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SUMMARY:Jules Macome: Against Epistemic Pessimism in Origins of Life Resea
 rch - Jules Macome (Cambridge History and Philosophy of Science)
DTSTART:20250529T100000Z
DTEND:20250529T110000Z
UID:TALK229702@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Paul B. Rimmer
DESCRIPTION:In person.\n\nEpistemic pessimism\, the idea that there are fu
 ndamental barriers to the possibility of explaining an event\, has been ex
 pressed under various guises in the context of the origin of life since th
 e inception of the field. In this talk\, I unpack three ways in which the 
 epistemic pessimists' argument has been mounted. The first claims that the
  origin of life cannot be explained because it is a unique event\, which h
 inders researchers' ability  to formulate generalizations about it. The s
 econd claims that the origin of life cannot be explained because it left n
 o traces. Unlike palaeobiological research\, origins of life researchers h
 ave no direct fossil evidence to work as 'smoking guns' (i.e.\, to verify 
 one hypothesis about the origin of life over another). The third claims th
 at the origin of life was a highly unlikely combination of events\, making
  it impossible to recover the sequence of events leading up to life. I sho
 w how each argument fails. An upshot is that appeal to god-of-the-gaps or 
 alien-of-the-gaps style arguments as possible explanations for the origin 
 of life is unnecessary and unwarranted. 
LOCATION:Battcock\, Room F17
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