A Received View paper on species 24 Dec 2009 While I have some internet access via my GF (another fortnight! Is this the third world?) I will mention this paper in Evolution: Education and Outreach, on teaching about species. It’s a standard received view version, complete with Plato and all those logicians being read as if they were talking about biological species. Nothing all that deep. [Hat tip Richard Carter] Enjoy tomorrow’s conspicuous consumption. They way things are going, we may not be able to do this for very many more years… Education Species and systematics Species concept
Evolution Virgin births 4 Dec 2007 Forget about the season; virgin births can happen any time of year… and anywhere. So there is an Ask a Scienceblogger question about virgin births. In zoology this is called “parthenogenesis” (which means “virgin birth”), and in botany it is either called “vegetative reproduction” (think: cuttings) or “apomixis”, in which… Read More
Administrative Species: a history of the idea 21 Jul 2008 Today I got my manuscript off to the publisher. Heaven knows what the editors will do with it; I expect a sympathetic treatment as the publisher’s editorial board are quite keen. But it’s like having a ten year boil lanced. And seeing a favourite child graduate. All at once. So… Read More
Metaphysics On hierarchies 29 Jun 200922 Jun 2018 We often make an appeal to hierarchical relations, in social and political discourse, in religion, in metaphysics (or that odd part of it called mereology) and more recently in social behaviour in animals, called ethology. But what we don’t do much is discuss what it is that a hierarchy is,… Read More
Did I inform you about that paper? Or did you see it in my shared Google Reader items? I just don’t recall sending you the link…