John S. Wilkins
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jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins
@jswilkins.bsky.social
1.3K followers 260 following 610 posts

Historian and Philosopher of Biology, focusing on species and taxonomy. Blog: https:/evolvingthoughts.net, Mastodon: https://fediscience.org/deck/@jswilkins, Substack: https://substack.com/@johnwilkins.

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John Wilkins was an English Anglican clergyman, natural philosopher, and author, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was Bishop of Chester from 1668 until his death. .. more

Philosophy 20%
History 20%
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jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 5d
Oh, and what about Boltzmann?

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 5d
Hmmm. What about Kelvin or Mach? Even sticking just to physicists, there are numerous candidates.

My favourite in biology is of course Darwin, in general, but then there's Claude Bernard, Carl Vogt, Pasteur, Humboldt, etc.

Or Mendele'ev, Dalton, Liebig. The list of great scientists is rather long.

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 5d
Brisbanians think 28C is cool. They wear sweaters at 24C.

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 6d
Great series but he failed to stick the landing.

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 6d
Darwin believed evolved brains could not solve the existence of God. He was perfectly happy with our ability to do science.

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 7d
Whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you? Just put your lips together and blow.

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 8d
Is this true? Linnaeus’ groups are explicitly artificial. So IT is more like the 18th century notion of a natural method.

Reposted by John Wilkins

patrickesavage.bsky.social
Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 8d
Something for everyone to hate here! Plenty to agree with, but also strawman arguments, conflating preregistration, replication and Registered Reports, attacking Jussim as preregistration advocate but promoting his anti-wokeism…
your standard is no better to me than the standards imposed by the progressive political cult trying to tell me that the scientific method is an arbitrary cultural construction rooted in white supremacy

Reposted by John Wilkins

respublications.bsky.social
RES Publications @respublications.bsky.social · 8d
New research in #RESSystematicEnt

Integrative #taxonomy unravels the true identity of Linnaeus' #Termes fatalis (Isoptera: #Termitidae), the source of termites' name
doi.org/10.1111/syen.70016

#Phylogenies #IntegrativeTaxonomy #Sequencing
@gkergoat.bsky.social @wileyeco.bsky.social

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 8d
This.
irisvanrooij.bsky.social Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 8d
We’ve never solved the frame problem, yet the AI industry believes (or wants us to believe) that they can make tractable context-sensitive “agents”

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Reposted by John Wilkins

irisvanrooij.bsky.social
Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 8d
We’ve never solved the frame problem, yet the AI industry believes (or wants us to believe) that they can make tractable context-sensitive “agents”

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Reposted by John Wilkins

markrubin.bsky.social
Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 9d
"I’m actually biased in favor of the intuitive value of preregistration; but things that seem intuitively sensible can turn out to be wrong anyway. Increasingly, I’m wondering if this is one of those things."
Preregistration Isn’t the Chief Executive of Science, It’s a Small Part of the Quality Control Department
And I'm Beginnning to Think It Should Be Fired for Poor Performance
open.substack.com

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 12d
Who offers one or two year visiting scholar grants in Europe to retired Australian academics?
#academicsky Preferably in German speaking countries.

Reposted by John Wilkins

georgetakei.bsky.social
George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 13d
I’m 88 and haven’t had to take this test yet.
Tweet by user Celia saying, “He’s…he’s talking about the Alzheimer’s tests they give senior citizens….” Below is a tweet from Acyn quoting Trump describing cognitive tests he took at Walter Reed and challenging AOC to take them.

Reposted by John Wilkins, Nathan P. Kalmoe

ericmgarcia.bsky.social
Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 13d
Lia Smith, a transgender athlete who was on Middlebury's swimming and diving team, was just found dead by suicide this week.
www.them.us/story/lia-sm...

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 16d
Stephen Miller is Mr Burn’s bastard son. Pass it on.

Reposted by John Wilkins

iai.tv
Institute of Art and Ideas @iai.tv · 16d
Have we been misled about genetics? | https://bit.ly/48QElEr

Gregory Radick shows how critiques of Mendel's experiments, which ignored environments' role in traits, were side-lined by accident, not evidence. This let the flawed idea of genes solely determining traits persist.

#philsci ⚛️ 🧪
Your genes do not define you | Gregory Radick
In the early 20th century many critiqued Mendel's model of evolutions but, as Gregory Radick shows, those criticisms failed to carry the day – not because they were defeated in reasoned, evidence-base...
iai.tv

Reposted by John Wilkins

philsci-archive.bsky.social
PhilSci-Archive @philsci-archive.bsky.social · 16d
New on the Archive:

Zach, Martin (2025) On Representation and Similarity: The Case of Mouse Models of Cancer. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. ISSN 00393681

https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/27018/

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 16d
Clearly I misunderstood your citation of that admonition ☹️

Reposted by Brigitte Nerlich, John Wilkins

rmathematicus.bsky.social
Thony Christie @rmathematicus.bsky.social · 17d
Written before I got ill but never posted: Three more books on the history of medieval Islamicate culture #histsci

thonyc.wordpress.com/2025/10/25/t...

Reposted by Göran Bolin, Daniel S. Goldberg, John Wilkins , and 1 more

npr.org
NPR @npr.org · 17d
Del Toro's new Frankenstein adaption reimagines Mary Shelley's 1818 Gothic novel. Frankenstein was like a tech bro: "creating something without considering the consequences," he explains. n.pr/3L5exuu
Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro says 'I'd rather die' than use generative AI
Del Toro's new Frankenstein adaption reimagines Mary Shelley's 1818 Gothic novel. Frankenstein was like a tech bro: "creating something without considering the consequences," he explains.
n.pr

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 17d
2/2 So philosophy tends to take a while to understand scientific issues without being partisan. That was all I meant.

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 17d
Sorry, I was travelling.

I think philosophers of science too often follow the drama in scientific developments rather than submerge themselves in the actual work. With regards to Quantum mechanics and dynamics (I am not a philosopher of physics, mind) waves were fun to write about 1/2

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 19d
That coup is almost complete. Just waiting for the reasons why the midterms cannot be held (due to Antifa terrorism).

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 19d
And that is what they did at first, but it took even physicists a while to come to terms with it. Cut the philosophers a little slack

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 19d
They wrapped the body in the rug

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 20d
Schrödinger was a philosopher, along with Mach, Einstein and just about every bloody physicist of the era.

jswilkins.bsky.social
John S. Wilkins @jswilkins.bsky.social · 20d
Do you get an honorary doctorate at 30 years?

Reposted by Cas Mudde, Anna O. Law, David M. Schultz , and 17 more

senchrislarson.bsky.social
Senator Chris Larson @senchrislarson.bsky.social · 20d
ICE is stockpiling arms, including chemical weapons, guided missile warheads and explosive components. The spending dwarfs anything we've ever seen in the agency - a 700% increase.

The President is building an army to attack his own country.

Reposted by Jonathan M. Gilligan, John Wilkins, Aurélien Mondon , and 1 more

charliejane.bsky.social
Charlie Jane "Lessons in Magic and Disaster" Anders 🏳️‍⚧ @charliejane.bsky.social · 20d
I'm so sick of discourse from supposed allies about where trans people went wrong.

Where we "went wrong" is that billionaires spent unimaginably large sums to attack us repeatedly and major media outlets have spent a decade piling on.