Professor John Bigelow
Ph.D., Cambridge, 1973
Email: John.Bigelow@arts.monash.edu.au
Phone: +61 3 990 53201
Other contact details.
Academic Background
PhD Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1973
MA
Simon Fraser University, Canada, 1970
BA University of Canterbury, New Zealand,
1968
Career Highlights
Lecturer, Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand
Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader,
La Trobe University, Australia
Professor, Monash University
Fellow, Australian Academy of Humanities (elected 1991)
President, Australian Association of Philosophy (1995)
Research Interests
Metaphysics; semantics; epistemology; history of science; Platonism
Recent Publications
Here is a list of John's recent publications in pdf format.
Other Research
I have been working for years on something I call "the Platonic Table". This is a table of numbers that guided the Demiurge during the creation of the heavens and the earth, and during the creation of both the souls and the bodies of both the gods and mortal animals - according to Plato's Timaeus.
I entertain the conjecture that this same table of numbers may have guided some of the creative works of a handful of artists who have imitated the Demiurge, and have taken guidance from the very same pattern of numbers in their attempts to create fictional worlds that "hold a mirror up to nature". I include a synopsis of a book manuscript on the subject and a chapter on granular space and Plato's Timaeus.
I have also worked with my colleague Sam Butchart on Simpson's Paradox and the evolution of laziness, inefficiency, irrationality and altruism.
Imagine there to be heritable behaviour patterns that harm your own chances of survival and reproduction, but thereby indirectly benefit your neighbours. For instance, your own inefficiency in finding food might ensure that you always leave more resources for your neighbours. Or, you might regularly trust your neighbours in games of Prisoner's Dilemma, even though your neighbours regularly double cross you and benefit at your expense.
I predicted that Simpson's Paradox would furnish a mechanism by which behaviour patterns of that kind could survive indefinitely within a population, even if that population also contained individuals who were ruthlessly and efficiently selfish in pursuing their own survival and reproductive interests.
My colleage at Monash, Sam Butchart, wrote two extraordinarily neat programs that tested and confirmed my predictions. (See Sam's webpage for links to the programs.)
One program represents a game of "Sharks and Suckers": this demonstrates that a sub-population of "suckers" can survive indefinitely in a population of "sharks".
The other program represents a game of "Rats and Lemmings". This game includes a sub-population of "lemmings", who regularly "trust" their neighbours in games of Prisoner's Dilemma; and another sub-population of "rats", who regularly "double-cross" their neighbours in those same games, and benefit at their neighbours' expense. This second game demonstrates that a sub-population of "lemmings" can survive indefinitely in a population of "rats".
Some of the background to these games is found in the entry on Simpson's Paradox in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Further background is found in this unpublished paper.