Species: A history of the idea, by John Wilkins, is now available. I've ordered my copy.
I've known John over the net for several eons as time counts on the net, including seeing him write about species and the idea. For this central concept of biology, there turn out to be many different definitions that get used in practice, and probably all of them have changed through time as we learned more. Here, you get it all from the very earliest thoughts to the present. Likely not a middle-school or jr. high level read. John's a good writer, but his audience here is mostly the highly educated and knowledgeable. Still, I'll be giving it a go myself. Those who seriously interested in biology should definitely get a copy.
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Interesting read, looks like. Unfortunately I seem to have an amount of "free" reading time inversely proportional to the number of book recommendations I get, but that isn't such a terrible cross to bear all things considered.:)
Thanks, Bob. I guess I must write something more accessible one day. When I have a paying job...
I can help with the paying job thing, John, if you happen to have some previously unmentioned talents in high performance computing applied to numerical models of ocean circulation.
Barring that, I'm afraid I have to go with hoping for the best for you, which has been my position for some years now.
All: If you happen to know of openings for philospohers of science, do let us (John or me, that is) know.
Alas, I am rather sparse in the high performance computing field. I know one thing: don't use a Windows OS...
I have funding for this year and two more, in which time I have to convince someone I'll make a great lecturer permanently... but I know all the job lists, newsletters and sites for PoS, so I'll probably hear of it before you guys. Don't let that stop you, though. At least one position was mentioned to me I hadn't heard before. I have one application out there now.
John, you're ahead of some of the vendors who were talking to us a few years ago. I was on the committee for the supercomputer purchase at work, and some vendors thought that running Windows was a good idea. That, in response to our request for a system with very low downtime and very high computational capacity.
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