03.02.09

Rome conference on evolution

Posted in Evolution at 3:45 pm by nemo

I am relinking to the Scoop article on the coming Rome conference on evolution. We shall see whether the Altenberg conference, last year, and this new one, et al., will be able to create a shift in the paradigm of biological evolution.
Unfortunately, from what I have seen I don’t think these innovations, despite their importance, are sufficient. And the eminence grise atmosphere of Rome and the Vatican will have–what effect?

We need a paradigm like that of the eonic effect/model which is a way to free history from stupid theories, Darwinian or otherwise, and to find ‘evolution’ there in terms that don’t invoke more stupid theories. The eonic model works because it takes advantage, not of what we claim to know, but of what we don’t know: The material on the eonic effect foots the bill for a practical way to take human evolution, and strikes paydirt by finding a Kantian framework associated with ‘what we don’t know’, leaving us with a suspicion that what we see on the surface of evolution in space-time hides a deeper aspect corresponding to the Kantian phenomenon/noumenon.

The eonic model provides a basis for looking at the historical in relation to the evolutionary, the freedom aspect in relation to the causal, and much else.

I put this here because these conferences are going to welsh on real change as compromises and PR take over.
And I could be wrong: it is important to follow these developments in any case despite one’s disappointment that the projected paradigm shift is likely to prove abortive, or a con, or more papers in journals.

The Darwin fanatics, we can be sure, won’t listen. they have the media clout to ignore all innovations for as long as they please. So what will these innovators do in this case?

The Rome Abstracts: “Evolutionary Mechanisms”
Saturday, 14 February 2009, 11:44 am
Article: Suzan Mazur
The Rome Abstracts: “Evolutionary Mechanisms”
By Suzan Mazur
Why have the two major evolution conferences of the year (this and last) been hosted outside the United States? In July 2008, we had Altenberg, Austria and the “Extended Synthesis”, and on March 3-7, 2009 in Rome, “Biological Facts and Theories: A Critical Appraisal 150 Years After The Origin of Species” under the patronage of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
The March conference will reconsider “issues surrounding evolutionary biology” and topics such as evolutionary mechanisms (a full day of talks), human origins, and the philosophical and theological aspects of evolution, with dozens of the most substantial evolutionary thinkers on Earth present. It is a collaboration of the University of Notre Dame and the Pontifical Gregorian University. But why couldn’t such an event take place in Indiana?
And while there has been some discussion about streaming the meeting live on the Internet, PGU organizers have advised that the conference abstracts presented to the media this week were in Italian, meaning the English-speaking world may not be getting the message of just how central evolutionary mechanisms are to this highly important conference. Nor that scientists who will speak about evolutionary mechanisms think Darwinian natural selection should be relegated to a significantly lesser role.

So I asked the following scientists who are presenting in the “Evolutionary Mechanisms” sessions if they’d share their abstracts — in English. They are: Stuart Newman — New York Medical College; Scott Gilbert (Rome conference scientific committee) — Swarthmore College; Stuart Kauffman (Rome conference scientific committee) — University of Calgary and Harvard University; Lynn Margulis — University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Oxford University; Robert Ulanowicz — University of Maryland; Jeffrey Feder — University of Notre Dame; Francisco Ayala — University of California-Irvine; Jean Gayon — Universite Paris. Their abstracts follow.

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