John Wilkins
evolvingthoughts
Posts by this author
November 19, 2007
[The third in a series on a recent paper by David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson. Post 1; Post 2]
In presenting a group selectionist account of sociobiology, Wilson and Wilson argue that alternatives such as kin selection are not really alternatives.
Kin selection and multiplayer games…
November 18, 2007
Wilson and Wilson begin by reviewing the reasons why sociobiology of the 1970s was rejected. They focus on the arguments against group selection.
Levels of selection
In the period in which sociobiology was first proposed under that label (from now on, the term sociobiology refers to this…
November 17, 2007
It's not often I get to comment on as-yet-unpublished work, but I have been sent a copy of a forthcoming essay by David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson, two giants of the theoretical evolutionary field, defending and redefining the nature of sociobiology (Wilson and Wilson 2007). As I have…
November 17, 2007
You may have spotted that I have created a new category called, expressively, "Book". This is primarily for when I review books, which I am going to do more, but also when a book raises issues I want to comment on, or just mock. I've gone back and added this tag to a few posts from the past, so…
November 17, 2007
I have always enjoyed reading the work of Frans de Waal, a primatologist who focuses on the social structure and psychology of apes, particularly the two chimp species, and monkeys. His previous books, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, The Ape and the Sushi…
November 12, 2007
If you really liked one of my posts in the last 12 months, please nominate it for the Open Laboratory anthology for 2007. See the little icon at the left side of the screen? Bora is taking final submissions now.
November 11, 2007
Following on from my previous post "Are species theoretical objects", I want now to discuss what the status of species as phenomenal objects is.
Some recent papers by Ingo Brigandt and Paul Griffiths (see refs), a view has been developed for some core concepts of biology - gene and homology - in…
November 10, 2007
When people visit Australia, we locals like to play up the dangers, like the most poisonous snakes and spiders, poisonous jellyfish, sharks, the drop bears, and of course the crocs. Very few of these are actually dangerous, in that with a bit of sensible precaution and awareness, you can avoid…
November 10, 2007
I've been so busy reading and assimilating the latest issue of Biology and Philosophy I forgot to let you all know about it. It's a special issue on Homology, edited by Paul Griffiths and Ingo Brigandt. A discussion group has now been set up at Matt Haber's blog The Philosophy of Biology Café.…
November 8, 2007
Some things that piqued my interest without triggering a full post:
The readability of this blog is high school level, which is good. That's pretty much how I pitch it:
There's a new species of killer whale in the Antarctic. [HT: Jason]
Toads will mate across species if things get tough.…
November 6, 2007
So, I was browsing through the CBD site, and idly wondered which countries have not signed on to this attempt to reduce the loss of biodiversity worldwide. The answer?
Iraq
Somalia
Brunei
The Holy See
The United States of America
November 6, 2007
The saying that "man is a wolf to man" comes from a saying of Erasmus of Rotterdam, but it is incomplete. The Latin is Homo homini aut deus aut lupus or "Man is either a god or a wolf to man". I'm beginning to wonder if there is a difference between gods and wolves.
Ask yourself this: why did we…
November 6, 2007
I can't believe Laelaps beat me to this (shows how on the ball he is) but he's just noted a paper that I watched getting written, and discussed in detail with Chris Glen, a very smart and talented young paleontologist, before I got to. So I will now, before he goes and does a better job.…
November 5, 2007
In a famous essay Borges wrote of an infinite library that contained all possible books (and most of it nonsense at that). The mind is not like that. It has only a few books in it.
In the philosophy of the cognitive sciences, there are competing views of the nature of the mind. One school, the…
November 5, 2007
Bill Wimsatt is one of the philosophy of biology's underappreciated performers. Many of his takes on biology have influenced a great many people, including me. Here is an interview with him on his latest book Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality (…
November 5, 2007
What with Hollywood archetypes of "animal rights activists" coming out of the woodwork lately, Ryan Gregory and Larry Moran pose the following question:
And so I ask, on what basis do you draw the sharp moral line between "humans" and "animals", "human rights" and "animal rights", "us" versus "…
November 4, 2007
[A guest post by palentologist and geologist Chris Nedin]
It's taken the best part of 50 years but it's finally here! 50 years after the International Geophysical Year (1957-8) that took a global geophysical view of the globe, one of the outcomes of that global geophysical view has just been…
November 3, 2007
I have a rule: a political party is usually the exact opposite of its name. Hence, the Liberal Party of Australia is not liberal, the National Party is not national, the Labor Party does not represent those who work, and Family First... well, what can one say?
November 3, 2007
Oh, I just know this is going to get enmeshed in arguments about framing, but I don't care.
A new movement in the UK, home of democracy as we know it, involves scientists getting out there and active in public engagement. So what? I hear you ask. This is old stuff. But what is new here is that…
November 3, 2007
Sorry about that pun - it's been around for a while since Antony Flew, quandam philosopher and "Darwinian", announced he was converting to a kind of deism. Jon Pieret, who often comments on this blog when he should be writing for his own, covers the facts as far as we can ascertain them.
I am…
November 3, 2007
[This started as a discussion of the debate mentioned below. It got lost somewhere, and became me riffing on my favourite topics. Sorry.]
I love it when people I know have a barny* in public, but it presents some delicate choices and sensibilities to be honoured. The case in point today is…
October 31, 2007
To summarise: so far we have three general kinds of explanations of religion. There are sociological explanations in terms of the economic, societal and political conditions under which religions develop. There are psychological explanations in terms of experiences, existential dread, need for…
October 30, 2007
From J. B. S. Haldane's 1932 The Causes of Evolution:
... I must ... discuss a fallacy which is, I think, latent in most Darwinian arguments, and which has been responsible for a good deal of poisonous nonsense which has been written on ethics in Darwin's name, especially in Germany before the […
October 30, 2007
Here is an article in Harvard Magazine on bacteria and other wee beasties that make up the bulk of the living world, that is worth reading. It's called "The Undiscovered Planet". Hat tip to Jason Grossman.
October 29, 2007
The above are icons to be used when blogging on actual peer-reviewed research (as opposed to popular reports or kookery). I had a marginal involvement in this (I made some passing comments early on) so it is with great pride... no, actually, it's all down to Dave Munger, who was a champion. I had…
October 29, 2007
Here is a wonderful (and for us old fogeys, resonant) essay by Chris Kelly at The Huffington Post on the use of the Geneva Convention by both Nazis and Allies during the second world war. The money quote:
In real life, bombing Germany killed a half million civilians, but interned American and…
October 29, 2007
I actually don't dislike the guy, but this is one of the funniest political ads I've ever seen.
For forners (not from Orstraya), it helps to know that Rudd leads the erstwhile socialist party, speaks Mandarin, and is likely to win the next federal election.
October 28, 2007
UPDATED:
To give some of my colleagues at the University of Queensland some link love, it is being reported that they have sequenced the Queensland lungfish (currently under threat by a proposed dam) opsin genes, showing that they see in ultraviolet and visible light, as well as having the…
October 28, 2007
Michael Ruse has a new article up on creationism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. There's not much new to those who know his work, but the following comment resonates - dare I say thunders - in the Science Blogs Atheism Wars:
Unfortunately at the moment, those opposed to…
October 25, 2007
I now turn to the question of explananda - what is it that explanations of religion are adduced to explain?
Similarly to the general classification I gave before, there are several things that seem to need explaining.
1. The sociological explanandum: the existence of organised religion…