Logic and philosophy Vale Michael Ghiselin 17 Jun 202424 Jun 2024 Michael Ghiselin, who was the originator of (the modern) view that species are individuals, died on 14 June 2024. He was a very generous person with his time for antipodean philosophers. With his passing, the authors of the SAI thesis, as it is called, are both gone: he and his… Continue Reading
Biology Aware is finished. Now for something different 14 May 202414 May 2024 So I finished presenting the book Aware on my substack, which will now ferment in my bottom drawer (metaphorically) until it ripens. While that is happening I am preparing to edit some nineteenth century sources for discussions of classification, taxonomy, species, higher and lower taxa, and many other subjects. Does… Continue Reading
Australian stuff A local talk 15 Mar 202415 Mar 2024 HPS book celebration at the University of Melbourne Continue Reading
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
Epistemology Operative concepts 27 Apr 202227 Apr 2022 Gave a talk “The Good Species” yesterday (26 April 2022) to the HPS crowd at UniMelb. The discussion went a way I didn’t expect: classification in the psychiatric and medical domains. I proposed a third kind of concept formation in science: what I am calling “operative concepts”: folk terms and… 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
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
Philosophy My species book receives a Choice award 11 Feb 202011 Feb 2020 I am delighted to tell you that my book Species: The Evolution of the Idea has received a 2019 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Award! The book met the meticulous Choice criteria from originality, uniqueness, and importance in building undergraduate library collections, to overall excellence in presentation and value to… Continue Reading
Philosophy Putnam on taxonomic terms 29 Jan 202029 Jan 2020 Terms with respect to which we defer to experts include both technical terms in science and such terms as ‘elm’ or ‘beech’ (in the United States, at least, most people cannot tell an elm from a beech, but anyone who knows that ‘elm’ and ‘beech’ are the names of common… Continue Reading
History Is racism Christian? 21 Sep 201921 Sep 2019 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 of Mankind, University of Göttingen, which was first published in 1775. In this work he outlined five races of humanity: Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopean, American…. Continue Reading