What to do with historical bastardry in our heroes? This is republished from my substack. Henceforth such posts – the equivalent of a magazine article…
1 CommentCategory: Evolution
The first phylogeny
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…
1 CommentVirulence and vectors
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…
2 CommentsWhat was Darwin’s Origin actually called
So, I got caught parroting half-remembered factoids, to Down House no less, that the Origin dropped the “On” from the start of the title with the fourth edition. In my defence, I was making use of Darwin Online, the Cambridge University site that collates all of Darwin’s publications and a whole lot more, in their list of editions of the Origin in English. So I got called out, and rightly so. If you’re going to be a pedant, at least be an accurate one.
Comments closedSuperstition and the fossil record
Superstition is not without value. Generally held beliefs give apparent order and coherence to human communities, qualities that are valued by some persons, especially those…
2 Comments50 words for snow 5; species
Series Conceptual confusion The economics of cultural categories What are phenomena? What counts as sociocultural? Species Constructing phenomena Explanations and phenomena All classificatory terms are…
7 CommentsSpecies: The evolution of the idea
My revised book is now titled Species: The evolution of the idea, and now contains a philosophy section as well as a complete list of species…
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