Sandwalk: Origin of Species at 150: Day Three

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Origin of Species at 150: Day Three

Tuesday November 24, 2009

08:00-09:00 Breakfast

09:00-11:00
Symposium V: Taxonomy
Chair: TBA

09:00-09:40
Mary Winsor (University of Toronto)
"Classification is a Census:" Huxley's Private Quarrel
with Darwin and its Public Consequences

09:40-10:20
Kevin Padian (University of California, Berkeley)
What is "Evidence for Evolution" to an Evolutionist?

10:20-11:00
Richard A. Richards (University of Alabama)
Context and Evidence in the History of Science

11:15-12:45
Session 4.i: Ancient Debates, Ancient Roots
Chair: Charissa Varma

11:15-11:45
P. William Hughes (Carleton University)
Aristotle contra Democritus: Anticipation of the Neutralist-Selectionist
Debate and a Haphazard Route Back to Darwin

11:45-12:15
Andreas Avgousti (Columbia University)
Pre-modern, Modern and Natural Understandings of Man:
Plato, Hobbes, and Evolutionary Theory

12:15-12:45
Robin Zebrowski (Beloit College)
The Evolution of Experience and the Experience of Evolution:
Revisiting Dewey's Analysis of the Influence of Darwin on Philosophy

11:15-12:45
Session 4.ii: The Devil’s Chaplain
Chair: David Smillie

11:15-11:45
Peter Sachs Collopy (University of Pennsylvania)
Naturalizing Calvinism: The Darwinism and Anti-Evolutionism
of George Frederick Wright

11:45-12:15
Stephen D. Snobelen (University of King’s College)
Theological Themes in Darwin's Origin of Species (1859)

12:15-12:45
Christopher diCarlo (University of Ontario Institute of Technology)
The Zing of Perceived Control: Memetic Equilibrium
and the Evolution of Religion

11:15-12:45
Session 4.iii: Laws of Evolutionary Economics
Chair: Mike Thicke

11:15-11:45
André Ariew (University of Missouri-Columbia)
Darwin’s Invisible Hand?

11:45-12:15
Eugene Earnshaw-Whyte (University of Toronto)
Breaking the Bonds of Biology: Natural Selection
in Nelson and Winter's Evolutionary Economics

12:15-12:45
Chris Haufe (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)
Darwin’s “Laws”

12:45-13:30 Lunch Break

13:40-15:40
Symposium VI: Evolution and Development
Chair: Jean-Bernard Caron

13:40-14:20
Manfred Laubichler (Arizona State University)
From Boveri to Davidson and Back

14:20-15:00
Jane Maienschein (Arizona State University)
From Epigenesis to Epigenetics and Back

15:00-15:40
Michael Dietrich (Dartmouth College)
From Goldschmidt to Gould and Back

15:50-17:20 Session 5.i: It's All in the Mind
Chair: Eugene Earnshaw-Whyte

15:50-16:20
Byron Kaldis (The Hellenic Open University)
Species-Qua-Individuals and the Modularity of the Mind: The Saving Grace for Humans

16:20-16:50
Alain Ducharme & Sheldon Chow (The University of Western Ontario
Keeping Darwin in Mind

16:50-17:20
Steve DiPaola (Simon Fraser University)
Darwin, Creativity, and Evoluionary Programming

15:50-17:20
Session 5.ii: International Receptions
Chair: Ari Gross

15:50-16:20
Paranbes Nath (Calcutta University)
Darwin and India

16:20-16:50
Alex Levine & Adriana Nova (University of South Florida)
The Fate of Darwinian Analogies in Latin America:
The Reception of Darwinism in 19th Century Argentina

16:50-17:20
Nolan Heie (Queen’s University)
Albert Kalthoff, Entwicklung and the "World View of Modern Man"

15:50-16:50
Session 5.iii: Fitness
Chair: Ellie Louson

15:50-16:20
Marshall Abrams (University of Alabama at Birmingham)
Individuals have no Fitnesses if Fitness Differences Cause Evolution

16:20-16:50
Kent A. Peacock (University of Lethbridge)
The Three Faces of Fitness

15:50-16:50
Session 5.iv: Language and Logic
Chair: S.J. Patterson

15:50-16:20
Alexander G. Yushchenko (Kharkov State Polytechnic University)
Logics & Ethics of Evolution from the Point of View of Evolutionary Theology

16:20-16:50
Justin Humphreys (New School for Social Research)
Darwin on Language

17:20-18:20
Keynote Address: Brian K. Hall (Dalhousie University)
Charles Darwin, Evolutionary Embryology and Evo-Devo

18:20-19:00 Break

19:00-19:45
Keynote Address: Spencer Barrett (University of Toronto)
Charles Darwin and Current Perspectives on the Evolution and Function of Plant Sexual Diversity

3 comments :

Anonymous said...: yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee spencer barrett!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!; Wednesday, November 25, 2009 7:04:00 PM
Anonymous said...: yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee spencer barrett!!!; Wednesday, November 25, 2009 7:04:00 PM
John S. Wilkins said...: Say hi to Polly Winsor for me, won't you? Tell her I jot a job as Assoc. Prof. at Bond University.; Thursday, November 26, 2009 6:32:00 AM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Origin of Species at 150: Day Three

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