So I’m at the Philosophy of Biology at Dolphin Beach 4 meeting in southern New South Wales. Some sort of a political erection (did I get that right?) occurred last night, and some people were either very happy or very sad; I couldn’t tell. But the talks are excellent, in particular one on my own field of expertise, by Joeri Witteveen on typological thinking. Also, Michael Weisberg’s paper on the origins of chirality was great fun. I am a sad, sad man, when talks involving chemical diagrams are fun.
Here’s a nice video showing why clocks would evolve if the parts had an affinity and they were selected for accuracy. Turn off the sound as they do horrid things to Coldplay’s song “Clocks”.
Justin Smith has two posts on Mark Taylor’s attack on philosophy, one here and the follow-on here.
Are Tuaturas one species or two?
Some history: Thony Christie has a great piece on Flamsteed, the astronomer. Eric Michael Johnson has the second of a two parter on Kropotkin. John Lynch has closed down A Simple Prop, the piker.
It’s a privilege not to have to apologise for atrocities perpetrated by your co-ethnics. Why kind of a privilege? Why, a white Christian privilege.
Is Darwinism a threat to Catholicism?
More philosophy links
The ten best philosophy papers of 2009. One of them is by my friend Rachel Briggs, who is Very Clever.
Metaphysics and the philosophy of science conference.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has some new and excellent articles, and some revised ones: Chance and Randomness; George Santayana; Tarski’s Truth Definitions; Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science; Folk Psychology as a Theory; and a stellar piece on Otto Neurath, one of the most underappreciated philosophers of his time. He invented ideograms, those little icons used to identify everything from toilets to children crossing the road, among other things.
Is evidence going to end Christianity?
Another obituary for David Hull.
John D at Philosophical Disquisitions is doing a series on Graham Oppy on Disagreement worth checking out: Part One, Two, and Three.
Proud of my pikerousness
Wuss.
Second your opinion of Thony’s post about Flamsteed.
Thirded. He’s one of the better bloggers around.
The cheques will be in the post at the end of the month.
Make sure they’re in Euros this time and not that Australian muck.
Payment is in Altairian Dollars of course.
You don’t happen to know the exchange rate for quatloos do you?
That depends on where the exchange occurs
Mark Taylor is a glorious dancing toad. Why glorious? Well, how many toads can dance at all well? I therefore call his act glorious.
Thanks for linking to my post The Scientist and the Anarchist, John. Part III has just been posted at Deborah Blum’s blog Speakeasy Science.
Something to read at work while I’m, erm, working. Yes, we’ll call it working. Thanks John.
Thanks again John!