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SUMMARY:Universal Darwinism: A Health Check at Forty - Professor Tim Lewen
 s\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
DTSTART:20210324T000000Z
DTEND:20210324T000100Z
UID:TALK157000@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Beverley Larner
DESCRIPTION:In his ‘Universal Darwinism’ paper of 1983\, Richard Dawki
 ns argued that only ‘Darwinian selection’ is ‘in principle capable o
 f doing the job of explaining the existence of adaptive complexity’. The
  question of whether natural selection should have an explanatory monopoly
  on adaptation remains a live issue nearly 40 years later. It is\, for exa
 mple\, one of several topics under dispute in the context of ongoing calls
  for an ‘Extended Evolutionary Synthesis’. In this talk I explain the 
 strong appeal of Universal Darwinism\, before assessing it using a series 
 of examples from evolutionary biology\, cultural evolution\, and machine l
 earning. I argue that adaptation always required some interplay between va
 riation and selection\, at some point in the history of the adapted system
 . But it is worth adding discipline to this informally stated position. Th
 ere are important explanatory differences in how reproductive processes br
 ing about adaptation in organic media\, and how other processes bring abou
 t adaptation in reconfigurable systems such as neural networks and cultura
 l groups. In short\, the position of Universal Darwinism only survives scr
 utiny if its key claims are understood in hedged\, vague or loose ways.
LOCATION:YouTube link to be confirmed
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