* Max Dresow writes…

Well, it’s now been six months since the Extinct blog resumed operations. To mark the occasion (and in the best Extinct fashion), I thought it might be fun to highlight the content that’s appeared since January.

This content can be organized under three broad headings. We’ve had three “Featured Essays,” which are equivalent to what used to be called ”Guest Posts” back when Adrian, Derek, Joyce, and Leonard ran things. An unintended theme of these essays was the intersection of historical science and climate science, and in particular the difficulties involved in comparing historical and contemporary data. Then there have been nine installments of my essay series, Problematica, covering everything from early American pragmatism to studies of Martian geohistory. Finally, there have been sporadic news digests, which function as (very) miniature essays on recent paleontological research.

Before I get to the rundown, let me first say thanks to those of you who have been reading and sharing our content. I’m not very social media savvy, and I’m convinced that word of mouth has played as large a role in rebuilding our traffic as my meager efforts at promoting the blog. If you’re willing, please help us out by following us on social media and sharing anything you find interesting (links to social can be found at the bottom, right-hand side of the page). I know it’s annoying to be told to “like and subscribe,” but for a mom-and-pop philosophy blog like this one, it really is hugely valuable. Also, there’s lots of fun stuff in the pipeline, which I’m looking forward to sharing with you!

Featured Essays

“Sizing up the Biodiversity Crisis: Paleocurves, Measurements, and Problematic Inferences” (Federica Bocchi)

> A stimulating essay on the problems involved in comparing present and past “biodiversity” (or, biodiversity and paleodiversity), which also introduces the useful distinction between“data-” and “conceptual incommensurability”

“Is Contemporary Climate Change Really Unprecedented?” (Aja Watkins)

> An extremely compelling look at the difficulties involved in comparing past and present climate change, which also discusses the challenges involved in the temporal scaling of historical data

“Stable Isotopes in Unstable Times: Harold Urey’s Paleothermometer and the Nature of Proxy Measurement” (Joe Wilson)

> A wonderfully readable essay that interweaves historical reflections on the development of the carbonate-oxygen paleothermometer with philosophical reflections on the nature of proxy measurement

Problematica

“Comparisons with Teeth: Two Hundred Years of Actualism in Paleontology”

> An essay that uses early dinosaur paleontology and recent modeling work on Otodus megalodon to explore the nature of actualistic reasoning in paleontology

“‘Truth Also Has its Paleontology’, or When Pragmatism Met Uniformitarianism”

> An essay that explores a single phrase in William James’s book, Pragmatism: “truth also has its paleontology…” What is he talking about?

“Hugh Miller, Misplaced Boulders, and a Challenge for ‘Historical Cognitivism’”

> An attempt to sic the history of geology on the position Derek Turner calls “historical cognitivism” in environmental aesthetics (roughly, the idea that scientific knowledge enhances aesthetic experience)

“The Trouble with Ancestors”

> A “mini-review” of Ronald Jenner’s book, Ancestors in Evolutionary Biology, which focuses on Jenner’s arguments about the supposed link between basal phylogenetic position and “primitiveness”

“Lords of Marble and the Spear”

> An essay that explores a recent episode in the history of paleontological colonialism and asks, under what circumstances might a nation demand the return of a fossil specimen in the absence of demonstrable illegality in its acquisition?

“The Once and Future Earth”

> **Maybe my favorite installment** of “Problematica,” which looks at an early and a recent attempt to use Mars to learn about the future and past of Earth, respectively

“History, Kindness, and the Great Evolutionary Faunas”

> An essay that tries to put pressure on a recent account of historical natural kinds using the example of Jack Sepkoski’s “great evolutionary faunas”

“Stray Thoughts on Contingency Following the MBL-ASU History of Biology Seminar”

> A little meditative essay on historical contingency, motivated by the recent MBL-ASU History of Biology Seminar (“Replaying Life’s Tape: Historical Contingency in the Life Sciences”)

“How to Change Your Life Using Punctuated Equilibria”

> The first part of an anticipated three-part essay, which looks at Stephen Jay Gould’s early work in evolutionary paleontology and asks why he was so invested in a concept he would come to greatly mistrust: “biological improvement” (i.e., progress)