John Wilkins
evolvingthoughts
Posts by this author
August 2, 2006
This week's question is
What movie do you think does something admirable (though not necessarily accurate) regarding science? Bonus points for answering whether the chosen movie is any good generally....
I can't think of a film that has accurately represented science as I know it. Possibly the film…
August 2, 2006
Here is a worthwhile short essay on biodiversity and the role of social norms in science. I particularly liked these paragraphs:
To begin with, it is apparent that "biodiversity" is not a factual observation, but a cultural construction. One way to construct it is by considering only biodiversity…
August 1, 2006
In which our hero rediscovers history and sociology and damned hot weather...
My travels continued with the usual boring flight to Heathrow, thence to Chicago, and a train trip to visit David Hull, as I said. As I flew into American airspace, I was struck looking out the window by the haze of…
August 1, 2006
COSMOS magazine is reporting that the local bank, the Bank of Queensland, has bought a Linnean name for themselves. Yes, that's right: they paid for a spider to be named after them officially.
Now, I don't know what you think of the relation between spiders and banks (some spiders aren't venomous,…
July 31, 2006
I just want to start out saying
1. Everybody has been tagged with this one, and
2. These aren't really "memes", although these days I think that term is otiose. A meme spreads itself.
Anyway, now I'm back from such non-English speaking places as Bristol, Exeter, London and Chicago (Paris and…
July 26, 2006
In which our hero discovers the joys of walking...
Next on my trip, I visited David Williams, a paleobiologist at the Museum of Natural History in London. We talked at length about the nature of systematics (which is something I am increasingly less certain about) and of the history of species…
July 17, 2006
This is a repost of some old site entries, collated.
I've been wondering of late what it is that is explained when something is called "designed".
The older design theorists had no such trouble - Aquinas, for example, noted that
... things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for…
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…
July 10, 2006
I am spatiotemporally challenged (it goes with my inability to remember names, even those of my kids. Birthdays are often a disappointment for them). However, I am fairly sure I will be overseas for the next three weeks. Overseas being defined as where Australia is not. I will blog when I can (and…
July 8, 2006
Rob Skipper has an excellent post at his blog entitled What Scientific Explanation Isn't. It's a good explanation of the DN (deductive nomological) model of explanation offered by Carl Hempel, which has come across some serious criticism of late.
By coincidence, this was a major issue in the two…
July 7, 2006
Media Matters has a wonderful bow by blow debuning of Ann Coulter's "Flatulent Raccoon Theory", better known as Godless: The Church of Liberalism. While I don't read the rabid blonde's droolings, it looks pretty good to me (apart from dating Kitzmiller a year too early.
What I hope is that this…
July 6, 2006
I had a thought as I was recovering from my lack of sleep. What would you like me to cover? I have some forthcoming topics, but I thought you might like to suggest some philosophical issue with biology that interest you (and offer me a chance to catch up on some old subjects I haven't thought about…
July 6, 2006
Ha! While I was away, being humiliated and disparaged (and that was only my family), I get a mention in Nature. Well on their website, anyway, as one (#30) of the top fifty science blogs. Science education and reporting is in a pretty pass when a philosopher gets rated as a science reporter. [Via…
July 6, 2006
The question offered up to stump those ivory tower eggheads this week, is:
On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal. Ten years on, has cloning developed the way you expected it to?...
Pretty much. I expected it to be both illuminating about the way development…
July 5, 2006
Well, despite major PowerPoint problems (I am so going to put Keynote on this Mac!) I survived my talk. It was, indeed, a very long suicide note, as I feared, but I gather the execution of said note is deferred for the time being.
Other than that I'm having a wonderful time - too many interesting (…
June 25, 2006
I suppose the regulars have noticed that I've dropped off a bit lately. I can explain...
The next few weeks are mad for me. I have two papers to write, and deliver, one in Canberra at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference in Canberra (on information in genes, or the lack of it) next…
June 25, 2006
Here is a paper in the Canadian Journal of Zoology which documents learned hunting behaviour among Tursiops truncatus, the bottlenose dolphin, in Western Australia.
Specialization and development of beach hunting, a rare foraging behavior, by wild bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.)
B. L. Sargeant,…
June 23, 2006
Yahoo news is reporting that Harriet, the world's oldest tortoise, has died aged 176
Harriet was collected by Darwin on the Beagle voyage in 1830, when she was about 2 inches. She found her way to Brisbane, where I currently live, and was allowed to roam the Brisbane botanical gardens, but ignorant…
June 21, 2006
The Interacademy Panel on International Issues has issued a statement on evolution:
IAP STATEMENT ON THE TEACHING OF EVOLUTION
We, the undersigned Academies of Sciences, have learned that in various parts of the world, within science courses taught in certain public systems of education,…
June 20, 2006
Courtesy of Panda's Thumb, a link to this wonderful short OpEd: The York Daily Record - Coulter mangles Dover case, by Mike Argento. It includes many beautiful zingers about the mad blonde, but the best is this:
... that brings us to the big irony of Coulter's work.
Her vitriol and ignorance shows…
June 20, 2006
... while I adjust my professional career. Please check back in a little while for more ranting.
June 20, 2006
Well after reading many papers by various bacteriologists, mycologists, and other non-vertebrates specialists, I have come to the conclusion that there is no single set of conceptions or criteria (that much abused word!) for something being a species in non-sexual organisms, which I am here…
June 19, 2006
When we attempt to apply to organisms that are not obligately sexual (that is, which don't have to have sex to reproduce) concepts that were specified to use with those that are, we have problems. The Recombination Model is one such attempt. Sure, some microbial species exchange genes. Others do…
June 18, 2006
The second main approach to a natural conception of microbial species (by which I mean, as opposed to operational, practical or conventional ones, collectively called "artificial" conceptions) is what I will call the Quasispecies Model. According to the concept developed by Manfred Eigen for viral…
June 17, 2006
The cluster of genomes of asexual organisms forms what is called a "phylotype" (Denniston 1974, a term coined by C. W. Cotterman in unpublished notes dated 1960; I like to track these things down). Phylotype is a taxon-neutral term, though, that is determined entirely by the arbitrary level of…
June 16, 2006
Reposted from the old blog.
OK, this is one of a series of posts in which I will play with ideas that might will become a paper.
The problem is this: usually we define a species as a group of related organisms that share genes (or a gene pool, which amounts to the same thing). Sometimes we…
June 16, 2006
Courtesy of Unscrewing the Inscrutable, comes this video of Stephen Colbert interviewing Georgia Congressman Lynn Westmoreland about a Bill he sponsored for putting the Ten Commandments up in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Wtach what happens when he asks the Congresscritter to name…
June 16, 2006
I recently [some time back now - this being a repost] received this question in email. I hope the correspondent doesn't mind my posting it anonymously.
I notice from www.dictionary.com that the word "Devolution" is a term in biology which means "degeneration". Is it an antonym of the word "…
June 15, 2006
Razib has proposed an interesting challenge: Define evolution in ten words or less.
His definition is this:
Differential fitness correlated with heritable variation results in evolution
John Hawks' suggestion is this:
No evolution means equal offspring for everyone!
But both of these focus only on…
June 15, 2006
A recent paper in Nature, Speciation by hybridization in Heliconius butterflies is getting a fair bit of comment on the internet. This is a case where the researchers, wondering if an Andean butterfly species was a hybrid of two others, decided to test the hypothesis by re-evolving it deliberately…