At last, my grant application is in. I reckon there's about the same amount of work in a grant application as in a good size novel paper, which is to say a paper on a topic you haven't published before. To add to that, I finalised a paper for final submission - which I hope meets the exacting standards of the editors.
So I am able now to work on other stuff, which includes more on Darwin and species concepts. When I began this, I hadn't read David Stamos' Darwin And the Nature of Species, in which most of the source material is covered. Stamos, like me, thinks Darwin was a species realist, but he has differing views on whether he was a rank realist (that is, thought that the category of species was objective). I don't. More on this as I get the time.
Among my current projects includes a denial that there ever was species essentialism in the way Mayr and others held there was - neither before nor after Darwin. This is the topic of a paper I will read at the ISHPSSB Conference in Exeter this July. Ish, as it's called, is the standard conference for history and philosophy of biology types. A session I am organising is titled "Essentialism and Classification", and it's been very popular. We have, in addition to my paper, presentations on biological essentialism as a proposal, on the ontology of race, on a Deleuzian view of populations, on biology wihout species (that'll be fun!), on the conceptual commitments of naming species and other taxa, and on what "good species" are.
Also, I am working now on measures of biodiversity. As I get stuff worked out, I'll post summaries here. It's a morass, but looks to be a fun project. It's the topic of my grant, if I get it.
Yesterday I discovered that I get to keep my present position for the next year. Paul Griffiths, who is my supervisor (and friend and mentor) is leaving to go to the University of Sydney, and there was some indication I might be declared redundant. For the past 18 months, it has been very worrying, and almost stupifying, not knowing what the university would do. At least it's over for now. Of course, if I don't get the grant, then I'm unemployed if no other positions come through. It's hard to be a postdoc at 51.
I haven't slept properly for about four weeks now, so don't expect big things from me (if you ever did) for a while, but I promise there's more coming. One thing I'm working on is a Basic Concepts piece on Theories. Another is a biodiversity piece, considered from the perspective of evolution.
While I'm tidying up loose ends, I visited my old haunts over the weekend in Melbourne, as well as visiting Dan Faith at the Australian Museum in Sydney (don't ever stay at the Ibis in Sydney, though the one in Melbourne was very nice). I got to see my advisors, Neil Thomason and Gary Nelson (and Gary is hip deep in Claude Bernard right now - he seems and interesting guy), and my staff from WEHI. In particular, Drew Berry, whose wonderful video animations of molecular processes are well worth looking at, is working on animations for a forthcoming special on - you guessed - biodiversity. I can't wait to see it. Drew is brilliant at making real science visual. He works from original research papers, not textbooks.
That's it for now. I'm taking a couple of days to recover from the last fortnight of strain.
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Interesting overview; I'm a postdoc approaching joblessness, and can sympathize. And, I'll profit from the diversity covered in the post to ask a question (I'm just curious):
Are you equaly but separately interested in ideas, and in the history of ideas? Or do you see some connection between philosophy and history of philosophy that I don't? I mean: I see the interest in discussing, say, what a meaningul content the word 'species' should have, and I also see the interest in knowing what Darwin meant or not when he used it. But I see them as separate topics, unless you can find in his work some nuance that hasn't been rediscovered by someone else and brought to current discussions. I know that sometimes (specially in humanities) the discussion on a topic shifts to a discussion of what 'authorities' have thought about a topic, and I'm quite sure you are aware of the difference. But since you do both things, I wonder how you see the connection between them.
It sounds like you've been uber-busy (as always). My colloquium on pragmatism and evolutionary biology begins today, so, of course, I wish you could be here for it. I suppose I will see you at Exeter, though.
Get some sleep!
That's good news.
Congratulations with the good news.
Wow. Ten hours sleep!
OK, I'm up and more or less active. Thanks for the well wishes.
On the history of ideas and philosophy, I think that we are engaged in philosophy in a dialectic with the past, and if we are to do anything more substantial than talk to strawmen of our own invention, we have to know how these conceptions developed. We try to get Hume, Kant and Locke right - why should we not try to get Darwin, Buffon and Mayr right?
Moreover, there are lessons to be learned from the debates and mistakes of the past. For instance, Ghiselin was not the first person to argue that species are metaphysical individuals. Depending how you delineate the topic, that goes back to Aristotle. So should we not see if the arguments were productive back then? And so on. My motto is that our ancestors and precursors were just as smart as we are, and often smarter. People did not suddenly achieve enlightenment with Darwin, and so we must learn fromt he past to address the problems of the present.
Abstract philosophy, with free floating ideas and arguments in some dialectic heaven, is a useless profession, in my view.
Curiosity satisfied, I see the point. Merci!
Oh, so the signs I sent you ("Unemployed philosopher, will argue about trivia for food") aren't needed?
I hope you get the grant: I'm looking forward to seeing your views on biodiversity. I'm not expecting you to actually tell us what it is, though.
Bob
Great news, John. Take an extra hour's sleep out of petty cash.
Having done both at least half a dozen times, I agree that writing a grant application is roughly equivalent in size and effort as a good size novel.
Grant applications are formal as a sestina, though, weaker in plot, intentionally less poetic in vocabulary, and limited in characterization to CVs of PI and co-PIs.
The Fantasy is usually better hidden in a grant application. The measured optimism is pretty open.
Unfortunately, critics with axes to grind kill grant applications more easily than they kill novels. On the other hand, you don't need a bestseller to make a living.
Good luck!
Great news regarding the confirmation of your position! I'm looking forward to continued coffees at Genies and hopefully doing some work on the messy biodiversity stuff (fingers and toes crossed).