Next Thrusday 28 November 2019 12:00 am at Seminar room - SS6 (institutes building floor -1), Erik Svensson (University of Lund - Sweden) will give a Seminar on "Adaptation without natural selection: a critique of some current evolutionary thought".
SEMINAR(i): Adaptation without natural selection - a critique of some current evolutionary thought.
WHO?: Erik Svensson (Lund University - Sweden).
LANGUAGE?: English.
WHEN?: Thursday 28/11/2019 - 12:00 am.
WHERE?: Seminar room - SS6 (Institutes building floor -1)
ABSTRACT:
I will critically evaluate and discuss recent suggestions that evolutionary biology needs "major reform" or "significant extension" and that there is soon a "paradigm shift" to be expected, based on research on developmentsl plasticity, non-genetic inheritance, niche construction and other phenomena. I trace the historical roots to such unsubstantiated claims back to the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and argue that these arguments are based on a conflation of source laws and consequence laws (as defined by philosopher Elliott Sober). I further criticize frequent claims that the Modern Synthesis and "Neo-Darwinism" are equivalent phenomena, and argue that these claims reflect poor scholarship among many critics of modern evolutionary biology. Finally, I argue that the popularity of ideas about adaptation without a major role for natural selection are flawed and a contradiction in terms.
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