Verne Grant died 24 Aug 200718 Sep 2017 I’m very late to this, but one of the significant figures in the synthesis, Verne Grant, died in May. Grant’s book The Origin of Adaptations (1963) was one that influenced a lot of theorising about evolution. His essay on species concepts in 1957 pointed out that botanical notions of species had to be very different to the reigning Mayrian biospecies concept. Grant, Verne. 1957. The Plant Species in Theory and Practice. In The Species Problem, edited by E. Mayr. Washington DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science. ———. 1963. The origin of adaptations. New York: Columbia University Press. Evolution History Species and systematics
Evolution New paper by Wilkins 6 Aug 2008 Wilkins, J.S. (2008). The adaptive landscape of science. Biology & Philosophy. DOI: 10.1007/s10539-008-9125-y This is a paper returning to my roots – the evolutionary view of scientific theory change. My first paper, back in the Jurassic, was a rough and ready attempt to make sense of David Hull’s view of… Read More
History The Blue Book is in PDF 10 Sep 2009 Systematists know the tome by Gareth Nelson and Norman Platnick, Systematics and Biogeography (1981), as the Blue Book (shades of Wittgenstein!). It was published once and is now so hard to get that I have been unable to find a copy in ten years of looking. Now, Malte Ebach tells… Read More
Evolution More on the Fodor and Piatelli-Palmerini thing 21 Mar 2010 FAPP have replied to Ned Block’s and Phillip Kitcher’s critique in the Boston Review, showing that the interpretation I gave before is the right one: they really do think that because we cannot say without ambiguity, a priori, what it is that natural selection is selecting, and therefore there is… Read More
I haven’t read the Origins of Adaptations for years, but Grant’s point about the difference between the way plants and animals evolve has shaped my thinking about evolution and, more generally, about science ever since I first encountered his book.