John S. Wilkins

Dr John S. Wilkins works in the fields of history and philosophy of science, focusing on evolution, systematics and the concept of species. He also works on the cognitive science of religion. He gained his PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2004, and has taught at the Universities of Queensland, Sydney, NSW and Melbourne.

Quotes

 * We imagine that the Creator at the actual time of creation made only one single species for each natural order of plants, this species being different in habit and fructification from all the rest. That he made these mutually fertile, whence out of their progeny, fructification having been somewhat changed, Genera of natural classes have arisen as many in number as the different parents, and since this is not carried further, we regard this also as having been done by His Omnipotent hand directly in the beginning; thus all Genera were primeval and constituted a single Species. That as many Genera having arisen as there were individuals in the beginning, these plants in course of time became fertilised by others of different sort and thus arose Species until so many were produced as now exist... these Species were sometimes fertilised out of congeners, that is other Species of the same Genus, whence have arisen Varieties.
 * Carl Linnaeus, Fundamenta fructificationis (1742). As quoted in John S. Wilkins (2009), Species: A History of the Idea, University of California Press. p. 72


 * A lot of people have thought of understanding as just knowledge of true causes, but then there is a problem of why we value knowledge - if not to understand things. And in effect understanding is what underwrites the desire for knowledge in the context of science.
 * Interview 'Aspects of Understanding & its Epistemic Value' - SciFuture


 * Generally, scientists have a “rolling wall of fog” that trails behind them at various distances for different disciplines, above which only the peaks of mountains of the Greats can be seen. In medical biology, for instance, this wall is about five years behind the present. Little is cited before that, and those works that are, are cited by nearly everyone. So there is a tendency for what Kuhn called “textbook history” to become the common property of all members of the discipline.
 * Species: A history of the Idea. (2009) University of California Press, p. ix.


 * Since philosophers are very often beholden to a particular biological writer or tradition (especially Mayr, who overcame his adversaries by the dual strategies of prolixity and longevity), they tend to see the issues in terms specified by those particular authorities.
 * Species: the evolution of the idea. (2018) CRC Press, p. 331.


 * [Species] obey, and when they occur are post hoc explained by the biology of populations, interbreeding, selection, drift, and so on, but they are not theoretical objects, any more than planetary orbits are in physics. Species occur, and are explicable in a multiplicity of ways, but they do not follow formally from any theory of biology.
 * Species: the evolution of the idea. (2018) CRC Press, p. 345.


 * What to think? My solution is this:

There is one species concept (and it refers to real species).

There are two explanations of why real species are species (see my microbial paper, 2007): ecological adaptation and reproductive reach.

There are seven distinct definitions of "species", and 27 variations and mixtures.

And there are n+1 definitions of "species" in a room of n biologists.
 * The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2010/oct/20/3