We are hearing a lot of calls for there to be public debates with climate deniers, the alt-right (that is, modern fascists), creationists and antivaxxers, and this has led to people marking the so-called “paradox of tolerance” named by Karl Popper in his epochal 1945 Open Society and its Enemies: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the Read More…
The wealthy are often sociopathic. Why?
I have been encountering, in these days of political “incorrectness” (i.e., bastardry), more and more well-to-do folk who treat other folk as if they were lesser beings. Ranging from stepping over homeless people (literally) to failing to give way when you drive a Korean car and they a European one (or some varieties of Japanese). Read More…
What was Darwin’s Origin actually called
There’s a technical issue with the site, so the images aren’t displaying. You can click on where the image should be to see the page. So, I got caught parroting half-remembered factoids, to Down House no less, that the Origin dropped the “On” from the start of the title with the fourth edition. In my defence, Read More…
Superstition and the fossil record
Superstition is not without value. Generally held beliefs give apparent order and coherence to human communities, qualities that are valued by some persons, especially those with a vested interest in the order and coherence that might prevail during a certain era of human history. Without apparent order and coherence, there would be no conventional wisdom, Read More…
In defence of taxonomists [plus ça change]
I sympathize with the physiologist or ecologist, who after he has written a luminous paper on a Cratoegus or Viola, or Rosa, or Opuntia, endeavors to ascertain the proper name for his plant; but I do not sympathize with his objurgations against the whole tribe of species makers. There is a deal of pseudo science, Read More…
Launching Species
WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder It’s out! Get it here. Hardback and Ebook.
12 Days to Species publication
Due 15 February! Details here
An Agnostic’s Apology
From Sir Leslie Stephen’s 1903 book. “Apology” here means defence (from apologia). AN AGNOSTICS APOLOGY The name Agnostic, originally coined by Professor Huxley about 1869, has gained general acceptance. It is sometimes used to indicate the philosophical theory which Mr. Herbert Spencer, as he tells us, developed from the doctrine of Hamilton and Mansel. Upon that Read More…
Religious exceptionalism is undemocratic
This is my submission to the government’s “review”. As usual, I get contrarian. Below the fold…
50 words for snow 7: taxing attacks on taxa
We should consider in each case what Question it is that is proposed, and what answer to it would, in the instance before us, be the most opposite or contrasted to the one to be examined. E.G. “You will find this doctrine in Bacon” may be contrasted, either with “You will find in Bacon a Read More…