SYMPOSIUM ABSTRACTS
I: Gender, Evolution, and Sexual Selection
Sunday November 21, 10:00-12:00
Lisa Lloyd, Indiana University
Bias in Evolutionary Explanations of the Female Organ
The evolution of the female orgasm is a puzzle. Unlike the male orgasm, female orgasm has not been adequately associated with any increase in fertility. Several types of theories have been offered for the evolution of the trait, but I shall argue that only one of them has much evidence supporting it, while the others are flawed by conflicts with the evidence. I shall review the familiar theory that orgasm evolved to support the bond between the man and the woman, as well as the theory that the sperm is sucked into the womb during orgasm. The best-supported theory, I shall argue, is actually the view that female orgasm is a byproduct of selection in the male, and is thus not an adaptation in the female. I shall discuss the biases - both androcentric and adaptationist – that led to the widely-held but seemingly premature dismissal of the byproduct view.
Marlene Zuk, University of California, Riverside
Sex and the Scala Naturae
Since well before Darwin, people looked to animals as illustrations and models of behavior. With respect to sex and gender, animals are used in two ways, both of which can harm our understanding of the animals as well as ourselves. First, we use animals as model systems. For example, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and other species in the genus have been used to study genetics. If we use model systems as the archetype, it is easy to conclude that anything that deviates from the model is aberrant, not “normal”. Because we often view males as the norm, they become the model system, with detrimental effects. Second, we pay more attention to certain kinds of animals than others; we are more excited about bonobos than butterflies. Relevance is often defined by how similar the animals seem to be to humans, with the idea that some species are higher, some are lower, and humans are the highest of all. This ranking is called a scala naturae, and it is completely false, leading to the use of animals as role models, and ultimately to a counter-productive view of how evolution acts on the sexes.
Erika Milam, University of Maryland, College Park
Negotiating Choice: Animal Minds and Human Instincts in the History of Sexual Selection
This talk will be an historical investigation of how scientific ideas about choice-based mating behaviors in animals developed within different communities of biologists over a span of one hundred years, from Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the late-nineteenth century to sociobiological research in the late-twentieth century. The language with which professional biologists during this period discussed the mating behavior of animals depended on both their disciplinary training and their beliefs concerning the human equivalent of animal courtship behavior. The simple words “female choice” carried a variety of connotations depending upon the particular material and theoretical cultures in which biologists worked, and biologists’ conceptions of animal mating behavior and human courtship behavior have remained tightly inter-woven. Despite the close association of female choice with Darwinian sexual selection theory at the end points of my story, the fate of female choice was not the same as that of sexual selection. Biologists’ interest in female choice as a mechanism for evolution remained strong throughout the twentieth century, while they simultaneously lost interest in sexual selection as a mechanism for evolution. During the mid-century, when female choice was reframed in terms of female sensitivity to male stimulatory courtship behavior, the concept was stripped of its rationalist implications and studied eagerly by population geneticists. Sexual selection did not escape the difficulty of aesthetic comparison until the 1970s. As notions of animal mind changed, so did the acceptability of female choice and sexual selection as evolutionary mechanisms.
II: Ecology
Sunday November 22, 14:30-16:30
Joan Rougharden, Stanford University
Darwin and Ecology
Darwin anticipated many of the ideas in today’s community ecology. Chapter III of The Origin of Species describes Darwin’s vision of how the “struggle for existence” takes place in nature, and discusses specific sources of limits to Malthusian growth, in particular, the role of predator-prey and competition interactions between species, as well as climatic fluctuations. He mentions that the most intense competition is expected between species in the same genus, a tenet of modern “niche theory” in community ecology. He mentions too the “web” of complex relations between species, another branch of today’s community ecology, and even alludes to the properties of invasive species. Although Darwin would be comfortable with much of today’s community ecology, he might be disquieted by today’s neutral theory of community structure that disavows an ecological importance to species differences, and perhaps even by community ecology’s present focus on body-size scaling laws that forecast community ecology from metabolic universals, and by the attention awarded these days to non-linear oscillations and chaotically unpredictable fluctuations in abundance and distribution owing to biotic interactions. Darwin also founded much of what is in today’s behavioral ecology, as presented in his Descent of Man. Yet, it’s hard to guess how Darwin would respond to today’s claims of ubiquitous sexual conflict in nature, and to how the metaphor of a selfish gene has today been promoted to a universal claim about animal and human motivation. Darwin’s theory of sexual selection is the singular large piece of his work that may be seen in the future as mistaken and on the wrong track to begin with, and Darwin might be uncomfortable with what has been committed in his name in behavioral domain of evolutionary ecology.
Gene Cittadino, New York University
Reflections on Darwin and Ecology: The History of a Tenuous Relationship
Today any reader of Darwin’s Origin of Species would recognize its obvious links to the science of ecology. Chapter Three, “Struggle for Existence,” reads like a treatise on ecology. Yet, as Michael Ghiselin reminded us thirty-five years ago, modern ecology “developed much of its theoretical basis during the period from 1880 to 1940, when Darwin was out of fashion.” Was Ghiselin right in assuming that ecology emerged from non-Darwinian roots? Is the obvious connection that we make today between Darwin and ecology simply a retrospective judgment made in ignorance, a bad case of Whig history? Did ecology have to wait for Robert MacArthur and university departments of ecology and evolutionary biology in order to take Darwinism seriously? This paper will explore these and related questions by focusing on selected examples from the history of ecology in an international context.
Gregory Cooper, Washington and Lee University
The Darwinian Character of Evolutionary Ecology
Ecology reveals the mechanisms driving Darwinian selection - an insight as old as the discipline itself. In this sense, all of organismic ecology is evolutionary ecology. However, evolutionary ecology also has a narrower sense wherein the connections between ecology and evolutionary biology are more directly in focus. Evolutionary ecology in this narrower sense has, throughout its history, exhibited a variety of relationships to the broader Darwinian research program. Three episodes are examined. During the early history of ecology, to around mid-twentieth century, Darwinian ideas about adaptation formed the conceptual backdrop for development of ecological ideas but there was little attempt to deploy evolutionary principles directly. Beginning about mid-century a kind of Darwinian "selection thinking" emerged as a powerful tool for the development of ecological insight. More recently, evolutionary ecology has shifted to a more explicit focus on adaptation, and thus to questions that are more evolutionary than ecological in nature.
III: Theistic Evolution
Monday November 23, 09:00-11:00
Denis O. Lamoureux, University of Alberta
Darwinian Theological Insights: Toward an Intellectually Fulfilled Theism
In his acclaimed bestseller, The Blind Watchmaker (1986), the inimitable Richard Dawkins offered the provocative proclamation that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” Of course, the historical record reveals that Darwin never embraced atheism. Late in his life in letter to John Fordyce, he states and qualifies, “I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of God.” Notably, in the opening sentence of this 1879 letter, Darwin sharply denounces, “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist.” He then confesses to Fordyce that a “not always” agnosticism best describes his personal beliefs.
In this presentation I will swim against the Dawkinsian tide in order to argue the novel thesis that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled theist.” Not to be misunderstood, it is clear that Darwin rejected Christianity as young adult, and there is no attempt to “Christianize” him. Instead, in a fashion similar to Dawkins, I will appeal to the Darwinian historical literature in order to glean theological insights that I believe inspire a conservative Christian approach to evolution. Often labelled “theistic evolution,” but now being more accurately termed “evolutionary creation,” this position claims that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created the universe and life, including humanity, through an ordained, sustained, and design-reflecting evolutionary process. Theological insights will be drawn from Darwin’s philosophy of science and epistemology; his views on divine action, biblical revelation, and hermeneutics; his theodicy and wrestling with the problem of evil and suffering; and his experience with and understanding of intelligent design in nature. And few caveats from his wife Emma are also included to fulfill my provocative thesis.
Michael Ruse, Florida State University
Are Science and Religion Compatible and If So, Why?
In this talk, drawing on my new book Science and Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science, I try to show exactly why it is that science leaves open unanswered questions and why it is appropriate for the religious person to offer answers. I shall be exploring the history of science and showing the great importance of the metaphor, something that is both power and constraining.
Bernard Lightman, York University
Christian Evolutionists in the U.S., 1860-1900
This paper will explore the appeal of Christian evolutionism to the American public, in particular as presented by Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman Abbott, Minot Judson Savage, Asa Gray, and Joseph Cook. After establishing the popularity of Christian evolutionism in the U.S., I will then examine why it would be more influential as a response to Darwin in this national context than in Britain. I will discuss how the British evolutionary naturalists, figures such as Huxley and Tyndall, managed to forge a link between evolution and agnosticism and how no similar group existed in the United States. Christian evolutionism remained a viable option in the US up until the end of the nineteenth century.
IV: Species
Monday November 23, 13:30-15:30
John Beatty, University of British Columbia
Darwin on Species
In my presentation I will attempt to disentangle several different kinds of claims that Darwin made about species. In particular I will attempt to distinguish claims about species that he sought to explain, claims about species that served explanatory purposes, and claims about how the term ‘species’ should (or should not) be defined.
Kevin de Queiroz, National Museum of National History (Smithsonian)
Charles Darwin and the Evolution of the Species Concept
Charles Darwin influenced the species concept in two important ways. First, he effectively redefined the general concept of species by equating species with separately evolving lineages (³lines of descent²).
Second, he adopted the existing view of the species category as a rank in the taxonomic hierarchy. Subsequent biologists increasingly accepted Darwin¹s general concept of species, but many replaced his subjective ranking criterion, degree of difference, with various criteria that are more objective and/or bear more directly on lineage separation (e.g., intrinsic reproductive isolation, different niches, reciprocal monophyly), resulting in a diversity of competing species definitions. More recently, these diverse and at least partially incompatible proposals are being unified in an emerging view that embraces the general Darwinian concept of species as separately evolving lineages but rejects the idea that the species is a rank in the taxonomic hierarchy, treating it instead as a fundamental category of biological organization.
Marc Ereshefsky, University of Chicago
Mystery of Mysteries: Darwin and the Species Problem
Darwin offered an intriguing answer to the species problem. He doubted the existence of the species category, but he did not doubt the existence of those taxa called species. And despite his skepticism of the species
category, Darwin continued using the word species. Many have said that Darwin did not understand the nature of species. Yet his answer to the species problem is both theoretically sound and practical. On the theoretical side, Darwin’s answer is confirmed by contemporary biology, and it offers a more satisfactory answer to the species problem than recent attempts to save the species category. On the practical side, Darwin’s answer frees us from the search for the correct theoretical definition of species. But at the same time it does not require that we banish the word species from biology as some recent skeptics of the species category advocate.
V: Taxonomy
Tuesday November 24, 09:00-11:00
Mary Winsor, University of Toronto
“Classification is a Census:” Huxley’s Private Quarrel with Darwin and its Public Consequences
Darwin declared in the Origin, "It is a truly wonderful fact---the wonder of which we are apt to overlook from familiarity---that all animals and all plants throughout all time and space should be related to each other in group subordinate to group...." The enthusiasm of his "truly wonderful" was genuine, for the fact that the Linnaean hierarchy seemed to reflect the shape of nature was what had led him, in 1837, to believe in branching evolution, but his warning against overlooking this fact was likewise based on personal experience. In 1857 T.H. Huxley quietly challenged Darwin's ideas about the relationship between classification and evolution. Unknown to the public, some of Darwin's remarks in the Origin were replies to Huxley. The impact of their gentlemanly disagreement upon subsequent generations was deep and long.
Kevin Padian, University of California Berkeley
What is “Evidence for Evolution” to an Evolutionist?
The structure of the Tree of Life has been argued as evidence of evolution for Darwin and other naturalists of his time and since. Trees structure taxonomy by their gaps, which allow taxonomists to construct groups based on their distinctness from others. These gaps are formed by selective extinction, which Darwin was the first to recognize. Most evolutionists since Darwin have not focused on the causes of large-scale patterns, nor have they considered much the relationship between these patterns and the processes that are so commonly studied at the populational (microevolutionary) level. Instead, lower-level processes and even theoretical models have been counted as sufficient evidence to explain the entire course of evolution through time. The recent synthesis of developmental genetics, paleontology, embryology, and phylogenetics, with its greater emphasis on the explanation of pattern, may redress this; but will biologists rethink their standards of evidence as a result?
Richard A. Richards, University of Alabama
Context and Evidence in the History of Science
Philosophical theories of evidence are usually formulated in abstract and normative terms. This way of conceiving evidence is inadequate for the history of science as Mary Winsor makes clear in her analysis of Darwin’s belief in common descent as based on taxonomic facts, and the tension with the attitudes of his fellow naturalists. What is required to understand such
disputes about evidence is a contextual and material theory of evidence that can take into account the views of actual scientists in actual historical contexts, and the relevant assumptions about empirical facts. I lay out what such a contextual theory might look like based on Peter Achinstein’s “subjective” and “epistemic situation” concepts of evidence, and John Norton’s “material” theory of induction.
VI: Evolution and Development
Tuesday November 24, 13:30-15:30
Manfred Laubichler, Arizona State University
From Boveri to Davidson and Back
This paper explores the contributions of Theodor Boveri, which were critically important but in many ways ahead of his contemporaries¹ ability to interpret their significance. Only in connection with the gene regulatory networks of Eric Davidson do we fully comprehend the connections of evolution and development as they play out in Boveri¹s work.
Jane Maienschein, Arizona State University
From Epigenesis to Epigenetics and Back
This paper looks at the focus on epigenetic interpretations of development and differentiation of the lat 19th and first half of the 20th century, including their connections (or lack of connections) with evolutionary thinking. Current studies of epigenetics illuminates some of the themes the earlier researchers were considering but did not really know how to study.
Michael Dietrich, Darthmouth College
From Goldschmidt to Gould and Back
This paper examines the way Richard Goldschmidt sought to bring together issues of heredity, development, and evolution, at why Stephen Jay Gould sought to resurrect Goldschmidt¹s work, and at what that tells us about the connections among these fields.
CONTRIBUTED PAPER SESSIONS ABSTRACTS
1.i: Reassessing Themes and Sources
Sunday November 22, 13:00-14:30
Scott Sinclair, St. Louis University
Three American Philosophers’ Responses to Darwin
The article, “The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy” (1909), written by American philosopher John Dewey has become a standard reference in Darwinian studies. Therein he makes at least two insightful observations: 1) the true nature of the controversy that Darwin effected was within science itself and called for a conceptual shift from traditional fixed or passive substances to that which is dynamic or in constant flux, and 2) Darwin’s principle of natural selection seemed to deny the traditional design argument for God and therefore brought the “science versus religion” controversy to the forefront. While agreeing with Dewey, two other American philosophers, Charles Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead, developed their own speculative philosophies that went beyond what Dewey described. For Peirce, he seems to suggest that God has an evolutionary or development nature. Yet, he later seems to discount this, which has led commentators to say that he wavered or is “in between” traditional theism and process theism. For Whitehead, he is more definitive in his “dipolar” or even threefold character of God that incorporates an evolutionary perspective. Even though Peirce and Whitehead may be just as controversial as “science versus religion” for traditional orthodoxy, their proposals demonstrate a commitment to the ultimate facts of reality and a religious commitment with a relational God that deserve renewed consideration.
Fred Wilson, York University
Replacing an Old Paradigm: Intelligent Design and Natural Selection
Hume, Mill, and Darwin
There is order in the biological realm in the sense that organisms are well-adapted (for the most part) in their normal environments to achieve the ends of survival and reproduction. This fact commonly lead various thinkers to infer that the cause of this order was the will of an intelligent designer. Darwin established clearly that the cause of this order was natural selection. John Stuart Mill, however, argued in his essay on “Theism”, that intelligent design was more probably the cause than natural selection. This is an odd conclusion for so astute a thinker as Mill. In that essay Mill gives a brief exposition of Darwin’s theory, but misses central points about its logical structure, a structure which, through the consilience of inductions, renders Darwin’s theory more than probable and certainly more probable that the intelligent design hypothesis. Mill had previously given in his System of Logic a careful analysis of the logical structure of scientific theories, which is the logical structure of Darwin’s theory, and Mill furthermore knows how to apply this account: he gives a masterful analysis of Newton’s theory. Since Mill knew all this but didn’t apply it in Darwin’s case, I conclude, tentatively, that Mill never read Darwin. Throughout I weave a discussion Hume’s discussion of the argument from design in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion and argue that Hume’s analysis of the argument allows us to conclude that Darwin’s natural selection is the intelligent agent that Hume allows to be the conclusion of the argument from design: Hume suggests that the argument allows that the cause of order bears a “remote analogy” to human intelligence, and I argue that natural selection bears just such an analogy and therefore verifies the conclusion of the design argument, if the latter be properly understood.
I.ii. Social Perceptions
Sunday November 22, 13:00-14:30
Eleanor Louson, IHPST, University of Toronto
Nature, Projected: Evolutionary Theory in Wildlife Documentaries
Wildlife documentaries are a major source of the public's exposure to evolutionary biology. Historians and philosophers of biology have yet to seriously examine this promising medium. Drawing on a brief history of the genre, I propose an explanatory schema of the viewer's mediated encounter with nature, with a focus on the evolutionary framing of wildlife films. I will then discuss March of the Penguins (2005) and Planet Earth (2006), documentaries which have contributed to the public debate over evolution. Any account of the impact of evolutionary theory can only benefit from a closer look at the screen.
David Smillie, IHPST, University of Toronto
Evolution and Popular Culture: Darwin on the Box
Adrian Desmond and James Moore begin their new book Darwin's Sacred Cause with a straightforward assertion: "Global brands don't come much bigger than Charles Darwin. He is the grizzled grandfather peering from book jackets and billboards, from textbooks and TV - the sage on greeting cards, postage stamps and commemorative coins." To some extent this is certainly true. The "Darwin Industry" continues to produce books for academics and for niche audiences, and Darwin remains the patron saint of biologists. But how widely has Darwin spread through the wider culture? How extensively has Charles Darwin penetrated the world of popular culture, and what image of Darwin is being projected to mass audiences?
In this paper, I will look at how Charles Darwin has been portrayed on television in the recent past. Television remains the most widespread medium of popular culture, and has become, for a majority of people, not only a primary source of information, but a primary source of attitudes and ideas. From appearances in nature documentaries on the BBC to potted biographies on the Biography Channel to appearances on The Simpsons, Charles Darwin is a visible icon: but of what? Looking at how Darwin is portrayed and the narrative tropes used in these portrayals, I will demonstrate how Darwin's portrayal differs depending on the nature of the program, its target audience, and its country of origin. Finally, I will look at the presentation of evolution itself in popular culture, comparing its prevalence and portrayal with that of Darwin.
Janet Browne has recently argued that Darwin himself was largely responsible for his public image during his lifetime and that he used this image to help promote his ideas. To some extent, the name and visage of Darwin are still being used as signifiers in a variety of popular culture settings. But in a time (at least in the United States) when the battles over Darwinism continue to rage, producers of popular culture must be careful how they present such a potentially-controversial figure. Unlike the iconic Einstein, Darwin cannot be presented in a way that is free of politics, and even those who would want to use Darwin's face to promote evolutionary ideas in popular culture often find themselves having to step carefully.
Ian Hesketh, Queen’s University
Of Apes and Ancestors: Myth and the Cultural Memory of the Oxford Debate of 1860
In June of 1860 during the annual British Association of Science meeting in Oxford, the Bishop of Oxford, “Soapy” Samuel Wilberforce supposedly clashed swords with “Darwin’s Bulldog,” Thomas Henry Huxley over the evidence for Darwinian evolution. The latter’s triumph, amid quips about apes and ancestry, has become a mythologized event, symbolizing the supposed war between science and Christianity. According to the popular media, in this instance Christopher Hitchens, the debate was a “tipping point” in that long war where “Huxley cleaned Wilberforce’s clock, ate his lunch, [and] used him to mop the floor”. Professional historians have largely discounted this crude version of the debate, arguing that Huxley’s “victory” was not so one-sided, and that the “debate” itself was at most “a minor incident.” But how could this seemingly inconsequential debate become such a mythologized event in the popular imagination? This paper reconstructs the way in which the “Oxford debate” became a myth by focusing on the careful remembrance and dissemination of a particular version of events that was cultivated and communicated within a close circle of scientific naturalists. Huxley, in particular, sought to control the memory of the Oxford debate, often challenging alternative accounts while providing an authoritative voice to later historical reconstructions. It was largely his version of events that would be publicized in his and Darwin’s “Life and Letters” in the late nineteenth century and again reproduced in early histories of science promoting the “warfare” between science and Christianity. The twentieth century continued this historical mythmaking through popular historical reconstructions such as the BBC produced series “Voyage of the Beagle” and the Down House heritage project. Just as professional historians demythologize the debate, Huxley’s version of events continues to find space in the popular media.
I.iii: Species and Sexuality
Sunday November 22, 13:00-14:30
Masoud Hassanpour Golakani, Macquarie University
The Spiral Valve Intestine of the Australian Lungfish
The anatomy of the Australian lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri, has been extensively studied due to its phylogenetic position as the closest living fish relative to the land vertebrates. Lungfish have survived over millions of years and are considered as living fossils. Among three genera of living lungfish, the Australian lungfish is the most ancient and one of the key species in evolutionary biology in regard to the shifting from water to the land. The gastrointestinal tract of lungfish is comprised of a complicated and strange spiral valve, which is a primitive characteristic in vertebrates. In Neoceratodus forsteri the spiral valve intestine is rather unusual with its pre-pyloric coiling, which is exclusive to the Australian lungfish among vertebrates. Both spleen and pancreas are embedded in an internally twisted spiral valve and are not visible, unless the spirals are unwound. Moreover, the location of rugae and stomach and also the form of pylorus is different from all other vertebrates studied. Unlike other vertebrates, rugae are absent in the stomach but present in the duodenum. Furthermore, instead of a pyloric region at the base of the stomach, Neoceratodus forsteri has pyloric fold, which can be analogized to venous valves and acts as an incomplete gate between foregut and midgut in the spiral valve intestine. There is almost unanimous agreement between evolutionary biologists that the Australian lungfish has survived unchanged for more than 100 million years. These assumptions are mostly based on the morphological similarities of the structures preserved in fossils with those of the extant lungfish, such as the skeleton, particularly the head skeleton, including the teeth. If the skeleton has remained unchanged over millions of years, it may be argued that other organs, including the intestine, have not evolved as well. Therefore, the strange characteristics of the gastrointestinal tract in Neoceratodus forsteri may imply a holding pattern or an interruption in their evolution. Surprisingly, the spiral valve intestine of the Australian lungfish has not attracted as many evolutionary biologists as it deserves. A thorough investigation of spiral valve intestine in Neoceratodus forsteri and comparative studies with other fish and tetrapods may help to unravel the evolutionary question of the transition of vertebrate animals from water to land.
Eugene S. Morton, Hemlock Hill Field Station
Sexual Conflict and Brood Desertion in Blue-Headed Vireos: How Females Won
We studied blue-headed vireo (Vireo solitarius) nesting behavior in Pennsylvania USA for 12 years between 1994 and 2008. In 245 nesting attempts, 58 were successful in fledging young. Observations of successful nests showed that females deserted their broods on or near the day of fledging leaving males alone to care for fledged young. Observational evidence was confirmed with radiotracking of females (2004, 2007) and both pairmembers (2008). Radiotracked females began visiting distant male vireos 1-2 days before young left the nest and paired with males 355-802m (mean = 636m) away and laid first eggs in new nests 4 to 10d (mean = 4.9d) after deserting. Their abandoned males paired with new females after 18d (new female laid first egg), on average, 40-500m (mean = 349m) distant from the original territory. Females remained paired to the same male and renested following predation of their nests. We suggest equal parental care in the sexes, genetic monogamy, and an adult sex ratio biased towards males has led to female control of brood desertion in this species. This is the first example of female-only brood desertion in a songbird and suggests genetic monogamy may be a female ploy that reduces male counter-adaptation to female desertion.
Jerome Goldstein, San Francisco Clinical Research Center
The Neurobiology of Sexual Orientation: A Tribute to Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin, the founder and well known author of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, based his theory of evolution on an essay from Alfred Russell Wallace, “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type.” Thus, there is historically replete documentation of homosexuality throughout history as well as virtually all reproducing species. In addition, there is abundant evidence that homosexual behaviour among all species so identified has enhanced reproduction and been productive to continuation of the species. There is no evidence that any species exhibiting such behaviour has become endangered or extinct and little if no evidence to support a “nurtural” theory to homosexuality. This prescient concept has been applied to human sexuality only in the latter part of the 20th century and early 21st century. The works of the Kinsey Reports and Dr. Evelyn Hooker published in the 1950s resulted in the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III in 1973. Since then, homosexuality has been mentioned as an illness only in the context of being a putative exacerbating factor in anxiety states. Homosexuality is a constantly debated issue as to whether it is a choice or determined at birth. The nature vs. nurture debate continues unabated. Population studies of physical characteristics have always been intriguing but not conclusive proof of a biologic origin. Recent studies, however, reveal a clear cut neurobiology to sexual orientation.
2.1: Acceptances and Denials
Monday November 23, 11:00-12:30
Fermin Fulda, University of Toronto
Against Fodor Against Darwinism
Fodor (2008) has argued that the Darwinian theory of natural selection cannot explain the changes in the distributions of phenotypic traits in biological populations on the grounds that there are no laws of selection to support counterfactuals about a trait being selection-for. I argue that his objection can be resisted by rejecting two metaphysical assumptions: a dynamical as oppose to a statistical interpretation of the theory, and a subsumption account of singular causation.
Stefaan Blancke, Ghent University
“A million guesses strung together:” Creationist Denial of the Science Behind Evolutionary Theory
Ever since William Jennings Bryan rallied up anti-evolutionary forces to combat evolutionary theory in public schools by the beginning of the 1920s, creationists have not only been implying that the science itself is worthless, but also that evolutionary theory is not science at all. Bryan himself called it a “million of guesses strung together”, and today the popular phrase says that evolution is “only a theory”. In this talk, we will discuss this pillar of creationism (Scott 2004), exposing the misunderstandings of both science and evolutionary theory that support it. To this end, we will explore historically how creationists have repeatedly used several models of science, borrowing from a variety of renowned philosophers like Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, to discredit evolutionary theory as a tautology, mere metaphysics, a paradigm that needs to be overturned or an atheist creation myth.
At the heart of this problem, however, lies the creationists’ denial of the hypothetico-deductive model of science, allowing hypotheses to be tested against the available evidence, leading up to the best explanation at hand. Creationists simply do not accept the understanding of science as an inference to the best explanation. Again and again they are convinced by the argument that nobody actually witnessed the origin of the universe, of life or of humanity, and therefore, every explanation is as good as the other because there is no way to tell which one is right. According to creationists, true science only comes down to direct observation and experimentation. The argument, however, is not new. Already Darwin had felt the need not only to defend the content of his evolutionary theory against creationist alternatives, but also the way he proved it right against narrow interpretations of science should work. He had convincingly demonstrated how the evidence could and did support both the fact and theory of evolution. Unfortunately, his arguments are still relevant today as creationists do not refrain from calling it ‘just a theory’.
Daniel A. Newman, University of Toronto
The Rhetoric of Probability: How Darwin Overcame the Argument From Design
Darwin was not the first evolutionist, but his evolutionary theory succeeded where earlier ones failed. Specifically, he was able to propose a convincing alternative to the Argument from Design, which had hitherto guaranteed the authority of natural theology on questions of biological adaptation. The argument from design was—and still is—persuasive because it fits with our intuitive notions of what is conceivable; indeed, it depends on the inconceivability of alternative hypotheses. The eminent natural theologian William Paley thus dismisses the possibility that there might be “proofs of design, but no designer,” adding that “this conclusion is invincible” (**14, 15). How, then, did Darwin convince his readers to consider the inconceivable? I propose that, following Hume’s dictum that “a wise man…proportions his belief to the evidence” (**566), Darwin prevailed by setting aside what seemed *conceivable*, and focusing instead on what was *probable.* From the first paragraph of *The Origin* Darwin characterises his theory as what “seemed to me probable” (**1). And what is probable to him is often explicitly opposed to what is conceivable. He admits, for example, that “it is *conceivable* that two hermaphrodites… might unite and leave offspring which would inherit their parents’ greater beauty. But with such lowly-organised creatures this is extremely *improbable*” (*Descent* i.327, my italics). Offering not absolute certainty, but “knowledge, imperfect though it be,” he consistently emphasises “the best and safest” conclusions on taxonomy, variation, heredity, and geology (*Origin* 4).
Darwin had read Paley at Cambridge, and understood the rhetorical appeal of conceivability. He therefore admits his theory seems unimaginable, but then, having conceded this point, proceeds to discredit conceivability as a source of scientific knowledge. Step by step, he lays out his vast stores of evidence, gradually bolstering evolutionary claims that initially seemed “absurd…to the highest degree” (*Origin* 186). Where Paley stresses the sublime complexity of whole structures, Darwin simplifies and demystifies complicated adaptations by emphasizing the probable interactions of simple parts. Using the rhetoric of probability, Darwin is able to engage natural theology on its own ground, outlining the likely steps in the evolution of what Paley saw as the paragon of design—the human eye. Never letting the argument from design out of his mind, Darwin builds a case in which empirical evidence, analogy, and parsimony render the inconceivable plausible. Shifting the terms of the debate on adaptation from common sense to empirical and statistical logic is rhetorically astute, but it also reflects the structure of Darwinism itself; indeed, I argue, Darwin’s probabilism is fundamental to his theory and places him squarely among the pioneers of modern science. In my conclusion, I suggest that understanding the probabilistic turn in Darwin’s thought and language can shed light on the ongoing debate between evolutionary biology and Intelligent Design theory.
2.ii: Historical Receptions
Monday November 23, 11:00-12:30
John Court, University of Toronto
Darwinian Evolution’s First Fifty Years of Impact on Botany at the University of Toronto, 1859-1909
The first half-century of Darwinism brought a new scientific outlook that transformed botany as a discipline, inspiring a proliferation of discoveries and perspectives informed by evolution. Although late-19th-century biology faculty members in the University of Toronto supported Darwinian principles, botany nevertheless remained behind their field’s cusp in teaching and research on pertinent evolutionary theory. Various aspects of, and reasons for the delay in the influence of evolution are examined, along with the case of a botanical gardens proposal that might logically have emerged under its aegis.
Botany was marginalized during Ramsay Wright’s chairing of Natural History (renamed Biology in 1887) from 1874 to 1912. Wright was a zoologist who administered his department with a persistent bias and favouritism toward zoology, at botany’s expense. Here we examine through archival evidence botany’s academic emergence at Toronto in relation to the field at large, the influence of their administrators, and the budding careers of three late-19th-century Toronto students who successively progressed to botany faculty ranks. While their careers edged forward gradually at Toronto, scientific botany in other centres was blossoming through new perspectives of geological time and microcosmic analysis, employing paleobotany, plant geography, and the cytology and histology of plants. During the twentieth century’s first decade, biochemistry and Mendelian genetics further enlarged biology’s scope, although again largely elsewhere. Soon after Robert Falconer was appointed Toronto’s President in 1907 he began to steer research toward the perspective that, through their discoveries, universities should be “useful” contemporary institutions as “sources from which thought will be translated into action.” Hence he instigated the launch in 1909 of an academic botanical gardens, of limited scale, designed not to test and explain botanical ideas within the scope of scientific research, but to support teaching with living specimens while appealing to certain external partners’ practical interests.
Botany’s embrace of evolutionary science, delayed at Toronto by more than 35 years until the mid-1890s, was scarcely noticeable outside the university until William Bateson’s 1922 Toronto public lecture series, more than a decade after the Darwinian jubilee. After their initial sorties in postgraduate research, Toronto’s few academic botanists were quickly distracted from Darwinian theory and advocacy. Issues that bedevilled them ranged from personality clashes impinging upon their careers, pressures for maintaining heavy teaching loads, inadequate campus facilities, and pressure to pursue research that would demonstrate practical usefulness to the community at large, in lieu of pure science. Only after 1909 were they able to benefit from their discipline’s dramatic surge in scholarly excitement made possible by the trio of contextual lenses forming evolution’s multifaceted prism. Each biological species or variety could potentially be understood through its descent over the full panoply of geological time, its settlement patterns in worldwide geographical distribution, and the multi-generational evolving of its forms and their functions for adapting to its environment.
David M. Steffes, Arizona State University
Population Ecology and Evolution: From Darwin’s Origin to the Modern Synthesis of the 1940s and 1950s
One of the fascinating features of the Origin of Species is the strong emphasis that Darwin placed on ecology for conveying his ideas on the evolution of life. Origin, published in 1859, predated both the coining of the word “ecology” (1866) and the emergence of ecology as a research field (1890s). Nevertheless, Darwin’s first edition is replete with references to the “economy” and “polity” of nature, along with descriptions of organisms competing for the opportunity to occupy “stations” of hospitable conditions. Of course, Darwin’s main focus in Origin was the organic population. Malthus’ principle was of the utmost importance for proposing historical transformations in animal populations, and yet the causal-mechanical process of Malthusian struggle could not be conveyed properly without a description of nature’s “web of complex relations” in environment (p. 73). Darwin provided examples of this intricate web in his chapter on “The Struggle for Existence,” affirming for his readers “how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life” (p. 80). Adaptations, which were created through population struggle, were the result of ecological interrelationships, and thus, for Darwin, evolution and ecology were two inseparable aspects of a single natural process.
As Darwin’s theory of evolution gained traction during the 1930s and 40s, however, its intimate connection with ecology faded away. Leading architects of the Modern Synthesis such as Ernst Mayr, Julian Huxley, and G.G. Simpson overlooked ecology for the most part, believing that their efforts were best served in marrying the natural history traditions (systematics, paleontology, and botany) with the laboratory biology traditions (physiology, cytology, and genetics). Professional ecologists failed to develop significant representation within the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) or on the editorial board of the new journal, Evolution. When Chicago hosted its centennial celebration of Darwin’s Origin in 1959, no panels were organized for discussion on ecology, despite the fact that Chicago had been one of the pioneers of ecological research during the early century. Ernst Mayr and William Provine even felt safe in omitting ecology from the list of contribution fields in their extensive volume on the Synthesis (1980).
In my paper, I outline four ecologists who refused to concede the study of populations to systemacists and population geneticists during the 1940s and 50s. David Lack, A.J. Nicholson, Charles Birch, and H.G. Andrewartha pursued a “theoretical population ecology” wherein they sought to build their own evolutionary syntheses, addressing specific problems ignored by most naturalists and geneticists (dealing with dynamic environment). They developed two competing programs for unifying evolutionary biology and ecology: namely, the “density-dependence” and “density independence” programs. They believed their programs would deal ecology into the Synthesis debate. I will examine in detail the research of the Birch-Andrewartha contingent during the 1950s, and argue that, in light of their work, historians ought to reassess Mayr’s well known historical proposition that evolutionary biology came about because of the endorsement of an “ultimate-proximate” duality in biological causation.
Kevin Pent, York University
Julian Huxley’s ‘Apogee of Species:’ Darwin’s ‘Man’ Comes of Age
Known as “Darwin’s Bulldog”, Thomas H. Huxley was one of the nineteenth century’s greatest advocates of Charles Darwin and was largely responsible for the growing receptivity to Darwin’s theory of evolution in Britain by the end of the 1860s. Within half a century his grandson, Julian Huxley, had taken up where his grandfather had left off, advancing Darwin’s theory during a time in which it had fallen into disrepute. Julian Huxley, a reputable biologist in his own right, became renowned for critically supporting and popularising Darwin’s theory of natural selection, putting Darwin once again at the forefront of evolutionary theory. Julian did for Darwin in the twentieth century what his grandfather, Thomas, had similarly done for Darwin in the nineteenth.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of both Huxleys was a concern for morality and ethics within an evolutionary framework. T. H. Huxley, who coined the term ‘agnostic’, undermined the idea of morality and ethics based on authority and resituated them in what he termed the ‘cosmic process.’ Though no longer based on authority, he still considered them absolute and transcendent. Julian Huxley went a step further than his grandfather, advancing a strictly atheistic perspective that placed morality and ethics on the relativistic ground of evolutionary progress. For Julian, morality was based upon what he called the ‘organs of society, varying according to the conditions of the time.’ Morality was relative but not without foundation, subject to society and historical precedent, and ultimately entrusted to man.
In this paper I will examine Julian Huxley’s approach to morality and ethics in light of his evolutionary humanism. It is my contention that Huxley was caught in a dilemma, trying to navigate the Scylla of mindless chance (evolution) and the Charybdis of ultimate values (morality and ethics). In attempting to reconcile this apparent contradiction, his works draw from such disparate ideologies as idealism, logical positivism, Marxism and the ‘new theology’. For Huxley, combining ‘evolution’ and ‘progress’ became an ideology itself, presenting ‘man’ as the maker of his own destiny and contributing to the humanist movement in Britain. In essence evolution’s apogee had culminated in twentieth-century man, and it was left to man to heretofore take charge of the evolutionary process.
For this Conference, I will focus primarily on the ethical and philosophical writings of Julian Huxley. From the 1920s to the 1960s Huxley situated himself strongly within a secular humanist tradition while contributing to that tradition by bringing an evolutionary rationale drawn from Darwinian evolution. I will attempt to show in my paper how Huxley contributed to Darwin’s legacy and how his epistemology reflected and contributed to the intellectual undercurrents of the mid-twentieth century in Britain. Each culminated in the growing secular humanism of the 1960s which coincided with a marked decline in church affiliation within an increasingly post-Christian moral paradigm.
2.iii: A Brave New Darwin
Monday November 23, 11:00-12:30
Peter Fedor, Comenius University
Advances in Artificial Intelligence in Species Identification
Exploring evolution in nature sometimes appears rather like building a card pyramid. Undisputedly it takes a lot of time and patience. Quick moves may be disastrous if you were to breath too hard. Generally speaking, evolution is a simple and clear concept but the mechanisms are much more difficult to understand. Simple is not always easy! Evolution is an amazing natural process and it has significantly influenced many branches of science including taxonomy. In Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection there is that well known section “Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps“. Taxonomists may find a useful parallel in speciation – the process of creating new species. However, those “short, sure and slow steps“ often lead to a never ending series of questions. For example, “What is a species? When does a species appear in a speciation process? Where is a clear line between a species and its ancestors? In general, a simple definition of a species is a taxonomic group within whose members can interbreed. A variety of specific cases in this matter has prompted biologists to find new methods of distinguishing new species. Help can come from morphology, molecular biology and ecology. However, we would like to introduce a brand new approach. That is, the application of artificial neural networks. There are vast arrays of morphologically similar species. Often, the differences are often minute and difficult to determine. There are many such cases within the insects. Their identification usually requires specialist training, significant experience, encyclopaedic knowledge, a good reference collection and relevant literature. The process of becoming expert on a group of insects can be pains-staking and time-consuming. For many groups and zoogeographical regions, the number of taxonomists is limited (Gaston & May, 1992). The rapid progress in Information Technology (IT) has opened opportunities for the development of computer-assisted taxonomy. Computer-aided taxonomic applications can range from interactive multi-access taxonomic keys, distributed to nearly fully automated identification systems. During the past ten years, artificial neural networks (ANN) seem to have been one of the most promising computing tools for the basis of such systems (Weeks & Gaston, 1997). Analogous to the structure of the human brain, the advantages of ANN include an ability to learn from examples and to generalize observed patterns. ANN are part of this area of artificial intelligence and provided practical methods for semi-automated identification of biological objects (Hernández-Borges et al., 2004, Va?hara et al., 2007, Fedor et al., 2009). That such advances from IT could contribute in such a significant manner to improving the tools for taxonomy and systematics, would surely have amused Charles Darwin!
Wybo Houkes, Eindhoven University of Technology
Hypothesis Testing in Artefact Evolution
In this paper, I argue that evolutionary approaches to culture – in particular, to technology – are fruitful, despite the common objection that they amount to misapplications of Darwinism or 'mere metaphors'. One prominent objection concerns the role of intentions in the use and design of technologies. I consider this objection vis a vis one particular application of evolutionary theorizing to technology, namely phylogenetic analyses of artefact lineages in archaeology.
Against these analyses, it has been pointed out that designing technology, as an intentional activity, differs from natural selection in such a way that the ‘family tree’ of an artefact kind would be essentially different from the tree of life – and that methods used to reconstruct the latter cannot be fruitfully applied to reconstruct the former (e.g., Tëmkin and Eldredge 2007). Features of intentional design used to fuel this objection include intra-generational borrowing of solutions; the re-emergence of ‘extinct’ solutions; and independent, but quasi-incremental solutions of the same design problem. All these features are supposed to result in idiosyncrasies of the family trees of artefacts – structural oddities that phylogenetic methods are bound to misrepresent or miss altogether.
Advocates of artefact phylogenetics typically respond by pointing out structurally identical features of natural evolution (Mesoudi et al. 2004; Collard et al. 2006) and calling for more empirical work regarding these features (Gray et al. 2007; Henrich et al. 2008). I argue that both the intentionalist objections and the ‘business-as-in-biology’ response fail to capture what is conceptually challenging and explanatorily productive in phylogenetic analyses of artefact lineages, and I offer a framework for additional empirical work.
Recent advances in phylogenetic methods, such as maximum-likelihood techniques, allow the testing of particular evolutionary hypotheses, i.e., particular trees, rather than reconstructing such trees directly from character lists. Such techniques are starting to be applied in archaeology and anthropology, but only slowly. I argue that a less reluctant adoption is in order. With these techniques, it is possible in principle to test hypotheses concerning combinations of mechanisms, some of which may be mediated by human intentions. The role of intentions in explaining artefact lineages may thus find a place within an evolutionary technique. Finally, I consider the constraints on this hypothesis testing, arguing that neither the potential nor the limitations of this approach should be underestimated.
Laura Landen, Queen’s University
Natural Selection, the Intentional Stance, and Mirror Neuron Research
In On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin introduces the mechanism of natural selection by way of analogy with human selection of characteristics in domesticated species of animals and plants. One obvious and widely discussed question about Darwin’s approach is just how much carries over from the human analogue to its correlate. Some scholars question whether some sort of intentionality may be introduced into discussions of natural selection if care is not taken in handling the analogy. Daniel Dennett approaches this delicate issue by bringing his concept of the intentional stance to bear on his discussion of natural selection, a promising approach, but one which raises its own questions. For example, is intentionality discerned in the natural world or merely a projection of intentionality in humans. Recent research in cognitive science on mirror neurons suggests intriguing insights into a physiological grounding for Dennett’s intentional stance. This paper investigates the philosophical potential of mirror neuron research for grounding the intentional stance and thereby shedding light on natural selection and Darwin’s analogical approach in explaining it.
3.i: Naturalism
Monday November 23, 16:30-18:00
Jason Marsh, University of Western Ontario
Darwinism and Divine Hiddenness
Perhaps the most common evolutionary objection to theism has to do with the amount and kinds of biological evil which result from evolution. Natural selection is an enormously cruel process and as Darwin noted in 1856, a ‘devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low and horribly cruel works of nature.’ More recently, a rather serious evolutionary argument from evil has been developed by Paul Draper (2007, 1998). By comparing the explanatory merits of theism and naturalism with respect to the suffering imposed on us by natural selection, Draper contends that theism is much more surprising (and so much less probably true) than naturalism. In response to challenges like these, Van Inwagen (2006) and Murray & Ross (2003) offer considerations that, if true, would explain why God permits so much biologically-based suffering and which are allegedly true for all the theist knows. Plantinga (2007), by contrast, offers a purely epistemic reply to show that the conflict between evolution and theism is superficial – and further contends that there is a conflict between evolution and naturalism that runs deep.
We have our doubts about these considerations. But are there any other evolutionary reasons to prefer naturalism over theism? We contend that the answer is yes. In particular, we contend that the standard focus on biological evil has led philosophers to overlook an equally challenging evolutionary argument from divine hiddenness. This argument suggests that our awareness of our evolutionary heritage creates a degree of religious ambiguity that would be surprising on the assumption that theism is true, but unsurprising given naturalism. More particularly, our claim is not merely that Darwinism substantially weakens the argument from design – although we think that’s true too – rather it’s that the many ways in which evolution contributes to non-belief pose an evidential challenge for theism. For this reason, our approach will bear a certain degree of discontinuity with that of J.L. Schellenberg, who takes it to be a necessary truth that the divine wouldn’t hide from those capable of enjoying a divine-human relationship (1993, 2007). That is, our argument will be comparative and probabilistic: while God might have good reasons for obscuring his/her existence through an indirect, evolutionary act of creation, this is at best significantly less likely than the claim that evolution is unguided. Lastly, a growing number of philosophers and scientists have come to think that the conflict between evolution and theism is superficial. Part of our aim is to challenge this consensus: to confirm that evolution is bad news for theism.
Khaldoun Sweis, Olive-Harvey College
Philosophical Paradoxs of Darwin Evolutionary Naturalism
Darwinian evolutionary naturalism (DEN) is the strongest force for the legitimate expression of research in the sciences or the humanities today. I attempt to address some issues that DEN still need take under consideration. This paper is divided into three parts. Part 1 is a struggle to find a coherent definition of DEN as it is currently understood. The common thread I find running through all definitions is the following: DEN is a belief or research paradigm that excludes any teleological, theological or supernatural explanations for the elucidation of phenomena in the universe. In Part 2, I address the supposed unscientific presuppositions of DEN. This leads us to the question of scientific methodology. Famous philosopher of science Karl Popper wrote, “the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.” If we cannot or are not allowed to consider the falsifiability, or refutability of DEN, then it is according to Popper, a non-scientific theory. Is this critique true? Is DEN a non-scientific theory? Finally in Part 3, I frame and articulate to the DEN’s community a strong argument against DEN ala Alvin Plantinga and Richard Taylor. This argument states that if our cognitive faculties have arisen by purely natural, unguided forces, then, although they can be trusted to arrive at pragmatic conclusions, they cannot be trusted to arrive at truthful conclusions. This is something that proponents of DEN need to address to make DEN a more reasonable hypothesis.
Maarten Boudry, Ghent University
Methodological Naturalism as an Intrinsic Property of Science: A Grist to the Mill of Intelligent Design Theory
In recent rounds of debate between evolutionists and supporters of Intelligent Design, the principle of methodological naturalism (MN) has been an important battleground. Creationists and intelligent design proponents have previously claimed that the commitment of evolutionists to naturalism and materialism constitutes a philosophical prejudice on their side, because it rules out any kind of supernatural causes by fiat. In response to these charges, some philosophers and scientists have argued that science is only committed to something they call methodological naturalism: Science does not deal with supernatural causes and explanations, but that does not mean that the latter do not exist. However, there has been some philosophical discussion about the correct understanding of MN. The principle of MN is often conceived of as an intrinsic and self-imposed limitation of science, as something that is part and parcel of the scientific enterprise by definition. According to this view (Intrinsic MN or IMN) - which is defended by people like Eugenie Scott, Michael Ruse and Robert Pennock and has been adopted in the ruling of Judge John E. Jones III in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case - science is simply not equipped to deal with the supernatural and therefore has no authority on the issue. It is clear that this depiction of science and MN offers some perspectives for reconciling science and religion. Not surprisingly, IMN is often embraced by those sympathetic to religion, or by those who wish to alleviate the sometimes heated opposition between the two.
However, we will argue that this view of MN does not offer a sound rationale for the rejection of supernatural explanations. Alternatively, we will defend MN as a provisory and empirically grounded commitment of scientists to naturalistic causes and explanations, which is in principle revocable by future scientific findings (Qualified MN or QMN). In this view, MN is justified as a methodological guideline by virtue of the dividends of naturalistic explanation and the consistent failure of supernatural explanations in the history of science.
We will discuss and reject four arguments in favour of IMN: the argument from the definition of science, the argument from lawful regularity, the science stopper argument, and the argument from procedural necessity. Moreover, we will argue that defining the supernatural out of science is a counterproductive strategy against ID creationism, and, for that matter, against any theory involving supernatural explanations. More specifically, IMN has been eagerly exploited by proponents of ID to bolster their false claims about the philosophical and metaphysical prejudices of evolutionists. As ID proponent Philip Johnson rhetorically noted, if science is about following the evidence wherever it leads, why should scientists exclude a priori the possibility of discovering evidence for the supernatural? Therefore, IMN is actually grist to the ID mill.
We conclude that IMN is philosophically artificial and that its attempt to reconcile science and religion is ill-conceived. QMN, alas, does not provide any such ready reconciliation either, but it does offer a sound rationale for the rejection of supernatural designers in modern science.
3.ii: Reconstructing Darwinism
Monday November 23, 16:30-18:00
Peter Gildenhuys, Lafayette College
Putting the Struggle for Existence to Work
For Darwin, the struggle for existence, or the struggle for life, figured prominently among the conditions necessary for evolution by natural selection; indeed, the full title of Darwin’s Origin makes explicit reference to it. Darwin’s intellectual descendants have de-emphasized the struggle for existence in selection theory; at least one prominent figure has even argued that evolution by natural selection does not require the struggle for existence (Lewontin 1970). The struggle for existence is important to the theory of selection only insofar as it can be given a role to play in that theory. I suggest that competition between variants can serve as a conceptual tool to solve a long-standing problem in the theory of evolution by natural selection, the problem of how populations of variant individuals undergoing selection should be delineated. Canonical criteria for delineating populations suitable for evolutionary theory invoke interbreeding and conspecificity, but thereby unnecessarily restrict the scope of evolutionary theory. Darwin thought the displacement of a local species by rival immigrants a case of selection, and variant haploid organisms can struggle for existence though they do not interbreed. In Chapter 3 of the Origin, Darwin gets across his notion of the struggle for existence by means of a consideration of easy examples coupled with a discussion of borderline cases. Two dogs that are literally fighting over a scrap of food are clearly struggling for existence, but (contra Lewontin) a lone cactus on the edge of the desert is not struggling for existence (it is instead dependent on the moisture); a mistletoe is not struggling with the apple tree that it parasitizes, though two mistletoe plants on the same tree are indeed struggling for existence with each other. I consider these and other examples that Darwin discusses and suggest an explicit definition of the causal relationship that must relate two individuals such that they count as struggling for existence. The definition is constructed so that it rules out the cases Darwin sought to rule out and covers the cases that Darwin clearly wanted his notion of the struggle for existence to cover. I go on to specify how this relationship can be used to delineate populations for the purposes of using evolutionary theory to model their dynamics. After all, if it is possible to delineate populations badly for the purposes of evolutionary theory, such that the theory does not accurately predict or explain their dynamics, it is possible to delineate populations correctly. An explicit criterion for distinguishing the bad ways from the good ones would clearly be valuable. I recover standard textbook definitions of population as often providing reasonable ways of estimating the scope of populations in evolutionary theory as I define them.
Katharine Browne, University of Toronto
A Darwinian Theory of Games
Social contract theories locate the source of, and our motivation to comply with, moral and political obligations in the notion of agreement. These obligations are either constituted by or follow from some set of principles that are acceptable and agreed to by rational agents. Game theory provides us with an analysis of the interactions of ideally rational agents, and has been a useful tool in determining which outcomes rational individuals would settle on in bargaining situations. If we look at potential cooperative interactions between individuals as “games” (i.e., strategic interactions, where each player will base her strategy on how she thinks the other will behave), then we can see how and when individuals will settle on a joint-cooperative outcome. One central problem that accounts that employ game theory to this end face emerges from the fact that any game generally has multiple equilibria (i.e., sets of strategies where no player could do better, given the way the other player behaved). Thus, explaining why individuals settle on one equilibrium over another needs to be explained. In response to this difficulty, some game theorists have shifted away from traditional rational choice theory-based models, and have adopted an evolutionary approach to game theory. This “naturalized” game-theoretic approach to social contract theory seeks to show which strategies are evolutionarily stable and, consequently, makes strides towards solving the equilibrium selection problem by showing which equilibria will be selected through evolution from the host of available strategies for any given game. In this paper, I explore the general methodology behind such Darwinian approaches to game theory in general, and social contract in particular, with an eye to determining what, if anything, such approaches can contribute to our understanding of the general failure of the traditional approaches to social contact theory.
Sarah Winter, University of Connecticut Storrs
Species as Value: Biosemiotics in Darwin’s Origin and Saussurian Linguistics
In the Cours de linguistique générale (1916), Ferdinand de Saussure emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between “static” and “evolutionary” methods in linguistics, defining as “sciences of value” those disciplines that imply “a system of equivalence between things belonging to different orders,” that is, the descriptive and the historical. These two orders entail two different but interlocking sets of methods: (1) a synchronic approach, which studies “simultaneity” and “relations between things which coexist,” and (2) a diachronic approach, which focuses on the same things, but taken in “succession . . . together with the changes they undergo.” As Darwin’s diagram in Chapter 4 of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) illustrates, the theory of natural selection also requires the elucidation of synchronic and diachronic relationships among species. Analyzing the Origin through the Cours allows us to understand Darwin’s text as formulating a science of value through the interplay between synchronic and diachronic methods. Saussure’s work in turn shows evidence of a more profound and influential role for Darwinian theory in the history of modern linguistics than has previously been recognized. The Cours also provides a new way of reading the Darwinian concept of “species” as a having the status of “valeur [value],” defined by Saussure as “a fact of a positive nature” emerging from a relationship of difference within a system without positive terms. A Saussurian, biosemiotic reading of Darwin’s Origin, I will argue, allows us to understand the Darwinian notion of “species” as a theoretical crux within Darwin’s development of synchronic and diachronic methods for evolutionary biology. Simultaneously designating natural kinds and relational “values” within a biological system, “species” becomes a natural sign that exhibits the Darwinian arbitrariness produced by natural selection.
3.iii: Applying Darwinism
Monday November 23, 16:30-18:00
Marion Blute, University of Toronto at Mississauga
Darwinism in the Social Sciences Today
Darwinism in the social sciences today comes in three broad forms - the gene-based biological, the social learning or meme-based sociocultural, and gene-culture coevolution. After a long hiatus, all three have begun to thrive in almost every social science. This talk will highlight some areas where the sociocultural version of this trend is most developed - empirically (the use of systematic methods in linguistics and archaeology), theoretically (population-genetics style models of cultural change), and both (the demography and population ecology of organizations). Darwinism has the capacity to address the most prominent dilemmas in cultural and social theory today including the relationship between history and social forces; among competition, conflict and cooperation; between the ideal and the material; and between the micro and the macro in three senses - the problem of individual agency; subjectivity and objectivity; and the emergence of complexity. Some of these require going beyond the model of the modern synthesis and some do not.
Howard M. Huynh, Acadia University
In the Footsteps of Darwin: The Value of Scientific Collecting in Biodiversity Research and Conservation
Charles Robert Darwin was noted for being a keen-eyed naturalist. A large and significant part of his work on the Beagle expedition was collecting biological specimens from new and unexplored regions, recording their distribution and studying their morphology in detail. His work in the Galapagos helped document the unique biodiversity of that archipelago. More importantly, however, the collection and subsequent study of such voucher specimens from many localities helped enable Darwin and his colleagues to recognize the intra and interspecific variation present in populations. Their detailed observations and interpretation of these patterns of variation in nature ultimately contributed to Darwin’s conceptualization of the process of natural selection, a fundamental concept in modern evolutionary theory. To this day, scientific collecting continues to remain the practice of many biologists in the quest to catalogue the immense biodiversity on this planet. The data that stem from judicious collection of voucher specimens represent important contributions to other disciplines in biology, and far outweigh the associated costs. Nonetheless, because the activity involves the sacrificing of individual organisms, there are many in the scientific community who continue to question the legitimacy and necessity of biological collecting, especially considering the plight of anthropogenically driven extinctions. To address whether scientific collecting is necessary for biodiversity research and conservation initiatives, this paper will discuss the pros and cons of this activity. Various examples drawn from my research on the taxonomy of several species of mammals will be used to argue the necessity of scientific collecting and highlight key points of discussion. Given that conservation biology is a value-laden scientific discipline, the ethics of when it is morally permissible to collect voucher specimens will also be reviewed. Considering the rapid rate of global ecosystem deterioration as a result of human activity, scientific collecting may be the only effective means of documenting and understanding the natural history for many species before they are driven to extinction.
Joel Velasco, Stanford University
The Tree of Life: From Darwin to Today
Famously, the sole figure in The Origin of Species is a phylogenetic tree which Darwin used to clarify what he meant by common ancestry. Darwin went on to speculate that common ancestry would provide the foundation for classification in the future. Today, the tree of life, which represents how all life is genealogically related, is an iconic representation in biology and even penetrates into popular culture. In addition, phylogenetic classification based on common ancestry is perhaps the dominant school of thought in systematics. However, it is a heavily debated question in biology, and in philosophy, whether there even is such a tree. Witness the recent New Scientist headline "Darwin was Wrong" and the fierce reaction it provoked from many biologists. Moreover, many biologists worry about a general phylogenetic classification and if there is no unique tree of life, phylogenetic classification is on shaky ground. Here I discuss exactly what Darwin meant to depict with his tree and how that relates to the multitude of various ways of thinking genealogically which are central to systematics today. For example, biologists variously look at gene trees, population trees, and species trees and it is not clear how they are related to each other, nor, in fact, if any of them is what Darwin really had in mind. I argue that the current debates about the existence of the tree among biologists, particularly amongst those studying microbes, can be seen as tangential to what Darwin was thinking about (even if he had known about microbes initially). No matter the outcome of this debate, it should not be taken to undermine our broad-scale understanding of common ancestry, which is what Darwin had in mind all along. However, the debate relies on facts about how genetic inheritance works and this would, of course, affect how Darwin thought about whether all life started from one form or many. Similarly, the debates about phylogenetic classification must be informed by our best theories of inheritance. Finally, I speculate about what Darwin might have thought about genealogical classification had he known what we know now.
4.i: Ancient Debates, Ancient Roots
Tuesday November 24, 11:00-12:30
P. William Hughes, Carleton University
Aristotle contra Democritus: Mayr’s Struggle with Teleology, Randomness and his Haphazard Route Back to Darwin
What is the role played by ‘chance’ in Ernst Mayr’s biological programme? Persistent in contemporary evolutionary theory is the major twentieth-century challenge to the modern evolutionary synthesis presented by the Neutral and Nearly Neutral Theories of molecular evolution propounded by Kimura and Ohta. Notable for its emphasis on the power of genetic drift and mutation pressures on the evolutionary trajectory of a phenotype, in a sense reaffirming the fact that chance plays an important role within evolutionary causation, the neutralist picture encountered resistance from prominent evolutionary thinkers such as Mayr. I suggest that, perhaps ironically, the panselectionist ‘neo-darwinian’ response to the neutralist challenge invoked the spectre of many of the arguments used by Aristotle, with his teleological conception of the organism, to reject the biological theories of Empedocles and Democritus – arguments which would, at a later time, raise serious concerns for evolutionists. I believe that an examination of this ancient debate would inform both the contemporary discussion with an interesting an relevant comparison between Mayr and Aristotle’s ‘organism-centred’ biological programmes, as well as the ongoing process of situating Darwin’s evolutionary thinking both relative to his own bio-philosophical intellectual forbears and also our present-day understanding of such ‘neo-darwinian’ evolutionary theory. In his 1971 work ‘Populations, Species and Evolution’, Mayr sums up his fear that the invocation of truly random molecular processes in the neutral theory might cause an uncomfortable rift between molecular and organismal evolutionary biology. The dualism Mayr (inadvertently?) creates resembles the Aristotelian rejection of Empedocles’ zoogeny and Democritus’ conception of organic evolution due to their account of ‘chance’ processes involving themselves in organismal design; anticipating the spirit of Mayr, Aristotle remarks that ‘the process of evolution is for the sake of the thing annually evolved, and not this for the sake of the process. Empedocles, then, was in error when he said that many of the characters presented by animals were merely the results of incidental occurrences during their development’ (De Partibus Animalium 640b). Aristotle is concerned with the impossibility of adequately explaining the manifold expressions of nonrandom ordering in the natural world using purely random processes – I contend that, for all Mayr’s seemingly nuanced argumentation, Aristotle’s conception of ‘chance’ is essentially similar to Mayr’s own. Looking past Mayr to Darwin, it is remarkable not just that his writings offer us an insightful middle path between inflexible teleology and unpredictable randomness, but how he manages to think of ‘chance’, enabling him to parse dualistic ‘easy answers’ and adopt a compromise between them. In Chapter Four of On the Origin of Species, Darwin writes of phenotypic traits which may be ‘favourable’, ‘injurious’ or ‘variation neither useful nor injurious’ – thus creating a space for nonselective processes to operate within his exposition of a selective mechanism. These curious words, implying the ubiquity, but not necessarily omnipresence, of selective pressures illustrate a carefully measured approach toward the complex relationship between ‘teleological’ and ‘chance’ processes.
Andreas Avgousti, Columbia University Press
Pre-Modern, Modern and Natural Understandings of Man: Plato, Hobbes, and Evolutionary Theory
Political theory is founded on an argued or implied understanding of human nature. States of nature are used as starting points to such an understanding. The first two sections of the thesis are a comparative exercise in the history of political thought focused on Plato and Thomas Hobbes respectively. My methodology is one of a close reading of the texts, coupled by an awareness of the historical period to which they belong. Although Plato is not known for his ‘state of nature’, I draw from his middle to later period dialogues in an attempt to synthesise a plausible pre-modern, Platonic example of the state of nature. Inasmuch, the first section of the thesis offers a new angle from which to appreciate the work of an ancient Greek political theorist. The second section sees us tread more familiar ground, as we delve into the Hobbesian state of nature, again drawn from a variety of the Englishman’s works. The vast time gap between the eras inhabited by the two theorists is meant to bring out both the correspondingly vast differences in their respective political theories as well as what they may share in common. Both the sections, therefore, follow the same format so as to facilitate better comparison and to keep the thesis condensed. The chapter structure is as follows: having sketched out the state of nature, I proceed by means of an outline of the model of Man each theorist sketches, and conclude with an account of the passage of this pre-political Man into the political. The reasoning behind this is that my aim is to capture the essence of what each theorist considers humans to be like and how this consideration manifests itself in the political. The final section constitutes a deviation from the history of political thought. Specifically, it is an attempt to import evolutionary theory into the preceding discussions of the nature of Man. Evolutionary accounts hold that the human species spent ninety-nine percent of its time in a primitive, pre-political environment. In short, Man has evolved in a state of nature, which is precisely the starting point of the discussion in political theory. Thus, I provide an introduction to the basics of the theory by means of synthesis of the work of various evolutionists, and then proceed to show how it can be respectively reconciled with selected aspects of the Platonic and the Hobbesian accounts of Man. The focus is explicitly on recent findings in the field of evolutionary theory, and not on the history of the concept of evolution since Darwin. My overall intention is to show that not only can comparative history of political thought yield fresh insights, but that contemporary evolutionary theory can aid political theory to clarify and deepen its perception of its central subject: the human.
Robin Zebrowski, Beloit College
The Evolution of Experience and the Experience of Evolution: Revisiting Dewey’s Analysis of the Influence of Darwin on Philosophy
In 1910, John Dewey, one of the early American Pragmatists, wrote an essay called “The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy.” In 1925, he went on to write Experience and Nature, which expanded on many of the themes from the earlier essay. Now, nearly 100 years after Dewey’s analysis and 150 years after Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species, there is a renewal of the themes that Dewey explored occurring at the intersection of philosophy and cognitive science. Historically, mainstream philosophy of mind and cognitive science had very little to say about evolution. Whereas Dewey pointed out the incredible power of accepting change, process, and a rejection of final forms in relation to philosophy overall, philosophical theories of mind continued to respond to Descartes rather than Darwin. This has proven to be a rather costly error, keeping our notions of mind focused on some immutable, absolute core, preventing any significant progress in the philosophical conception of mind. However, in very recent years, philosophers and cognitive scientists are increasingly becoming dissatisfied with this antiquated notion of mind and returning to Dewey’s analysis that emphasizes the Darwinian contribution to biology in relation to philosophy. In retrospect, it is astonishing that as biology and neuroscience developed complex histories of brain and body in interaction with the environment, philosophy as a field studying the mind proceeded as though immune to the same revisions. Minds remained somehow finished, final forms, even as we accepted and understood the evolution of brains and bodies. Dewey’s short 1910 analysis of what evolutionary theory would do for philosophy was, looking back, an anachronism: philosophy of mind was simply not prepared for the revolution required to account for Darwinian evolution, and therefore ignored Dewey’s contribution almost entirely. Thankfully, we can now look back to Dewey’s analysis of Darwin’s influence on philosophy and recognize just how powerful it was, and how useful of a guide it can still be for our current research projects in cognitive science. Accepting and understanding minds in relation to the evolutionary history of the brain, body, and environment provides us with cognitive scientific theories that are moving us in entirely new directions, exemplified by researchers such as Andy Clark, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, and Shaun Gallagher. Re-examining Dewey shows us why these theories are successful, and where we should be going next as our theories continue to evolve.
4.ii: The Devil’s Chaplain
Tuesday November 24, 11:00-12:30
Peter Sachs Collopy, University of Pennsylvania
Naturalizing Calvinism: The Darwinism and Anti-Evolutionism of George Frederick Wright
George Frederick Wright was an American Congregationalist minister, theologian, and geologist who lived from 1838 to 1921. In the 1870s and 1880s, Wright was a prominent theistic evolutionist who reconciled Darwinism with his Calvinist theology and collaborated closely with the similarly orthodox Harvard botanist Asa Gray. Wright argued in his writings that his conservative theological tradition had so much in common with Darwinism that the latter was "the Calvinistic interpretation of nature." He maintained not only that the two doctrines were compatible, but that they shared central themes and logical structures. Wright especially emphasized that theological objections to Darwinism applied also to Calvinism, and thus that the Darwinian "may shelter himself behind Calvinism from charges of infidelity." In addition to his natural theological writings, Wright made major contributions to glaciology during this period, tracing the extent of Ice Age glaciation from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. As a professor first of New Testament and then of The Harmony of Science and Revelation at Oberlin College, Wright passed on his reconciliationism to the next generation of Congregationalist ministers. At the turn of the century, however, Wright began to criticize both Darwinism in particular and evolutionary thought generally. Over the period from 1900 to 1912, he published three revisions of a forcefully anti-evolutionist article. He at first focused his attack on the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, but became more anti-Darwinian in each revision. Wright was also among the authors of a series of pamphlets entitled The Fundamentals, and thus a standard bearer for the conservative wing of American Protestantism that soon developed into the fundamentalist movement. The last version of his anti-evolutionist essay, titled "The Passing of Evolution," was published in The Fundamentals. Wright's ideas about Darwinism and Christianity changed dramatically over the course of his life, not only because he became more concerned about the place of orthodox Protestantism in America, but also because evolutionary and theological thought themselves evolved. In 1880 Wright perceived a number of similarities between Darwinian and Calvinist orthodoxies. By 1910 the roles of Darwinism in evolutionary theory and Calvinism in Protestant theology had diminished, and the common ground Wright staked out had eroded. It was in this new environment that Wright became an antievolutionist. This paper, then, is a study of science and theology as evolving elements in American thought and in the mind of George Frederick Wright.
Stephen D. Snobelen, University of King’s College
Theological Themes in Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859)
Charles Darwin began his Origin of Species with rhetorical quotations from classic works of natural theology and concluded this work with an allusion from the Bible to the Creator. Many other allusions to theological themes—some negative and some neutral and even positive—can be found in the pages of Darwin’s magnum opus. Beginning with a brief overview of Darwin’s family and cultural religious background, this paper identifies and analyses examples of theological language Darwin included in the Origin of Species. These include references to natural theology, criticisms of the design argument, discussions of natural evil, considerations of general and special providence and even more than one biblical allusion. Special attention is paid to the well-known allusion to Genesis 2 in the concluding sentence—an allusion that was strengthened with the insertion of the word “Creator” in the second edition—along with other pertinent references to the Book of Genesis. This paper argues that while some of the theological references are negative as Darwin criticises theological ideas he no longer accepts, other references are of a neutral or positive nature. The paper’s consideration of the theological themes in the Origin of Species will be bolstered with examples from Darwin’s other writings, including his personal correspondence and published works such as The variation of animals and plants under domestication (1868) and The Descent of Man (1871), both of which books conclude with theological themes. These examples show Darwin dialoguing with Paleyite natural theology as well as the Anglican and biblical theology of his youth and contemporaries. This paper suggests various cultural, conceptual and rhetorical reasons for the inclusion of theological language and themes in a book on biological evolution. Although no longer a Christian by 1859, the continued presence of theological themes in Darwin’s work helps suggest that religion—both positively and negatively—helped to shape in a small way the structure of his evolutionary thought.
Christopher diCarlo, University of Ontario Institute of Technology
The Zing of Perceived Control: Memetic Equilibrium and the Evolution of Religion
The purpose of this paper is to examine the origin and development of mythological and religious belief in light of currently known varying constraints on human cognitive evolution. In order to get a relatively clear picture of such constraints, we must attempt to faithfully and responsibly represent the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (or EEA). Since religious belief appears to be a relatively recent human invention, my analysis of the EEA shall be restricted mostly to the Upper Paleolithic period. This will involve considering several contributing factors such as hominid migratory patterns, food availability/acquisition, physiological changes (including gene mutations), meteorological/climatological and geographic changes, tool use and other artifact records e.g. objects of art, burial rituals, etc. After developing a representation of the type of environment in which our ancestors were evolving during this time period, I consider the evidence for the emergence of consciousness and language, the use of human reasoning skills, and specific neuro-endocrine factors, in an effort to develop a hypothesis regarding possible proximate causes of religious behaviour. I propose that religious belief developed as a memetic response to natural occurrences viz. the emergence of conscious symbolic representation in relation to currently evolved conceptual schemas and belief sets. As human consciousness evolved and developed, so too did our ancestors capacity to consider and attempt to solve environmental problems in more conceptually sophisticated ways. I believe it is epistemically responsible to make the claim that through gradual entrenchment and memetic patterns, these beliefs would have held influence over individual and group behaviour. Although I do not necessarily subscribe to either the internalist or externalist branches of memetics in general, I have found Dawkins’ term ‘meme’ to be quite useful in referring to all units of culture which include things like beliefs and their cultural transmission. Understood in this way, problem solving amongst a particular group, when considered satisfactory (whether real or imagined), often produces a feeling of environmental control, stability, in short – . But the payoff is not merely practical, providing purely functional utility–it is biochemical–and it comes in the form of neurotransmitters. The relationship between a gradually emerging conscious awareness and sophisticated languages in which to formulate representations combined with the desire to maintain biological equilibrium, generated the necessity for memetic equilibrium to fill in conceptual gaps in terms of understanding three very important aspects in the Upper Paleolithic: causality, morality, and mortality. The desire to explain phenomena in relation to maintaining survival and reproductive stasis, generated a normative stance in the minds of our ancestors—Survival/ReproductiveValue (or S-R Value). Those gaps most acutely relevant to their survival/reproduction capacities would have caused the greatest amount of stress (due to the potential decrease in S-R value and disequilibrium). We can make a relatively safe assumption, then, that once the capacity for conscious memetic gapfilling was possible, this would have been a powerful tool in dealing with natural environmental stress conditions. Attributing unseen forces to unknown causes (e.g. animism) may simply have been a cognitive and conceptual knee-jerk response to very powerful natural phenomena. And this does not mean that the beliefs to satisfy criteria which we, today, believe to be indicative of an epistemically responsible view of our world and ourselves. These mythological beliefs simply had to do the job in satiating the need to reduce stress levels among individuals, kin or groups and provide sthe illusion of increased S-R Value—in other words, provide the zing of perceived control.
4.iii: Laws of Evolutionary Economics
Tuesday November 24, 11:00-12:30
André Ariew, University of Missouri-Columbia
Darwin’s Invisible Hand?
SJ Gould, among others, have argued that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is structurally identical to Adam Smith’s laissez-faire economics. Gould argues for the structural identity or “isomorphism” (his word) on two grounds, historical and structural. Historically, Darwin was influenced by Smith’s work on
laissez-faire economics. Structurally, both are instances of “invisible hand” explanations whereby the collective effect—ecological harmony or well-ordered economy—emerges from individuals striving for their own personal ends with no mind to the collective effect. I wish to argue that Gould (and others, including Robert Nozick, who adopt roughly similar arguments) is misguided on both accounts. And the way that he is wrong informs us about some critical structural differences between Darwin’s version of evolution by natural selection and modern versions. Historically, Darwin’s theory is an outgrowth of his views on population growth in the “economy of nature” where “economy” pertains to a particular ecology, not human commerce. Structurally, Darwin’s theory of natural selection is not strictly an invisible hand explanation because Darwin was not postulating an emergentist or “epiphenomenal” (Gould’s word) explanation of collective order. More than individuals striving for their own reproductive ends, Darwin postulates as a necessary condition for natural selection a “universal” principle of excessive reproduction in the economy of nature. This is otherwise known as the Malthusian principle of population growth. The Malthusian principle is a condition external to individual strivings that is necessary to cause evolution by natural selection. Modern versions of natural selection selection, ever since R.A. Fisher, reject the Malthusian principle as a necessary condition for
natural selection. Consequently, modern versions of natural selection, rather than Darwin’s version, are closer in structure to “invisible hand” explanations.
Eugene Earnshaw-Whyte, University of Toronto
Breaking the Bonds of Biology: Natural Selection in Nelson and Winter’s Evolutionary Economics
Nelson and Winter’s An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (1982) was the foundational work of what has become the thriving sub-discipline of evolutionary economics. In attempting to develop an alternative to neoclassical economics, they looked to borrow basic ideas from biology, in particular a concept of economic ‘natural selection’. However, the evolutionary models they construct in their seminal work are in many respects quite different from the models of evolutionary biology. There is no reproduction in any usual sense, ‘mutation’ is directed as opposed to blind, and there is no meaningful distinction between phenotype and genotype. Despite these substantial departures from the conceptions of evolutionary biology, I argue that the ‘evolutionary’ economics of Nelson and Winter is indeed a legitimate extension of Darwinian evolutionary principles to a novel domain, and that the novel features of evolutionary economics models reflect the distinctive theoretical requirements faced by economists. I further contend that reproduction, blind variation, and the genotype/phenotype distinction are all inessential to evolutionary theory, and that their role in evolutionary biology is a domain-specific feature of biological theory specially.
Chris Haufe, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Darwin’s “Laws”
There is widespread agreement among contemporary philosophers of biology and philosophically-minded biologists that Darwin’s insights about the intrusion of chance processes into biological regularities undermines the possibility of there being biological laws. Darwin made not infrequent references to “designed laws.” He also freely described some laws as having exceptions. This paper provides a philosophical analysis of the notion of scientific laws that was dominant in Darwin’s time, and in all probability the one which he inherited. The analysis of laws is then used to show how it could have been natural for Darwin to believe in designed laws that had exceptions, and to highlight the continuity between the metaphysics of pre-Darwinian, Darwinian, and contemporary biological science. The result is a lack of motivation for the anti-laws sentiment in philosophy and biology.
5.i: It’s All in the Mind
Tuesday November 24, 15:30-17:00
Byron Kaldis, The Hellenic Open University
Species-Qua-Individuals and the Modularity of the Mind: The Saving Grace for Humans
In Darwin’s Origin an important injunction is at least twice underlined regarding the scope and target of evolutionary adaptation when he reminds us of a special interrelationship of species: “Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in any one species exclusively for the good of another species; though…one species incessantly takes advantage of, and profits by, the structure of another…[on the other hand, natural selection] can and does often produce structures for the direct injury of other species.”
Contemporary controversies about the reality of natural kinds cast widely enough to include scientific insights gained from recent developments in biology into otherwise one-sided metaphysical debates about kind-realism have undermined any straightforward belief in ‘cutting physical reality at its natural joints’ or faith in all sorts of ‘discriminatory classifications not of our own making’ or to use Whewell’s phrase written only a year after the publication of Darwin’s Origins “groups made by nature, not by mere definition”- though it has not so much undermined the optimistic search for it, underwritten by powerful or more sophisticated arguments hopefully waiting to be made at some point. Recent philosophy of biology has beaten other branches into denigrating a naïve belief in typological or ‘stuff” essentialism by debating the very concept of ‘species’ itself.
Two prominent recent positions are on the one hand, the familiar thesis about biological species properly construed as individuals rather as kinds, and on the other, the research programme(s) in favour of a modularity thesis (both in the case of the mind and in that of biological views of evolutionary development) the latter being standardly subdivided into the sub-thesis of the modular structure of the mental (dedicated information processing units) and into the sub-thesis that these units must be adaptations (evolutionary all the way).
The Darwinian-evolutionary pedigree of these two positions, taken separately, is undoubtedly important once the common core of adaptationism is isolated both externally in inter-species differential relationships as well as internally between two or more mental moduls developing differential or exclusive capacities. However the combination of these two position may pose intriguing problems the possible resolution of which may throw light on one specific sub case of the debate over ‘cutting nature at its joints’, namely the special case of human beings as cultural/social beings and possibly ‘cultural species’ as it has been argued by certain advocates of diversified evolutionary processes that bar any unified adaptationist conception allegedly suitable for human/cultural beings too. One of the leading presuppositions explicitly advanced by advocates of the species-qua-individual thesis is that their conception facilitates a general and universally applicable conception of evolutionary selection that, thanks to the abstract generality of its defined notions (e.g. ‘replicators’, ‘lineages’, etc.) expressly circumvents any biological reference markers (rigid designators) that would plague any such attempt by keeping it chained to the inescapable diversity of biological units (something they miss, however, is that this would make even mechanical nano-replicators candidates for such inclusion).
This paper explores the question as to what extent, and under what presuppositions, the two positions, species-qua-individuals and the modularity of the mind, can be made mutually compatible in an attempt to ascertain any possibly special case to be made in favour of a non-universal treatment of the evolutionary background of human beings. (a) One strategy the paper puts forward is to see to what extent the basically adaptationist argument of recent evolutionary psychology ignores factoring-in, in the evolutionary equation, inputs regarding the possible problems our mental mechanisms were adaptations for, when the description of these inputs cannot be given by any other channels than non-biological social sciences. (b) The second strategy is to check whether blocking the extreme adaptationist solutions advocated by orthodox modularity theses means that if such ‘fractured’ panglossianism were the functionalist antidote to stuff-essentialism that the debate about species-qua-individuals has been debunking, dropping it, too, pushes us towards such a conception. If we allow for non-adaptationist results (by diminishing the extreme evolutionary pretensions of the second modularity sub-thesis), not much is left for essentialism, even of the functionalist type; individual organisms as parts of a species-qua-individual must be accepted.
Alain Ducharme & Sheldon Chow, The University of Western Ontario
Keeping Darwin in Mind
Darwin was explicit that evolution via natural selection explains all biological phenomena, including the complex and mysterious nature of the human mind. The application of his theory of natural selection to the mind, however, is the most ill-received facet of Darwinism. Darwin received much opposition on this point in his own time, and the controversy is still alive today. We argue that human mind and cognition should not be excluded from an evolutionary analysis. Religious thinkers have most resolutely resisted the idea. Alvin Plantinga, for instance, is adamant that the mindless processes of natural selection cannot give rise to uniquely human features such as consciousness, meaning, and morality. This application of Darwin’s idea is even resisted by many other notable thinkers—both philosophers and scientists. Despite his scientific approach to language, Noam Chomsky is agnostic to the prospects of evolution. Borrowing from Chomsky, even Stephen J. Gould argues that natural selection is too feeble to account for uniquely human mental capacities (language is merely a spandrel). Some argue that consciousness, like language, could not have been selected for. Indeed, many contemporary philosophers think that consciousness is mysterious in principle, and science will never be able to demystify it. Until recently, the prevailing theory in psychology and philosophy had been that the mind is initially a “blank slate”, void of any content or structure. Research now strongly suggests that the human mind has innately rich structure and contents. What needs to be explained is how such structure and contents came to be. We argue that Darwin had it right: The best explanation is evolution through natural selection.
One application of Darwin’s ideas to human mind and cognition that has recently received much attention is the programme of Evolutionary Psychology. According to Evolutionary Psychology, the human mind is the product of a vast number of adaptations from our ancestral history. But Evolutionary Psychology has come under harsh criticism, mainly having to do with its accommodation and use of evolutionary concepts (such as fitness and adaptation), as well as its proposed ontology of mind. The central aim of our paper is to show that, notwithstanding criticisms militated against Evolutionary Psychology, applying Darwinian evolution through natural selection to the human mind remains a tenable research programme. Darwin himself saw the potential of how his own ideas may bear on the human mind: “In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation” (On the Origin of Species, 1859, p.488). We show, however, that applying Darwinian evolution to the human mind does not have to result in the programme of Evolutionary Psychology (with capital letters). We offer instead a modest view of how the human mind could have evolved through natural selection, given the available evidence. We conclude by identifying further hurdles that a respectable evolutionary psychology (sans capital letters) faces, and gesture towards potential ways to overcome them.
Steve DiPaola, Simon Fraser University
Darwin, Creativity, and Evolutionary Programming
Darwin's work into living things also extended into the more subtle areas of expressions and emotion as evidenced by his 1872 book, "Expression of the Emotions in Man & Animals". Can you model and gain insight into human expression and creativity using modern computation techniques based on Charles Darwin – both his namesake evolutionary
discoveries and portrait gaze? Cognitive scientist, Steve DiPaola, will discuss and demonstrate his work recently highlighted in the journal Nature, the MIT Museum and Cambridge University's Darwin Festival which combines research on human creativity with Darwinian evolutionary computer algorithms. The goal is to create computer algorithms that are creative on their own (for use in science, art and design) but in doing so learn more about what makes human’s creative.
5.ii: International Receptions
Tuesday November 24, 15:30-17:00
Paranbes Nath, Calcutta University
Darwin and India
After Newton's Principia a single book which had changed our views about natural science, society and man’s place in nature is The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin published nearly 150 yrs ago, in 1859. The central concept of the Origin is that species are evolved from a common ancestor by a process called natural selection (or survival of the fittest) and is not independently created. The argument of Darwin is a good approximation of Newton’s hypothetico-deductive ideal, not followed by other naturalist of the same period. The Origin in spite of being a scientific treatise nevertheless produced a sweeping influence in England. Few areas of thought and culture remained immune to its influence. The book also evoked enormous controversy. Darwinism was attacked, modified, ridiculed, and used not only by biologists but also by philosophers, priests, sociologists, warmongers, cartoonists, robber-barons, psychologists, novelists, and politicians of various stripes The socially dominant groups misused Darwin’s views to control others such as woman, other “races”, and socially backward classes. The Origin was translated in various languages including German and French within a couple of years after its publication. In Germany and France and in other parts of the world like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America the book also evoked tremendous impact. But it is indeed amazing to find that the impact of such a scientifically and socially revolutionizing book was not only negligible in India but remained so till its independence in1947. One of the factors which put up a barrier was prevailing colonial education system which mainly emphasised to produce bureaucrats to help to run the administration. The other most important factor was Hindu religion. The Hindu intelligentsia were of the opinion that the evolutionary theory of Darwin was not “New”- the Vedas long before Darwin had described evolution. Not only that the Hindu view of evolution was superior because that also considered the evolution of soul. The paper thus proposes that due to prevailing colonial education system and Hindu religion Darwinism had negligible impact in India during the period from 1859 to 1947.
Alex Levine & Adriana Nova, University of South Florida
The Fate of Darwinian Analogies in Latin America: The Reception of Darwinism in 19th Century Argentina
Famously, Darwin later described his Origin of Species as “one long argument from beginning to end.” But equally famously, philosophers of science, who make it their business to understand and explain the persuasive character of scientific arguments, have long had trouble reducing accounting for Darwin’s argument using any of their standard models. This difficulty dates back to Darwin’s contemporaries, including such noteworthy figures as William Whewell, John Herschell, and John Stewart Mill.
One explanation for our persistent failure to account for the success of Darwin’s arguments consists in the hypothesis that these arguments, rather than following some more familiar mode of inductive reasoning, must be understood as involving inferences from analogy. We argue that understanding such inferences, and their persuasive power in their particular scientific contexts, demands that we treat them as culturally situated. Much about them is revealed when we explore their removal from one cultural situation, and their transplantation into another. Our paper considers the fate of Darwin’s analogies when removed from the familiar context of Victorian England, and taken further afield than the equally familiar contexts of nineteenth century Europe and North America. We explore their transformation in nineteenth century Argentina.
This paper is thus an advertisement for the study of peripheral science, science at the geographical and cultural peripheries. Following such philosophers of science and historians as Max Black, Richard Boyd, and Nancy Leys Stepan, we identify a class of scientific analogies that constitute the very sciences they help to articulate. Studying how these analogies are transformed by a cultural context other than that of Europe or North America does much to illuminate the ways in which the interactions between scientific analogies and culture shape the scientific enterprise. Examples are drawn from the reception of Darwinism in nineteenth century Argentina, especially from the work of evolutionary theorist Florentino Ameghino.
Nolan Heie, Queen’s University
Albert Kalthoff, Entwicklung, and the “World View of Modern Man”
Charles Darwin’s ideas received a stormy reception from theologians in Germany during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was due in large part to the activities of Darwin’s most outspoken advocate in Germany, the marine biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919). In popular science books Haeckel not only rejected the Mosaic account of Creation but overtly ridiculed the Judeo-Christian conception of God as amounting to a “gaseous vertebrate.” In 1906 Haeckel and like-minded associates founded the Deutscher Monistenbund (German Monistic Alliance or DMB), with the stated goal of propagating a world view based on knowledge obtained from the natural sciences rather than alleged divine revelation. In the years leading up to the First World War the DMB became actively involved in the so-called Kirchenaustrittsbewegung or “church-leaving movement,” as members held information sessions on the formal procedure for renouncing one’s membership in the national churches. In light of this, it is somewhat surprising that Haeckel would have arranged for Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906), an Evangelical Protestant pastor at the St. Martini Congregation at Bremen, to serve as the first active president of the DMB, and indeed that the latter would have accepted the offer. This paper explores one facet of the clerical response to Darwin’s ideas in Germany by looking at Kalthoff’s association with Haeckel and the DMB. It will examine Kalthoff’s beliefs concerning the theological implications of recent discoveries in the life sciences. This will provide insight into the discussions that took place during the period between natural scientists and clerics over the place of religion in a world after Darwin.
5.iii: Fitness
Tuesday November 24, 15:30-17:00
Marshall Abrams, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Individuals Have No Fitnesses if Fitness Differences Cause Evolution
It's often claimed that:
(A) Natural selection is a cause of evolution.
(B) Natural selection is the result of (or is partly constituted by) differences in fitness between two or more alternative phenotypes or genotypes (or group types, etc.) in a population.
(C) Where fitness exists, each individual token organism (gene, group, etc.) has a fitness value specific to it.
Since it is types (e.g. genotypes, phenotypes) which are heritable and which can persist beyond the death of any individual, (B) requires that types have fitnesses. Many authors thus claim that:
(D) The fitness of a type is the average of the individual fitnesses mentioned in (C).
I argue that given (A) and (B), it's most reasonable to deny (C) and (D): That is, type fitness is not an average of individual fitnesses, which don't exist in any event. I believe that (C), which has its roots in Darwin's work, has generated confusion about the nature of fitness and natural selection.
I argue that:
(E) Only types (phenotypes, genotypes, etc.) have fitnesses.
I argue further that legitimate roles which individual fitness was thought to play can be captured by holding that:
(F) A population's state is defined by numbers of realizations of a set of alternative types.
This idea—which is not the same as attributing fitnesses to fully-realized individuals—has generally not been a part of thinking about microevolution.
In more detail, I argue (using "organism" as a stand-in for any entity with heritable types):
If token organisms had fitnesses that differed between organisms with the same heritable type in the same environment, these fitnesses would not be heritable (but see below).
As I've argued before, we can't define a type's fitness as the average of tokens’ fitnesses (except to motivate certain models): The fact that organisms can experience variations in environmental circumstances by chance means that averages of such individual fitnesses could vary wildly in arbitrary ways. Fitnesses should not do that, however, if natural selection is a cause of evolution (A). Thus fitness attaches to types and not to token organisms. (F) then allows us to preserve what was correct about the individual fitness view.
One might argue in response that fitnesses of individuals must be capable of differing in different environmental circumstances. After all, models that assign different fitnesses relative to different patches within an environment provide prominent explanations of polymorphisms, and there are systematic relations between, e.g., numbers of seeds produced by cloned plants as a function of soil type.
I grant that fitnesses of types can be conditional on such "subenvironments", but only where there is a significant probability that members of the population would experience a given subenvironment repeatedly. Such a subenvironment must abstract from any particular circumstances that would likely be unique to a given token organism, since fitnesses determined by circumstances unlikely to be experienced by multiple organisms would not heritable, and thus couldn't be the basis of natural selection.
Kent A. Peacock, University of Lethbridge
The Three Faces of Fitness
The core of Darwin's doctrine is the idea of evolution of species by natural selection, which in modern terms can be understood as a recursive process in which variations in the traits of successive generations are amplified or damped by feedback from the environment. Fitness from this point of view is simply whatever (beyond pure luck) allows an organism to withstand or benefit from the feedback. The phrase ?survival of the fittest? was due to T. H. Huxley, and following his infamous description of animal life as a ?gladiator?s show? fitness came to be thought of purely as competitive ability. In recent literature fitness is sometimes defined tautologically as nothing more than reproductive success: the fittest are by definition those who survive. Somewhat less tautological are the various quantitative measures of fitness defined as functions of the success of an organism in propagating its genes or in producing offspring in comparison with other organisms. These notions of fitness are useful but also tendentious at least insofar as they are presumed to provide complete accounts of fitness, since they make sense only on the assumption that winning survival strategies are competitive. If one wants to understand why some organisms flourish and others do not, it is essential to look behind the phenomenology of fitness and inquire into those dispositions and traits that conduce to survival or reproductive success. There are three sorts of tendencies that conduce to fitness in importantly different ways. Obviously there are circumstances in which the ability to compete with other organisms for a larger slice of a pie of fixed size is the dominant factor in survival. However, the ability to cooperate can be at least as relevant to survival as the ability to compete in many ecological contexts. It is insufficiently appreciated that there is a third mode in which organisms can increase their survival probabilities. Just as the abilities to either compete for or share a pie of fixed size can be decisive to survival, organisms also have a crucial ability to enlarge the ecological pies upon which they depend. This fact has been largely overlooked in the evolutionary literature even though its essential biophysics and evolutionary significance were outlined by Lotka in 1922. Let us call an organism?s ability to enlarge the carrying capacity of its supporting ecosystems constructive or Lotkan fitness. This can be understood thermodynamically as the ability to enlarge the energy-circulating capacity of an ecosystem. An organism that does this could end up with its gene frequency unchanged but its probability of survival enhanced since it would have increased the total carrying capacity of its ecosystem. Photosynthesizers and other autotrophs are obvious candidates for organisms that are fit in the Lotkan sense, but any organisms, including heterotrophs, can exhibit Lotkan fitness if they have some mechanism for channeling external flows of free energy into their ecosystems. There are thus three components to fitness: the ability to compete, the ability to cooperate, and the ability to construct. I will conclude by examining the prospects for the human species in the light of these considerations.
5.iv: Language and Logic
Tuesday November 24, 15:30-17:00
Alexander G. Yushchenko, Kharkov State Polytechnic University
Logics & Ethics of Evolution from the Point of View of Evolutionary Theology
One can distinguish two meanings of the term “evolution theology”: a theology that accepts evolution theory and a theology that admits its own evolution on the way to God-knowledge. The most consistent theology based on both evolutionary principles is evolutionary Christianity. Its paradigm has been enunciated in the doctrine of the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and was further developed in the works of the Orthodox priest Alexander Men. This direction in human thought can be characterized as a synthesis of science and religion that is carried out despite their historic opposition resulting from a number of objective reasons. Thus we see the megasynthesis as universal spiritual matter that evolves according to anthropic principles and synchronously prepares a) huge energy sources – stars surrounded with planetary “eggs” comprising the initial organic “soup” as well as b) germs of life – proto-DNAs (or RNAs), elementary replicators, in which – according to the cosmology principle – the replication property of the Universe is informationally reproduced in the current psycho-physical cycle. Evidently, the conditions leading to development of new species occur when intra-species competition exceeds the inter-species one. That all resembles an archive file self-extracting to some media for which the archive can even adapt. The chemical basis of life on Earth (namely, gene replication and gene-guided synthesis of protein “suits”, i.e. organisms) – as has been already noticed long ago – is in its essence a system of complex programs In spite of the random character of mutation, crossover and inversion – the genetic operators creating new information structures of DNA and hence the protein structures synthesized by the latter -- , the pronounced regular nature of evolution is ensured by natural selection granting survival to the “most fit” individuals. The most adapted biological form turns to be the most cephalized one, i.e. Homo sapiens along with some higher Cetaceans. This means that intelligence is the most perfect mechanism for survival since it accelerates the search for favorable “informational mutations” in psychic reality. This was an outline of the mechanism of God’s technology for creating a living being “in the image and likeness of” the creator, endowed with soul, intelligence and creative abilities, i.e. capacity to change the world. All these features, being developed to perfection, ensure realization of the anthropic principle. It seems that development of planetary intelligence will be carried out both in direction of most cephalised biological forms and in integration of natural and artificial intelligences (humankind kyborgisation). The necessity of human – dolphin interspecies intellectual interactions is understood as the regular stage in the integration of the noosphere superconsciousness.Co-operation between living organisms in biotsenoz, which shows up through their instincts (or reflexes), in a mathematical plan is their optimization on a genetic information base in space of planet on the temporal interval of existence of life. Therefore we can propose the concept of «ethics of genes» which forming «ethics of Nature», unlike «ethics of mimes» forming «ethics of Noosphere» during of ethnocultural historical process which has substantially more narrow «spatial» scopes of «psychical reality» and limited by time of existences of the civilized man. Comparing the scales of creative processes of Nature and human civilization, it is necessary to conclude that «ethics of genes» can serve as scientific basis of bioethics, complementary mystic experience of man (religions) and his moral search (philosophy and art).
Justin Humphreys, New School for Social Research
Darwin on Language
How precisely do we place language in the evolutionary context? If there is a language gene or particular region of the brain, how do we account for it in the evolutionary picture? If there is not a language gene, how is it that humans can use language while other species cannot? In linguistics and cognitive science, these questions have given rise in recent years to a great deal of debate. Similarly in philosophy, which has at times considered language as one of the defining characteristics, if not the defining characteristic of what it means to be human, the problem of language is no less pressing. This paper approaches the issue from the historical perspective. Beginning with Darwin’s thoughts on language and the challenges it presents to biology (and hence to his own discoveries), we consider his thoughts both on what language is and its particular place in the evolutionary theory. The bulk of the paper discusses Darwin’s ideas in their original context. Both his methodological outlook on the study of language as a biological phenomenon and his speculation on the prospects of future generations of scientists are considered. Of particular concern is the theory of language acquisition. How natural is language and how did Darwin account for the parts of language that arise from social interaction rather than from biology? In other words, since language lies at the border of the natural and the social, how does Darwin’s Theory of Evolution treat language and language acquisition? Furthermore, to what extent does Evolution treat language as something peculiar to the human organism? Towards the end of the paper, we raise the question of how Darwin’s ideas have been and can be applied to the modern study of language, particularly stressing the conflicts between the psychological-statistical approach to language acquisition and the formal, (‘generative’) grammatical approach to semantics. Both approaches have sophisticated methodologies but have sometimes been interpreted as resistant to evolutionary explanation. Ultimately, we argue that whatever approach is adopted, the significance of Darwinian evolution cannot be underestimated in the study of human language.