[SydPhil] HPS Research Seminar, Monday 4 November 2024 at 5.30pm

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School of History and Philosophy of Science
RESEARCH SEMINAR
[The University of Sydney]
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Is there a respectable broader notion of the Major Transitions?

Rachael Brown (Australian National University)


Dates: Monday, 04/11/2024
Time: 5:30pm
Venue: F23.01.104 Michael Spence Building Auditorium (1) 104
How to register: Free, no registration required

Abstract: The decades since Maynard-Smith and Szathmáry's The Major Transitions in Evolution (1995) have seen evolutionary events ranging from the origin of hot-bloodedness (Araujo et al. 2022), to the origin of human cultural groups (Szathmáry 2015),and the biological oxygenation of the Earth (O'Malley & Powell 2016) labelled as"major transitions". So disparate has the range of evolutionary events become that some (e.g., McShea & Simpson 2011) question the value of “major transition” talk altogether. Others (e.g., Herron 2021, Okasha 2022) argue we should limit the label "major transition" to only those events concerning the origin of new types of evolutionary individual. In this paper, I attempt to walk the middle ground between these two extremes, exploring the respectability of a broader notion of the Major Transitions based in evolvability. Ultimately I argue for a type of pluralism: there are several types of "major transition", which are of value in discussions of macroevolutionary patterns and the contingent nature of evolution.

Bio: Rachael Brown is a philosopher of biology with a particular interest in the evolution of cognition and behaviour, the role of development in evolution, and the methodologies of the life sciences. Rachael is the Director of the Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences and an Associate Professor in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University.

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