I hate a barnacle… 6 Jan 2008 …said Charles Darwin, more than any man ever has. He should have, too – he spent seven years of his life working up the first encyclopedic monograph on the group. But that pales into insignificance compared to Alan Southward, who died last year. The Other 95% has a very nice roundup post on Southward’s work on barnacles, including a just-published paper, which you should immediately go read. And some nice pictures of my favourite historical invert, the Gooseneck Barnacle that gave rise to the myth of the Barnacle Goose. Evolution General Science Species and systematics
Evolution A quote: On philosophers and evolution 23 Mar 2010 Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually, as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may… Read More
Epistemology Evolution quotes 15 Apr 2010 Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic, but praiseworthy, tendency to die before reproducing their kind. [W. V. O. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays 1969: 70] Read More
Evolution Larson on FAPP 15 Apr 2010 Ed Larson, an excellent historian of biology, takes Fodor and Piattelli- Palmarini to task for their ahistorical setting up of a strawman “Darwinism” in the Wilson Quarterly. Recommended reading. Read More
Thanks for the link! Sometimes I feel we are losing all the great naturalists, but I suppose that has been said every generation. I hope the jobs and funding are available to secure a future for the next generation of great naturalists. I love the barnacle goose story, was almost going to include it…
The thing is, Kevin, that the great naturalists of the next generation are all but invisible to us now. But they are out there, be assured.