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
Education Darwinism, Philosophy and Society 7 Jul 2010 I’m teaching, for the first time, this subject in the final semester for this year (we have a three semester structure in defiance of all etymology), and as you might expect I’m pretty au fait with it all, except for one: Darwinism and literature. Now, we’re using the Appleman volume… Read More
History The earliest picture in Islam? 20 Sep 2009 Jeb McLeish point me at this one: The Vak-Vak (or Wak Wak) tree is often depicted in Islamic art as having fruit that are the heads of women, men or animals, but never the full body, which grows on a mythical island. Text here describes the tree as growing on… 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.