Biology Last year in Lisbon… 13 Jul 2010 I attended an excellent conference organised by the wonderful Nathalie Gontier at the Faculdade de Ciências of the Universidade de Lisboa, in April last year. Now, the proceedings has been published in a special issue of Theory in Biosciences here. These are the contents: Double Special Issue: Darwin evaluated by… Continue Reading
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… Continue Reading
Biology My latest paper 4 Jul 2010 I have just had a paper published: “What is a species? Essences and generation” Theory in Biosciences Volume 129, Numbers 2-3 / September, 2010. Pages 141-148 . DOI 10.1007/s12064-010-0090-z Abstract: Arguments against essentialism in biology rely strongly on a claim that modern biology abandoned Aristotle’s notion of a species as… Continue Reading
Biology On borders and boundaries 30 Jun 2010 Thos who focus on differences often tend to look more closely at boundaries than at the core of the phenomenon, whether it is social, biological or conceptual. So I was pleased to read this comment by Will Thomas regarding boundaries in social and historical contexts: However, I want to finish… Continue Reading
Evolution Evolution quotes: Darwin on randomness 25 Jun 2010 Some authors have declared that natural selection explains nothing, unless the precise cause of each slight individual difference be made clear. Now, if it were explained to a savage utterly ignorant of the art of building, how the edifice had been raised stone upon stone, and why wedge-formed fragments were… Continue Reading
History The Renaissance Mathematicus is one today 11 Jun 2010 Go wish him happy blogday. Continue Reading
History The Oxford conference 11 Jun 2010 … audio podcasts are here. This is the Religion, tolerance and intolerance conference I recently attended. I particularly was wowed and provoked into thinking – a rare occurrence these days – by Ben Kaplan’s talk ‘A tale of two churches’, in which he noted that religions in Europe tolerated each… Continue Reading
Evolution Prichard on species 9 Jun 2010 Here’s a nice and interesting discussion on how species was seen well before Darwin, which is effectively a “biological”, that is to say, reproductive isolation species conception. It’s by James Prichard, an anthropologist, and published in the second edition of Prichard, James Cowles (1845), The natural history of man; Comprising… Continue Reading
Evolution Evolution quotes 9 Jun 2010 For although there seems to be so great a difference between widely separate nations, that you might easily take the inhabitants of the Cape of Good Hope, the Greenlanders, and the Circassians for so many different species of man, yet when the matter is thoroughly considered, you see that all… Continue Reading
Evolution Evolution quotes 31 May 2010 Evolution itself, it must be remembered, does not necessarily mean, applied to society, the movement of man to a desirable goal. It is a neutral, scientific conception, compatible either with optimism or with pessimism. According to different estimates it may appear to be a cruel sentence or a guarantee of… Continue Reading