Wilkins on screen

Comments (10)

1. I wish I had known you gave a lecture at Oxford. I would have made the effort to come down.

   Still surprises me how I can use some of the ideas developed and apply them directly to art.
   It does not seem natural! But would seem that it is.

   1. Actually Jeb, I didn’t give a talk at Oxford. I was visiting people there.

      1. Oops, wishfull thinking on my part. Would have liked to drag a few postmodernists along from history and English lit. from that neck of the woods to hear you speak.

         I am sure I could get some heated family debates out of it for some time to come.

2. Personally, I love intentional language in biology.

   I find it very tiresome when people challenge me and ask me to spell out what I mean when I use terms like “want” or “for”.

   In fact, their usual tack is to claim that I am making a stupid anthropomorphic error.

   This soon gets tedious – but it is not bad enough to make me go for the long-winded option of spelling out what I mean explicitly every time.

   1. But that’s my point: one doesn’t need to be longwinded. Just careful.

3. Hey, how come when I click on that link, it says “Access denied, lowly scut. You are not authorized to access this page!” ?

   (or something like that).

   I sense CONSPIRACY!!

4. I watched the video the other day. But I just tried to watch it again, because I probably missed some things, and now I’m denied access.

   Anyway, from what I remember it was very interesting and also clarified a number of confusing points.

   You talked about Haeckel, so I’ll mention that I saw a collection of Haeckel’s artwork when I was shopping for a 2010 wall calendar the other week. There were lots of calendars to choose from and I didn’t choose that one, but I recognised the images.

5. I get “You are not authorized to access this page.”

   1. The whole video site is dead. I don’t think that it’s my fault.

6. Actually, I thought you came across very well. You looked relaxed. You spoke easily and without stumbling or hesitation and gave the impression you had mastered your subject. Above all, there was enough inflexion in your delivery to make it easy on the ear.

   They should invite you on to BloggingHeads to debate someone like Michael Flannery on his thesis that Darwin’s notebooks reveal a very different and less praiseworthy character than the public persona.

Comments are closed.