Epistemology Feeling smug 29 Jul 2009 … because I sent off two papers this week to journals. I’ll feel a lot smugger, of course, if they get accepted. One is on genetic information (yeah, you all know about that one!) and the other about natural kinds in biology, a historical-philosophical piece. We’ll see. Even more smugifying,… Continue Reading
Biology Godfrey Smith’s book 27 Jul 2009 Peter Godfrey Smith is a leading philosopher of biology, a professor at Harvard. He has recently published an important book on the nature of evolution, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, in which he moves away from the gene centrism of Dawkins to a reproducer view in which objects that form… Continue Reading
Metaphysics Metaphysics of Science papers 27 Jul 2009 I wasn’t able to go to the Metaphysics of Science conference in Melbourne recently, because it unfortunately conflicted with the AAHPSSS conference in Brisbane (not good planning!), but some of the papers are available online. Devitt’s and Dowe’s papers in particular are very interesting. I agree with Dowe and as… Continue Reading
Epistemology More Whewell 26 Jul 2009 When we have thus obtained, with reference to any such subject as those we have here spoken of, these two portions of science, a systematic description of the facts, and a rigorous analysis of the causes, — the Phenomenology and the Ætiology of the subject, — we are prepared for… Continue Reading
Biology Evidence and Evolution 23 Jul 2009 I have just finished doing a review (for Systematic Biology) that took me six months. It was not because I was slack. It was because I had to read it in three page segments. The book is “Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science” (Elliott Sober) Continue Reading
Biology Around the internets 23 Jul 2009 Razib has a post on a paper in BMC Evolutionary Biology that shows, fairly well, I thought, that Australian aborigines are most closely related to relict populations of indigenous Indian tribes. They are touting this as evidence that the “southern route” from Africa was the one taken by the Australians… Continue Reading
Book Unscientific America 17 Jul 2009 I can’t yet speak about this book, because my review copy is presently on what passes as Australia’s international mail service, which involves yaks hiking across the Himalayas and then taking the parcels via the Silk Road to Beijing, where they will be brought to northern Australia by junks, and… Continue Reading
Biology So much to say, so little time 9 Jul 2009 As I prepare for the conferences I start attending and blathering at from tomorrow, I of course find a treasure trove of things to blog about. Since I can’t really do them all justice, I will merely put a one liner for each below the fold. Continue Reading
Epistemology Religion and truth revisited 7 Jul 2009 Chris Schoen, he of the u n d e r v e r s e, has a piece up on Coyne’s challenge to the religious as to why Scientology’s absurd etiology of Xenu and souls in volcanoes is any less stupid than the etiologies of the Catholic, Jewish and Islamic… Continue Reading
Biology Social dominance psychology in humans 2 Jul 200922 Jun 2018 There is a syllogism I call the Phylogenetic Inference: All members of clade X are F Species S is a member of clade X S is F It’s not infallible, but it is a good inductive rule, because monophyly acts as a kind of Straight Rule for biological induction. Let’s… Continue Reading