What to do with historical bastardry in our heroes? This is republished from my substack. Henceforth such posts – the equivalent of a magazine article…
Published 23 Nov 2022
Feet of clay problem
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Category: History
I’m 50% a historian so I do some history of science. When something strikes me as useful, I use this category. Check out Whewell’s Ghost blog for other work.
Published 8 Mar 2021
Ill of the dead
I have found it necessary, in the course of this volume, to speak of the departed; for the misgovernment of the Royal Society has not…
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Published 19 Sep 2020
John Ray on species fixity and race
For since in nature the number of species is fixed and determined, since ‘God on the sixth day rested from all his labour’, that is,…
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Published 21 Sep 2019
Is racism Christian?
I was taught that racism developed out of Johannes Blumenbach’s Anthropological Treatises in the late eighteenth century, specifically his doctoral thesis On the Natural Variety…
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Published 11 May 2019
Draft of talk, for comment
I will be presenting this talk in Brisbane in a few weeks. Have a look and make suggestions.
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Published 3 May 2019
John Ray
This has been submitted as an entry in the Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, and it is offered here for your delectation and delight… Title…
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Published 25 Feb 2019
Lucretius and the papal secretary
In 1417, during the Council of Constance that reunited the Catholic Church in the west, a papal secretary took advantage of the location in Germany…
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Published 29 Jul 2018
What 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.
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Published 7 Mar 2018
In defence of taxonomists [plus ça change]
I sympathize with the physiologist or ecologist, who after he has written a luminous paper on a Cratoegus or Viola, or Rosa, or Opuntia, endeavors…
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Published 11 Oct 2017
Species: 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…
