Evolving Thoughts
One man's struggle against impermanence
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Profile
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...
Recent Posts
- Render Caesar
- What sorts of people
- Speaking of spiders...
- Neil Young gets his own web presence
- Russell's teapot
- Pastorale
- Short takes
- A meaningless numerical coincidence, w00t!
- Podblack Cat
- The name has been changed...
Recent Comments
- Ribozyme on Render Caesar
- Pubcat on What sorts of people
- t on Speaking of spiders...
- Christopher Taylor on Render Caesar
- George W. Caesar on Render Caesar
- Ian on Render Caesar
- csrster on Render Caesar
- fvngvs on Render Caesar
- Thinker on Render Caesar
- Thony C. on Render Caesar
Archives
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
Blogroll
- Aetiology
- Afarensis
- Brooke McEldowney's blog
- Darwin Central
- De Rerum Natura
- Deanne Taylor's Blog at Nature
- Dienekes' Anthropology Blog
- Dispatches from the Culture Wars
- Galactic Interactions
- Ideas of Imperfection
- John Hawks Anthropology Weblog
- Laelaps
- Malfunction Junction
- Musgrave's Astroblogger
- National Center for Science Education
- Pharyngula
- Sandwalk
- Scott Page's All-too-common dissent
- Small Things Considered
- Sunbeams from Cucumbers
- The Lippard Blog
- The Loom
- The Panda's Thumb
- The Questionable Authority
- The Thinking Meat Project
- Thoughts in a Haystack
- Unruled Notebook
- Unscrewing The Inscrutable
Books I'm reading
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)
Search old and new blogs
Other Information
My personal page is here:
The previous instantiation of this blog is accessible here.
Best of Evolving Thoughts: a silverback sampler
Listed below are the best of my posts and articles, some of which are written as drafts of actual papers. They have been scientifically sampled and recommended by me.
Entries from the Old Site are asterisked
Species and speciation/classification
- Relating speciation*
- Speciation genes*
- Speciation conclusion*
- Speciation of invaders by natural selection*
- Botany gets a "C" for species*
- The essence of a species*
- When is a species worth conserving?*
- On microbial species 1
- Microbial species 2: recombination
- Microbial species 3: Quasispecies and ecology*
- Microbial species 4: degrees of sex
- Microbial species 5: A new beginning, followed by a Postlude
- The reciprocal illumination of palaeontology and molecular systematics
- A list of 26 species "concepts"
- Against units in biology
- Species
- Darwin on species 1
- Darwin on species 2
- Darwin on species 3
- Allopatry and Sympatry
- Linnaeus' tercentenary and species
- Happy Birthday Linnaeus
- Linnaeus on species
- The mystery of mysteries - early naturalistic views of species origins
- Types, tokens, genera and species
- "Species in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Are species theoretical objects?
- Theories of speciation
Scientific behaviour and process
- Peer review, stem cells and science*
- Demarcating science
- Methodology, domains and disciplines
- The Demarcation Problem... again
- The Song of the Scientist
- PhotoShopping Science
- Science and nonscience
- Theory
- Thoughts on History and Science
- Philosophy is to Science, as ornithologists are to birds: Introduction; Two topics of the philosophy of science; Science is a dynamic process
- Journalists and scientists
Evolutionary theory and processes
- Evolution, rules and laws*
- Rooting the tree - and finding the cenacestor*
- The evolution of lawns*
- Evolution and truth
- Anthropology and the evolution of culture
- A Darwinian history
- Cladism and culture
- Epicurus, Moran, and chance
- Clade
- Fitness
- The many faces of "evolution"
- Progress, Primitive, and Advanced
- Evolution and accident
- Ancestors, followed by Counting Ancestors
- What is an individual?
Creationism and antiscience
- A polite creationist, and a polite reply*
- How many fallacies can ID pack into one article?*
- Species description of creationists
- Why are creationists creationist?
- Why are creationists creationist? 2 - conceptual spaces
- Why are creationists creationist? 3 - compartment and coherence
- Why are creationists creationist? 4 - how to oppose antiscience
- Teaching science in an antiscience country
- The evolution crackpot index
History and philosophy of biology
- Aristotle on biology, by Lennox*
- Universals and language*
- Essentialism revisited*
- The abstract and the concrete in biology*
- Evolving representations*
- What is an abstraction?*
- Popper on evolution
- Mayr's Whig
- The man who invented evolution
- Giraffes win by a neck
- Introduction to the Philosophy of Biology
- Water and reduction
- Nietzsche and evolution
- The pobble has no toes...
- Instruction and information
- On the incoherence of "Darwinism"
- Lewes on Heredity
- Explanation
- The meaning of "life"
- What is "life", again?
- What is "life", at last
Politics and race
- Races, geography and genetic clusters*
- Some more on race*
- Last one on race*
- Darwin and the Holocaust - what's the real story?
- Darwin and the Holocaust 2: Christians and Jews
- Darwin and the Holocaust 3: eugenics
- Is nature democratic?
- Is the Bush Administration fascist?
- Retrospective legislation
- Darwin on the Irish
- The kangaroo is the first organism [in English], but the fungus is not the biggest
The World according to Genesis
Sermons
- Saturday evening sermon*
- On disbelief
- Is religion malign?
- What is an agnostic?
- Agnostic still
- On Learned Ignorance
- The origins of religions
- God, evolution, and variation
- Atheism and agnosticism... again
- Another kind of agnosticism
- Dads
- The Procrastination Principle, followed up by More on Procrastination
- Religion: the cure that kills
- God and the Natural History of Religion
- The topic of the evolution of religion
- A Thursday sermon
- The nature of spirit
- Disagreeing with PZ
- Sunday Sermon: Secularism
- In praise of religious tolerance, even for atheists
- Religion and science
- Tolerance and reason
Last updated 14/09/07
