A blog worth reading 8 Aug 2007 Kate Devitt, a PhD student at Rutgers, as a rather wonderful blog, Mnemosynosis, on matters relating to memory. She’s got at present a very interesting post on bacterial cognition worth reading. Logic and philosophy
Biology Why is Darwin’s theory so controversial? 24 Nov 2012 So asks this essay and gets the whole thing wrong. Darwin’s theories (plural) are not controversial because they imply that species are mutable. This was a widely held view by preachers, moralists, Aristotelians, naturalists, breeders, formalists, folk biology, and even biblical translators. Darwin was not controversial because he implied racist… Read More
General Science Begging questions about philosophy, science and everything else 1 Sep 20121 Sep 2012 Those who know me well take great care not to say (at least when I am in earshot) “That begs the question…” and mean by that “That raises the question…”, or else they will get a dissertation delivered for a period on the right use of that phrase. That’s right, folks,… Read More
History Quote: Nominalism 16 Feb 201216 Feb 2012 Nominalism has often been misunderstood in the past, perhaps because of the associations of the word itself. Properly conceived, nominalism has nothing to do with names. It is, quite precisely, the thesis that everything which exists is an individual, and is moreover an individual in itself, and not merely as a… Read More