Species and systematics “Class” war 1 Nov 2008 An essay in Nature recently, titled “A question of class” (by Jeffrey Parsons and Yair Wand) puts the case that classification is crucial to science and needs to be understood. They hold, as I do, that a poor understanding of classification – particularly of the concepts/words “class” and “category” –… Continue Reading
Evolution Browsing through the Philosophical Transactions on species and generation 30 Aug 2008 One of the major events in the history of science was the foundation of a number of published communications, so that the results of observation and research could be relatively quickly shared amongst scholars, and one of the first of these was the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of… Continue Reading
Evolution Is there a species rank? 8 Jun 200818 Sep 2017 The final of my comments on this topic (see one and two here) addresses the question whether or not there is a rank of species. Continue Reading
Species and systematics What is a theoretical object? 2 Jun 200818 Sep 2017 So, in the last episode, you’ll recall that the dastardly villain “theory” has relinquished its grip on species in a cliffhanger. But that raises a few questions. What, for instance, is it to be a theoretical object? Continue Reading
History What is a species? 29 May 2008 If somebody asked me to write a short essay giving an overview of my favourite topic, the nature of species, I doubt that I could. I can write a long essay on it (in fact, several) but it would be excruciatingly hard to write a short one. For that, we… Continue Reading
Religion The different epistemologies of science and religion 7 Apr 2008 While it’s always nice to see a scientists step up to argue that intelligent design or creationism ought not to be taught as science because they aren’t science, this worries me somewhat: Scientists have failed to explain the limits of science, Peshkin said. Science deals in what can be observed… Continue Reading
Evolution Nature makes no leaps… 26 Jan 2008 Reacting to Jerry Coyne’s guest blog on The Loom, Brian Switek at Laelaps discusses, among other things, the objection to Darwin’s theories that Huxley put forward, both in personal correspondence and in print: The only objections that have occurred to me are 1st that you have loaded yourself with an… Continue Reading
Evolution Why not information? 17 Jan 2008 OK, so by now a number of you are either quite puzzled or are up in arms about this notion of mine that genes aren’t information. First I’ll recap and then make some general philosophical and historical points. Continue Reading
Evolution When academics attack 5 Dec 2007 I love a good academic stoush, so long as I’m just watching and not involved either as an antagonist or as collateral damage. Recently, Steven Pinker published a book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, which was subsequently reviewed by Patricia Churchland, in Nature. Unfortunately,… Continue Reading
Evolution The philosophy of classification 29 Nov 2007 The term “radical” is a very loose term. It basically means “something that differs wildly from the consensus” in ordinary usage. So I hope David Williams and Malte Ebach won’t take offense if I say that they have a radical interpretation of the nature of classification. In a couple of… Continue Reading