One man's struggle against impermanence
John Wilkins is an aged, eternal student, who thinks philosophy of biology is at least as interesting as politics or sport and twice as important. He has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Queensland, in Australia. After a varied career, involving factories, gardening, civil service, publishing, graphics, public relations but not, unfortunately for the CV, driving a truck, John finally completed his thesis on species concepts, which he is working into two books. One has been accepted for publication, and will come out in 2008; the other may be contracted soon. He is also interested in cultural evolution, philosophy of religion, Macintosh computers and his kids (they sort of make it a necessity, you know?).
If anyone knows of a tenurable, or even medium term, job in philosophy of biology, let me know. Have library, will travel. The contract runs out soon...
This blog is designed to host any random thoughts that happen to be passing through my forebrain at a given moment. So there will be errors...
Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion
Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent Design (New Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine)
Foundations of Systematics and Biogeography
Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality
Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition Series)
My personal page is here:
The previous instantiation of this blog is accessible here.
May 14, 2008
Category: History
In a famous skit, Wayne and Schuster had Calpurnia, Caesar's wife, saying "Julie, don't go! It's the Ides of March!" Now we can see why Julie went. He was old, and worried... This is a bust of Julius Caesar...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:12 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V scene 1, Miranda says O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't! The third line gave Aldous Huxley the...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:26 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 13, 2008
Category: Humor
There's this: But spiderman is fiction, of course....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:02 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
No, not the use of Java to archive his music. This presence: A trapdoor spider named after him. This cute fellow: Hat tip: David Williams...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:17 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Design
Some things, I really should have thought of myself. Like this:...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:12 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 12, 2008
Category: Politics
From Wiley: And while we're on the topic......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:50 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 9, 2008
Category: Administrative
So much has been happening in the world while I was giving a talk on the adaptiveness of religion in Sydney. The Platypus thing was one item I'd have blogged on if the rest of the blogosphere hadn't beaten...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:33 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
Sometime over tonight, this blog will pass the half a million visits mark. Say it out loud with me: half...a...million! Now I know this is because the six regular readers routinely and obsessively visit me every fifteen seconds, and...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:49 AM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 8, 2008
Category: General Science
... is a blogger on the paranormal and skeptical stuff. She has some nice posts on Women and superstition (parts one and two) and Skeptical Books for Children (parts one, two, three and four). Go check them and her...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:33 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 5, 2008
Category: Humor
Damn The Onion! They're watching me!...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:31 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
In a piece reported on in New Scientist, Maurice Bloch has proposed another basis for religion: imagination. Because we can project ourselves and imagine the "transcendental" relation in social and personal relationships, we can imagine that there are agents...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:04 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
The federal Australian government of Kevin Rudd has done its first act of pure bastardry. As I noted before, the PM thinks that marriage is reserved for heterosexuals only. He can think that. He can think that marriage ought...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:20 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 4, 2008
Category: General Science
On a newsgroup that shall remain Nameless, one of the regulars, Bill Reich, just heard on the History Channel: Smilodon is the ancestor of all the modern big cats. Oy! So this thread is for egregiously* wrong statements made...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:05 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 3, 2008
Category: Logic and philosophy
Duck and cover, folks. I'm about to upset somebody. I have previously been fairly critical of DNA barcoding, the proposal to use a small fragment of the COI gene - a mitochondrial gene cytochrome c oxidase, subunit I -...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:29 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
John Hawks has a very nice post for people with basic math, explaining why a recent press release announced that 70,000 years ago the human species encountered a population bottleneck of 2000 individuals, and why it's most likely wrong....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:43 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
One of the enduring patterns of the history of the history of evolution is for historians to claim that their favourite individual, or their country's best and brightest, invented evolution. The most recent appears to be this guy from...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:04 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
