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
Epistemology Logic, evolution, and classification 1 Feb 201118 Sep 2017 Sometimes, as a philosopher, one forgets that not everyone has been forced to undergo a logic class. This is a problem, both because logic is taught as the second most boring subject after calculus, and because, like calculus, it is enormously relevant to everything we do. Most especially it is… Read More
Epistemology Disambiguating the Theory-Dependence of Observation thesis (TDOT) 16 Jun 2011 For the past half century it has been largely agreed that one cannot observe without prior theory. This is rarely explicated, however, and there seems to be some ambiguity in the claims made. So I will do a rough taxonomy of the TDOT. When N. R. Hanson introduced the claim… Read More
Biology When philosophy meets historical taxonomy 5 Apr 2010 Chris Taylor does this absolutely amazing blog. I find myself checking to see if he’s done another one of his wonderful taxon posts, where he picks some usually obscure group of animals and makes them interesting and alive. He’s done it again, for indrids, a group of lemurs, but what… Read More