Aware updates 20 Feb 202420 Feb 2024 Oops, I forgot to post links to my latest chapters of Aware on Substack: Desires Morals and Values There are perhaps two chapters and a conclusion to come. Book Epistemology Metaphysics Science Aware
Epistemology Dynamics and classification redux 7 Aug 2010 In my last two posts in this series, I suggested that science is a field of possible moments, with no set trajectory over what I called the “dance floor of science”. Some commentators have objected to this, arguing that there is no real difference between classification and theory building. I… Read More
Biology More on reductionism 26 Jan 201326 Jan 2013 I am presently teaching in a history subject dealing with ideas of nature, and I notice that the historians we are using often refer to a distinction between reductionism and holism. The former is the Bad Old Science (“we murder to dissect”) and the latter is the New Improved Science. This… Read More
Epistemology Peirce on Darwin (1877) 18 Aug 2009 The Darwinian controversy is, in large part, a question of logic. Mr. Darwin proposed to apply the statistical method to biology. The same thing had been done in a widely different branch of science, the theory of gases. Though unable to say what the movements of any particular molecule of… Read More