The ontology of biology – interlude and podcast 5 Dec 2008 The General Ecosystems Thinking (GET) Group centred at Queensland University of Technology (or as we at UQ like to call it, the “city university”) invited me to come give a talk on the ontology of evolution. I gave it yesterday. As it will be part of this series of posts that will end up as some form of publication, I thought you might like to hear my dulcet and husky tones, and read the incredible slide. If so, go here, or get the PDF slides here and the WMA sound here. Check out some of the other speakers too. Thanks to Marco Fahmi for the invite and shepherding. The actual title was: “Species, Traditions and Corporations: What is it that evolves?” As I was talking to a variety of disciplines, I made it incoherent in all of them rather than just the one. I can do that, you know… Evolution Social evolution Species and systematics
Evolution The more things change.. 2 Sep 2007 I have decided that I am sick and tired of the antievolutionists. When I got into this game about 15 years or more ago, I thought that if we just argued and presented information about what evolution really is, and what it means for modern thinking, people would move away… Read More
Politics The law, Sharia, and religious control 12 Feb 2008 Language Log recently took apart the speech and interview by the Archbishop of Canterbury that the media are, inaccurately, reporting as advocating the introduction of Sharia law into British and by implication other common law jurisdictions. Its conclusion was that Abp Rowan Williams did not advocate Sharia law, but instead… Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity What is “life”, again? 8 Sep 200718 Sep 2017 Now we turn to the modern accounts of life. In 1828, Friedrich Wöhler produced uric acid without using “kidney of man or dog”. Prior to that time, there was considered to be something different between organic chemistry and inorganic chemistry. Living things had some “vital fluid” that other things lacked…. Read More
Bob: under the Eigen and Schuster approach, there are exponential growth rates in non-malthusian reactors, but under the assumptions I was positing the growth rates are indeed hyperbolic. See this PDF paper, for example, page 2, and refs. Universal Darwinism, in the Dawkins sense, is indeed epistemic, but there’s a confusion in thinking that because we can call something informational, that information is causal, which is what I was trying to get across. Information is only causal when it is interpreted by an information processing system.
Minor nitpick: hyperbolic != exponential. Non-Malthusian growth is exponential (or geometric in discrete time).
Minor nitpick: hyperbolic != exponential. Non-Malthusian growth is exponential (or geometric in discrete time).
Minor nitpick: hyperbolic != exponential. Non-Malthusian growth is exponential (or geometric in discrete time).
Now I’ve listened to all of it, I think I’ll need to read the book: there’s a lot in there which is fascinating, but I’d need to mull it over and see how it works with a couple of examples. I hope you’re not lynched by molecular taxonomists before you’ve finished writing it (I’m sure they’ll point out that they should effing well know what a pseudogene looks like!). One thing I couldn’t get/missed was where the phenotype appears in your story. If there is evolution, we see it as much in change of the phenotype, but you didn’t seem to talk about its status: there has to be something causing differential survival, or to be a spandrelpedantive.
Now I’ve listened to all of it, I think I’ll need to read the book: there’s a lot in there which is fascinating, but I’d need to mull it over and see how it works with a couple of examples. I hope you’re not lynched by molecular taxonomists before you’ve finished writing it (I’m sure they’ll point out that they should effing well know what a pseudogene looks like!). One thing I couldn’t get/missed was where the phenotype appears in your story. If there is evolution, we see it as much in change of the phenotype, but you didn’t seem to talk about its status: there has to be something causing differential survival, or to be a spandrelpedantive.
Now I’ve listened to all of it, I think I’ll need to read the book: there’s a lot in there which is fascinating, but I’d need to mull it over and see how it works with a couple of examples. I hope you’re not lynched by molecular taxonomists before you’ve finished writing it (I’m sure they’ll point out that they should effing well know what a pseudogene looks like!). One thing I couldn’t get/missed was where the phenotype appears in your story. If there is evolution, we see it as much in change of the phenotype, but you didn’t seem to talk about its status: there has to be something causing differential survival, or to be a spandrelpedantive.
Yeah, you know… metaphysical poet. They’re all alike 🙂 Actually, “To his coy mistress” is one of my favourite pieces. “But at my back I alwais hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”
Slide 24 attributes “vegetable love” to Donne; didn’t you mean Andrew Marvell (“To His Coy Mistress”)? My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow. An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart. Or perhaps you were thinking of Donne’s “A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day”? Were I a man, that I were one I needs must know; I should prefer, If I were any beast, Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest, And love; all, all some properties invest…. I’ve been puzzling my brain and looking vain for Donne on vegetable love.