Erdös Numbers in philosophy 9 Sep 2009 A little while ago I found out that I have an Erdös Number of 3. I published a paper with Wesley Elsberry: Wilkins, John S., and Wesley R. Elsberry. 2001. The advantages of theft over toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance. Biology and Philosophy 16 (November):711-724. Wesley has just published (or soon will) a paper with Jeffrey Shallit of the University of Waterloo: Elsberry, Wesley, and Jeffrey Shallit. Information theory, evolutionary computation, and Dembski’s “complex specified information”. Synthese. and Jeffrey has a number of papers coauthored with Erdös. I mentioned this to Mark Colyvan, who has the same number, and he tells me this is to be desired… Some guy apparently auctioned his Erdös number on eBay, coauthoring for cash. I’m not that venal (hint, hint). Humor
General Science The man who changed the world 24 Dec 2007 OK, so today is Christmas day, December 25. On this day* a man was born who changed the world. He affected a growing tradition that has left no part of the world untouched, for good or ill. He revealed the workings of the universe. He spent his life teaching us… Read More
Australian stuff Come to Australia and learn to handle venomous snakes 14 Oct 2009 We like to joke with visitors about the venomous wildlife in Australia. I mean we even have a venomous mammal (well, sort of mammal). But as we have 20 of the world’s top 25 venomous snakes, we sometimes need to teach snake handling for the workplace. And somebody posed a… Read More
Evolution No dino pee 5 Jun 2009 Tom Holtz, palentologist at the University of Maryland, gives a guarded review for Land of the Lost at National Geographic‘s website. The summary? No pee, but feathers. Read More
Congratulations! Wikipedia has a list of people with Erdös numbers up to 3, “List of people by Erdös number”.
What about small network theory in historical citations? That would be relevant to PE and our own work. Still waiting for the remunerative aspects to be clarified, though…