Greg Priest
@gregpriest.bsky.social
PhD in history and philosophy of science (also JD and MLA), Stanford.
Biology, complexity, diagramming. Philosophy of history.
Curates these BlueSky feeds:
History and Philosophy of Biology
Complexity Science
Philosophy of History and Historiography
Biology, complexity, diagramming. Philosophy of history.
Curates these BlueSky feeds:
History and Philosophy of Biology
Complexity Science
Philosophy of History and Historiography
OTD in 1944, in Korematsu v. US, SCOTUS upheld the constitutionality of FDR’s order that US citizens of Japanese descent be involuntarily interned.
The decision has come to be seen as one of the lowest moments in the Supreme Court’s history.
The decision has come to be seen as one of the lowest moments in the Supreme Court’s history.
December 18, 2025 at 6:36 PM
OTD in 1944, in Korematsu v. US, SCOTUS upheld the constitutionality of FDR’s order that US citizens of Japanese descent be involuntarily interned.
The decision has come to be seen as one of the lowest moments in the Supreme Court’s history.
The decision has come to be seen as one of the lowest moments in the Supreme Court’s history.
Maurice Wilkins was born OTD in 1916. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the structure of DNA using X-ray crystallography.
He did not start out in biochemistry. He changed fields after being disillusioned by his work on the Manhattan Project.
🐋🌱 #HistSTM #STS 🧪 🐡
He did not start out in biochemistry. He changed fields after being disillusioned by his work on the Manhattan Project.
🐋🌱 #HistSTM #STS 🧪 🐡
December 15, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Maxwell's Demon was born OTD in 1867 in a letter to Peter Guthrie Tait. M called it only a “finite being.”
Lord Kelvin named it a “demon,” presumably referring to its apparent unearthly power to (locally and temporarily) violate the second law of thermodynamics.
🦫🦋 #HistSTM #philsci 🧪
Lord Kelvin named it a “demon,” presumably referring to its apparent unearthly power to (locally and temporarily) violate the second law of thermodynamics.
🦫🦋 #HistSTM #philsci 🧪
December 12, 2025 at 1:17 AM
An article I saw today details a debate (in Heisenberg’s old stomping grounds of Helogland) in which Carlo Rovelli and Chris Fuchs argue about how best to interpret Heisenberg’s intuition.
🦫🦋🧪 #philsci
https://www.science.org/content/article/100-years-quantum-mechanics-redefining-reality-us-center
🦫🦋🧪 #philsci
https://www.science.org/content/article/100-years-quantum-mechanics-redefining-reality-us-center
December 5, 2025 at 6:26 PM
An article I saw today details a debate (in Heisenberg’s old stomping grounds of Helogland) in which Carlo Rovelli and Chris Fuchs argue about how best to interpret Heisenberg’s intuition.
🦫🦋🧪 #philsci
https://www.science.org/content/article/100-years-quantum-mechanics-redefining-reality-us-center
🦫🦋🧪 #philsci
https://www.science.org/content/article/100-years-quantum-mechanics-redefining-reality-us-center
Joan Didion was born OTD in 1934.
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live.... We live entirely … by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”
#BookSky #Lit 🦋🦫 🗃️🧠
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live.... We live entirely … by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”
#BookSky #Lit 🦋🦫 🗃️🧠
December 5, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Werner Heisenberg was born OTD in 1901.
“What we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” We are “asking questions about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer … by the means that are at our disposal.”
🦋🦫🧪 #PhilSci #HistSTM
“What we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” We are “asking questions about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer … by the means that are at our disposal.”
🦋🦫🧪 #PhilSci #HistSTM
December 5, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Claude the albino alligator, the unofficial but very real mascot of the California Academy of Sciences, has died at 30, apparently of liver cancer. I’m kind of broken up about it.
In all seriousness, may his memory be a blessing.
🧪🐋🌱
In all seriousness, may his memory be a blessing.
🧪🐋🌱
Claude the alligator’s cause of death revealed: ‘There was nothing we could have done’
As Bay Area residents mourned the death of Claude the albino alligator this week, the California Academy of Sciences received the results of a necropsy.
www.sfchronicle.com
December 4, 2025 at 5:03 AM
Claude the albino alligator, the unofficial but very real mascot of the California Academy of Sciences, has died at 30, apparently of liver cancer. I’m kind of broken up about it.
In all seriousness, may his memory be a blessing.
🧪🐋🌱
In all seriousness, may his memory be a blessing.
🧪🐋🌱
St. George Jackson Mivart, one of Darwin’s fiercest critics, was born OTD in 1827.
If long necks favor giraffes on the African savannah, M asked, where are the *other* long-necked ungulates? Why are there not vast herds of giraffopottamuses sweeping across the veldt?
#QED
🧪 🌱🐋 #HistSTM #EvoBio
If long necks favor giraffes on the African savannah, M asked, where are the *other* long-necked ungulates? Why are there not vast herds of giraffopottamuses sweeping across the veldt?
#QED
🧪 🌱🐋 #HistSTM #EvoBio
November 30, 2025 at 4:09 PM
The surprising crab-trap–pulling behavior is described in this article: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
We recently published a paper on how animal tool use is conceptualized, offering a framework to make sense of its different forms 👇📃 www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #evosky #philsci
We recently published a paper on how animal tool use is conceptualized, offering a framework to make sense of its different forms 👇📃 www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #evosky #philsci
November 27, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Darwin was a pioneer in experimental psychology, showing photos of human faces that had been galvanically stimulated to represent different emotions to visitors to Down House in an effort to determine which emotions could be reliably identified. 3/4
🧪🌱🐋 #HistSTM #Evobio #Psychsky
🧪🌱🐋 #HistSTM #Evobio #Psychsky
November 26, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Darwin had earlier made detailed observations of the emotional displays of his “little animalcule of a son,” William Erasmus, which he used in Expression.
D’s wife Emma worried that if she were “out of temper,” he would just be “forming theories about me.”
🧪🌱🐋 #HistSTM #Evobio #Psychsky
D’s wife Emma worried that if she were “out of temper,” he would just be “forming theories about me.”
🧪🌱🐋 #HistSTM #Evobio #Psychsky
November 26, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions launched OTD in 1872.
Just as our bodily form has evolved from our animal ancestors, so too have our minds, including "the habit of expressing our feelings [or, in his title, "emotions"] by certain movements." 1/4
🧪🌱🐋 #HistSTM #Evobio #Psychsky
Just as our bodily form has evolved from our animal ancestors, so too have our minds, including "the habit of expressing our feelings [or, in his title, "emotions"] by certain movements." 1/4
🧪🌱🐋 #HistSTM #Evobio #Psychsky
November 26, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Apparent case of learned tool use by wolves.
https://youtu.be/SiuQF68tdWI?si=k7DWNrI0y5jASt-o
#EvoBio #HPBio
https://youtu.be/SiuQF68tdWI?si=k7DWNrI0y5jASt-o
#EvoBio #HPBio
Cameras capture BC sea wolf raiding crab traps in first possible ‘tool use’
YouTube video by Global News
youtu.be
November 25, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Apparent case of learned tool use by wolves.
https://youtu.be/SiuQF68tdWI?si=k7DWNrI0y5jASt-o
#EvoBio #HPBio
https://youtu.be/SiuQF68tdWI?si=k7DWNrI0y5jASt-o
#EvoBio #HPBio
John Beatty has a lovely chapter analyzing this topic in Kohn’s classic volume The Darwinian Heritage: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400854714.265/html?lang=en&srsltid=AfmBOooCnjMcj4ghbwulYQebLeOoMOV168osG2dP9u5WXMt6pKE2LS0F
One of the great things about this work is the way Darwin performs a discourse analysis of the word "species" as it is used in the sciences. To me, it reads closer to Derrida than standard biological writing.
November 24, 2025 at 5:02 PM
John Beatty has a lovely chapter analyzing this topic in Kohn’s classic volume The Darwinian Heritage: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400854714.265/html?lang=en&srsltid=AfmBOooCnjMcj4ghbwulYQebLeOoMOV168osG2dP9u5WXMt6pKE2LS0F
![Handwritteen note with a tree diagram inscribed in concentric circles representing geological time. Center is labled "Paleoz[oic]." First sphere is labled "Second[ary]." Next sphere is labled "Tertiary." At the top of the page is the following text: "Dot means new form--[illeg.]"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6eqjufcnopmdmucccde5aeob/bafkreid5gprtscooczxuoxg4qy7agigiqaqyh4u6qnjc56uwt6ayrs33oa@jpeg)
I also also have a standalone article, here: https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160932718300528
Full disclosure: analysis to a certain extent changed by the time of the dissertation.
🌱🐋🧪 #histSTM #evobio 🐡
Full disclosure: analysis to a certain extent changed by the time of the dissertation.
🌱🐋🧪 #histSTM #evobio 🐡
November 24, 2025 at 4:58 PM
I also also have a standalone article, here: https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160932718300528
Full disclosure: analysis to a certain extent changed by the time of the dissertation.
🌱🐋🧪 #histSTM #evobio 🐡
Full disclosure: analysis to a certain extent changed by the time of the dissertation.
🌱🐋🧪 #histSTM #evobio 🐡
The diagram was more than a picture. He referred to it frequently in the text, clearly believing that the diagrammatic form rendered some aspects of evolutionary dynamics more clearly than text could. I’ve written about this in my dissertation, available on request.
🌱🐋🧪 #histSTM #evobio 🐡
🌱🐋🧪 #histSTM #evobio 🐡
November 24, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Darwin’s publisher, John Murray, was usually quite generous about paying for maps, plates, and in-text images for D’s books, and D attended closely to his illustrations, so it’s surprising that the Origin featured only 1, a diagrammatic model of change through time.
🌱🐋🧪 #histSTM #evobio 🐡
🌱🐋🧪 #histSTM #evobio 🐡
November 24, 2025 at 4:53 PM
Asa Gray was born OTD in 1810. A devout believer in a personal God, G was also one of Darwin’s greatest champions.
In a correspondence spanning 12 years, G and D minutely explored what evolution says about God and free will. D could not accept G’s God, but was deeply torn.
🌱🐋 #HistSTM #philsci 🧪
In a correspondence spanning 12 years, G and D minutely explored what evolution says about God and free will. D could not accept G’s God, but was deeply torn.
🌱🐋 #HistSTM #philsci 🧪
| Darwin Correspondence Project
www.darwinproject.ac.uk
November 18, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Arthur Miller was born OTD in 1915.
He had a complicated relationship with The Crucible, never settling even on who was the central villain. But late in life, he offered this:
“I’m not really a moralist. I just make the assumption that certain things we do lead to catastrophe.”
#philsky #booksky
He had a complicated relationship with The Crucible, never settling even on who was the central villain. But late in life, he offered this:
“I’m not really a moralist. I just make the assumption that certain things we do lead to catastrophe.”
#philsky #booksky
November 17, 2025 at 4:09 PM
“To make a life of order out of the buzzing confusion in a wondrous but difficult world demands our best efforts.… Negotiating the physical world into a conceptual entity of some interest and dimension is a challenge of the championship level.”
November 15, 2025 at 4:13 PM
“To make a life of order out of the buzzing confusion in a wondrous but difficult world demands our best efforts.… Negotiating the physical world into a conceptual entity of some interest and dimension is a challenge of the championship level.”
Wayne Thiebaud was born OTD in 1920.
“You can do art history backwards or forwards; you can take your choice. Progress is not part of it. Variation, yes, and extension and all that, but progress? Phew. I don’t know how you’d beat any of that stuff, even from the cave period.”
“You can do art history backwards or forwards; you can take your choice. Progress is not part of it. Variation, yes, and extension and all that, but progress? Phew. I don’t know how you’d beat any of that stuff, even from the cave period.”
November 15, 2025 at 4:08 PM
Wayne Thiebaud was born OTD in 1920.
“You can do art history backwards or forwards; you can take your choice. Progress is not part of it. Variation, yes, and extension and all that, but progress? Phew. I don’t know how you’d beat any of that stuff, even from the cave period.”
“You can do art history backwards or forwards; you can take your choice. Progress is not part of it. Variation, yes, and extension and all that, but progress? Phew. I don’t know how you’d beat any of that stuff, even from the cave period.”