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
Philosophy The Greek Pantheon Test 5 Nov 2010 I’ve been very busy teaching, and so this blog has suffered. So I thought I’d do a short screed of an idea that I have had for some time. I have discussed what a religion is for a while now. Instead I want to ask today, What is a god?… Read More
History Copernicus did not demote humanity 5 Dec 2009 Stephen Jay Gould was fond of observing that of the two revolutions identified by Freud as having dethroned humanity – Copernicus, and Darwin’s – that Darwin’s was the more revolutionary, because (as he put it) Copernicus and Galileo merely changed our real estate, while Darwin changed our essence. But it… Read More
Education My Absent Career 2: From theolog to undergrad 6 Dec 20221 Jan 2023 Since my mother worked, I would stop at the local library on my way home. I had until she got home about an hour and a half later. So I would read books in an hour and a half, since the ones I liked were adult books and I was… 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