Biology Aware is finished. Now for something different 14 May 202414 May 2024 So I finished presenting the book Aware on my substack, which will now ferment in my bottom drawer (metaphorically) until it ripens. While that is happening I am preparing to edit some nineteenth century sources for discussions of classification, taxonomy, species, higher and lower taxa, and many other subjects. Does… Continue Reading
Australian stuff A local talk 15 Mar 202415 Mar 2024 HPS book celebration at the University of Melbourne Continue Reading
Biology Species-related publications 8 Sep 20238 Sep 2023 What’s a personal blog for, if not to blow my own horn? Well, it can only be to blow the horns of those who I have collaborated with, of course. Two of my most recent publications are: The first is a chapter in the open Access book edited by Schwartz… Continue Reading
Censorship Feet of clay problem 23 Nov 202223 Nov 2022 What to do with historical bastardry in our heroes? This is republished from my substack. Henceforth such posts – the equivalent of a magazine article or an essay – will appear first on the substack and then on the blog evolvingthoughts.au. After a distance of time, they will end up… Continue Reading
Philosophy How to do numerical taxonomy 9 Oct 20219 Oct 2021 Hint: use only original IBM punch cards Continue Reading
Evolution The first phylogeny 30 Sep 202030 Sep 2020 The only diagram in the Origin is famously the hypothetical series of species forming a tree structure, but it isn’t an actual classification based on his principles. I have previously noted the rise of cladograms towards the end of the 19th century, but in a talk by Ian Hesketh, I was… Continue Reading
Biology Do we need, and can we get, a single authoritative list of species? 4 Aug 202025 Aug 2020 In a recent paper, Garnett et al. [2020] have set up what they refer to as the principles for creating a single authoritative list of all known species. This is required because there are no such singular lists (one was attempted in the 1990s, and another in the naughties) to which… Continue Reading
Ecology and Biodiversity Virulence and vectors 18 Mar 202018 Mar 2020 Apropos of nothing, I am reminded of Paul Ewald’s book Evolution of infectious disease (1994). Ewald begins with the question of whether parasites and pathogens evolve towards commensuality (the state of being mutually beneficial, which is what, among others, Macfarlane Burnet thought, along with many immunologists and epidemiologists. Ewald points out… Continue Reading
Philosophy Putnam on taxonomic terms 29 Jan 202029 Jan 2020 Terms with respect to which we defer to experts include both technical terms in science and such terms as ‘elm’ or ‘beech’ (in the United States, at least, most people cannot tell an elm from a beech, but anyone who knows that ‘elm’ and ‘beech’ are the names of common… Continue Reading
Ecology and Biodiversity Environmentalism timetable 6 Dec 20196 Dec 2019 I prepared this for my students and thought others might like it. It’s a timetable of environmental law, politics, publications of note, events and disasters since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962. Enjoy and send corrections. Continue Reading