The science and philosophy of evolutionary theory
March 29, 2018
Prof. Massimo Pigliucci
One often hears talk of ‘paradigm shifts’ in science in general and in evolutionary biology in particular. In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion about the differences between the Modern Synthesis of the 1940s and ‘50s and various proposals for an Extended Synthesis that accommodates novel empirical discoveries and conceptual advances made over the past several decades. But is the Extended Synthesis an example of paradigm shift in biology? What is a paradigm shift, anyway? In this talk I present two major examples of theoretical transitions in biology – the move from natural theology to Darwinism and the move from the Modern to the Extended Synthesis – and defend the view that the first but not the second one represented a genuine paradigm shift, arguably the only time in the history of biology in which any such shift has occurred.
Bio
Prof. Massimo Pigliucci has a PhD in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Tennessee. He currently is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His research interests include the philosophy of biology, the relationship between science and philosophy, the nature of pseudoscience, and the practical philosophy of Stoicism. Prof. Pigliucci has been elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science “for fundamental studies of genotype by environmental interactions and for public defense of evolutionary biology from pseudoscientific attack.”
