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SUMMARY:Mass extinctions and other evolutionary myths - Professor Simon Co
 nway-Morris\, Department of Earth Sciences
DTSTART:20161019T170000Z
DTEND:20161019T180000Z
UID:TALK68266@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:46129
DESCRIPTION:You have to admire the physicists: in the last twenty years th
 ey have managed to mislay about eighty percent of the visible universe and
  are reduced to muttering about "dark matter" and other such arcana. Lucky
  them\; they have work to do. In contrast evolutionary biology seems to ha
 ve hit the buffers: lots of activity but where are the big ideas? So time 
 to dismantle a few areas of received wisdom. Things like mass extinctions\
 ; do they really radically reset the evolutionary agenda? On the contrary\
 , they accelearate the inevitable. Extraterrestrials? Of course they exist
 \, but Enrico Fermi (he of the Paradox) saw a major problem. In fact we ar
 e "alone"\, but not quite in the way you might think. Consciousness? All i
 n the brain? If you believe that you'll believe anything\; the test case i
 s mathematics (or language\, or music\, or poetry......).
LOCATION:Fisher Building\, St John's College
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