12 Days to Species publication 3 Feb 2018 Due 15 February! Details here Ecology and Biodiversity Epistemology Metaphysics Philosophy Science Species and systematics Species concept Systematics
Epistemology You and me, baby, ain’t nothing but mammals 7 Apr 2010 The song of the title of this post is a catchy and highly amusing piece that suggests that if we’re just mammals we should have sex. It’s sort of a low brow version of Andrew Marvell’s To his coy mistress. Instead of Time’s wingéd chariot, we should do what mammals… Read More
Evolution On the supposed essentialism before Darwin 30 Jan 2009 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 philosophy of language by Hilary Putnam in the 1970s. Just… Read More
History The classification of clouds 26 Nov 201228 Nov 2012 [A segment of my new book, coauthored with Malte Ebach] The classification of clouds Clouds were regarded as so subjective, fleeting and resistant to classification that they were a byword for the failure of empirical classification, until Luke Howard in 1802 proposed the foundation for our present system of cloud… Read More