General Science Quote: Eddington’s two tables 20 May 201120 May 2011 Arthur Stanley Eddington was an Englishman, a physicist, a pacifist and a clever writer: I have settled down to the task of writing these lectures and have drawn up my chairs to my two tables. Two tables! Yes; there are duplicates of every object about me — two tables, two… Continue Reading
Epistemology Hume’s birthday 8 May 2011 So you may have noticed, David Hume turns 300 today. I reckon he looks a lot younger than that, almost modern. There’s an interesting discussion on the History of Philosophy of Science list about whether Hume is the greatest English language philosopher, as the Stanford article claims. Influence and importance… Continue Reading
Administrative Are you a HPS scholar? 30 Apr 2011 If so I invite you to join our group blog Whewell’s Ghost, even if you already blog. You can either write for WG directly or repost some or all of your blog’s posts with alink back to your home blog, thereby increasing your readership. Contact me or the other WG… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
Biology Evolution quote: Sirks and Zirkle 25 Apr 201125 Apr 2011 At this point it might be well to insert a fact that has generally been overlooked by the historians of biology. The pre-evolutionary concept of species is generally given as a universally accepted view that species were constant and true breeding forms. Actually, the idea that species were completely stable… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
History Somehow, I got minions/The first biological species concept revisited 17 Mar 2011 It’s late in Real Time so I can only do a brief one now… I made the mistake of noting on Twitter that I lacked minions after PZ accused me of hating his. Of course I don’t hate them. It’s just that, as an agnostic I am superior to them… Continue Reading
Biology Darwin Day: Enough already 18 Feb 2011 I love studying about Darwin and his life and times. I have read enormous amounts, and taught Darwinian history. I’m teaching it again this semester. But enough already. Can we talk about modern biology now? I get a strong impression ( and that’s all this is, as I can’t find… Continue Reading
Evolution Arseholes! Systematics, phylogenetics and HPS 10 Feb 2011 There’s been some developments this day. First of all a defunct blog on history and philosophy of science has revived with a new skin and as a group blog: AmericanScience: A Team Blog. I keep wanting to say “F&*k yeah!” It used to be the Forum for the History of… Continue Reading
Biology What is systematics and what is taxonomy? 5 Feb 201123 Jul 2023 Over the past few years there have been increasing numbers of calls for governments to properly fund systematics and taxonomy (and a number of largely molecular-focused biologists insisting they can do the requisite tasks with magic molecule detectors, so don’t fund old-school, fund new-fangled-tech). But I think that there is… Continue Reading