Book Historicism 17 Nov 202417 Nov 2024 I have made my latest Substack post available to all. In which I defend myself from heinous charges and calumnies, and defend a kind of historicism. Continue Reading
Freedom So, how did we get here? 7 Nov 20247 Nov 2024 This is not my beautiful world Shit got real just now, but it took a long time and a lot of inattention and complacency, basically since the 1950s. It began with the unholy alliance of manufacturing and the military during the Cold War and the technowashing of German military engineers… Continue Reading
History Imaginaries in Science 13 Sep 202413 Sep 2024 I wrote a thing. I started out skeptical, but ended up convincing myself that “imaginaries” is a good concept. I am annoyed by this. Continue Reading
Philosophy New book on Land Ethics 7 Aug 20247 Aug 2024 A friend and colleague, Roberta L. Millstein, who is emerit at UC Davis, has published a new book: The Land Is Our Community: Aldo Leopold’s Environmental Ethic for the New Millennium, which is available from The University of Chicago Press here. She defends Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic. The publisher’s blurb:… Continue Reading
Logic and philosophy Vale Michael Ghiselin 17 Jun 202424 Jun 2024 Michael Ghiselin, who was the originator of (the modern) view that species are individuals, died on 14 June 2024. He was a very generous person with his time for antipodean philosophers. With his passing, the authors of the SAI thesis, as it is called, are both gone: he and his… Continue Reading
Logic and philosophy A quote from Lewis Carroll 11 Jun 202411 Jun 2024 Well, it’s actually from Charles Dodgson’s The Game of Logic 1887: The world contains many Things (such as “Buns”, “Babies”, “Beetles”, “Battledores”, &c.) ; and the Things possess many Attributes (such as “baked”, “beautiful”, “black”, “broken”, &c: in fact, whatever can be “attributed to”, that is “said to belong to”,… Continue Reading
History On the difference between a people and a nation 26 May 202426 May 2024 A substack notice Continue Reading
Biology Aware is finished. Now for something different 14 May 202414 May 2024 So I finished presenting the book Aware on my substack, which will now ferment in my bottom drawer (metaphorically) until it ripens. While that is happening I am preparing to edit some nineteenth century sources for discussions of classification, taxonomy, species, higher and lower taxa, and many other subjects. Does… Continue Reading
Australian stuff A local talk 15 Mar 202415 Mar 2024 HPS book celebration at the University of Melbourne Continue Reading
Australian stuff Kinds of drivers 5 Mar 20246 Mar 2024 As a motorcyclist, I am acutely aware of other road users, and some patterns crop up which I am certain is unique to Melbourne, of models driven by those who have no concern for other road users, and especially not those of a two-wheeled kind. So, after some 40 years’ experience, and still being alive, if battered, here are the kinds of drivers to avoid. Continue Reading