Epistemology Operative concepts 27 Apr 202227 Apr 2022 Gave a talk “The Good Species” yesterday (26 April 2022) to the HPS crowd at UniMelb. The discussion went a way I didn’t expect: classification in the psychiatric and medical domains. I proposed a third kind of concept formation in science: what I am calling “operative concepts”: folk terms and… Read More
Ethics and Moral Philosophy Arnhart on Hitler’s Ethic 9 Sep 2009 Larry Arnhart has a pretty solid review of Richard Weikert’s latest anti-Darwin guilt-by-association text linking Darwin to Hitler. However, I think he gives too much away. Read More
Biology Thermodynamics, and the origin of replicators 14 Mar 2010 Over at Discover, Sean Carroll has a nice post on thermodynamics, free energy and the origins of life. It’s a good intro, but in the course of it he remarks: Obviously there is a lot missing to this story, and much of it is an absence of complete understanding on… Read More
This explains pretty much every single “OMG WE JUST SOLVED BIOLOGY!!1!” paper ever found in physics journals… *cringe* (If I recall, T Ryan Gregory is accumulating quite the collection of “revolutionary” genome papers he finds in physics journals. So revolutionary that no lowly biologist can understand as much as the basic thesis of the paper…)
Reminds me of Fred Hoyle’s rediscovery of population genetics, apparently unaware that it had already happened. And of course his discovery that Archaeopteryx was a hoax. “Most popular Tested Marketing auctions”? Is that a form of spam I have not previously encountered?
There is a form of trackback spamming becoming popular. Mostly I block it via Askimet, but some creeps through.
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2010/09/prolate-spheroids.html OT, I really like the “how scientists think” idea. My alter ego may have to send you something.