Historicism 17 Nov 202417 Nov 2024 I have made my latest Substack post available to all. In which I defend myself from heinous charges and calumnies, and defend a kind of historicism. Book History Science
Biology Downward Causation 9 Aug 201122 Jun 2018 The final claim for there being an ontological sense to emergence is “downward causation“, a phrase coined by the evolutionary epistemologist Donald Campbell in the 1970s. The idea here is that emergence is real because higher-level (or bigger, composite) entities cause changes in the properties and dynamics of their parts…. Read More
Evolution An unnecessary rebuttal 29 Oct 2009 A paper has been published formally rebutting the single most stupid idea ever published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS(USA)). The story is in Scientific American but the gist is that Lyn Margulis, who sees the world in terms of endosymbiosis, having once correctly argued… Read More
History Imaginaries in Science 13 Sep 202413 Sep 2024 I wrote a thing. I started out skeptical, but ended up convincing myself that “imaginaries” is a good concept. I am annoyed by this. Read More