History, Philosophy, & Theory of Biology • Assistant Professor @GeorgeMasonU
Fairfax, VA
Joined March 2018
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Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
🎉 We are excited to announce that Dr. Daniel Nicholson (George Mason University), will deliver a talk in Session 1 Evolutionary Biology at IOCBI2026
🧠Population Thinking, Variation, and Uniqueness
📢 Free registration: shorturl.at/XUXXi
#iocbi2026 #evolutionarybiology
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
I had a lovely time presenting in Michael Ruse’s session on “the new biology” today — great discussion with great co-panelists @NicholsonHPBio @GregoryRupik and Paul Thompson. @ISHPSSB #ISHPSSB2023
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
In Michael Ruse's session on his book The New Biology: A Battle between Mechanism and Organism, I threw in my lot with the Organicists and argued why we might want to go Back to Goethe! Amazing co-panelists! @UofT_IHPST @ISHPSSB #ISHPSSB2023 @1stphilosophy @NicholsonHPBio
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
As much as I detest the impact factor, I admit that seeing @HPLSjournal making such a jump as I approach the end of my & Giovanni Boniolo’s editorship is impressive… huge thanks to our associate editors, board, fantastic authors & most of all our amazing referees 🙏🙌
Do journal metrics tell us anything very meaningful about journals? No. Will that stop us celebrating our new impact factor? Also no.
#philsci
ALT JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR 2022. (1) British Journal for the Philosophy of Science - 3.4. (2) Biology & Philosophy - 2.5. (3) History & Philosophy of the Life Sciences - 2.0. (4) Philosophy of Science - 1.7. (5) Social Epistemology - 1.7. (6) European Journal for Philosophy of Science - 1.5. (7) Synthese - 1.5. (8) Journal for General Philosophy of Science - 1.0. (9) Studies in the History & Philosophy of Science - 1.0. (10) Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences - 0.9.
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
70 years ago, 3 papers appeared in @Nature under the title ‘Molecular structure of nucleic acids’. In an article appearing today (link at end) @matthewcobb and I shed new light on ‘what Watson and Crick really took from Rosalind Franklin’. This thread summarizes our findings.1/23
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
Me before I teach Vs. Me before
an undergrad I give a talk
course in front of experts
in an international
conference
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
I really enjoyed listening to @NicholsonHPBio talking with @pgmid on Brain Inspired braininspired.co/podcast/150…
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
🚨 Job Alert 🚨
Come work with us! TT position in Ethics and AI at George Mason Uni.
philjobs.org/job/show/22673
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
So excited! Just received the author copies of my book “The Architecture of Evolution” @UPittPress. Officially out in one week!
#biology #philosophy #HistoryofScience #morphology #form #organicism #Goethe #philosophyofbiology #evolutionarybiology #hps #bioinspired #evodevo
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
When I first read the hallmarks of cancer paper, I was much amazed yet something didn't convince me about it. @NicholsonHPBio is cell really a machine? Gave the correct explanation to it!
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
The latest episode on the phenomenal #BrainInspired podcast by @pgmid is a particular treat: a conversation with @NicholsonHPBio on process philosophy, the machine metaphor, the relevance of history, and an encounter with James Watson. braininspired.co/podcast/150…
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
A super piece from @yoginho: Philosophy for Biologists - Part I - Untethered in the Platonic Realm johannesjaeger.eu/1/post/202…
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
“we should avoid distorting biological reality by construing it in engineering terms” - good to read when talking about the “mechanical underpinnings” in cognition or “mechanistic explanations” of psychological phenomena
I wrote a follow-up to 'Is the Cell Really Machine?'. I revisit a classic essay by JBS Haldane in order to show how attending to physical scale allows us to understand the problems with apealing to engineering metaphors in cell & molecular biology (THREAD) academia.edu/43847479/On_Bei…
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
Machines have rigid/static, specific parts. Cells have floppy/jiggly/dynamic parts that do many unpredictable, non-specific activities. So to draw molecular circuit boards or animate molecular clockwork misses the bigger picture. They are only one (misleading) slice of the cell.
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
The point of the video is not get into semantics about what a machine is. The problem is that biologists DO often view proteins as things that are rigid and specific. This has been imported from the machine metaphor and is wrong. That's why I defined it the way I did.
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
That's not how biologists use the machine concept of the cell on a daily basis. As the animations show, they usually appeal to the rigidity and specificity aspects. @NicholsonHPBio explains philpapers.org/archive/NICIT…:
Daniel J. Nicholson retweeted
Sure. But biochemists still use machine language and machine thinking (perhaps without realising it). We still speak of 'genetic programs,' 'molecular circuitry' and 'power strokes.' All of these are at odds with the stochastic nature of the cell within a Brownian storm.