Couple of organismic blogs 20 Jun 2007 No! Not orgasmic! [There, that should bump up the hits] You all know, of course, the inestimable Darren Naish and his wonderful blog Tetrapod Zoology. What? You don’t? Go there immediately and come back when you’ve read it all, and the old site too. [Fifteen days later] So, I wanted to mention a similar blog, by a student working on spider systematics (way cool), name of Christopher Taylor, called Catalogue of Organisms. In this 300th anniversary of the first real such catelogue by Linnaeus, that’s a way cool title. And of course you have an almost endless supply of cool material, even if you stick at high taxonomic levels. And he’s being controversial too, with a shamelessly populist post on which dinosaurs are coolest or most ferocious (like those “Could Superman get Beat Up by Spiderman?” arguments nerds have, only with real beasties). Go visit. Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution General Science Species and systematics
Cognition Notes on novelty 7: Surprise! 14 Jan 201221 Jun 2018 Notes on Novelty series: 1. Introduction 2. Historical considerations – before and after evolution 3: The meaning of evolutionary novelty 4: Examples – the beetle’s horns and the turtle’s shell 5: Evolutionary radiations and individuation 6: Levels of description 7: Surprise! 8: Conclusion – Post evo-devo It is now time to return to the basic argument… Read More
Evolution Why do scientific theories work? The inherent problem 18 Jun 2008 In an interesting post, Think Gene poses what they call “the inherent problem” of scientific theories: The inherent problem of scientific theories is that there exists an infinite equally valid explanations. Why? Because unlike in mathematics, we never have perfect information in science. … OK, so our world understanding improves… Read More
Epistemology Linnaeus: the founder of databases 17 Jun 200918 Sep 2017 A couple of years ago I was in Exeter, and was chatting to Staffan Müller-Wille, who is an expert in the history of biology specialising in Linnaean taxonomy. He mentioned to me that Linnaeus had invented the index card in order to keep track of the increasingly large data set… Read More
Chris, sorry. One eight legged beasty is pretty much the same as another to my untutored eyes. Darren, not on your own blog, so far as I can recall 😉
Thank you for your kind words. Though I feel honour-bound to point out that I don’t work on spiders, but harvestmen. There’s whole worlds of arachnids beyond spiders ;-).