Cultural evolution essay 6 Jul 2010 At On The Human there’s an essay by Bill Benzon, a friend and colleague of mine, on cultural evolution: “Cultural Evolution: A Vehicle For Cooperative Interaction Between The Sciences And The Humanities”. It’s open to informed and moderated comments in what they cutely call a Sympoze. One of the comments is mine, of course. This is an initiative of the National Humanities Centre, an independent institute for advanced study. Check out some of the earlier essays: Elliot Sober, Pat Churchland, Margaret Boden(!), Gillian Beer; easily a fabulous site. I put my reply beneath the fold… Evolution Metaphysics Social evolution Evolution
Evolution Lynch’s challenge to the Orang crowd 7 Jul 2009 Further to the claim I mentioned a while back, on orangutans being the closest species to humans, not chimps, John Lynch has a post up on the phylogeny of ERV sequences in the great apes which show, independently of the methods that Grehan and Schwartz criticised. He asks how they… Read More
Epistemology My latest paper 15 Feb 2013 Science & Education, February 2013, Volume 22, Issue 2, pp 221-240 Biological Essentialism and the Tidal Change of Natural Kinds John S. Wilkins Abstract The vision of natural kinds that is most common in the modern philosophy of biology, particularly with respect to the question whether species and other taxa are natural kinds, is… Read More
Cognition Too adaptationist? 25 Aug 201225 Aug 2012 Penises can too tell the time… As always, click through. Read More
I rather like that way of putting things. All too often I just end up saying things like “Dilthey was wrong! Wrong I tells ya!” BTW, when it comes to your rule about not calling people “peodophilic communist sexist pigs” are you willing to make an exception for Beria? The shoe does seem to fit in his case.
Hi, The “Sympoze” portion on On The Human, is a their incorporation of the external vote button for http://www.sympoze.com It’s a social bookmarking site for academics…the idea is to have a place where academics can collectively share, promote and discover online content. An academic blogger can use the external vote button to make it easy for other academics to promote the blogger’s content. Check out the site. We’re in beta testing now, and we’d love feedback.
I liked the ‘I Know it when I see it’ comment. Not an excuse but partly the result of language diffrences. I find I constantly have to exert much effort in translation. I don’t just know it when I see it but find that I have great difficulty developing a syntax and language to describe the movement (I should be perhaps describing this as replication or reproduction) that I do see. Coupled with the mountian ranges of archive and field work it’s a constant juggling act. I find myself making methodology on the hoof and not slowing down to work out how to express it in clear and simple language. But that may be a personal failing. Looks like a fruitfull debate. Look forward to reading more.