Two new papers of mine 18 Aug 2009 Deflating genetic information – in which I argue that the only sense in which genes have “information” is the causal sense of specificity Darwin on species and heredity – in which I reprise some blog entries on this site about myths of Darwin. Both are under review, and hence neither are final or citeable. Epistemology Genetics History Metaphysics Philosophy Science Species concept Systematics
Biology Does life exist? 11 Jan 2014 Life, I believe, is what physics does on one particular planet on a Wednesday. More exactly, it is a series of chemical and physical dynamics that occurs between 3.85 billion years ago and now on this planet. Ferris Jabr, an editor at the Scientific American site, has a piece entitled “Why… Read More
Ethics and Moral Philosophy Morality and evolution 2: Moral facts 1 May 201422 May 2014 [Morality and Evolution 1 2 3 4 5 6 7] In a forthcoming paper, “Evolution and Moral Realism”, Kim Sterelny and Ben Fraser, of the Australian National University, have argued that there can be moral facts that evolution by selection tracks. Their argument is that moral reasoning is complex, and relies upon rapid judgements (what Daniel… Read More
Evolution Are species life forms? 19 Jun 201719 Jun 2017 This is a section of my forthcoming revision to Species, presented here for comments that I can steal – umm, I mean for peer commentary. The philosophical ideas and terms of Wittgenstein have played an interesting and underappreciated role in the species debate: we saw Beckner appeal to family resemblance… Read More
How many papers are you working on at the same time? Your output is prodigious. What exactly does “under review” mean?
I usually have around four of five projects ongoing (see my “What I’m Working On” page here). However right now is rather unusual because I put a half dozen projects on hold while I finished my books. So I’m clearing the decks with all those “in the drawer” projects. Some of them date back ten years. I must revise my functions paper too. “Under review” means I submitted them to a journal, but have received no response or acceptance. “Forthcoming” means they are accepted but unpublished.
A possible correction: you propose that the term “Lamarckian” for those who think heredity is acquired by an individual organism during the parental generation and then passed on to progeny, was coined by August Weismann (1904): Bowler’s ”Evolution” p. 236 says that “neo-Lamarckism” became popular in the 1890s, and appeared with that meaning in “Darwin and after Darwin” by Romanes, from 1892. http://www.archive.org/stream/darwinandafterd04morggoog/darwinandafterd04morggoog_djvu.txt p. 12 Romanes claims to have coined “Neo-Darwinian” and “Ultra-Darwinian” for Weismann’s ideas, p. 13 he turns “to the so-called ‘Neo-Lamarckian’ school of the United States” and says “members of this school believe that much greater importance ought to be assigned to the inherited effects of use and disuse than was assigned to these agencies by Darwin.” (ocr errors corrected) p. 53 he mentions “the self-styled Neo-Lamarckians” This goes a bit against Bowler’s p. 231 statement that some early advocates of the position didn’t realise that Lamarck had pioneered the idea, and a U.S. account of Lamarck and his writings was not published until 1901. So, neo-Lamarckism with the inherited use and disuse characteristics meaning goes back to the 1890s, it may have been coined by Weismann. Not sure if dropping the “neo” is a big issue.
What we now think of as Lamarckism is what the neo-Lamarckians pushed as the alternative to Darwinian variation: acquired inheritance. This became the central interpretation at about the time Romanes wrote. Weismann wrote a bit before Romanes, and Romanes was responding to him.