Rieppel reviews my book 24 Sep 2010 … at Metascience here. The book, of course, is my Species: A history of the idea. The concluding paragraph is this: Does Wilkins deliver on his promise? Does the ‘essentialism story’ capture the essence of the centuries old debate about ‘what is a species’? Wilkins delivers a resounding NO, and he does so in a highly accessible language. This will be important especially for the biologists and paleontologists among his readers, who get a clear exposition of sometimes difficult to understand philosophical issues underlying logical versus biological classification. I can live with that. Book History Species concept History
Evolution An essay on the evolution of human evolution 12 Aug 2007 Laelaps has a very nice essay that ranges from the number of ribs humans have, the book of Genesis, creationism, and the variety of stories told about human evolution from the nineteenth century to now. Go read it. It’s one of the few blog posts in which you’ll read of… Read More
History Turtles all the way down 28 Mar 201122 Jun 2018 There is a story, often told about the philosopher William James: One day when the philosopher William James, who had a liking for scientific popularization, had just finished explaining in a small American town how the earth revolved around the sun, he saw, according to the anecdote, an elderly lady… Read More
Epistemology Sewall Wright on emergence 5 Dec 2009 I came across this passage while looking at the philosophical problem of emergent properties (which I think are purely epistemic). I thought it would be good to put up here… Read More
If Springer thinks that I’m going to pay $34 to download a review of your book then I can only say that someone to Springer needs their head examined!
Sorry that’s €34 and not $34 which makes it even more ridiculous (but a friendly ape sent me a copy!).
“Needing head examined” is, I think, a good description of Springer when it comes to pricing practices. The review is about 3/4 the price of the book and almost as much as the current price for the Kindle version. (Amazon.com currently has the Kindle edition at $39.) I think UT-Austin has a Metascience subscription, so it will probably show up there by the time I’m next downtown. (It does show up as $34 for me; Springer is stiffing Europeans even more than Americans.)
My university library also has a Metascience subscription but I was at home today at not in the library.
This is a nice review – it makes me want to read your book, at any rate. Now I’ve got to go order a copy.