Acknowledgements
This book had a rather inauspicious beginning. It was July 2021, around 3 a.m., in a Christchurch hotel, three days into a fourteen-day COVID quarantine. I’d travelled to Aotearoa (New Zealand) from my home in Exeter because my mother, Yvonne, was dying of cancer and, well, I needed to be there. I wish I could say Prof. Ichthy appeared to me in a dream or something suitably dramatic, but rather the title of this book, and the simple thought that what we can know about the past depends on what exists in the present, emerged from a heady mix of jetlag, boredom, and grief.
The journey from that initial title and initial thought to this book took over four years, and its final form has been intimately shaped by far too many discussions and inspirations to list or remember systematically (so a million apologies if I miss you out here). But I’ll give it a bash.
Between 2021 and mid-2023, I workshopped what turned out to be chapter 2 with a few hints of chapters 3 to 5 through various presentations at the University of Notre Dame, the London School of Economics, Brown University, and the University of Exeter, as well as meetings of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science and the Philosophy of Science Association (and probably other places missed by my subpar record-keeping). The audiences at those talks were crucial for developing the initial conceptual framework (especially the “loss/erasure” distinction), and hence, for getting the project up and running.
Writing began in earnest over the summer of 2023. This was partly motivated by my failing to get the project funded and a subsequent fear of (as has happened to me in the past) the whole idea foundering due to becoming too emotionally and intellectually entangled with an unsuccessful grant bid. Further motivation came when I decided to incorporate drafts into my undergraduate teaching that autumn. By the end of 2023, the students in the University of Exeter’s philosophy module, The Deep Past, History, and Humanity, read through the first drafts of chapters 1 to 5. The following year’s students made it to chapter 8, and—I’m planning as I write this—the 2025 batch will read the whole thing. Attaching research to teaching is a great motivation for actually getting the work done. Exposing draft work to engaged students is enormously beneficial for developing the ideas and for articulating them with clarity. I certainly threw my students into the deep end, and I’m enormously grateful to them for their time, focus, and grace. I’m also grateful to other undergraduate groups with whom I’ve shared some of the research for this book: University of Exeter’s undergraduate philosophy society, Katy Shorey’s HPS group at Northeastern University, and Luca Corti’s class at the University of Padua.
In the summer of 2024, I ran the Philosophy of the Paleosciences Retreat: a few days in the utterly gorgeous nature reserve and farm at Kingcombe Meadows in Dorset. This more or less involved bribing the participants with beautiful scenery and various palaeontology-related escapades (including visiting the Etches Collection Museum of Jurassic Marine Life, several museums in Lyme Regis, and fossil hunting in Charmouth) in exchange for their reading and discussing chapters 1 through 9. Every participant provided enormously helpful feedback and encouragement, and I’m grateful to them: Alisa Bokulich, Angela Cassidy, Max Dresow, Denise Hossom, Chris Manias, Andra Meneganzin, George Newman, Frankziska Reinhard, Ross Pain, Ben Please, Beth Porter, Tom Roberts, Judyth Sassoon, Derek Turner, Katherine Valde, Kirsten Walsh, Joe Wilson, and Yoshinari Yoshida. I’m especially grateful to Kirsten, George, Tom, and Judyth for their hard work in helping me organize everything, keeping everything running smoothly, and dealing with me stressing out about it. Further thanks to Chee Wong both for help running the retreat and more generally for keeping Egenis (the Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences at the University of Exeter) and our immediate research environment from falling into administrative and logistical tatters.
Leading up to the retreat, many of the book’s chapters were read by members of Egenis. In addition to those named above, I’d like to thank Tyler Brunet, John Dupre, Ariane Hanemaayer, Geoff Hughes, Zamir Kadodia, Joel Krueger, Celso Neto, Brian Rappert, Adam Toon, Maria Volkova, and Hugh Williamson.
As the book neared completion, I received incisive feedback on various elements from colleagues. Tyler Brunet and Robert Northcott read chapter 8, Mike Stuart read chapters 6 and 7, and Chris Manias read chapter 10. Ideas from later chapters were presented to the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice, the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology, the UK Integrated History and Philosophy of Science meeting, and Chris Manias’ excellent Poppaleo series. Two anonymous referees from the University of Calgary Press (UCP) provided useful feedback, as did David Teira on behalf of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, and Brian Scrivener from UCP. I’d also like to thank Glen Hoffmann for his flexible and diligent copy-editing of this, at times, idiosyncratic text.
I’ve been extremely lucky to have had patient feedback from some of the scientists whose work I draw on throughout: many thanks to Alex Liu, Charlotte Kenchington, Nick Butterfield, and Emily Mitchell for their help (and apologies for the stuff I still managed to get wrong). Extra thanks to Charlotte for allowing me to use her haunting rangeomorph image. Similar thanks to Chris Manias for keeping the book’s historical elements at least not-too-embarrassing, and to Emily Hauser for her insights into the Prof. Ichthy sections.
Many of my research activities, including the retreat, were only possible due to the Leverhulme Trust’s Philip Leverhulme award, which I was extremely lucky to receive. The flexibility of this funding not only gave me precious time to complete the book, but it also enabled me to follow my heart for this project by incorporating more artistic elements, one visual and one auditory.
On the visual side, it was a delight to work with Jim Robins to produce the illustrations of Prof. Ichthy and their colleagues. Jim, besides being an extremely talented artist and designer, is also wonderfully down to earth and sensible—necessary qualities, considering the sketchiness and downright silliness of some of the ideas I threw at him. As with writing the Ichthy vignettes themselves, developing the illustrations formed an active part of the philosophical work of this book. Misty ShadowFang further deserves thanks for allowing her likeness to be used, and I’d also like to thank Lucy Osler, Blaire Andres, Charlie Masquelier, and Jo O’Hara for feedback on the illustrations as they developed.
On the auditory side, I’ve been working with The Bookshop Band on a series of songs inspired by some of the book’s ideas. In 2019, Kirsten Walsh and I met Beth Porter and Ben Please of The Bookshop Band and immediately saw that their highly conversational method of songwriting could potentially work well in a philosophical context. To our great surprise, they were keen to explore collaborations, but (as with many of these things) it wasn’t until many years later that the funding—again through Leverhulme’s largesse—was available. Beth and Ben attended the summer retreat (and its associated workshop) and spent several months’ artist’s residency at Egenis. As with Jim’s illustrations, thinking through how some of the ideas in this book could be in discussion with music and lyrics became an active part of the research. I’m grateful to them for diving into such an unusual project with such camaraderie, creativity, and enthusiasm. Speaking of the auditory element, I’d also like to thank the team at Sound Gallery Studios for producing the audiobook version, especially Duncan Chave. Boo Jackson deserves special credit for elevating the Ichthy sections with her wonderful performance.
As I hope is obvious, whatever success and skill I might have in philosophy is due to the generous scaffolding provided by my colleagues, and I’m enormously grateful to them. Egenis is an incredible place to do philosophy of science, and my colleagues across philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and STS (Science and Technology Studies) are endless sources of inspiration. Geographically further afield, the philosophy of science and biology generally and the philosophy of the historical sciences (or geosciences, or palaeosciences, or whatever we’re calling it) communities have been very kind to me and have proven over and again how supportive, collaborative, and rigorous philosophy of science can be.
Among all those I’ve mentioned and those that have slipped my mind (sorry!), Kirsten Walsh deserves special mention. Not only is she a loving, supportive partner with whom I’m extremely lucky to build a life, she is also an incisive, creative, and clear-headed philosopher whose intellectual generosity is to blame for the best bits of this book.
My mother lived for just three days after I left quarantine. I’m grateful for those days, and the time I got to spend with my father, Currance, after her passing (and I’m so sorry that my sister Nicole was unable to be there). At her online wake (such were the ways of COVID), it was striking how many people all over the world had been touched by her gregarious, caring ways. In that spirit, I dedicate this book to my mother.
She is lost, but only from a particular perspective; so many lives were enriched by her, she’ll not be erased.
Me tangi, kāpā ko te mate i te marama.