Wheeler on Yoon on species 8 Aug 2009 Quentin Wheeler has an interesting discussion of the recent book Naming Nature by Carol Kaesuk Yoon; in which he (rightly) dismisses her apparent claim (I haven’t read the book) that species are subjective. Go read it. Species and systematics Species concept Systematics
Ecology and Biodiversity Barcoding redux 17 Mar 200818 Sep 2017 So, here I am in Phoenix airport, waiting to go back home, and I read T Ryan Gregory’s snark about me and barcoding. Apparently I am to learn only from his blog posts and not from (perish the thought) critics. One should never attend to critics. My crime was, of… Read More
Administrative Oh ghods, I’m on TV 24 May 2008 Nothing is more excruciating to me than to see myself and hear myself. It’s even worse when I’m up against someone who presents so much better than I do. So watch Paul Myers (I think that’s how they spell his name) and me talk about Stuff at Bloggingheads.TV. The video… Read More
Epistemology Linnaeus: the founder of databases 17 Jun 200918 Sep 2017 A couple of years ago I was in Exeter, and was chatting to Staffan Müller-Wille, who is an expert in the history of biology specialising in Linnaean taxonomy. He mentioned to me that Linnaeus had invented the index card in order to keep track of the increasingly large data set… Read More