Forthcoming event: 27th and 28th March 2024
Overview: Fitness is one of the most fundamental concepts in evolutionary biology, as it is intimately connected with evolution by natural selection. Despite this, the fitness concept is rather elusive, as a number of authors have noted, seemingly lacking a fully general, precise definition. Indeed, it is unclear whether it is right to speak of a single fitness concept at all. There is a large literature in evolutionary biology dealing with how fitness should be defined in different circumstances, and a parallel literature on fitness in philosophy of biology. However these two literatures are less well integrated than they should be. The aim of this workshop is to further the integration.
We plan to make this workshop hybrid - please email Charlotte (cw1658@bristol.ac.uk) to request the joining link.
Programme
Wednesday March 27th
9.00 – 9.15 Introduction
9.15 – 10.15 Hanna Kokko (Zurich)
10.15 – 11.15 Alan Grafen (Oxford)
11.15-11.45 coffee
11.45 – 12.45 Samir Okasha (Bristol) and Bengt Autzen (Cork)
12.45 – 1.45 lunch
1.45 – 2.45 Grant Ramsey (Leuven)
2.45 – 3.45 Ellen Clarke (Leeds)
3.45 – 4.00: coffee
4.00 – 5.00 Sean Rice (Texas Tech)
Thursday March 28th
9.15 – 10.15 Andy Gardner (St Andrews)
10.15 – 11.15 John McNamara (Bristol)
11.15 - 11.45 coffee
11.45 – 12.45 Mauricio Suarez (Madrid)
12.45 – 1.45 lunch
1.45 – 2.45 Hannah Rubin (Missouri)
2.45 – 3.45 Thomas Hansen (Oslo)
3.45 – 4.00: coffee
4.00 – 5.00 Marshall Abrams (Birmingham, Alabama)
The 'Representing Evolution' reading group takes place bi-weekly at the University of Bristol
Veit, W. Complexity and the Evolution of Consciousness. Biol Theory (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-022-00407-z [Open Access]
Okasha, S. Goal Attributions in Biology: Objective Fact, Anthropomorphic Bias, or Valuable Heuristic? (Forthcoming)
Suárez, M. (2010). Scientific representation. Philosophy Compass, 5(1), 91-101. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00261.x
Godfrey-Smith, P. (2006). The strategy of model-based science. Biology and Philosophy, 21(5), 725-740. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-006-9054-6.
Picturing Weismannism: A Case Study of Conceptual Evolution
by Griesemer and Wimsatt
Olson, M. E., Arroyo-Santos, A., & Vergara-Silva, F. (2019). A user’s guide to metaphors in ecology and evolution. Trends in ecology & evolution, 34(7), 605-615. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.03.001
Cognitive bias (article by Varella, M.A.C. (2018) “The Biology and Evolution of the Three Psychological Tendencies to Anthropomorphize Biology and Evolution”, Frontiers in Psychology 9, 1839
Gonzalez Galli, L. M. and Meinardi, E. N. (2011) “The Role of Teleological Thinking in Learning the Darwinian Model of Evolution”, Evolution: Education and Outreach 4, 145–152. https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-010-0272-7
“Two-Thousand Years of Stasis”: How Psychological Essentialism Impedes Evolutionary Understanding by Susan A. Gelman and Marjorie Rhodes. https://academic.oup.com/book/12041/chapter/161342831
-Sober, Elliott. 2001. “The Two Faces of Fitness.” In Thinking about Evolution: Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspectives volume 2
-Hansen TF. On the definition and measurement of fitness in finite populations. J Theor Biol. 2017 Apr 21;419:36-43. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2016.12.024
G. Wagner, The Measurement Theory of Fitness. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00909.x
J. Brommer, "The Evolution of Fitness in Life-History Theory" (attached).
Abrams M (2012) Measured, modeled, and causal conceptions of fitness. Front. Gene. 3:196. doi:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2012.00196/full
Sterelny, K. (2017). Cultural evolution in California and Paris. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 62, 42–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2016.12.005
Lewens, Tim, 'What is Cultural Evolutionary Theory?', Chapter 1 Cultural Evolution: Conceptual Challenges (Oxford, 2015; online edn, Oxford Academic, 17 Sept. 2015), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199674183.003.0002
Godfrey-Smith, Peter, 'Cultural Evolution', Chapter 8 Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (Oxford, 2009), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199552047.003.0008
Talks from members of the 'Representing Evolution' project
"Animals, Compassion and Conservation
Ethics and Scientific Methods Relating to Wild Animals, Their Welfare and Conservation"
7th-9th of February 2023
Talk "Counting positive wild animal welfare" by Dr. Heather Browning and Dr. Walter Veit
Samir Okasha, Feb 2nd 2023, The Significance of Mendelism for Evolutionary Theory", Mendel at 200 webinar series, MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, Bristol University. https://www.bristol.ac.uk/integrative-epidemiology/seminars/mendel_200/mendel-at-200-webinars/
Video of the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OSAq0opYSs
“Should cancer be viewed through the lens of social evolution theory?"
https://www.philinbiomed.org/event/arcachon-cancer-and-evolution/:
Expert Workshop on Anya Plutynski's Making Sense of Disorder, London School of Economics, Nov 1st 2022:
"Cancer, Causality and Evolution: some reflections on Anya Plutynski's Understanding Cancer".
"Life history theory as the teleonomic theory of the organism"
Since its original conception in the mid-90s (Maynard Smith and Szathmary 1995) the idea of major evolutionary transitions has undergone evolutionary trajectories of its own. While the original formulation targeted a conjunction of events where new units of organisation evolve out of pre-existing ones, and events and where new modes of transferring information across generations evolve (Szathmáry 2015), later formulations have tended to be more coherent in explanatory targets as well as explanatory models, at the cost of scope. Particularly representative here is the derived concept of Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality, which focuses on the evolution of new biological individuals from pre-existing ones (Michod and Herron 2006, Bourke 2011, Calcott and Sterelny 2011, Birch 2017, Okasha 2022) and the closely-related debate around what biological individuality is (Clarke 2010, Pradeu 2016). This remains a lively area of debate within theoretical biology and philosophy of biology, and it continues to inspire similar research outside the realm of biology.
The purpose of this workshop was to stimulate discussion on the topic of major transitions in cultural evolutionary theory (Jablonka and Lamb 2006, Hodgson and Knudsen 2010, Waring and Wood 2021). While the prospects of applying the major transitions framework seem promising, given increasing hierarchical complexity in sociocultural systems over the course of their evolutionary histories, the approach faces challenges. For instance, how should we understand the central concepts of major transitions in biology? How do (or can) these concepts apply in the case of sociocultural processes? What explanatory benefits does major transition thinking offer in biology, and do these benefits transfer when applied to culture? The aim was to interrogate issues in major transitions thinking in biology, and assess the prospects of applying this thinking to sociocultural change.
Speakers:
Samir Okasha
Ross Pain and Christine Balasa
Arsham Nejad Kourki
Richard Moore
Eva Jablonka
Tim Waring
Azita Chellappoo
Adrian Currie and Tyler Brunet
Daniel Lawson
Rachael Brown
Maureen O'Malley
Matthew Herron
David Harrison
Ellen Clarke
Ceri Shipton
Monique Borgerhoff-Mulder
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement number 101018533). All project outputs are published Open Access.
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