Epistemology Similarity 4 Sep 2010 Brandon in a comment to the last post in this series mentioned this text of Plato: Well, at any rate, he said, justice has some resemblance to holiness; for anything in the world has some sort of resemblance to any other thing. Thus there is a point in which white… Continue Reading
Epistemology Homology and analogy 27 Aug 201018 Sep 2017 Last time I noted that phylogenetic classification was based on homologies, which I have elsewhere discussed. Now I want to consider how we might generalise it across all the sciences. And in particular I want to consider the other form of classificatory activity, by analogy, might also generalise. This will… Continue Reading
Biology Some loose ends – Reductionism and Phylocode 26 Aug 201018 Sep 2017 I’ve been asked in the comments to cover two topics, neither of which I want to discuss at length because they are not easy to cover, and because they aren’t the focus of my rather intense monomania right now. They are: Reductionism and Phylocode. Continue Reading
Biology Ranking 24 Aug 2010 A diversion in the natural classification series. In natural classification, we typically do not find that patterns due to the process of historical causation come arrayed neatly in boxes within boxes, and yet one of the most common temptations is for classifiers to set up fixed ranks. The Linnaean scheme… Continue Reading