Creative Commons and textbooks 18 May 2009 Anyone who has had to order textbooks for students knows how expensive they are. Here’s something that I hope may end up a trend amongst academics: Creative Commons licensed texts. P.D. Magnus wrote a logic textbook, forall x, which he made available under the CC license; and now David Morris of the University of Lethbridge has used it as the basis on which to write an abstract mathematics textbook, Proofs and Concepts. With luck, this is a new dynamic of the new media, that will benefit education even if it takes away some revenue from academic publishers. For work that is fully created (rather than using existing material) it looks to be a good way to get material out there. If demand-publishing sites become more widely available, you can even get a hard copy version done nicely. Education Philosophy Technology
Epistemology Doxastic biases and arguments for religion (and other things) 18 Feb 201218 Feb 2012 Helen De Cruz has the results of a fascinating survey on how various arguments for and against the existence of God are treated by philosophers… according to their general stance – atheist, agnostic, or theist. Basically it considers not whether people think the arguments are right (a common mistake scientists… Read More
Academe My Absent Career 12: The aged aged man 6 Jan 20236 Jan 2023 Suddenly I was out of work, I could not rejoin the postdoc, and I had to move to Sydney once again, to see if I could find anything. I did do some teaching at UNSW, but that was about it. I was in dire straits. And the Straits of Dire… Read More
Biology The false analogy between species and art 26 Jan 201118 Sep 2017 Biological topics are used widely in philosophy to illustrate arcane and recondite philosophical topics,and one of the most widely used, and most abused, are species as examples of natural kinds. Kangaroos, swans, tigers, lions, cats, and of course humans are all brought in to assist our intuitions. As Umberto Eco… Read More
If demand-publishing sites become more widely available, you can even get a hard copy version done nicely. You mean like LuLu.com?