Book
evolvingthoughts | April 23, 2009"Few topics have engaged biologists and philosophers more than the concept of species, and arguably no idea is more important for evolutionary science. John S. Wilkins' book combines meticulous historical and philosophical analysis and thus provides new insights on the development of this most enduring of subjects."—Joel Cracraft, American Museum of Natural History
"This is not the potted history that one usually finds in texts and review articles. It is a fresh look at the history of a field central to biology, but one whose centrality has changed in scope over the centuries. Wilkins' book…
bioephemera | April 6, 2009
This Tuesday, April 7, the Koshland Science museum in DC is hosting a book talk:
Join NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt and accomplished photographer Joshua Wolfe as they demonstrate how photographs can illustrate the effects of global warming more poignantly than any temperature graph or chart. The two will show photos and satellite images of retreating glaciers, sinking villages in Alaska's tundra, and drying lakes from their new book, Climate Change: Picturing the Science. They will also discuss how scientists gather climate data and come up with cutting-edge research findings.
RSVPs are…
bioephemera | April 1, 2009
I've been as eager as a brain-starved zombie to get my hands on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the Jane Austen mash-up concocted by Seth Grahame-Smith for Quirk Books. It sounded a like Regency Buffy: zombie-slaying Lizzy Bennet indulges in arch quips while skewering zombies and ninjas with her Katana, all in time for the Netherfield ball. The obvious question was, could this conceit actually work for the length of a novel?
The answer: yes - sort of. P&P&Z is no Buffy. But it will be entertaining for a particular type of reader: those who are familiar with the original novel, yet…
evolvingthoughts | March 24, 2009Anthony Grayling, who does a really interesting review column in the Barnes and Noble Review, entitled "A Thinking Read", has a piece on Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True. This saves me having to read it and review it for you myself.
The column title is a pun on Blaise Pascal's statement that "Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed". A pun which I wish I had come up with.
amillikan | March 6, 2009The third edition of The Open Laboratory 2008, a compilation of the best science-related blog posts of last year, is now available for purchase in the Lulu Marketplace. The book was started by ScienceBlogger Bora Zivkovic in 2006 as a way to lend credibility to the new media form of blogging and package it in a way that is accessible both online and off. "This book was produced communally with people submitting over 800 posts, other bloggers reading and judging them, bloggers editing them, bloggers designing the cover and typeset, and bloggers publishing it - Yes We Can!" Bora said in an…
sciencepunk | February 26, 2009Today the Big Daddy of bad science journalism, Ben Goldacre, received the advance new-look copies of his fantastically brilliant book, Bad Science. He didn't take well to having his picture in it, either because he is so modest he gets flustered by these things, or because he is in reality several different people engaged in an elaborate ruse the meaning of which we cannot fathom.
Anyway, all his harping inspired me demonstrate just how bad the Bad Science cover redesign could have been. His publishers may, for example, have tried to boost female readership by breaking into the misery-lit…
evolvingthoughts | February 3, 2009
"Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution" (Mark S. Blumberg)
This book came to me well recommended, and as far as the content goes, I am very impressed. The writing style, however, and the intended audience, are at odds with each other.
Blumberg is a developmental biologist who has a real grasp of the topic, is enthusiastic about it, and has a clear target in his sights. That target is sometimes misleadingly called "The Modern Synthesis", although a better term might be something like "gene centrism"; the view often expressed in words like "genes are the…
evolvingthoughts | January 6, 2009I make no secret that I admire Darwin as a historical figure very much, but I recently submitted a paper for an open access journal for science teachers at secondary level named Resonance, entitled "Not Saint Darwin". I was motivated by some of the rather uncritical, unhistorical and unnecessary examples of Darwin worship, and its obverse, Darwin demonisation. Here are some examples.
Darwin worship:
Charles Darwin was crazy about dinosaurs (MSNBC) [He also liked roast beef]
Yale Center for British Art to Present Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts (Artdaily.org…
grrlscientist | December 14, 2008
Elizabeth Gibson alongside the story I wrote about her on my blog [larger view].
Image: GrrlScientist, 14 December 2008.
A most remarkable thing happened to me just now. I am working on some writing in a Manhattan coffee shop when two women sat at the table next to me and began negotiating a roommate situation. After I overheard them both talking about research into the neurobiology of learning, all attempts on my part to ignore their conversation went out the window. Neither of these things are particularly unusual, but what was very unusual was when I learned that I actually know one of…
evolvingthoughts | December 1, 2008
New: Solutions listed
Mike Dunford, who is still trying to get me to pay for that time he put me up in Hawaii when his wife was on active service in Iraq (if I knew what I'd have to pay, both in climbing horrific rainforested slopes to release wallabies, and this meme, I'd never have gone) has tagged me, the bastard. It's a meme created by Henry Gee (I'll get even with him later, too).
Find ten books, the first ones you see, go to page 56, sentence five and transcribe it. You readers are supposed to guess what they are. [I better keep a note or I'll be screwed later...] Below the fold…
evolvingthoughts | November 28, 2008
I haven't done much philosophical blogging lately. There are Reasons. I'm preparing to move to Sydney over the next few months (and there may be a period in which I have no laptop too), and trying to catch up on a bunch of projects I have in play and which deserve my attention. Also, there's a stack yay high of books to review. To impress you all and disgust my editors, they include the following:
Books
Sober, Elliott. 2008. Evidence and evolution: the logic behind the science. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.
This continues Sober's general project of giving a…
evolvingthoughts | November 9, 2008
I was very pleased to receive today my copy of this book:
A Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography, edited by A. Tucker. Chichester UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
I got it because on pp 405-415 is my essay "Darwin", which I am rather proud of. I have long thought that Darwin as a philosopher of history is undervalued, but much more interesting than Hegel or Marx. Anyway, if you don't tell anyone, I have made a rough scan available here, although you really ought to make your library buy a copy.
sporte | October 18, 2008Sometimes I'm thankful for all extra restrictions on air travel that got imposed after 9/11. Not the ones involving personal searches, taking your shoes off, or putting all your liquids in plastic bags, but I do like having to arrive at the airport 2 hours ahead of any scheduled trip.
The reason is that I'm a sucker for airport book stores. Almost every time I go on a trip, I bring home more books than I packed. Sometimes surprisingly, as in the case of "Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's" by John Elder Robison, I even have to fight with my children to get the book back.
I don't…
evolvingthoughts | October 2, 2008
Today I finalised my manuscript, printed it out, annotated it, made sure all the figures were there, that they had the least ugly photos of me, burned the CD, and ticked all the boxes. Tomorrow, Species: A history of the idea physically travels to University of California Press, where they will do publishing things to it until it instantiates as a book. This is great, given that I am now in the job market, with an actual interview in two weeks, and possibly many more to come. What gets up my nose is that the Australian department of education treats a 300pp book as the equivalent of five…
evolvingthoughts | September 8, 2008
I am presently reading Fuller's Dissent over Descent, but here's A. C. Grayling's review in advance of mine. The money quote:
The demerits of ID theory itself – so woeful as to be funny: in this world of ours, with so much failed experiment of life, so much repetition and haphazard variety of endeavour to meet the challenge of passing on genes, to claim the existence and activity of a supernatural designer would be a sort of blasphemy on the latter, if it existed – are well enough known not to require the wasted effort of iteration; nor does the overwhelming security of evolutionary theory…
evolvingthoughts | August 24, 2008
In addition to Fuller's Science versus Religion, I also received my copy of Phil Dowe's Galileo, Darwin and Hawking last week, and today arrives Roy Davies' The Darwin Conspiracy (thanks, Roy; I will be as even handed as I can be), and Frank Schaeffer's Crazy for God. So I am going to be busy over the next few weeks. I'll post a bloggy review here for those that I also have to review for a journal (I have a backlog on this - Bowler's Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons is also due).
I'm about one third through Schaeffer's book already - it's a good read. His father and mother come across as…
evolvingthoughts | July 21, 2008
Today I got my manuscript off to the publisher. Heaven knows what the editors will do with it; I expect a sympathetic treatment as the publisher's editorial board are quite keen. But it's like having a ten year boil lanced. And seeing a favourite child graduate. All at once.
So it remains for me to thank the enormous number of people who have helped me do this book. Nobody could have done it alone. I am amazed and heartened by the fact that no matter how much disagreement I may have with the various people involved in the species debate, they are all hell of a nice lot of guys and gals.…
evolvingthoughts | 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 see if it helps. You can access the categories via the Archives page.
evolvingthoughts | 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 Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist, and Peacemaking among Primates have all entranced me and inspired my reflections on such diverse topics as evolutionary psychology, the origins of political and social structures, and, of course, the evolution of religion.
His recent book, Our Inner…