Greg Priest

@gregpriest.bsky.social

7248 Followers 3133 Following

PhD in history and philosophy of science (also JD and MLA), Stanford. Biology, complexity, diagramming. Philosophy of history. Curates these BlueSky feeds: History and Philosophy of Biology Complexity Science Philosophy of History and Historiography

Image credit: Edward hopper.net.
Cartoon with the city of Dayton, Tennessee, where the Scopes trail was held, represented as an organ grinder. The organ is labeled “Scopes trial,” and the grinder’s monkey is collecting dollars labeled “publicity.”
Darwin’s manuscript of the title page to the Origin. Credit: Darwin Online.
Caricature of Kuhn by David Levine for The New York Review of Books.
Photo portrait of Pareto. Via Wikipedia.
Caricature of Benjamin by David Levine for The New York Review of Books.
“Once there were brook trouts in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming.” Text in iPad notes app. Take a photo and use it.
Caricature of Mayr by David Levine for the New York Review of Books.
Caricature of Kafka by David Levine for the New York Review of Books.
Cartoon of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, by Chris Madden, based on a caricature from Hornet magazine.
Engraving of Hooker by Charles Henry Jeens. Wikipedia.
Caricature of Carson by David Levine for the New York Review of Books.
Model of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine No. 1, Replica. Smithsonian.
John Constable, The Hay Wain (1821)
Portrait of Adam Smith by John Kay.
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over,
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over,
Illustration of Emerson likening himself to a “transparent eyeball" in his “Nature” essay. By Christopher Pearse Cranch (ca. 1837-1839). From Houghton Library, Harvard University, via Wikipedia.
A plot of Lorenz' strange attractor for values ρ=28, σ = 10, β = 8/3. Via Wikipedia.
Caricature of Bateson by David Levine for The New York Review of Books.
Caricature of Huxley from Punch.
Diagrams from T’s On Growth and Form
Diagrams from T’s On Growth and Form
Caricature of P by David Levine for The New York Review of Books.
Caricature of G by David Levine for The New York Review of Books.
The dna double helix diagram from the original Nature paper.
Caricature of Nabokov by David Levine via the Brooklyn Museum.
Vincent Van Gogh, Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers (1889)
Caricature of W by David Levine for the New York Review of Books.
Artist’s rendering of the One Ring, via Wikipedia.
Photo of T from Wikipedia.
Photographic portrait of H by Julia Margaret Cameron. Wikipedia.
Caricature of Hacking by David Levine for @nybooks.com.
Caricature of Hacking by David Levine for @nybooks.com.
Caricature of H by Dan Williams for The Economist.
Plate of iguanodon teeth from Gideon Mantell, “Notice on the Iguanodon, a newly discovered fossil reptile, from the sandstone of Tilgate Forest, in Sussex,”Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 115 (1825), p. 186.
Photo of Monod. Maker unknown. From Wikipedia.
Final stanza of the poem: If you catch him, hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil, an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips. Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over, cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.
View of Earth as photographed by the Apollo 8 astronauts during their lunar orbit mission. NASA, via Wikimedia Commons.
Ernest Shepard, Pen and ink on board, "Pooh and Piglet walked home thoughtfully together in the golden evening, and for a long time they were silent," original signed artwork from A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh. Bonham’s. “Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.” #philsky #booksky
Photo of Weinberg. Photographer unknown.
Photo of Feyerabend, www.pkfeyerabend.org.
1865 photo of James taken on an expedition to the Amazon under Louis Agassiz. MS Am 1092 (1185), Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Photo of Leopold in horseback. The Wilderness Society.
Caricature of Wallace, including the words “After you, Mr. Darwin, kind sir.” By David Hughes for the New Yorker.
Wegener's (1915) depiction of the breakup of Pangaea. (a) the Carboniferous, (b) the Eocene, (c) today.
Arthur Danto, Spinoza as a Young Man 2011. Woodcut. Credit: Wayne State University Art Collection.
Photo of Fred Korematsu, and a copy of FDR’s internment order.
Cartoon by Wilkins on our failure to reconcile science and religion.
Cartoon of the operation of Maxwell’s demon, by User:Htkym, via Wikimedia Commons.
Caricature of Didion by Fabio Miraglia for the Brazilian literary journal rascunho.
Caricature of Heisenberg by David Levine for The New York Review of Books.
An AI (Perplexity)-generated giraffe/hippopotamus hybrid.
Photos of humans expressing various emotions from Expression. Darwin Online.