My present work 10 Oct 2010 Life can be … interesting, for Chinese values thereof. No, I don’t mean the Nobel Prize, although good choice. I mean that I’m presently undergoing some kind of curse. I think it’s called “work” . Work!? So what I’m doing doesn’t translate to meaningful blog posts. Not always (but eventually, sure). I’m going to be doing this in the near future: 1. A lecture on the rise and nature of social Darwinism (and how that is a very bad term). My course on Darwin, Philosophy and Society has to be completely revised in the light of the fact that most of my students are doing counselling rather than philosophy and history for its own sake. Apropos of which: “History should be written as philosophy” [Voltaire, Letters, 31 Oct. 1738] I should have used that as an epigraph for my book, although I can’t find a primary source. 2. A talk on Agnosticism – basically I’ll argue that one can taxonomise the conceptual landscape in several ways; and that being an agnostic about some gods doesn’t mean I am necessarily asserting that all gods are unknowable, nor that I am not an atheist about other gods. It’s the indexing argument again. Hey: They haven’t heard it yet. 3. Drafting a paper on Leonardo da Vinci, pterosaurs, phylogenetic bracketing, and the difference between homology and analogy with a very clever young man, Chris Glen. Who should finish his PhD before I Frown at him again. A major paper in Current Biology is not enough, you know… 4. Drafting chapters of a book: The Nature of Classification with a very clever slightly older (than Chris) man, Malte Ebach, with whom I am also trying to write a grant application. Two words: “Soil Science”. Who knew it would be so interesting? 5. Moving house. 6. Finding a house to move to (that comes before the last one, I hope). 7. Undergoing a sleep study to find out how badly I have apnoea and what to do about it. So forgive my apparent inactivity. I’m actually working harder than a socialist candidate in an American electorate. Administrative Education Evolution Philosophy Religion Systematics AdministrativeEvolutionNatural ClassificationPhilosophy
Ecology and Biodiversity Some new work on speciation and species 12 Dec 2008 There is a widespread tendency of biologists to overgeneralise from their study group of organisms to the whole of biology. Sometimes this is because the organisms are model organisms, like Drosophila (the “fruit flies” that have been used in genetics since the beginning).Other times it is because specialists tend to… Read More
Epistemology Disambiguating the Theory-Dependence of Observation thesis (TDOT) 16 Jun 2011 For the past half century it has been largely agreed that one cannot observe without prior theory. This is rarely explicated, however, and there seems to be some ambiguity in the claims made. So I will do a rough taxonomy of the TDOT. When N. R. Hanson introduced the claim… Read More
Epistemology Hume on induction (sort of) 10 Nov 201110 Nov 2011 Reading this from the Enquiry, in the section on Miracles (Chapter X), it hit me Hume is describing induction*… A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and… Read More
Undergoing a sleep study to find out how badly I have apnoea and what to do about it. Been there and done that.
Well I’ve been there now. I will have done that when I get the results. In the meantime, local seismologists are concerned over the effect I’m having on New Zealand’s tectonic stresses.
John, Agnosis (in this context) is highly interesting to me and I’m looking forward to learning more- if you will post the paper eventually. (Or send me to some other source you’ve already completed). Meanwhile, best wishes for the house search and move.
à M.[Nicolas-Claude] Thieriot, 31 October 1738 “Je pense comme mr l’abbé St Pierre, qu’il faut écrire l’histoire en philosofe, mais je me flatte qu’il pense comme moy qu’i ne faut pas écrire en précepteur, et qu’un historien doit instruire le genre human sans faire le pédagogue.” page 1186, tome 1, Voltaire Correspondance, ed. Theodore Besterman, Paris: Gallimard, Biblitheque de la Pleiade, 1964
Good luck with all this. Are you sure you’ve got quite enough to do? (Most of *my* students *need* counselling!) “qu’il faut écrire l’histoire en philosofe”. My French is fairly shaky these days, but this seems to mean “we should (must?) write history as a philosopher would”. Maybe not quite the same as “history should be written as philosophy”, but perhaps a real French speaker could enlighten us about the nuances.
Apropos of little: I’m shocked that they know about Maynard G. Krebs in Australia. Few enough people even remember him here. What a shame that his memory was sullied by that offensive fellow Gilligan.