Book 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. Continue Reading
Book New edited species book 19 Oct 202119 Oct 2021 So, what have I been doing for the Covid Lockdown. Many things. This is one of them. The CRC Press link is here, but I’ll give the table of contents below. The beautiful cover art is by Scott Partridge, an artist in North Carolina. It is entitled Abyssal Zone. Table… Continue Reading
Accommodationism Accommodating Science overview 13 Mar 2014 I have done quite a lot of blogging under this heading lately so I thought it might be useful to get all the posts used in order: On beliefs Why do believers believe silly things? The function of denialism Why do believers believe THOSE silly things? The “developmental hypothesis” of… Continue Reading
Book Books I am reading/reviewing 6 Feb 20148 Feb 2014 Despite marking scores of essays, after having taught a subject intensive, and preparing various papers, I get to review some books. This means reading them, familiarising myself with the technical literature, and so on. So I thought I’d do a brief summary of them for you now: The first is… Continue Reading
Biology Natural classification 23 Jan 201423 Jan 2014 It occurs to me that I haven’t plugged my own book here. What a failure on my part! It was published in December, so it is really time I did so. In this book, Malte Ebach and I discuss a topic not often discussed in the philosophy of science: the… Continue Reading
Academe My latest paper – Carving Nature at its Joints, a review 25 Nov 201225 Nov 2012 You can find it online here. A very interesting but ultimately, to me, largely frustrating book (because it didn’t answer my questions, goddammit!). Review – Carving Nature at Its Joints Natural Kinds in Metaphysics and Science by Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O’Rourke and Matthew H. Slater (Editors) MIT Press, 2012… Continue Reading
Book Book proposal call 4 Apr 20124 Apr 2012 I’m on the editorial board of the Species and Systematics series at the University of California Press, and so if any of you have a proposal for that series, on any topic relating to these two areas that is academic and specialist, let me, series editor Malte Ebach, or the… Continue Reading
Book Yet another “post-Darwinism” 2 Aug 201122 Jun 2018 Over the years there have been many books that purport to “radically revise” or “supplant” Darwinian evolutionary biology; they come with predictable regularity. Usually they are of three kinds: something is wrong with natural selection, something is wrong with inheritance, or something is wrong with phylogeny. This book, by geneticist… Continue Reading
Book “Species” an ALA Choice Book 15 Jan 2011 I take what plaudits I can: Choice, from The American Library Association, has listed my book Species: A History of the Idea as an “Outstanding Academic Title” for 2010, a list they release each each January. Their criteria are: overall excellence in presentation and scholarship importance relative to other literature… Continue Reading
Administrative A paperback of Species: A History 12 Jan 2011 My not-inconsiderable ego has expanded several sizes upon the news from University of California Press that my book Species: A History of the Idea (see at right or on the My Books page) is to become a paperback. I hope to make a couple of corrections, and maybe add a… Continue Reading