Paleobiology is not only a science of the deep past: it is a science of deep possibility.
Drawing on recent speculative reconstructions of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, I sketch a new …

In recent years, the explanatory term “scaffold” has been gaining prominence in evolutionary
biology. This notion has a long history in other areas, in particular, developmental …

Phylogenetics emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century as a speculative
storytelling discipline dedicated to providing narrative explanations for the evolution of taxa …

Biologists often study living systems in light of their having evolved, of their being the
products of various processes of heredity, adaptation, ancestry, and so on. In their …

Kinds that share historical properties are dubbed “historical kinds” or “etiological kinds,” and
they have some distinctive features. I will try to characterize etiological kinds in general …

Evolutionary explanations are not only common in the biological sciences, but also
widespread outside biology. But an account of how evolutionary explanations perform their …

Historical contingency is commonly associated with unpredictability and outcome variability.
As such, it can be seen as an undesirable aspect of experimental investigations. Many might …

This article explores the major trends in the South African health workforce in the context of
HIV/AIDS and analyses their potential impact on the professional work and status of nurses …

In this paper I offer a new account of narrative possibility that I call the “ecological approach.”
I situate it relative to alternative “metaphysical” and “epistemological” approaches, and …

Researchers in the life sciences often make uniqueness attributions; about branching events
generating new species, the developmental processes generating novel traits and the …