Philosophy of Paleontology Blog

[Tyrannosauron]

Hello all! Some colleagues and I have started a blog dedicated to discussion of philosophical concepts related to paleontology and paleontological news. I thought some of you might be interested in taking a look: www.extinctblog.org

Every bit of support helps! Thanks for taking a look.

[Kovu]

Very cool. I just briefly looked over it, but what I saw looks super interesting! I look forward to reading more in depth when I have more time.
Also, love the pictures linking to each story! They're adorable! I'm assuming their portraits of the authors?

[DinoLord]

Looks like it'll be a promising blog! The first few articles are very intriguing. Maybe you guys could do a post on the ethics of private fossil ownership? The topic always sparks some rather heated discussion, with some rather extreme opinions in the mix. Heck I've seen people disgusted by the thought of keeping fragmentary invertebrate fossils from the local rock pile

[Kovu]

Oh, an article on the philosophy behind lumping vs splitting could be interesting too!

[Halichoeres]

Oh, an article on the philosophy behind lumping vs splitting could be interesting too!

That sounds like going down the whole species concept rabbit hole. Sharpen your claws, homies!

[Sim]

Oh, an article on the philosophy behind lumping vs splitting could be interesting too!

I agree!  I found the blog post linked to in the first post of the thread "The taxonomic issues with Pentaceratops aquilonius" very interesting.

Something else that could be interesting is an article about the philosophy behind naming species based on remains that are not really/temporarily/not at all diagnostic due to being fragmentary or likely of a juvenile of an already named species.

[laticauda]

I am going to keep checking out the blog.  Looks like there will be some interesting topics coming down the pipe. 

[Viking Spawn]

Thanks for sharing this link!  Looks very interesting and I'll bookmark it for news and updates!

[Libraraptor]

Tyrannosauron, since you already know how much I appreciate your work, you don´t wonder at me becoming a regular reader, don´t you?

[fleshanthos]

Hm. Philosophy itself is something alot of Scientists I know chuckle about...

But I could see where you would apply it with only scant evidence to go on.
At what point does philosophy become an hypothesis?

Especially in Paleontology, where future technology in 100 years is pretty much unimaginable to today. We might postulate something that can indeed never be proven. Or, we might have our clones in another 100 years, or our Tachyon scopes, or who knows what... and get our answers.   

[Tyrannosauron]

Hm. Philosophy itself is something alot of Scientists I know chuckle about...
But I could see where you would apply it with only scant evidence to go on.
At what point does philosophy become an hypothesis?
Especially in Paleontology, where future technology in 100 years is pretty much unimaginable to today. We might postulate something that can indeed never be proven. Or, we might have our clones in another 100 years, or our Tachyon scopes, or who knows what... and get our answers.

What you're suggesting isn't philosophy; it's science fiction. We try to avoid that. Science fiction must eventually become either one of two things: science or fiction (neither of which is something a philosopher should attempt).

Philosophy of science is about examining the assumptions that scientists make and don't have the time or the training to examine themselves. Sometimes it contributes to scientific progress and sometimes it doesn't. The same can be said about math.

We've been writing about things like research and reconstruction methods, resource allocation, theory choice, and naming conventions. Our last post was about how the use of parataxonomies is motivated by the same concerns philosophers of language have about naming fictional beings (and also a bit about how science journalism is pretty bad). Our next post (going up tomorrow) is a review of David Sepkoski's book about the development of paleobiology.

And thanks to everyone else for the suggestions--we're going to get to all of that over the next few months! I'll be tackling the lumpers/splitters issue myself sometime after my wedding in June.

[Tyrannosauron]

Tyrannosauron, since you already know how much I appreciate your work, you don´t wonder at me becoming a regular reader, don´t you?

This reply is horrendously late, but thanks very much for the kind words! Hope we've delivered some stuff that was worth reading.

[Tyrannosauron]

Hello again, folks! I hate that my first post in several months is going to be a plug, but it's been a really busy semester...

In any event, I know that at least one of you had expressed interest in the lumper/splitter debate and I wrote up some thoughts on the subject while I was on my honeymoon. Here's the result; it's nothing groundbreaking, but it was fun to write and hopefully puts things in an interesting light!

http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2016/6/27/humps-and-lumps-what-i-discovered-at-loch-ness-during-my-summer-vacation

[Tyrannosauron]

Some blog updates for the interested among you! Here's what we've been up to in the past month:

First, we had a review of Martin Rudwick's "The Meaning of Fossils." http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2016/7/4/the-ossification-of-ideas

Then we had a guest post from Dr. Don Brinkman of the Royal Terrell Museum! http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2016/7/11/paleoecology-in-the-badlands

That was followed by a new post about lumping and splitting (in response to the one I linked to in my last post above). http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2016/7/18/penguins-ceratopsids-lumpers-splitters

Last week we had a philosophy of art-related tour of the Bisti Badlands. http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2016/7/21/paleoaesthetics-in-the-bisti-badlands

And this week we have a comparison of paleontological and biological metaphysics! http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2016/8/1/the-paleontological-individual

We've got some really great stuff coming up soon, including a month-long look into how paleontology is useful for teaching philosophy (I'll be contributing a philosophical review of "Jurassic Park" for that series). We're also presenting new work together at the Philosophy of Science Association meeting in Atlanta this November!

Thanks to everyone here who's taken the time to visit the site--please do feel free to comment there!

[Tyrannosauron]

Here's the (now monthly, I guess) blog update!

First we had philosopher of science Trevor Pearce write about constraints, both in evolutionary history and in paleontological theory: http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2016/8/7/is-internalexternal-eternal

Then we had Adrian Currie consider proper and improper ways for philosophers to contribute to paleontology and science in general: http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2016/8/15/triceratops-against-concepts

After that, Derek Turner argued (brace yourselves) that dinosaurs might be overrated: http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2016/8/20/are-dinosaurs-overrated-1

Adrian responded to Derek's argument: http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2016/8/26/playzilla-the-value-of-fossils-a-response-to-turners-are-dinosaurs-overrated

And this week I've written a philosophical review of Jurassic Park after reading through the book for the nineteenth time: http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2016/8/29/you-call-that-a-velociraptor

Hope you all enjoy the work we're doing!

[LophoLeeVT]

wow these are really interesting!!!!

[Tyrannosauron]

wow these are really interesting!!!!

Thanks! We have a lot of fun writing them.

[Tyrannosauron]

Been a while since I updated here, but we put up a post this afternoon that I think everyone here might appreciate. Here's what Socrates might have to say about the scientific value of dinosaur toys: http://www.extinctblog.org/extinct/2016/11/27/geoffrey-by-plato

Enjoy!