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
Creationism and Intelligent Design Pope on evolution: more of the same teleological thinking 26 Apr 201126 Apr 2011 Recently, the Pope did what religious leaders appear increasingly inclined to do on Easter: bash science: Benedict emphasised the Biblical account of creation in his Easter Vigil homily, saying it was wrong to think at some point “in some tiny corner of the cosmos there evolved randomly some species of… Read More
Biology The Velvet Underground of… 8 Oct 2010 Recently there have been a couple of “Velvet Underground” posts, of the kind that the VU were a very unknown but amazingly influential group. As Chad Orzel says, “only of order a thousand people bought the first Velvet Underground record, but every one of them went on to start a… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design Intelligent designoids are unsure about me 27 Jan 2011 Normally I wouldn’t link to these guys, but I’m having a kind of odd week with the ID crowd. On the one hand the ever reliable Casey Luskin has declared I am condescending for suggesting we teach science free of religious overtones to young children (but Kelly Smith is more… 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.