John Wilkins is one of my favorite living philosophers, which is saying a lot because I think philosophers are weirdos and sometimes kooky (I’m looking at you Plantinga!). It doesn’t hurt that he’s a philosopher of science with a blog entitled Evolving Thoughts. You know I read it. He has a new book out called Species: History of the idea. It belongs to a series called Species and Systematics. Now it is a well-known fact that philosophy books are read by virtually none, and yet they’re priced like textbooks. One would think, to sell more readers publishing houses would price books more reasonably. Poetry books have this same problem…something about niche markets and limited vendors. In any event, life isn’t fair when a 320 page book on philosophy is twice the price of a 1000 page book about a boy magician.
From the University of California website:
The complex idea of “species” has evolved over time, yet its meaning is far from resolved. This comprehensive work takes a fresh look at an idea central to the field of biology by tracing its history from antiquity to today. John S. Wilkins explores the essentialist view, a staple of logic from Plato and Aristotle through the Middle Ages to fairly recent times, and considers the idea of species in natural history—a concept often connected to reproduction. Tracing “generative conceptions” of species back through Darwin to Epicurus, Wilkins provides a new perspective on the relationship between philosophical and biological approaches to this concept. He also reviews the array of current definitions. Species is a benchmark exploration and clarification of a concept fundamental to the past, present, and future of the natural sciences.
Dude, the book’s only $50… for a hardcover. That said, my own personal poverty meter says that’s a lot of money.
I’m wishing there was some way I could justify getting the lab to pay for it
I know $50 is way more expensive than your usual paperback bestseller, but that’s a long way from the $120 and up for most textbooks. Because these books have a limited audience they have to charge enough to recoup their printing costs. Plus, most of the people who read this stuff have to read this stuff for professional reasons, so they’ll buy it in hardcover at pretty much any price. John’s book may very well also be a textbook for some graduate philosophy of science course somewhere (or at least in John Wilkins’ classes).
The thing about textbook prices that pisses me off is that the books for general lower-division classes such as Chemistry and Calculus are so high, yet they sell zillions of them because everybody and their mother has to take those classes. To add insult to injury they come out with new editions every couple of years to help kill off the used book market. Does basic Calculus really change every 2-3 years?
Halfsies? I’ll even let you read it first in deference to your defense. (if you give a blood oath to post about it).
The text book industry is a capricious one, which is why ebooks such as Kindle are trying to horn in on the racket. I’m not saying undergrads won’t still be grabbing ankles, though I imagine it being a Kindler, softer fucking.
I definitely don’t need to read it first. It would be edifying, but I have a feeling relatively few of my examiners will be obsessing over the history of my field primarily because most of them don’t know much about it.
In fact I need to read as little as possible. I need to get the dammed dissertation written, that’s what I need.
Now I feel guilty so I’m going to get back to work.
Guys, I feel your pain. If it were up to me, Species would be given away free in cereal packets using Bill Gates ill-gotten gains (or is that ill-Gated gots?), while remunerating me to the point that a yacht in Monaco would be achieveable…
Arjun, until that dissertation is done, don’t even read newspapers. Why are you reading blogs?
I’m not teaching this year or next. But someone had better teach about species concepts…
I didn’t want to have to say this, but Arjun tried to sneak off to a David Hillis talk the other day. I cleverly sabotaged it by making him late so he was forced to go home and work on his thesis instead.