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SUMMARY:The Boundaries of Darwinism - Professor John Dupre\, University of
  Exeter
DTSTART:20090306T173000Z
DTEND:20090306T183000Z
UID:TALK13705@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Janet Gibson
DESCRIPTION:‘Darwinism’ is often associated with a quite narrowly defi
 ned scientific picture.  Central to this are the view of evolution as chan
 ge in the frequency of genes\; evolution as overwhelmingly driven by compe
 titive natural selection\; and the assumption that living things can be ar
 ranged on a branching tree the branches of which are genetically isolated 
 from one another.  I believe that this picture has largely outlived its us
 efulness\, and that evolutionary theory is in the midst of a period of rad
 ical rethinking that is shifting the boundaries of how we understand evolu
 tion.  In this lecture I shall focus on the growing realisation of the imp
 ortance of cooperation in evolution\, an idea that has often been sideline
 d by an excessive emphasis on competition.  Mutualism and symbiosis\, late
 ral exchange of genes and endosymbiosis\, in which one biological entity i
 s integrated into another\, and the evolution of many forms of sociality\,
  are among the phenomena that can be included under the concept of coopera
 tion\, and which have played a fundamental role in evolution.  \n\nTwo con
 clusions follow from the rapid changes that evolutionary ideas are current
 ly undergoing.  First\, I suggest that we should adopt a much more open-en
 ded conception of Darwinism.  It is hardly a compliment to one of our grea
 test scientists that we should tie his name to a frozen and dogmatic conce
 ption of a scientific theory that we are rapidly leaving behind.  Moreover
 \, though unsurprisingly there are many scientific advances that Darwin co
 uld not have foreseen\, today’s topic\, cooperation\, is one in which he
  took a major interest\, but which has largely remained a mystery to a nar
 row view of Darwinism.  However\, I assume that Darwin would have been del
 ighted that evolutionary science had progressed far beyond his first found
 ational conclusion.\n\nSecond\, and turning to a different sort of boundar
 y\, Darwinism in the narrow sense is widely advertised as providing us ins
 ights into human nature and even\, consequently\, the way we should live. 
  I think particularly of the school of so-called Evolutionary Psychology. 
  Basing our self-conception on increasingly obsolete understandings of sci
 ence is clearly a bad idea and illustrates where we should draw firm bound
 aries to Darwinism in the narrow sense even as we expand them in the sense
  above.  However as a young but developing science\, and if understood in 
 a properly cautious way\, Darwinism may indeed be expected gradually to pr
 ovide us clearer insight into what it is to be a product of the evolutiona
 ry process and\, more specifically\, what it is to be human.\n\nBiography\
 n\nJohn Dupré is a philosopher of science whose work has focused especial
 ly on issues in biology.  He is currently Professor of Philosophy of Scien
 ce at the University of Exeter and since 2002 he has been Director of the 
 ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis). He has formerly held posts a
 t Oxford\, Stanford\, and Birkbeck College\, London.  In 2006 he held the 
 Spinoza Visiting Professorship at the University of Amsterdam. His publica
 tions include The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disu
 nity of Science (Harvard\, 1993)\; Human Nature and the Limits of Science 
 (Oxford\, 2001)\; Humans and Other Animals (Oxford\, 2002)\; and Darwin’
 s Legacy: What Evolution Means Today (Oxford\, 2003).  Most recently he ha
 s co-authored Genomes and What to Make of Them (Chicago\, 2008) with the d
 istinguished sociologist of science\, Barry Barnes.\n\n
LOCATION:LMH\, Lady Mitchell Hall
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