A series of posts on Categories in systematics 7 May 20257 May 2025 They are on Substack of course, and I forgot to link to them here, so: https://johnwilkins.substack.com/p/category-mistakes-with-explanation https://johnwilkins.substack.com/p/category-mistakes-in-scientific-metaphysics https://johnwilkins.substack.com/p/explanation-and-inference-in-science https://johnwilkins.substack.com/p/concepts-methods-and-categories Biology Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution Genetics Metaphysics Science Species and systematics
Ecology and Biodiversity How is a species like a soup can? 22 Oct 200818 Sep 2017 That is not a riddle, or rather it’s not meant to be, but it’s a question worth asking about the barcoding project. Wired has a nicely written piece about the rationale and program of giving species DNA barcodes and using the gene chosen as the barcode to identify the number… Read More
Evolution The “design” mistake 18 Feb 2008 Back when Darwin was a student at Cambridge, he read, and almost memorised the Rev William Paley’s Natural Theology, and thereafter remained impressed by the obvious adaptiveness of the parts of organisms and their interrelations. As is well known, he gave an explanation differently to Paley’s external intelligence that designs… Read More
Administrative Envall troll has his own blog 17 Feb 2009 Once upon a time, I made mention, simply a mention, of a paper by one Matts Envall, which I said I would later comment on. I did so because a friend of mine, Malte Ebach, told me about him and the paper. I have yet to appropriately thank Malte. My… Read More