-
24Robert J. Richards and Lorraine Daston , Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions at Fifty: Reflections on a Science Classic. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. 208. ISBN 978-0-226-31720-5. £17.50 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 50 (3): 562-563. 2017.
-
18Race and language in the Darwinian tradition (and what Darwin’s language–species parallels have to do with it)Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 39 (3): 359-370. 2008.
-
35Physics in the Galtonian sciences of heredityStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (2): 129-138. 2011.Physics matters less than we once thought to the making of Mendel. But it matters more than we tend to recognize to the making of Mendelism. This paper charts the variety of ways in which diverse kinds of physics impinged upon the Galtonian tradition which formed Mendelism’s matrix. The work of three Galtonians in particular is considered: Francis Galton himself, W. F. R. Weldon and William Bateson. One aim is to suggest that tracking influence from physics can bring into focus important but now…Read more
-
31Primate Language and the Playback Experiment, in 1890 and 1980Journal of the History of Biology 38 (3): 461-493. 2005.The playback experiment -- the playing back of recorded animal sounds to the animals in order to observe their responses -- has twice become central to celebrated researches on non-human primates. First, in the years around 1890, Richard Garner, an amateur scientist and evolutionary enthusiast, used the new wax cylinder phonograph to record and reproduce monkey utterances with the aim of translating them. Second, in the years around 1980, the ethologists Peter Marler, Robert Seyfarth, and Doroth…Read more
-
76Race and language in the Darwinian tradition (and what Darwin's language–species parallels have to do with it)Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 39 (3): 359-370. 2008.What should human languages be like if humans are the products of Darwinian evolution? Between Darwin’s day & like the peoples speaking them are higher or lower in an evolutionarily generated scale This paper charts some of the changes in the Darwinian tradition that transformed the notion of human linguistic equality from creationist heresy., our own, expectations about evolution’s imprint on language have changed dramaticallyIt is now a commonplace that, for good Darwinian reasons, no language…Read more
-
53Presidential address: Experimenting with the scientific pastBritish Journal for the History of Science 49 (2): 153-172. 2016.When it comes to knowing about the scientific pasts that might have been – the so-called ‘counterfactual’ history of science – historians can either debate its possibility or get on with the job. The latter course offers opportunities for engaging with some of the most general questions about the nature of science, history and knowledge. It can also yield fresh insights into why particular episodes in the history of science unfolded as they did and not otherwise. Drawing on recent research into …Read more
-
59Other Histories, Other BiologiesRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 56 3-. 2005.Concentrating on genetics, this paper examines the strength of the links between our biological science -- our biology -- and the particular history which brought that science into being. Would quite different histories have produced roughly the same science? Or, on the contrary, would different histories have produced other, quite different biologies? One emphasis throughout is on the kinds of evidence that might be brought to bear from the actual past in order to assess claims about what mi…Read more
-
33Language, brain function, and human origins in the Victorian debates on evolutionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31 (1): 55-75. 2000.
-
33Morgan's canon, Garner's phonograph, and the evolutionary origins of language and reasonBritish Journal for the History of Science 33 (1): 3-23. 2000.‘Morgan's canon’ is a rule for making inferences from animal behaviour about animal minds, proposed in 1892 by the Bristol geologist and zoologist C. Lloyd Morgan, and celebrated for promoting scepticism about the reasoning powers of animals. Here I offer a new account of the origins and early career of the canon. Built into the canon, I argue, is the doctrine of the Oxford philologist F. Max Müller that animals, lacking language, necessarily lack reason. Restoring the Müllerian origins of the c…Read more
-
26Gordon Chancellor and John van Wyhe , Charles Darwin's Notebooks from the Voyage of the ‘Beagle’. Foreword by Richard Darwin Keynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xxxiv+615. ISBN 978-0-521-51757-7. £104.00 .John van Wyhe , Charles Darwin's Shorter Publications 1829–1883. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Foreword by Janet Browne and Jim Secord. Pp. xxvi+529. ISBN 978-0-521-88809-7. £97.00 .Edmund Russell, Evolutionary History: Uniting History and Biology to Understand Life on Earth. Studies in Environment and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Pp. xxii+216. ISBN 978-0-521-74509-3. £16.99 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 46 (2): 349-351. 2013.
-
14Ian Hacking, the social construction of what? Cambridge, ma and London: Harvard university press, 2000. Pp. X+261. Isbn 0-674-00412-4. £11·50 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 35 (1): 97-123. 2002.
-
38Is the theory of natural selection independent of its historyIn J. Hodges & Gregory Radick (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, Cambridge University Press. pp. 143--167. 2003.
-
7Evidence-Based Darwinism: Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science Elliott Sober Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008Biological Theory 5 (3): 289-291. 2010.
-
11Evidence-Based Darwinism: Evidence and Evolution: The Logic Behind the Science Elliott Sober Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 (review)Biological Theory 5 (3): 289-291. 2010.
-
14Essay Review: The Ethologist’s World (review)Journal of the History of Biology 40 (3): 565-575. 2007.
-
6Darwin’s Fishes: An Encyclopedia of Ichthyology, Ecology, and Evolution (review)Isis 97 578-579. 2006.
-
18Cultures of evolutionary biologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 34 (1): 187-200. 2003.
-
11Biomachine dreamsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (4): 790-792. 2013.
-
1
-
3Charles Darwin's Notebooks from the Voyage of the ‘Beagle’ (review)British Journal for the History of Science 46 (2): 349-351. 2013.
-
34A critique of Kitcher on eugenic reasoningStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 32 (4): 741-751. 2001.Pre-natal genetic tests prompt questions about when, if ever, it is legitimate to choose against a potential life. Philip Kitcher has argued that test-based decisions should turn not on whether a potential life would have a disease (understood as dysfunction), but whether that life would be of low quality. I draw attention to difficulties with both parts of this argument, showing, first, that Kitcher ignores distinctions upon which the case for disease as dysfunction depends; and, second, that h…Read more
-
45Claiming ownership in the technosciences: Patents, priority and productivityStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (2): 188-201. 2013.
-
27What’s in a name? The vervet predator calls and the limits of the Washburnian synthesisStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (2): 334-362. 2006.After the Second World War, a renaissance in field primatology took place in the United States under the aegis of the ‘new physical anthropology’. Its leader, Sherwood Washburn, envisioned a science uniting studies of hominid fossils with Darwinian population genetics, experimental functional anatomy, and field observation of non-human primates and human hunter–gatherers. Thanks to Washburn’s stimulus, his colleague at Berkeley, the bird ethologist Peter Marler, took up the study of the natural …Read more
-
1The Cambridge Companion to Darwin (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2003.The naturalist and geologist Charles Darwin ranks as one of the most influential scientific thinkers of all time. In the nineteenth century his ideas about the history and diversity of life - including the evolutionary origin of humankind - contributed to major changes in the sciences, philosophy, social thought and religious belief. This volume provides the reader with clear, lively and balanced introductions to the most recent scholarship on Darwin and his intellectual legacies. A distinguishe…Read more
-
28IntroductionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (2): 269-272. 2006.
Areas of Specialization
Genetics, Misc |
Darwinism |
Philosophy of History |
Areas of Interest
1 more
Genetics, Misc |
Darwinism |
Philosophy of History |
History of Science |
General Philosophy of Science, Miscellaneous |
Explanation |