More on David Hull 4 Dec 20104 Oct 2017 There’s a special issue of Biology and Philosophy in the wings on the late David Hull. So far, the editorial introduction by Kim Sterelny and a fair summary of his work by Peter Godfrey-Smith have appeared Online First. Springer appear to be making these open access. Update: Michael Ruse’s memoir has been added. Biology Evolution Metaphysics Philosophy Science Social evolution EvolutionPhilosophy
History In defence of taxonomists [plus ça change] 7 Mar 20187 Mar 2018 I sympathize with the physiologist or ecologist, who after he has written a luminous paper on a Cratoegus or Viola, or Rosa, or Opuntia, endeavors to ascertain the proper name for his plant; but I do not sympathize with his objurgations against the whole tribe of species makers. There is… Read More
Freedom On the Gates arrest 26 Jul 200918 Sep 2017 I’m a long way away from this event which is taking up so much of the media’s attention in the States. So of course that means I have to say something about it. Read More
Administrative Travel Diary 13: Berkeley talk 6 Nov 2009 Well, yet again I have utterly utterly failed to embarrass my university by making an idiot of myself in public. In short, the talk (on the Essentialism Myth) to the Vertebrate Zoology crowd at Berkeley went very well I am told. I believe them because instead of sending me on… Read More
The missing David Hull reference is : D.L. Hull 2008 Leon Croizat : A Radical Biogeographer, pp. 194-212 in O. Harman & M.R. Dietrich (eds) Rebels, Mavericks and Heretics in Biology, Yale University Press, New Haven & London. This is a very biased and inaccurate account that again “idealises” Gary Nelson and the New York school, and ignores completely the considerable influence that panbiogeography has had in Argentina, Brazil, Chile,Columbia, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela. Hull also misses the point that mid-late 1970s New York school vicariance biogeography “evolved” into New York school “area cladistics” in the 1980s. Far more papers are published in peer reviewed journals using quantitative panbiogeographic methods originally developed by New Zealanders than are published using Nelson’s area cladistic method, so Hull gets it completely wrong once again. He also misses completely the key issue that Croizat was trying to think through “the colonial difference” and “decolonize” biology