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Update on my trip

By evolvingthoughts on July 17, 2006.

So, some of you are wondering what's happened. Well, maybe one of you is. Hi mum.

I went to the Philosophy of Microbiology conference at Exeter - somebody forgot to tell the English that it's supposed to be cold here. I got sunburned! An Australian getting sunburned in England! How embarrassment. I delivered my microbial species concept talk, and it generated a lot of discussion. Some thought it entirely unnecessary, while others (including many scientists) thought it had good points. We'll see. As it happens, I visited David Williams and the Natural History Museum in London today, and he told me there was a fairly inconsequential series at the Royal Society on microbial species recently, trying to shoehorn asexuals into Mayr's species concept. Loyal readers will know I think that's the cart dragging the horse.

I got more sunburned today, but I am resting now in the lovely home of mein hosts, Robin and Cathy Levett, in Kent. Next to Paris - I hear they have lovely secondhand bookshops there and some other things worth seeing, before I'm off to Chicago to visit David Hull, who will no doubt set me straight on my many pecadillos and confusions.

In between Exeter and London, I dropped by to visit Sue Blackmore and Adam Hart-Davis in Bristol. I would have come by a day earlier, but they were having tea with the Queen (along with several others). I don't mind being displaced by Royalty. In my honour, they had a BBQ, and I managed to nearly set the hedge alight in true Australian fashion. We discussed memes, of course, and "Darwinism", a topic that has come up everywhere recently I have visited.

It seems to me that people are becoming a little jaded about that term, as well they might, since it appears to cover everything from adaptation to gene-centrism and adherence to this or that writer. I might blog on the nature of Darwinism later.

I still intend to respond to Rob Skipper on the DN model of explanation - I may have time on the plane to the US to write something up. Or not, if my friend Malte Ebach, with whom I am staying (along with his lovely wife Caitlin Hulcup) in Paris manages to get me going in one of those "solve the problems of the world" nights.

Tomorrow, Downe House... to tread where Darwin trod (and presumably absorb some of the cognitive aura).

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