Good news, and bad news… 17 Apr 2008 First, the good news. The inestimable John van Whye has added, with the help of his team of course, 90,000 scanned images of Darwin’s journals, manuscripts and letters. Now the bad news. The Utrecht Herbarium is closing, and no plans have been made to store and make available its collection of type specimens. Why this matters is that the very name of species depend on there being type specimens. Go read Catalogue of Organisms, an amazing blog in any case, on the matter. Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution Humor Species and systematics
Epistemology Was Darwin a philosopher? 12 May 2010 It is only fair that I apply the same standards to my saviour-figure that I apply to others (Paul Griffiths wants a t-shirt with the slogan “Darwin is my personal saviour”). In fact I published an essay asking whether Darwin was a historiographer, if not a historian (answer: yes). So… Read More
Book A philosopher reviews a biologist on evolution 24 Mar 2009 Anthony Grayling, who does a really interesting review column in the Barnes and Noble Review, entitled “A Thinking Read”, has a piece on Jerry Coyne’s book Why Evolution is True. This saves me having to read it and review it for you myself. The column title is a pun on… Read More
Ah HA! I know where that squiggly scrawl in your masthead comes from. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&itemID=CUL-DAR121.-&pageseq=38 Very clever.
Ah HA! I know where that squiggly scrawl in your masthead comes from. http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&itemID=CUL-DAR121.-&pageseq=38 Very clever.
It’s always shocking to observe of closing of any kind archives (google groups t.o, or real specimens..). former t.o’ist MrKAT from Finland
I don’t know what’s behind the economic problems of the herbarium, but I’d be curious to know if it has something to do with the recent drive for privatizing and “effectivizing”. In other European countries, this has resulted in absurd situations when university buildings are given for free to new state-owned companies to manage, and they then charge market-based rent for the offices and labs, although in most cases the university has no real choice of location.