Administrative What is a homology? 2 Jun 2010 No, not that kind, but the mathematical kind. I tried to read the online definitions, but they all presume other mathematical terminology and knowledge I don’t have. So can anyone explain, in words that don’t assume I have done a course in topology, what a mathematical homology is? Pretty please? Continue Reading
Biology What counts as “unique”? 25 Nov 2009 I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes something unique. Since Aristotle we have described something as unique if all its properties are special to it, but I don’t like property talk because I tend to think that it biases our thinking towards linguistic problems and solutions. I don’t… Continue Reading
Biology Illiger’s Prodromus 13 Nov 2009 Does anyone have a scan of Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger’s Prodromus systematis et mammalium avium (1811), or at least the introductory section? It appears that Illiger is the one who introduced the rank of family to the Linnean system, and I’d like to find out more. Late note: Thanks to… Continue Reading
Epistemology Philosophy as forgetting, and index characters 13 Nov 2009 I was talking to a friend, Damian Cox, yesterday, and we were discussing how many of the ideas of, say, a Wittgenstein had been a rediscovery or reformulation of what had been commonly held over a century before. Damian made the comment that philosophy is a process of forgetting what… Continue Reading
Biology Darwin and Blumenbach 28 Oct 200918 Sep 2017 I recently became aware that the probable originator of the “biological” species concept, which I prefer to call the Reproductive Isolation Species Conception*, or RISC, was Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840). He presented this in his doctoral thesis On the natural varieties of mankind (1776), and I missed putting it in… Continue Reading
Biology What came before Darwin 2 Oct 2009 If ever you wondered what the “default” view was before the modern era began with the late 18th century naturalists, culminating in Darwin, regarding the natural world, this passage, from a philosopher with the odiferous name William Smellie, gives a complete summary. Continue Reading