Back in the saddle 16 Jul 2009 So, my conferencing has finished, and I’ve even managed to catch up on some sleep. The Ish conference was amazing: I got to hear a lot of papers on topics I am working on and I got to meet some of the people whose work has strongly influenced me, especially Phillip Sloan, a historian of biology, and Paul Farber, who was so far as I can tell the first critic of the essentialism myth. It’s a buzz to meet one’s heroes and even better to find they are great folk. There were some thought provoking talks on the species problem, on taxonomy, and general issues of essentialism, which all seem to be undergoing a bit of a revival, quite rightly. Of course, only I am right… I got quite grumpy about a repetition of the old caricatures of pattern cladism and of the views of people who I know and respect and deserve better, rather than reiterating the canards of old. But even that was fun; a good grump is good for the soul. Somehow – I’m not entirely sure – I got tapped for some committee work, not a day after I was boasting to a friend that I would never do committee work again. The gods are nothing if not ironic. I have a bit of work to do, but I’ll return with the usual garbage later on. Administrative Species and systematics Species concept
Epistemology 50 words for snow, or conceptual confusion 11 Sep 20171 Mar 2019 Series Conceptual confusion The economics of cultural categories What are phenomena? What counts as sociocultural? Species Constructing phenomena Explanations and phenomena In a well-known and generally debunked story, Inuit people have around 50 words for snow. Or so the argument by anthropologist Franz Boas goes. In fact, people who engage… Read More
Administrative So, here I am in Arizona, still 9 Mar 2008 Yeah, yeah, OK, I know I’ve been absent except on the comments, but I’m traveling, all right? Everything I have worth saying gets said over beer or whiskey, tonight to Jim Lippard and John Lynch, the latter of whom is my present host. I must thank Malte Ebach for his… Read More
Administrative Testing Tweet Embedding 1 Oct 201110 Oct 2011 Using a hint from here: http://twitter.com/#!/john_s_wilkins/status/119905993344827394 http://twitter.com/#!/john_s_wilkins/status/119905698241978368 http://twitter.com/#!/john_s_wilkins/status/119905579950026752 http://twitter.com/#!/john_s_wilkins/status/119765002872827905 Testing LaTeX embedding: [latex]H= -K\sum^{n}_{i=1} p(i) \log p(i)[/latex] [latex]d(x, y) = \alpha f(X – Y) + \beta f(Y – X) – \theta f(X – Y) \quad \alpha, \beta,\theta \geq 0[/latex] Read More
Sounds like it was a great meeting. Like essentialism, pattern cladism is another myth very popular all the way from philosophers to systematic biologists: everything perceived as wrongheaded is automatically associated (blamed on) with pattern cladism. It is also not surprising that both myths are intertwined. Anyways, we miss you in the blogosphere so GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER MAN!
Thanks, Roberto. I am thinking that I might start writing a book on the philosophy of classification. It seems to be needed. I’m getting my act together and taking it on the road!
Farber, Paul Lawrence. 1976. The type-concept in zoology during the first half of the nineteenth century. Journal of the History of Biology 9 (1):93-119. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00129174