The Life Academic
jlynch | October 28, 20082009 ASU-MBL History of Biology Seminar: Theory in the Life Sciences
May 20-27
Application Deadline: January 15, 2009
The MBL-ASU History of Biology Seminar is an intensive week with annually varying topics designed for a group of no more than 25 advanced graduate students, postdoctoral associates, younger scholars, and established researchers in biology, history, philosophy, and the social sciences.
The 2009 seminar will focus on the meaning of "theory in biology" as well as "biological theory." What makes biological theories different from theories in the physical sciences, and how has…
jlynch | October 8, 2008I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in Indianapolis. Tomorrow I will be attending a two-day Liberty Fund seminar on "Liberty in the Scientific Enlightenment," a discussion using E.O. Wilson's Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge as a jumping off point. Other attendees (there are 15 in total) include Vernon Smith, Larry Arnhart, Carl Mitcham, Stephen Barr, and Ronald Bailey. How - or why - I ended up in such company, I'm still unsure, but if anything interesting happens, I might just post something.
jlynch | August 21, 2008
Yesterday marked the start of the Fall semester here, and by marked I mean saw the circle of hell that is a seven hour faculty retreat. Saturday morning brings the Fall Assembly for honors students and teaching then begins on Monday.
Two classes this semester - my regular honors seminar and a (new for me) course on the history of science since 1700.
jlynch | August 3, 2008The preliminary program for the History of Science Society's annual meeting (November in Pittsburgh) has been placed online and it looks like the best series of sessions in a long while with the organizers managing to avoid scheduling sessions on similar themes at the same time. It's a three-day meeting but I'll only be around for the Friday & Saturday. Here's what my preliminary schedule looks like:
Friday
9:00 - The Hard Parts: Paleontology and the Evolutionary Synthesis. Some nice papers here on Sewall Wright, species concepts, Osborn, random drift, and ID.
12:30 - lecture by Gar Allen…
jlynch | July 22, 2008I recently co-authored a paper that discussed the utility of history of science for science (Isis 99: 322-330). The abstract reads:
This essay argues that science education can gain from close engagement with the history of science both in the training of prospective vocational scientists and in educating the broader public about the nature of science. First it shows how historicizing science in the classroom can improve the pedagogical experience of science students and might even help them turn into more effective professional practitioners of science. Then it examines how historians of…
jlynch | July 20, 2008Recently anthropologist John Hawks was granted tenure by the University of Wisconsin (congratulations to him!) and he feels that his blogging did not impede his evaluation. He has begun a four part series that "covers a different portion of the tenure process, from starting and establishing the tone of your blog, up to documenting your blog for your tenure dossier."
The full story is divided into four parts. In the final installment, which may be most useful to current bloggers, I will describe the specific strategies that I applied to quantify my blog's role as a service to the field and to…
jlynch | July 14, 2008
Very sad news for those of us who do physical anthropology. Charles ("Charlie") Lockwood (University College London) was killed today in a motorcycle accident in London. He is survived by his parents and sisters.
Charlie was a talented morphologist both in the sense of being a descriptive anatomist and quantitative biologist. I met him in the late 90's when he came to ASU's Institute of Origins for a post-doc after completing his PhD at the University of Witwatersrand. He, Bill Kimbel and I shared the pain of rejected NSF grant proposals before receiving NSF money to study the use of…
jlynch | June 10, 2008Two quick shots ...
Firstly, ASU is planning to install a 2 megawatt roof-top solar grid that will provide over 20% of the power to our campus. The installation is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
That’s enough to run 4,600 computers and reduce carbon emissions by 2,825 tons per year, or the equivalent of taking 530 cars off the road for a year. Long-term plans call for up to 7 megawatts of solar-generating capacity to be built at ASU in Tempe, with additional solar installations at its campuses in downtown Phoenix and other locations.
Secondly, Lawrence Krauss (of The…
jlynch | April 26, 2008Below the fold because it’s a 250k image. But it’s worth it.
Via eclectech - I can’t wait to use it in a presentation.
jlynch | April 26, 2008Onias raises an interesting question (to which I have no answer) in another thread, namely:
I was wondering if any of you folks at science blogs can discuss the issue of LGBT people in science. Apart from Jim Pollack, Alan Turing and a few others, we seem to be underrepresented. Is it due to something essential or innate in queer people? Is it because there is cultural pressure for gay people to work in other disciplines like fashion etc.?
Have at it folks. Any thoughts?
jlynch | March 21, 2008I have only one student completing an honors thesis with me this semester. Congratulations are due to Jes Joganic for successfully defending her thesis (An examination of the factors contributing to the development of posterior plagiocephaly in infants) this afternoon, a thesis that one colleague described as the best undergraduate research he had ever encountered. Moments like this make it all worthwhile.
jlynch | March 15, 2008John Wilkins and I have been at the Edges and Boundaries of Biological Objects workshop here in Salt Lake City for the past few days. John live-blogged some of the talks, so you may want to check his posts out. Lots of interesting stuff was discussed about populations (here and here), the fossil record (here), ecosystems (here and here), system dynamics and boundaries (here and here), DNA bar-coding (here and here), species, rank-free classification, and homology. All in all some really thought-provoking ideas that will take me a good while to digest.
Discussions are likely to continue at the…
jlynch | March 11, 2008Theodore Beale, a.k.a. "Vox Day", quote-miner and "Christian libertarian opinion columnist," apparently has issues with women in science. This via Ed Brayton:
Because they are the intellectual driving force of humanity, men will be fine. They will simply continue to do what they have always done and pursue the same challenges they have always pursued, focused on the realities of success rather than its superficial attributes. It is the institutions they are exiting, voluntarily and involuntarily, that will be destroyed instead. It is written that "women ruin everything"; having destroyed the…
jlynch | March 1, 2008It’s going to be quite the busy week here at ASU. John Wilkins is in town, as is Richard Dawkins. For the latter’s talk on Thursday, I’ve managed to snag VIP tickets - courtesy of the RDF - for Wilkins and I. Then we also have the launch of the International Institute for Species Exploration (Monday) and a two-day workshop Systematics and Biodiversity: Concepts and Prospects (Tuesday and Wednesday) featuring such names as Norm Platnick, Olivier Rieppel, Robert Kohler, Polly Winsor, a bunch of us ASU people, and, eh, Wilkins. A nice mix of historians, philosophers and taxonomists.
On top of…
jlynch | February 10, 2008
As promised, here [pdf, 7.83M] are the slides from today’s Darwin Day talk for the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix. There were somewhere between 80 and 100 people in attendance, and I think it went quite well.
And for any attendees who stop by here [pdf] are the slides from my September talk on Intelligent Design.
jlynch | February 7, 2008
Yesterday was a good day, though a long one. I was in my office from nine in the morning meeting with students constantly (talking about upcoming papers) until I began teaching at 12:15. My classes were discussing the Book of Job and really seemed to get it, and by that I mean be able to tease it apart and figure out what was going on, and what the assumptions and goals of the authors were. Seminars are so much fun when the students come ready to talk, argue and discuss! After classes I had a five minute break (literally my first break for the day, not even enough time to grab a coffee)…
jlynch | February 6, 2008James Hrynyshyn highlights an editorial in Nature that offers luke-warm support for Science Debate 2008. Frankly, the criticisms are paltry and misconceived.
Well meant though it may be, the idea of Tim Russert or some other journalist-interrogator looking Republican hopeful John McCain in the eye and asking "What balance will you seek in federal science funding between major-programme project research and investigator-initiated basic-research grants?" is somewhat fantastical. It is also slightly disturbing.
But who is advocating "Tim Russert or some other journalist-interrogator" asking…
jlynch | February 6, 2008
This coming Sunday I will be giving a public lecture for the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix. All are welcome, whether humanist or not. Details are:
Was There A Darwinian Revolution?
HomeTown Buffet, 1312 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale
February 10th, 2008 9:00 am
[There is breakfast at 9, the talk will begin at 10]
As usual, I will probably post the slides here after the talk.
jlynch | January 22, 2008By way of Sage Ross, a graduate student in history of science at Yale:
Spontaneous Generations is a new online academic journal published by graduate students at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. The journal aims to establish a platform for interdisciplinary discussion and debate about issues that concern the community of scholars in HPS and related fields.
Apart from selecting peer reviewed articles, the journal encourages a direct dialogue among academics by means of short editorials and focused discussion papers which highlight…