Monthly Archives: January 2009
On the supposed essentialism before Darwin
There is an extensive literature on essentialism in the natural sciences, including recent work by Brian Ellis, Joseph Laporte and others arguing that it is time to reintroduce the notion of essentialism. This follows the raising of essentialism in the … Continue reading
Filed under Evolution, History, Species and systematics
Amazing new philosophy resource
David Chalmers and his student David Bourget at the Australian National University have developed a new resource: PhilPapers. This is a hot list to online versions of (so far) over 188,000 items in current philosophy. I checked my own papers … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Metaphysics disclaimer
Ron Amundson is a philosopher and historian of biology at the University of Hawai’i – Hilo who has done some great work in my field. So I was greatly amused and more than a little sympathetic to see this disclaimer … Continue reading
Filed under General Science
Fun in Guelph
If you happen to be near the University of Guelph, then not only is Massimo Pigliucci giving a talk there, but there’s this event by my friend and former colleague, Stefan Linquist:
Filed under Evolution, Social evolution
More on the really bad journalism
An excellent fisking by Johnny at Ecographica is here – including the cover that New Scientist should have used… More from Larry at Sandwalk here, on the cover and the intent of the article. Marco F at Leucophaea has a … Continue reading
Filed under Evolution, History, Social evolution
The Place of Science in Society
It came as an email. Then it was on the Seed Bloggers Forum. Now it’s on my frigging Facebook – they really want me to answer this: In his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama reminded us of … Continue reading
Filed under Evolution, General Science, History, Politics, Sermon, Social evolution, Technology
Darwin was wrong…ish
There’s been a slew of “Darwin was wrong” and “Evolution is more complicated” stories in the media lately. It’s nearing Darwin day so simple minded media hacks can be explained as needing to find the requisite “drama” in their “stories”. … Continue reading
Filed under Ecology and Biodiversity, Evolution, General Science, History
Science by pedophile
What is nice about the humanity of science is that we do not need to have unattainable ideals for it to proceed. But we remain moral agents, and so we should not try to cover up the moral failings of scientific achievers.
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