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
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
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
Ecology and Biodiversity New book contract 29 Jul 201930 Oct 2019 Well CRC Press haven’t learned their lesson yet, and have given me, Frank Zachos (Vienna) and Igor Pavlinov (Moscow) a contract for an edited book of science and philosophy dialogue entitled Species and Beyond. Anyone who wants a particular topic to be covered, leave it in the comments. I won’t… Continue Reading
Biology A not terribly good post on the species problem 18 Jul 2019 As a biological phenomenon the species problem is worthy of serious study as an end in itself, and not as a mere corollary to work in some other field. It is, to be sure, a problem so fundamentally important that it touches many such fields. Workers in any one of… Continue Reading
Evolution What is special about humans? 23 Nov 201827 Feb 2019 As soon as somebody asks the question “what is a ____?” we get into trouble. Not because we do not know about the thing in the blank, but because we tend to have the wrong idea about how to answer that question. Since the Greeks, the general feeling is that… Continue Reading
Evolution What was Darwin’s Origin actually called 29 Jul 201827 Feb 2019 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… Continue Reading
Evolution Superstition and the fossil record 21 May 201821 May 2018 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 with a vested interest in the order and coherence that might prevail during a certain era of human history. Without apparent order and coherence, there… Continue Reading
Cognition 50 words for snow 5; species 15 Oct 20171 Mar 2019 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 impossible of exact definition. Their use always has and always will depend upon the consensus of opinion of those best qualified by wisdom, experience and… Continue Reading