Monthly Archives: July 2009

by | July 29, 2009

Feeling smug

… because I sent off two papers this week to journals. I’ll feel a lot smugger, of course, if they get accepted. One is on genetic information (yeah, you all know about that one!) and the other about natural kinds … Continue reading →

13 Comments

Filed under Epistemology, Evolution, Philosophy, Religion, Science

by | July 29, 2009

My Carter number is one

Longtime readers will recall that I was put upon by that mountebank Professor Steve Steve during a trip to the US one time. Now he has managed to finagle a dinner with America’s most moral president, Jimmy Carter! So I … Continue reading →

19 Comments

Filed under Humor

by | July 28, 2009

Rant on Dembski

My good friend Ian Musgrave has just put up a wonderful rant on Dumbski’s latest crap, and it’s also up at Panda’s Thumb. Go read it. Nothing unexpected, Dembski’s usual rhetorical tricks and bad research, but it’s a fun read. … Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under Creationism and Intelligent Design

by | July 27, 2009

Fundamentalist atheism?

One of the more annoying claims some people make is that atheists are or can be fundamentalists. This is annoying for two reasons: one is that atheists rarely go out and picket funerals or insist on what people can do … Continue reading →

40 Comments

Filed under Metaphysics, Philosophy, Religion, Sermon

by | July 27, 2009

Godfrey Smith’s book

Peter Godfrey Smith is a leading philosopher of biology, a professor at Harvard. He has recently published an important book on the nature of evolution, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, in which he moves away from the gene centrism of … Continue reading →

6 Comments

Filed under Biology, Book, Evolution, Philosophy, Science

by | July 27, 2009

Metaphysics of Science papers

I wasn’t able to go to the Metaphysics of Science conference in Melbourne recently, because it unfortunately conflicted with the AAHPSSS conference in Brisbane (not good planning!), but some of the papers are available online. Devitt’s and Dowe’s papers in … Continue reading →

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Filed under Metaphysics, Philosophy, Science

by | July 26, 2009

More Whewell

When we have thus obtained, with reference to any such subject as those we have here spoken of, these two portions of science, a systematic description of the facts, and a rigorous analysis of the causes, — the Phenomenology and … Continue reading →

9 Comments

Filed under Epistemology, Philosophy, Science

by | July 26, 2009

On the Gates arrest

I’m a long way away from this event which is taking up so much of the media’s attention in the States. So of course that means I have to say something about it.

17 Comments

Filed under Freedom, Politics, Race and politics, Sermon, Social evolution

by | July 25, 2009

Good God. Bush was a force for reason

against Cheney’s wholesale rejection of the rule of law. Read about it here.

2 Comments

Filed under Politics

by | July 23, 2009

Evidence and Evolution

I have just finished doing a review (for Systematic Biology) that took me six months. It was not because I was slack. It was because I had to read it in three page segments. The book is “Evidence and Evolution: … Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Biology, Book, Creationism and Intelligent Design, Epistemology, Evolution, Philosophy, Science, Systematics