Dibs and dobs 28 Oct 2008 One of the downsides to being old is that your favourite teachers die. I learned most of what I know about the Empiricists, in particular John Locke, from a book by C. B. Martin, who passed away recently. Hat tip to Leiter. I didn’t know he spent so much time in Australia. John Lynch is tantalising me with a workshop I very much want to go to but can’t: The 2009 ASU-MBL History of Biology Seminar: Theory in the Life Sciences. It looks like enormous fun (hey, I’m a philosopher: I use philosophical values of “fun”). I Have Views on what counts as a theory in life sciences, and I’d love to see how well they hold up under withering scorn criticism. [If any of my incredibly wealthy readers want to stump for a plane ticket, I can stay with Lynch again. He didn’t mind the snoring much…] The internet filter issue is gathering speed. A good criticism is made by Argosy about the failure of internet filtering in Pakistan and China. Education General Science Internet filtering Technology
Education Is your university really undergoing a fiscal crisis? 27 Oct 2009 I have friends who are forced to do five days’ teaching and research work in four days a week, ostensibly because of the Global Financial Crisis. It turns out, this is often not the real reason why… Read More
Evolution The greatest threat: antimodernism 27 Apr 200818 Sep 2017 In the thread on the recent debate between Winston and Dennett, I said that I thought the greatest threat to scientific progress and rationality was antimodernism, which was not always religious. Here, I’m going to elaborate on that cryptic comment. Read More
Evolution Other adaptive landscape papers 8 Aug 2008 Having blown my own trumpet, I should mention that there are a few other articles in the same edition of Biology and Philosophy (which I hadn’t seen until now) on Gavrilets’ view of adaptive landscapes now on Online First: Massimo Pigliucci has a very nice historical summary of Sewall Wright’s… Read More
I never met the man. But there’s a link to a PDF of his obit at the U Calgary link (first one given).
This is very sad. I have Martin’s The Mind In Nature (2008) right next to me as I read this. I picked it up from my library at my university the day before he died–last Wednesday. So far, this is an interesting, austere book–much inside to be admired and fruitfully studied. If the publication was anything like the man, what interesting details can you give us about him, John? Mourning together, BR