Reminiscences of one who was there 12 Apr 2010 Early on, when I thought I would be an intellectual, a dilettante but still an intellectual, at the age of 17 or so, I read several books that I found at a second hand bookstore (my usual place of recreation). One was a little volume called Critique of Pure Tolerance, and one of the editors was Robert Paul Wolff. In part it led me to think of myself as philosophical, if not then a philosopher. Anyway, he is blogging his memoirs, and I strongly recommend anyone interested in philosophy reads them. Resumption of my Memoirs Memoir — Second Installment Memoirs Third Part Memoir Fourth Installment Memoir Fifth Installment Memoir Sixth Installment Memoir Seventh Installment Memoirs Eighth Installment Memoirs Ninth Installment History Philosophy
Evolution Going backwards, or, devolution? 29 Sep 2009 Carl Zimmer has another one of his excellent summary articles, this time about the problems encountered by a research group that tried to make a protein that had evolved into one form, evolve back to the starting point. This is being touted as a molecular version of “Dollo’s Law” (which is… Read More
Evolution Could God Have Set Up Darwinian Accidents? 9 Jul 20119 Jul 2011 I have a paper forthcoming in the Theology and Philosophy journal Zygon, that I thought some of the readers of this blog might find interesting. Here’s the PhilPapers entry: John S. Wilkins (forthcoming). Could God Have Set Up Darwinian Accidents? Zygon. Charles Darwin, in his discussions with Asa Gray and in… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design Objecting to the prevailing tide 12 Jun 2009 My friend and costudent of Gareth Nelson, Malte Ebach, persists in his campaign to bring some clarity to evolutionary and systematics thinking. I may not always agree with him, but he’s often clearer on these matters than his targets, so I refer you to his recent post on paraphyletic thinking…. Read More
Sorry to disillusion you but you *are* an intellectual by any reasonable definition of the word. And that’s a good thing. You have achieved the goal you set when you were 17. You also have a motorcycle. Very impressive!
This does not disillusion me. It was only that at 17, I thought I’d be a dilettante, since my teachers had uniformly announced that I was actually rather stupid, before I was thrown out of school.
Shame Kant was not a biker. Can you imagine what his Critique Of Pure Motorcycle Maintenance would have been like?
Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind. –in words from the definitive work on motorcycle maintenance.