4:00pm to 5:15pm |
|
Creativity of Natural Selection & Boundaries of the Modern Synthesis
(Seminar/Conference)
The Virginia Tech Distinguished Adjunct Lecture Series in Philosophy presents Professor David Depew (Department of Communication Studies, University of Iowa, Emeritus) to give The Marjorie Grene Lecture.
Abstract: This paper analyzes a commonplace that I contend marks off the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis from earlier forms of genetic Darwinism and perhaps from some new forms as well. I discriminate three meanings of the creativity ascribed to natural selection by genetic Darwinism....The present importance of this topic springs from the circumstance that proposals for revising the Modern Synthesis in the light of currently cascading knowledge about the role of genes in development sometimes calls natural selection's creativity into question. Since, as I will argue, the creativity of natural selection is a basic plank of population-genetical Darwinism, and so of the Modern Synthesis in all its forms, withdrawal of that creativity points toward a new, not an expanded or extended, Synthesis. More information...
|