 I'm Christopher Donahue. I'm the historian of National Human Genome Research Institute. That's my honor and pleasure to open this conference focused on the work of David DePieu and the spirit of engagement, extension and critique. David did his graduate work at the University of Chicago, the new school for social research and the University of California at San Diego where he received his PhD. Since 2011, he is professor emeritus of communication studies in the project on rhetorical inquiry at the University of Iowa. David with John Jackson also presented as part of our history genomics program in 2019. Of David's many, many publications ranging from the complexities of Aristotle's contribution to the life sciences, to the richness and challenges to the evolutionary synthesis, to the political ramifications of modern day and ancient biology, the contiguity of this work emphasizes that problems, questions and quandaries in the history and philosophy of biology are neither understood well articulated without historical context, nor is historical context free to do its work without the precision of philosophy. Returning to themes two in David's work, there is a consistent drive to understand complexities and unsolved riddles, even in the most well-treaded accounts, be it in Darwin or Dubjanski. David is rightly adamant too, that contemporary philosophy of biology is in danger of losing its philosophical technology if it is neglectful of the conceptual richness and difficulty of prior history. Today we have six talks which will not only engage with David's work but which will draw upon larger themes and questions of this uvra. It is hoped therefore that today's meeting can be a way of engaging, not only with the history and philosophy of biology but with the history of that discipline itself to an engagement with a truly important figure, David Depew, within that discipline, thus serving as a model for how the discipline moves into another critical reflective period. And with that, David, over to you. I'm David Depew. I wanna thank all of the speakers in advance for agreeing to use my work at the intersection of history, philosophy and rhetoric of biology as a framework for our discussion. I'm also grateful to Christopher Donahue and his colleagues at NHGRI for organizing and this conference and for his generous introduction, overly generous. It's wonderful to see old and new friends here today. Your work, some of which has gone into my own, could just as well have been used as a scaffolding for raising important questions at the junction between evolutionary biology, technology, biotechnology and public policy. So our conference is a collective enterprise. I know that my own errors invite correction, supplementation and refutation and I'm eager to hear what you have to say. The context in which we are meeting presents very weighty issues. There is for one thing, a growing existential realization that climate change is upon us and that its effects are exponential and irreversible. For another breakthroughs in bioengineering, such as CRISPR technology, are occurring just as developmental biology, ecology and cognitive science are giving rise to a more complex picture of what organisms are and of how evolution works than we have been accustomed to relying on. This conjunction of new ways of intervening with new ways of representing gives fresh urgency to the geneticist, Theodosius Dubjansky's famous remark that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Finally, these challenges are taking place against the background of a political crisis in which the authority of science has been eroded just as when we need it more than ever. The authority of science and more generally sound norms and practices for establishing and interpreting facts was crucial to the formation and functioning of post-war democracies. The National Institutes of Health are a good example. Where would we be with COVID-19 without knowing what went into mRNA vaccines? And how could we learn about the ways of mRNA if we hadn't come to see how bacteria evolve defenses against viruses? George Santiana I think was not quite right to say that those who don't know the past are doomed to repeat it. Even in scientific matters, we usually come equipped with accounts of the past. Science educators have shown that even school children come to the scene of inquiry with preexisting proto theories inside of their heads that need correction and that gentle correction by exposing them and opening up their curiosity by exposing them to facts rather than pouring facts into what is often conceived as empty vessels, which they are not. The same, we're all in the same position, grown up or not. The trouble is that received historical commonplaces are often very poor guides to public policy. For example, understandings of Darwinism that were misunderstandings even when they first began circulating imprinted themselves on our society a long time ago. Even in the face of a century of steadily more powerful evolutionary science and I might add a golden age of the history of science, these old pictures of nature and society red in tooth and claw have been very hard to dislodge. In this discursive condition, how can we expect science communications to succeed responsibly in framing issues about how to apply new genetic technologies, some of which affect the germline? This is a definite challenge. My view, and I believe the tacit view of our conference is that we must revisit the history of biology in ways vivid enough to unearth and upend inadequate accounts of it, some of which I confess have lurked in the corners of my own mind, even when I didn't suspect it. It is in this spirit, I think, or something close to it that we will reframe topics as obscure as Aristotle's biology and political theory or as old fashioned as 18th and 19th century arguments about mechanistic materialism versus vitalism or as relevant today as the mid 20th century population genetics that did so much to undermine the presumed biological basis of racism or the crucial development of molecular genetics whose spectacular success has undermined the pictures of evolution it started with. We can move more sure, surely into the future if we undertake this kind of an inquiry. And I for one, I'm here to help us do it and to listen to how other people are addressing the issue. Thank you very much. I'm very much looking forward to this. So with this introduction in mind, I'd like to take the opportunity to field any questions from first our speakers. And I wanna particularly open with the idea that in order to address biological complexity and our changing understandings of the fundamental concepts of biology and genetics we really have to address in a much more complicated nuanced way even foundational fundamental discussions in the history and philosophy of biology. So any questions from the panelists first and Chris, you're going to discuss a little bit the Q&A feature for our audience. Yes, hi, I'm Chris Wetterstein part of the NHGRI History of Genomics program and I was just gonna make logistical notes so that we will be taking questions through the Q&A answer. The Q&A box part of Zoom and not the chat function. So folks should put their questions in there and then the moderators will pick them up to be asked of the panelists. We will of course use the chat function to chat and things like that but put your questions in terms of the presentations in the Q&A box. Thanks. Any opening questions or comments first from our speakers? I'd very much like to hear what other people thought of the way that Chris and I framed this. So Phil first. Yes, I'll make an initial comment. I thought first of all that was a very interesting framing of the questions and I think one of the interesting points and that's of course it's very much evident in your own work David is that to readdress and deal with many of these contemporary questions we're dealing with in the both the ethics of biology the use of technology and so forth. The questions of how we got here historically can be very interesting to deal with. I mean, it's a kind of history that helps us illuminate the present and why we're in certain kind of quandaries over either very highly theoretical issues like what is the species or some very technical questions like what is life and philosophical questions. So I think your work has opened up that very well and I think you're weighing which is not about reflection but I wonder if you had any further comments on that point David. No, but that's exactly what I was trying to get at but I should also say that the wide scope of this kind of inquiry and how this history is sentiment sedimented inside of our thinking, well even below our thinking level is actually I wanna give a shout out to Marjorie Green who had exactly who was my mentor and maybe and others of you too who had exactly that wide scope and I think she was a model for me of that. So I wanna make sure that we all remember her while we do this. So Charles, you had your hand up. Yeah, and I'm nodding at what David just said because I was going to mention Marjorie Green in fact which was, I was gonna say something like there's an obvious dimension which I suppose brings us all together some of us more than others in which I think David alluded to which is a kind of Gaillon, Depew, Sloan, historicity, richness of engaging with the history kind of perspective but that's like the obvious point. I was gonna say something slightly different and I was thinking of Marjorie Green in doing so which is there's a funny tension I think and my talk doesn't address this and I think David's opening remarks in a way did address him. So funny tension between the interests some of us have in studying sort of like reductionist and non-reductionist projects sort of holisms and organisms and vitalisms versus other projects and how those kinds of dichotomies or overlapping hybrid programs work there's a funny tension between that kind of interest and the more rationalist interest in where would we be if science and policy hadn't done X, Y and Z and it's not that they're contradictory it's that they tend to be narratives that go sort of on parallel tracks they don't often touch and I think Marjorie Green is probably one of the very few people ever who really had what's the metaphor who was sitting in both chairs who had her feet in both those worlds and I think her relation to Darwinism sort of says it in one sentence the relation to the more science friendly mainstream analytic often reductionist friendly way of approaching Darwin and her quote unquote Germanic philosophical work I mean, not just her heritage but that kind of Goldsteinian philosophical anthropology type work there that was my way of bringing Marjorie Green in too but thanks. So I see several questions in the chat box. Yeah, one question would be David what specifically did you mean with the when you said the success of molecular genetics as undermined the picture of evolution that they themselves started with could you elaborate a bit more give us some more details on that topic specifically? Yeah, I think in general you have to always remember that molecular genetics came out of an entirely different intellectual tradition from a natural historical tradition of evolutionary biology and you can watch the intersection of them in the early fifties with great interest and the general idea was, wow, this is wonderful we finally found the source of variation and then some worries began to creep in about whether or not this entails some kind of genetic reductionism and those worries have been with us ever since and the proof in the pudding would be what would happen when you had a real genetic revolution that would actually affect the gene line the germ line without undergoing all of the eugenic side of eugenic effects that were originally in the twenties associated with it well, we're there now we're getting on the edge of that and so at the same time so you have this roughly reductionist determinist view in molecular genetics that went into the rhetoric for instance of the human genome project in its early quest for funding like we're gonna give you your genome and then that's gonna be a picture of you and then if there's anything wrong, we'll fix it I was very successful in raising money especially after the collapse of the supercollider at about the same time which would have cost a huge amount of money and which was eventually done in Europe because you could say genome project, this is great in comparison, this is cheap and amazing thing there but what we've learned in evolutionary theory especially through the integration of evolution and development is that there are lots of determinants of what happens that are epigenetic as it's now called as a kind of general term and even the rise of possibilities of I wouldn't say direct influence of the environment on the germ line itself but pretty close to it where the manipulability conditions are not particularly genes but they are as Richard Luentum was always insisting they are environmental and require public policy that addresses those things that's kind of what I had in mind does anybody else wanna contribute to that? Well, I would also point out that the conditions behind the initial funding of the human genome project were quite complex there's a considerable amount of discussion around that so I think you do highlight some of the rhetoric and some of the initial aspects of a lot of the initial discussion was on development of central mapping and sequencing technologies without necessarily over an overarching conception of what precisely the HGP would produce other than better ways of investigating the genetic foundations of health and disease so I think there's a my work in particular tries to complexify for a wider audience some of the motivations and some of the contentions that went into the human genome project has a very programmatic emphasis on we would like to investigate certain problems in a better way and we have tools and methods that we think can become cheaper and more efficient and that was a lot of thinking about in a particular way some of the future applications that in many senses could help a lot of people with a fair degree of modest investment so I think for many people in the community that was a very specific way of thinking about the human genome project in really pragmatic terms that really emphasized some developing technologies some really fascinating studies that were done in the mid to late 80s with the idea that this could actually help a great deal, a number of people if some of these techniques could be basically brought into a more sort of scalable way so that would be my one comment so I think that's why writing the history of that period is so important, precise, yeah, right, yeah multiple rhetorics but I think the pragmatic aspects are really essential to keep in mind so Betty you had a question as well or a comment? I do and thank you David for remembering Marjorie Green I too count her as part of sort of my mentoring in history and philosophy of science when she was at Cornell if I understand the frame and the opening frame I would have to say that we need to know the history yeah that's the kind of argument that I make to my Dean who is a chemist all the time and of course I believe it, I'm a historian I'm not a philosopher, I'm a historian I believe that on the other hand it's not that simple because when you're dealing with the writing of history you have got all kinds of complexities and different kinds of narratives are very often told that happen to be equally legitimate it depends the sources who are you tracing when it comes to something like the evolutionary synthesis I just marvel at the range of interpretations that still exist and the disputes that are out there when I look at let's say as I will discuss in my own presentation when I look at advocates or proponents of the extended synthesis I don't understand the history that they're telling and I've been working in this area and I've lived the history of evolutionary biology so I think we ought to be absolutely we need to know the history but let's not presume that there is one well-defined history to be told I see Phil is nodding and to come to Philip Honenberg's question you know I am experiencing a real challenge trying to come up with a kind of a middle ground where I support science in all of these recent attacks but at the same time you know as a historian I see complexity and we don't always have the time to be explaining all the complexities when you're dealing with different kinds of popular audiences so Philip I think that's a really good question and a challenge that he has posed thanks yeah I would agree with that Betty I think one of the key tasks that we have as historians and philosophers is dealing with complexity dealing with historical complexity dealing with philosophical conceptual complexity communicating that complexity whether it be about population genetics like the biology development of sort of how science and technology interact as something as complicated as the origins and development of the human genome project in a way that audiences the general public the informed public can understand and I think at various times in the history of our profession we have done this better and in some cases have there have been sort of failings and false starts and I think this is you know the real union between the history of science and the philosophy of science and science communication and science education is something that I think is a continual issue and a continual and a continual dilemma because of precisely Betty that reduction that you're that you're considering and I also think that it has to do with sometimes a static notion of what we believe the the general public can understand which I think is very much a dynamic thing and I've always been of the opinion that the the public and that's a difficult thing to define can always understand more about the history of science and more about technical topics than and can be given credit for in certain situations that in fact the the more complexity we're able to give our audiences in a reasonable framework that better off we are because that way you can set essentially a a standard of basis of foundation from which to from which to develop a better understanding of key topics in the history of philosophy of biology. So Phil you had you had a comment or question? Yeah I wanted to follow up on that because I thought that was a very Betty has raised a very interesting and important point and I actually want to refer it back also to a distinction that I I got from something I wrote read of David's I can't cite the text and I think the difference between the history a really contextual history and what we might call genealogy and and I think that they have two different functions often when we're speaking with you know trying to deal with contemporary problems like what should we do about CRISPR we may be much more interested in the genealogy in other words trying to figure out given a particular complex question we have what are the things that have led us into that complex that's a kind of teleological view and that's I think that's a very different thing than sort of a bottom-up history that many of us deal with which immerses us in enormous complexities of different communities, different texts and documents and so forth so I do think that there's so much different different roles and I think particularly for discussing a lot of questions of contemporary relevance the question of genealogy can be more useful than I think sometimes the kind of deep contextual history we might write but David I think you've talked about that well actually the subtitle of Darwinism Evolving was a genealogy I know that's probably a natural selection but I got criticized first night for too much history not enough genealogy that people expected to be like Foucault which it isn't so we're scooting on the edge between those things but I think that's right I mean conditions of the possibility are what genealogies are and they accumulate and that's kind of my picture but I don't think you can do it right without detailed history either did I notice that there's two more chat questions one of them from Phil Holmberger yeah so we've we've had right so I think we've addressed Phil's question a little bit which is a much wider discussion I think we have time for one more question before we move to to Philip's talk and then that Q&A but I'm going to actually I'm just going to reference this what do David well what do the panelists think or what does David think in particular about sort of complex system dynamics and its relevance for the history and philosophy of biology for its relevance for contemporary evolutionary theory I think this is an interesting question a very broad question but something that we could probably address at least a little bit and say the next 90 seconds or so well I think we're going to keep it in mind because of the picture of this genealogy that has been orienting what I've done since I worked with Bruce Weber is that you know followed Darwinism went through a series of stages which have different conceptual foundations and that the general idea was that these stages depend on the kind of mathematics that you're using and that the statistical turn really saved Darwinism from extinction pretty much and then so now we have the system of complex the system dynamics which is actually going into the integration between development and evolution and ecology especially ecology and so I think we ought to bear that in mind in the conference that you're on the edge of whether you ought to think about the idea that once you have new mathematics you get control of something that you otherwise at first you thought was just irrational and you couldn't you couldn't deal with it and you find ways of coping with it and that's kind of the way I see complex system dynamic I don't see it as a worldview so much as a set of tools so yeah and there's always been in the history of biology this this relation of what is the relation of the part to the whole and I also think that increasingly now that discussion is resolving itself and what is the sort of complex system debate versus sort of individuals to to wider groups wider communities and the history of genetics and the history of social thought many many disciplines have tried to define what is the relation between the individual and the group and a lot of the 20th centuries is determined by various ways of answering this question but my my implication would be and I think yours is too that you might not you probably have some new tools available now to sort of make another run at that question of Holism and Partism okay so we are out of time and we have to move on to our first lecture from Philip Sloan so thank you very much thank you for the questions from the audience we will return with the Q&A shortly after Philip's talk Philip Sloan is professor emeritus in the program of Louisville Studies and the graduate program in history and philosophy of science at University of Notre Dame originally trained in biology and chemistry with a specialization in evolutionary biology in the deep sea his professional career has been devoted to the history and philosophy of the life sciences with publications on the history of evolutionary theory enlightenment natural history and recent genetics and molecular biology he is a fellow and past president of section L of the AAAS and a fellow of the Reilly Center for Science Technology and Values at Notre Dame Sloan's most recent books include creating a biophysics of life the three-man paper and early molecular biology and he is the main editor and contributor to Darwin in the 21st century I'm honored to be asked to contribute to this symposium on the work of David DePugue for commenting on such a prodigious body of scholarship that he has produced makes it difficult to know where to begin in selecting the topic of this paper I've taken my point departure two issues in his analysis of Darwinism one is his interpretation of Darwin's project in which Darwin is seen as having a genuine indeed a burning desire to find his theory of organic origins that conformed as far as possible to Newtonian cannons the second is David DePugue's analysis of the history of Darwinism as itself an evolving system of concepts that have changed over time in response to social and rhetorical and scientific communities that have surrounded his different formulations and that require discrimination if we were to understand what Darwinism means in any given context my focus in this paper is to look at some select elements in the development of Darwin's original theory that surround the attribution of Newtonian to his theoretical achievement while I agree that there are aspects of David's Darwin's reading Darwin's work with which I agree I also raised some cautions about this interpretation indeed need for caution is also illustrated in some of David's more recent discussions of issues of teleology and final causation with respect to Darwin's theory that's certainly amount to heresies in some circles but these allow us to find openings to new interpretation of Darwinism in light of more recent concerns with organismic and developmental biology my own specific interest is in seeing in the vital dimensions of Darwin's project issues that bear on his discussions of consciousness and human and animal relations and on the inner dimensions of living beings these themes explored in the last century in the writings of primarily German philosophers like Helmuth Plessler and Felix von Erkskuhl, Max Schaler and others and in important ways imported into anglophone discussions by David's collaborator Marjorie Green have not been typically discussed in anglophone circles this is indicated for these philosophers at least some of the problems in reading Darwinism as a solution to major questions of biology that reduce it to the application of paradigms of physics to the life sciences the renewed interest in these German reflections is an ongoing project taking place in present under the leadership of Lenny Moss, David, Depew and others including myself in this discussion I will first highlight some issues surrounding the early origins of Darwin's theory that shared to shape his original formulation of transformism that these are that I interpret as non-Newtonian origins of his theory secondly I will then examine the origin introduction of Newtonian dimensions into his work and the degree to which these warrant a Newtonian reading of his project finally I will discuss some of the continuities of his reflections on mind and nature and the descent of man with the earlier non-Newtonian layers of his thinking now to situate this discussion in a larger intellectual framework I will claim without attempts at documentation in this short talk at the general absence of genuine transformist theories in the history of life until the late 18th and early 19th century was a direct consequence of mechanistic and inert theories of matter that reflected the dominance of Cartesian and at least some readings of Newtonian natural philosophy the new transformisms of Hereter, the Mark, Schelling and others that could appeal to vital materialism or to the addition of special powers of matter or to appeals to dynamic Newtonian fluids to give its system its developing dynamism as Charles Wolfe has developed in the previous paper Darwin I will argue built his initial theory on a similar foundation but at a much more subtle level of argument so for some preliminaries what I will call the Beedle Drop backdrop I've after I've in other publications detailed some of the developments of Darwin's theory of life and matter during his Cambridge years of 1827 to 31 Cambridge was also the place of his initial encounters with the romantic philosophy of nature of Alexander von Humboldt these foundations constituted an early framework upon which he explored some limited questions of the relation of matter and life that we can follow into his discussions in the Beedle years what we find in Darwin's Beagle writings are not explicit theoretical discussions of vital powers or other obvious treatments of life matter question instead what we do encounter are two levels of discussion one can be seen in the more general Humboldtian reflections on the grandeur and luxurience of the living world and the vitality of nature that Darwin describes vividly in his first reflections occasioned by his encounter with the Brazilian rainforest in 1832 second and more limited discussion concerns his detailed examination on living planktonic and sessile invertebrates recorded in the zoology diary in this record Darwin seems fascinated with the observations of minute particles of granular matter that he claimed to be observed to the microscope in these live specimens of planktonic and sessile invertebrate animals these granules often termed gemules the displayed motion and dynamism in live specimens an example is an observation in early and late early 1835 on a Medusa Darwin writes as we read during the dissection I noticed that all the granular matter possessed a rapid revolutionary motion the instant a mass of granular matter was broken each little detached piece detached piece whatever shape began to revolve there could be no mistake the more minute particles revolve the quickest this power laid chiefly if not entirely in the reddish granular matter the field of view in the microscope appeared enchanted when Darwin began his reflection on the species question in the spring of 1837 upon his return from his epic journey around the world we see him speaking about atoms monads molecules or gemules of life a reference to these is now combined with the thesis concerning the relation of elementary particles of living matter to the degree of organization attained by an organism we can see this idea expressed in an undated passage added at some point to the indecide cover of the so-called red or rn notebook that covers the latter portion of the beagle voyage and his first reflections back in England up to march of 1837 as he's added here the living atoms have definite existence those that have undergone the greatest number of changes toward perfection namely manalia must have a shorter duration and the more constant this view supposes the simplest infusoria same since the commencement of the world the theme of a quantitative law-governed relationship between living atoms and the degree of organization and the duration of species may be a key to an elusive dialogic aspect to these relations reflections when Darwin had moved to London in March of 1837 he commenced regular meetings with his new acquaintance the hunterian museum comparative anatomist Richard Owen concerning the description and classification of the beagle mammalian fossils lodged at the hunterian museum remarkably at this exact time Owen was in the process of the final drafting out of his series of 24 bi-weekly hunterian lectures that were to commence in the newly remodeled hunterian museum on May 2nd of 1837 delivered to an audience of around 400 people that included the leading lights of london science this was the opening show of the newly remodeled hunterian museum Owen's lectures covered a wide range of topics that extended from a survey of the history of comparative anatomy to discussions of fossils and evidently even of Charles Darwin's fossil toxodon Darwin's close confidant Charles Lyell would attend at least some of these as would the Oxford paleontologist William Buckland although there's no evidence to confirm this it'd be surprising if Darwin had also not attended whether or not that's true Darwin accepted in the early part of the B notebook a law-like relationship between vitality and complexity of organization that initially limits the duration of species and individuals that is similar to an argument Owen was putting forth in his lectures Darwin reflected on this issue in some crucial passages of the B notebook and in one dramatic passage we read is this shortness of life of species in certain orders connected with gaps in a series of connection if starting from the same epic certainly the absolute end of a certain form of considering South America independent of external causes and then we read down at the bottom if we suppose similarity of animals in one country owing to springing from one batch and the monocule now he's using this term the monocule has definite life then all die at one period which is not the case monocle not definite life in this he broke with the limitations then the conclusion that there are no such limitations on lifespan and the potential for the development of species it's at this point he then sketches out his famous diagram of the B notebook of the tree of life that related groups together in historical genesis now in this brief sketch of the interplay of a with a of a kind of vital conception of matter and the original emergence of Darwin the version of transformism what I suggest is getting the theory of species transformism off the ground for him is a theory of biological matter possessed of vital powers that are unlimited by a law governed relationship between quantity of vitality and degree of organization but this is something more subtle than we can see in the theoretical frameworks of previous versions of transformism on this point Darwin has entered new theoretical territory and commences an exploration of a theory of species transformism unlimited by restrictions on the power of life to develop and complexify it's in the succeeding C notebook dated from May June and entries dated from May June of 1838 that we see a new dimension of this argument as it bears the issues of mental powers and consciousness here we encounter a dynamic matter mind monism that shows the impact of the reading of German romantics in this discussion that follow his reading of a treatise on the philosophy of nature by the German romantic Karl Gustav Karus and Darwin writes there's one living spirit prevalent over this world and I've highlighted here there's one the thinking creative sensible period ultimately allied to one kind of organic matter brain which is modified into endless forms bearing a close degree to the endless forms of living beings we see that's unity and thinking and acting principle in the various separate shades of separation between those individuals the endowed and the community of mind okay inter Newtonianism but as we know there's a profound change that subsequently occurs in the denote for reflections that surround the rereading of thomas malthus essay on population in september of 1838 these developments serve as the grounding for interpretations by michael roose sam schwaeber david haldon jonathan hodge david depue and bruce webber who've all developed in different ways the case for a strong Newtonian reading of darwin's project at least from this day forward david depue following the lean of silvin schwaeber has analyzed this in his darwinism evolving as an incorporation of an analogical Newtonianism that was developed on the theories of political economies of adam smith thomas malthus and ricardo even before the famous malthus entries we can see the language of physical science enter his discussions in an entry in august likening the development of the natural world to add to the product of natural causes what a magnificent view one can take of the world astronomical unknown causes don't modify by unknowns changes in geography changes of climate super attitude change of climate from physical causes these super induced changes of form in the organic world as adaptation these changes changing affect each other and their bodies by certain laws and so it goes on instinct alter reason is formed in the world people with myriads of distinct forms with the malthus entries of a month later uh we can uh we now encounter vivid image as we read here until one sentence a malthus no one perceives the great check amongst men one may say there's a force like a hundred thousand wedges trying to force into every kind of adapted structure into the gaps in the economy of nature or rather forming gaps by thrusting out weaker ones the final cause of all this wedgings must be the sort out proper structure and adapted to change to do that for form malthus show final effect dating from these entries we see the emerge one prominent meaning of natural selection that will appear in the early draftings of the theory one that are denoting the actions of a teleological final cause that will sort out proper structure and adapted to change in the succeeding e-note book in october darwin will even speak for the first time of nature as this selector that picks out forms more easily than man i can shut off screen read here darwin's theoretical development from this date displays a general cessation of inquiry into the ultimate causes of life the nature of vitality and any appeals to the action of dynamic matter as driving the evolutionary process it would seem that matter has become once again passive and inert as conceived in classic mechanistic newtonianism governed by natural laws adapting and accompanied with an external wise selector organisms to their external conditions of life it's at this point we might speak of darwin as developing something analogous to a physicalist newtonian conceptual framework never explicitly named it such at this time but in effect resembling several features that characterize newton's physical dynamics we have a dynamic system of bodies and motion driven by a kind of inertial force that of geometrical population increase a model of force acting upon material bodies in lawful way and where newton makes any departure of a body from its inertial state of rectilinear motion due to the action of externally impressed force darwin makes the control and limitation of the force of population an external constraint that acts originally as an intentional power of selection controlling numbers and resulting in a force driven action of species against one another and just as newton declined to give a causal explanation of his principle of inertia making it simply axiomatic as the first law of the principia darwin gives no causal explanation of this new force of population that is driving the natural species into all available niches the whole attention has shifted from internal dynamic powers to external control and forces this fairly dramatic shift of perspective that enters darwin the darwin manuscripts with the deno book sets up the discourse that we can trace through the 1842-44 and 56 drafts the force of population acts in company with selection by nature on slight variations to prove divergence from common ancestors leading to major change in species over time this framework defines the public presentation of the theory in november of 1859 but the insertion of his work conceived originally in the 1830s in the public world into the public world of the 1860s where at least the professionalized discourse scientific discourse at least was defined by physics of james clark maxwell lord kelvin the comparative anatomy of coupierre and owen the biophysics of helmholtz and duro remond the cell theory experimental biology of pastor and claude bernard meant that darwin had to engage a sophisticated scientific level of discourse defined by the limited scientific papers and journals rather than by great synthesis he also had to interface with contemporary discussions of methodology of science framed in the debates taking place among his contemporaries john herschel john stuart mille william huel darwin's interaction with the public and professional communities of the 1860s is a lesson on how different readings of darwin could be given by different communities of discourse that david petue has described in an important paper the early reception by darwin by much of the professional community has been analyzed in major studies uh the professional public reception by albert elegar david hall jongay on david depu illustrates that he was not initially regarded at least by the professional community as having achieved some kind of newtonian synthesis applicable to the biological world instead troubling questions were raised about the satisfaction of methodological canons generally accepted by can contemporaries to be those governing genuine newtonian science his language suggesting the action of a wise teleologically selective agency of nature seemed to many as naively anthropomorphic coupled with the non-technical and semi-former formal popular form of presentation that was forced upon him by his russian to publication of the self-designated abstract after the letter of ar walis the initial reception by many of the leading professionals of british science was in many cases openly hostile and not simply on ideological grounds for such critics as william hopkins oh and sedgwick kewell and her shall darwin's theories failed to satisfy canons of empirical testability and demonstrative proof that they viewed as the key requirements of newton's scientific methodology we can follow in darwin's extensive correspondence his efforts to clarify his meanings of key concept his valiant attempts to defend his methodology and the empirical warrant for his claims his clarification of the third edition of the origin that nature was no more than a personally mechanically acting force rather than a teleologically acting demiurge reconceptualize his concept of natural selection and his action we can follow how darwin sought to move its argument more into conformity with the language of physical science that now surrounded darwin more explicitly identifies his theory as newtonian enterprise both in methodology and spirit specific workings draws parallels to his account and newtons even claiming that his principle of natural selection is a newtonian veracasa but the endless revisions of the text left many incoherencies and inconsistency standing the most generous thing that his one time friend and later bitter adversary richard owen could say about darwin but he was certainly quotes the Copernicus of natural history but not its newton now as a historical studies by hall bowler gong and depue have shown darwin's stratogens were not generally successful before the 1930s with the scientific community generally and have not been so in the public domain for various reasons to the present the new synthesis and the rise of theoretical population genetics resolved the main points of dispute between natural selection theory and the new genetics the retrospective reading of darwin's theory by the architects of the new synthesis and by philosophers of biology who've systematized and elaborated the theoretical structure of neo darwinism have now seen darwinism satisfying the basic canons of at least contemporary philosophy of science and as david depue and bruce webber illuminated in their influential discussion the reconciliation with the background physical science was made possible by reinterpretation of darwin in the language of statistical mechanics of Maxwell and Gibbs rather than that of classical newtonian materialism return here to screen share but we know that this is but all is not well with the solutions of the new synthesis to several problems concerning the organic world before we go too far along the route of accepting darwin is having answered cons doubts about the possibility of a newton of the grass blade there are those dimensions of his thought that reflect persistent conflict with issues that i argue reach back to an earlier layer of theorism and that can tear some degree in play in the difficulties that have come to face the darwin of the new synthesis when darwin turned in 1867 to write a short essay on the origin of mankind eventually the bossam into the two volume descent of man he reached back into the reflections of the c notebook quoted previously and a theme more developed in reflections in the m and m notebooks metaphysics and expression of the emotions that paralleled the composition of the cd and e transmutation notebooks here we can encounter again a kind of vital monism that comes more to the fore in the entries especially in the m notebook there we see darwin frequently commenting on inner properties of animals there are continuity with those of human beings even attributing free will to oysters moral sense to animals satire to dogs and so on as he says in this comment here from the m notebook with respect to free will seeing a puppy playing cannot doubt they have free will so all animals then an oyster has an apollo and a plant in some senses now free well of organ oyster can one can fancy to be a direct effect of organization this discourse appear reappears in the descent in the strong parallelism of intermental states with external anatomical complexity darwin does not we see reduced mind to matter in tradition of german materialists of his day instead what is developed is an intermediate reductionism higher mental properties of humans are interpreted as simply more elaborate manifestations of the same properties other less complex but still vital organisms possessed of will and tensionality and some kind of basic inwardness the result is the pervasive anthropomorphism of darwin's discussion of mental powers such powers are not in the technical language of the comparative anatomy of his day simply analogical similarities they are literal identities true homologies human children may play together but so do ants shame imitation magnanimity sympathy wonder our inherent properties designated by terms that can be applied univocally to the actions of humans and animals but warrants these identities is not loose metaphor instead we are drawn back more to the pantheistic nature of karus and humble of the early notebooks that manifests is not self not so much in a vital materialism as in a dynamic matter mind monism mindedness and inner intentionalities are pervasive throughout nature extending from humans and primates down even to the sensitive plans as it won't express in his last works but these differences between the world of the origin and that of the descent illustrate is the complexity of darwin's thought about several issues if the framework of physical science causal law and mechanical action seems to be that which emerges from the final tuition additions of the origin giving us the physicalistic picture that will subsequently underlie developments that result in the new synthesis the concepts manifest in the descent move us in a different direction and put darwin is in conversation with psychology studies of animal and human behavior and eventually engage fundamental epistemology the expansions of the sentences proposed in recent decades by evo-devo theory the new emphasis on niche construction as a causal agency and evolution and interactionist theories of species change that relate organism genome and environment all seem predicated on some kind of fun word fundamental inwardness and dynamism of organisms properties that do not easily fit with the physicalist darwinism of the original new synthesis in from my conclusion form and focusing my talk on these issues i produce pursued topics not directly in david's focus but i particularly absorbed from his paper on darwinian historiography his other writings in his summary statement of his general research trajectory new ways of looking at these questions david has been concerned in his recent statement to argue that darwin quotes broke through the design mechanism binary this was a model we can see as part of what i've characterized as darwin's newtonian framework as originally stated with some kind of external design acting in accord with natural laws and an inner conception of matter to result in evolutionary adaptation but how darwin develops fully the alternative to that image is an issue i've sought to explore more deeply in this paper by looking at the early origins of darwin's theory and the continuity of aspects of these early roots of his original theory with darwin's later work i here see here's some ways of dealing with issues raised in the expanded synthesis which david is directly concerned to do as david is clearly aware of dealing with the world of descent must concern at some point with the relation of nowhere and the known and eventually with fundamental epistemology and even metaphysics if we retain a philosophy of biology that really does justice to the phenomenology of the living world now darwin to be sure does not choose to go there when darwin on rare occasion reflects on these issues in his well-known correspondence with william graham late in life he is simply troubled by the complexities of the questions his work ultimately raises on the philosophical level and sees even the possibility of an ultimate epistemological skepticism that could result from his theory david's focus has not been on the world of descent directly but his analysis of darwin's analysis they're directly on this in important ways his recent work drawing out issues dealing with teleology and final causation in relation to darwin's work ingredients to that and they are ingredients enables to enter more deeply into the world of the descent his examinance nation of the way rhetoric is such is important for the scientific theorizing and his historical situatedness and the importance of this for interpreting rhetoric of the descent all supply basis for this in these insights into darwin for this i am deeply in his debt and i want to thank you all including the medley organizer of this competent and particularly david depute so now we will have charles wolf lead the question answer session charles over to you thanks a lot phil for beautiful talk i have some rough rough and ready question or two questions squeezed into one but i'm looking at the audience in case okay if there isn't an immediate question for phil let me let me um come back to the issue concerning dynamic matter and darwin in phil's talk you say the absence of genuine transformist theories of the history of life till the late 18th early 19th centuries is a direct consequence of mechanistic and inert theories of matter that reflected the dominance cartesian and at least some readings of newtonian natural philosophy and so and you said a few things about this and that raises the question to me a to what extent can transformist theories be aligned with vitalist theories given that vitalists as well as the sui generis club bernard say next to nothing about evolution and those kinds of issues it's as if they're parallel universes and i'd like phil secondly or point b to clarify a bit the newtonian point because i think he's very subtly shifting the goalposts in the way that uh sam schwaeber and david depute had so brilliantly dealt with darwin as a newtonian i'd like phil to be blunter in what he's doing in relation to that because when i hear newtonian i think of the newtonian analogy in the life sciences in the 18th century which is very fruitful in vitalism as well also in holler and bloom about and so forth whereas in phil's way of talking about it newtonian seems to mean a kind of closed perfect system which raises the question then how can darwin fit in that model so there's a sort of analogical newtonianism is a slightly different story i would have thought and lastly the same question third way of putting it to what extent is dynamic matter vital matter ultimate cause of life talk to what extent is that relevant for darwin or not versus lamarck because phil quoted some notebooks where darwin seems to care about them and he said okay he doesn't stick with it but could he come back to that story and those are my points thanks again phil well uh this year i'm unmuted thank you very much and i'm really glad to get the commentary from charles who certainly has explored these questions very deeply uh in the statement i made which i didn't really have time to document in which i'm relating uh transformism to to various kinds of vitalism i would argue that one of the things that is certainly holding you might if you we can use that term holding back any kind of transformist evolutionary view in terms of the uh before the 19th century is the fact that that for so many of the uh formulations that's particularly in say the physical sciences descending you might say from orthodox cartesian and at least one reading of newton matter is inert you might have powers that act on matter but nonetheless matter itself is inert and i think you can see this even when we would get uh to someone like uh bufone who would in some ways seems to have a kind of dynamic theory of matter and yet he has a degenerative view of the cosmos gender degenerative view of nature and i think it's really interesting to see when we go to say toward german philosophers like herder then we begin to see the introduction of vital force we also get to see developmental views of nature taking place and i would if we had more time i'd like to i would really be glad to go into this in terms of blumenbach uh and also the mark the mark the mark has these dynamic newtonian fluids i think you brought out very well that there's certainly other ways of reading newton and a lot of the what you might call the vitalist of the 18th century would consider themselves newtonians in some respects but one of the ways in which they aren't newtonian you might say is that they don't accept a particular inert view of matter of which we might have a physical force acting on it and actually put powers into matter and that point here now on the question that that of course i'm really taking on some issues that david and sam schwaeber and others have made about darwin as newtonian i want to be clear about my argument here is what i want to argue is for a certainly early part early part of his views darwin is cannot be put into some kind of newtonian framework and i think this would be true of the early uh notebooks excuse me just a minute the early note but i also would agree that there is this with the malthus introduction there is this introduction of physical metaphors and what i've said is the the shift from internal dynamics of life to external controls on an inertial principle of life i think that's the point i want to bring out is that the principle of population is fundamentally an inertial principle for darwin now if you go back to the roots of the principle of population the malthus malthus it attributes it to vital atoms of some kind but darwin doesn't use that kind of language i think what that does is enable darwin to certainly develop something much more like a newtonian dynamic models of life and what i want to certainly emphasize here is that that i think darwin particularly as i've tried to detail goes through the various revisions of the text and the debates and so forth i think darwin wants to push himself much more into the form of conforming to contemporary physical language and he isn't really you can't you see sort of disappearance of any kind of what seemed to be references to vital atoms vital matter and so forth but what i'm trying to then say is look when we go back to the descent then we get back into another world and we're getting back to inwardness of life getting back to dynamic powers of life and i think that to me is in some ways the more interesting dimensions of darwin's view so i think that i've tried to capture that you had some very good questions here and i certainly want to follow those up maybe there's some others that want to bring there's a question so thanks a lot phil and i'm trying to see one right here so there's benjamin feldman in the audience speaking of atoms and of vital matter he says he writes i read that darwin's grandfather erasmus had some influence on his theory do you have any comments on this history so there you go yes yes i didn't develop that point but i think that can be very important the first line of the b notebook is zonomia which is the title of erasmus darwin's great work and which erasmus himself is very much holds the theories of vital matter i don't pick that up uh in terms of the you might say the more detailed workings of what some of the points i've tried to bring out in in these passages in the b notebook that but i do think that erasmus is certainly an important influence on him you read him and edin burrow and he was part of the family tradition and he's also darwin's made annotations on erasmus darwin's uh zonomia so there's definitely there you know okay um let's see does anybody ill thank you and um it was a very beautiful talk and um i just i marvel at this kind of close reading um an intellectual history and you are the master i have to say so thank you could i ask you i'm not an 18th or a 19th century person one of the things that that intrigued me about this romanticism slash newtonianist discussion let's just say in in understanding darwin and his work was the feud between um bob richards and michael roose could i i mean that's everybody's laughing i i mean i really tried to understand what was at the heart i mean you did a beautiful job that's kind of mediating but but what's going on there why is there so much just emotion like i can comment on this and most of those fights bob richards and i have been more on the same side we take slightly different readings of this i think uh what i wanted to emphasize here is certainly that there's a subtle level of darwin's argument that i tried to bring out about the relationship of the powers of life and degree of organization that somehow gets modified and i think owen is really more important for that view and the dialogue with owen than it would be with humble but i that i think particularly through darwin's reading of humble uh his romantic uh conceptions of nature a lot of these passages even that even what you might call the matter mind monism i think there's a certain root of that in in humble and i said i think part of this is much of this is stripped out in the history of the origin but i think some of it's coming back in in the history of the descent because one of the reasons that darwin's going back and we're using notebook c m and n in other words craft the argument of the descent uh later and he's uh and i think that that some of those romantic points come in but there are other people i mean i excited the one statement from carus he has a very interesting comments and c notebook on carl gustav carus and the unity of nature and mind and so forth which is one of the things i would agree and so i take bob's if i had to take sides i think generally bob and i are more on the same so time for one more question if um such exists let's see uh huh uh shall i read along can you so but i think it needs to be read out i believe even though phil swan can see it doesn't it need to be read out okay so another philip another very learned philip honan berger writes hi philip i tend to think the influence of lile on darwin as a kind of methodological exemplar is often underrated lile is concerned to explain histories and explain historically but also appeals to a single common set of laws and forces could you say how lile fits in your narrative is lile a newtonian or non-newtonian and in more ways lile also famously rejected lamar both on evolution and internal vital forces is darwin occupying a middle position between lile and lamar throughout this early period or does he basically turn his back on lamar early on and follow a fairly thoroughly liely and have my inclination of interpretation um philip that's a very good uh good good question i didn't mention lile virtually on the whole paper just for a part of it for a matter of time i think you're quite right that lile is a very important influence on darwin and i would also say that lile is certainly does have many dimensions and i think you could say in with certain kind of qualification he is a newtonian he's seeking for general law he's actually seeking for uniform actions of laws and history it's one of the reasons why lile is an anti-progressionist which is one of the points where he will separate from from darwin he also he also rejects these kind of appeals to to particularly with lamar to internal vital powers in the way he which he seems lamar doing this and i think that but i i think you know i think we'd have to explore a little bit more to what extent does lile play a move in darwin to what i would call the newtonian turn i think that one is not completely clear to me from the documents that lile is immediately important in that if one of the things to note that in with lile that darwin's annotations on liles principles of the crucial part is on the fifth edition which he gets after he returns from the beagle and that is the one which has some interesting annotations that you could in fact follow up but i would agree i mean i don't emphasize lile as much as say someone like jonathan hodge would do but nonetheless i do think lile is certainly a very important point and it is if more time would be allowed i would have tried to develop that point more well it's going to be time for philippine man's talk so thanks to phil slone again and to everyone for their questions thank you thank you both so now we will have philip man's talk philip huenman is director of research at the institute the story of the philosophy the science and the technique at paris one soban after having studied the constitution of the concept of the organism in modern biology in relation with conge he turned to the philosophy of evolutionary biology and ecology some edited books include from groups to individuals functions a co-edited handbook of evolutionary thinking and the sciences as well as challenging the modern synthesis he has written on the relationships between natural selection and causation on the roles of the organism and evolution and on the cons computational conception of emergence in general in 2021 through stanford university press he will publish why he will also publish a book in the same year on the philosophy of biological death thank you for the invitation to this nice conference it's a pleasure to be part of the schoolhouse who will be celebrating the works of baby deep new who has been inspirational for all of us so in this talk i'll talk about something that david has been studied through many perspectives throughout his career namely the modern synthesis in evolutionary biology and it's possible it's possible extension or expansion or overcoming by novel theoretical frameworks and inspired by the method and the general attitude of the important book Darwinism Evolving he published with Bruce Weber in 1994 where he characterizes Darwinism as a research tradition which goes from Darwin and goes on through neo Darwinism and the modern synthesis and many achievements later on and there are several important claims in this book and one of them is that a research tradition can evolve by changing its ontologies so it will be the same tradition however researchers will either add a new ontology or shift ontology and I think that will be the heart of this presentation about what how many synthesis and exist as frameworks in evolutionary biology so in this book they say during most of the 20th century the Darwinian tradition has gone under the name of the modern evolutionary synthesis which married Darwin theory of natural selection to the new science of genetics and the influence of our rapidly expanding knowledge of medical biology however the modern synthesis has been subjected in recent decades to pressures and peasants that have led some to proclaim once again that Darwinism isn't its death bed or at least is due from a major surgery to anyone who is familiar with the history of Darwinism this can seem like just like deja vu all over again here is where they are going in this book and most of the guessing comes in we think there is reason to believe that the pressure is currently being put on the Darwinian tradition and on the theory of natural selection in particular may serve as an occasion for it to transform itself once again into an even more powerful explanatory theory so this claim and this argument are the horizon of this talk and one can notice that this is published in 1994 and there is already an impression of deja vu when people are claiming that Darwinism isn't this bed and in the 2014-15 and so on there have been a sort of this new claim that Darwinism isn't this bed and we have a new framework and it seems that it's the deja vu of the deja vu so two papers by David are the motivation of this talk the first one is the paper about adaptation as a process of future of Darwinism and the legacy of Teodor Yuth-Dubtonsky a paper that basically considers that there are two trends in the modern synthesis one rather American and one rather British and examines the trajectory of the princess thinking under this perspective and the other one is a paper about the false talks on the forces of selection or the factors of selection or the causes of selection the false talk in evolutionary biology so I think those papers are really important because they help us to through genealogy and conceptual genealogy and through linguistic analysis to eliminate or to dislike two controversies one about adaptationism and the other one about what's called the statisticalist view of natural selection and this will be considered later on in my talk so there are many approaches to the modern synthesis in evolutionary biology and two sets of questions can be a way of understanding my question how many synthesis there is a synchronical question which is if you consider the classical modern synthesis the one which defines evolutionary biology was it a theoretical an institutional or social event how many of these meanings social theoretical institutionals are valued together so those are the questions many historians of biology and philosophers have been dealing with including David Deepu and I'll try to have a new look on them and then there is the chronical question so it has been omitted in synthesis that's at least one synthesis and now there are people arguing that we should have an extended synthesis others are going for an expanded synthesis or an included synthesis and so and so actually there are several synthesis of an evolutionary biology biology on the market and there are competing synthesis and the question the preliminary question is are they different how many of them are actually in the game and so on so those will be the the major question of the talk I'll start by considering the modern synthesis as a social event then the modern synthesis are rather as a theory then I'll look at all those questions at the final round with the help of David's paper on the first talk and finally I'll address the question of whether there is another synthesis that is going on now that has been going on since like 10 or 15 years so first considering the modern synthesis as a social event actually historians of biology since the the the 80s and have been questioning whether the modern synthesis they may be basically the synthesis of Darwin's view of natural evolution by natural selection and Mendelian genetics is really a theory or or what it is because it's we agreed on the fact that it started with population biology and then Maria Simson the Pshansky ranch and a bunch of other people built on ever a population genetics to produce a framework that was able to formulate many questions about evolution adaptation and diversity but it's hard to find out one single or a set of claims that will be the core of the theory and that's why several philosophers like historians have concluded that the modern synthesis is rather an institutional social fact than a a theory or parody so the fact is that after the modern synthesis evolutionary value becomes a discipline a discipline with all the sociological markers of chairs of journals like evolution conferences and a set of problems that would be addressed in curricula for students and with the modern synthesis the the biologists evolutionary biologists had a way to be a real scientific discipline and not just uh colleague fossil collectors or um something that has been more and more depreciated with the advent of formalized theories and experimental biology so there are many papers by Joe Kane on this and the distinction made by Bruno Straser between the naturalist and the experimental traditions is also relevant here and the modern synthesis can be understood as a way to depart from the naturalist tradition which was Darwin's tradition and to acquire the external symptoms of scientificity that makes knowledge into an academic discipline and interestingly in a paper from 1986 questioning the modern synthesis of gen Bt asked what happens between the population genetics which is a core theory of which the coordinates and the major books and authors can be identified and the modern synthesis is properly and if you write the core of the modern synthesis is actually uh pretty much just the theory of population genetics so the modern synthesis is not happening at a theoretical level um but there is more to the synthesis than theory he says and like the few later he centers are on the chance key and he says that for example the genesis use of fragrant concepts in field observations and lab experiments was a contribution of another nature it was not evidence for claims but rather it was making explicit the fact that models and theories could indeed be used to handle real data so um it's uh very plausible that the modern synthesis is not happening on the theoretical level primarily um and that explain why there is no major common explicit theoretical claim shared by all the founders of the synthesis uh but rather uh there exist aposteriori reconstructions of the event during its happening so uh what's uh very uh distinctive of the modern synthesis is that is that while it's happening biologists are also commenting the fact of its happening and are vindicating the fact that they are doing something new by synthesizing various knowledges at both experimental and uh theoretical level so the modern synthesis was while it uh was in progress a self-conscious field and this self-consciousness can be uh like can be uh identified by considering two benchmarks first the book by Hexla Evolution the modern synthesis which gave the synthesis its name and second the uh collection of articles based on the conference gathered by uh collected by ansmer and in proveni in 1980 called the evolutionary synthesis where many of the architects of the synthesis and some later biologists reflect on what the synthesis was uh but this reflection is also uh producing the sort of received view of what uh the modern synthesis should be and this received view is much um it's much impacted by ansmer own view of the synthesis so um if you will look at Hexla's 1942 book at some point he says the time is right for rapid advance in our understanding of evolution genetics genetics development ecology developmental physiology ecology systematics paleontology cytology mathematical analysis have all provided a new fact or new tool to the research the need today is for a concerted attack and synthesis if this book contributes to such a synthetic point of view i shall be well content so Hexla's book was not only providing the name of the modern synthesis but also a program which is an expansion from the basics of um population genetics and quantitative genetics towards uh many fields related to the biology of evolution so uh i was very happy to work with uh with david and with other scholars especially uh uh the light uh jong ayon on a uh long-term project which uh resulted in a special issue of the journal the history of biology in 2019 that was um and that was trying to tackle the question of what the modern synthesis was by uh by considering each of the lines of attack that Hexla in this uh in in this um sentences was um considering as the program for the synthesis to come so uh and i think that's where i also benefited a lot from david's impressive knowledge and understanding of what was going on with the synthesis so uh now if we consider uh if if we still consider the modern synthesis synthesis as a theory uh i think that there is uh something very uh important that is uh i'll get in david dipus pay 2011 paper on the first paper so i'm reading uh from the paper the truncky's views of adaptation as dynamical process contrasts with so-called adaptationist views of natural selection figure that's designed without a designer are relatively discrete innumerable adaptations correlated with these respectively process and product oriented approaches to adaptive natural selection are divergent pictures of organisms themselves as development alcohols or as bundles of adaptations so uh on the from the viewpoint of theory the modern the modern synthesis is not one theory says david dipu she the modern synthesis is rather uh at least two series one which is uh oriented towards the process of adaptation and it's rather the truncky and the other one which is oriented towards adaptation as a product so the idea of uh design without a designer which is and i'll get to it later which is the view that started by uh with one of one outfisher and was influential in the british school of evolutionary biology so um if one wants to look at what could be a core theoretical commitment of all synthesis there is this sentence uh that hooks my words in a letter to maria when they were preparing preparing a collective book commemorating the origin of species natural selection he says uh acting on the heritable variations provided by the mutation and recombination of a newly engineered constitution is the main agency of biological evolution so there are two pillars of the modern synthesis natural selection as an agent and uh the mentally engineered constitution of a population which in which variations are given by mutations and recombinations uh so it might be that this is the core of the theory but uh it's a very thin theoretical core and what david debu tells us is that there are two ways at least two ways of understanding these core commitments depending on how you think of natural selection producing adaptation and um so what in in the 2011 paper david debu says uh there are two ways of understanding adaptation either as a product so you will one looks at a trait understood as a result of natural selection and one asks what was the selective pressure pressures responsible of this trait and uh as a process which uh tried to focus rather on the developmental and ecological underpinnings of natural selection and the other distinction david debu makes is uh whether organisms are viewed as bundles of adaptations and that's a that's a phrase by huxback or as a developmental house and of course uh this uh this distinction and uh the perspective taken by the chansky uh according to david debu namely see namely seeing organisms as developmental holes and adaptation as a process predates golden lewantin's famous critique of adaptationism because basically what uh golden lewantins in their spandrels paper were saying was that uh organisms are not bundles of adaptations and one should not try to understand organisms as just a set of products of natural selection so uh one can replace easily golden lewantins in the variation paper in the variation of this uh second kind of synthesis that is uh inspired by that is represented by the chansky or still according to david debu um so those two synthesis are geographically located so with one sink in terms of biologists the the first synthesis which which focuses on adaptation as product and organisms as bundles adaptation is rather the fishery and tradition in the in the u k so uh it's fisher it's for then it's his ecological genetics dokins uh prior to the digmatically and more generally many inspirations of the behavioral ecology including main atlas work and more likely uh allen grafens formal Darwinism that continues uh fisher's understanding of natural selection as uh design without a designer um the other kind of synthesis is more uh to be found in the us and uh it's inspired by the school of right and the chansky and then simpson mayor lewantin would be uh would represent this uh these other synthesis and interestingly uh if one looks at those two traditions uh the the the feeling of deja vu that someone may have by uh looking at the claims that Darwinism is dead could be understood as um another uh realization that the modern synthesis started as a divided uh field so of course there's the potential for critic because there are at least two synthesis and uh if one wants to character characterize those two synthesis further uh in terms of exponents the the what's the core what's the uh the key of the what's crucial sorry in the division is uh the scatters of selectionism so uh is the like natural selection the main exponents and how it is how is the main exponents to what extent one should understand it in genetic term or in ecological terms for example uh from the viewpoint of exponents uh the UK brand of synthesis is more targeting adaptation whereas the other US brand of synthesis might be more uh receptive to the question of diversity um the UK brand for example is more receptive to the question of complexity uh for instance Dawkins sees evolutionary biology as a science mainly of complex adaptations uh while the US brand is more interested in uh like diversity in general and its many patterns uh and that finally one key explanation on them is in the UK brand of that modern synthesis would be the traits the traits of an organism whereas appreciation might be one of the key questions for all the US brand of modern synthesis so um the consequence of that is that the adaptationism debate started by Julian Lewontin uh is deflated there is not one issue of adaptationism and one decision to be made about it but there are many problem agendas even many ontologies depending on what are the major explaining that and uh of course uh this supposes that one research tradition can in one research tradition several distinct ontologies can be included and that was one of the plane of the boom Darwinism evolving um a test case of this view of the two synthesis is given by ecology so if one looks at ecology whose relation with evolution has been always complicated since uh the the the the third is uh there are two uh at least two spreads the one starts with uh Ford who was a student of Fisher and who wrote uh the the book Ecological Genetics in 1964 which was relying on many of his papers and the works of his students and uh in thought ecological genetics ecology is mostly testing natural selection in the field and trying to corroborate selectionism mostly against right Ford and Fisher's in their paper show that in the in the field there are even more selection than drift that that then uh selection that then theory predict whereas um in the U.S. uh monument of animal ecology was the book the principle of animal ecology written by uh Clyde Daly Alfredo Mercent Thomas Park all on the park and uh Carl Schmidt in published in 1949 and in this book uh that was this book was much influenced by Wright and who was also in Chicago as many of the authors of this book and and and in this book Ecology is an autonomous autonomous science and is based on a group selection as parallel to individual individual selection and uh ecological communities correspond to organisms so they uh reinterpret uh Clemens idea that there is a metabolism of an ecological community in Darwinian terms in terms of group selection and that's a very different kind of ecology uh than the one that the one uh sorry different from the one uh done by Ford and uh Jeb Jansky endorsed the project and he's reviewing the quarterly review about it he said you know serious objections would be raised against this community as super organisms idea so um if one looks at all uh those questions at a finer brain brain uh one could even say they are depending on the question uh considered there are several theories so uh David Deepu's mostly focuses on the role of adaptation and then there are two theories when one looks at the modern synthesis uh John B. T. and other philosophers have however argued that the creativity of natural selection is a unifying theme even between those two theories so natural selection for the the synthesis is not just a theme it also contributes to shaping traits of individuals especially on several generation natural selection changes the probabilities of various genotypes by acting on the frequencies of alleys so the variation is in principle independent of selection and adaptation at what generation but selection in several generations impacts variation and that's why selection is creative so that would be a way to argue that there is one synthesis that has been divided into a UK and a US brand however one could also look at a viewpoint of scales and the relation between macro and micro evolution and the status of speciation and here uh there would be two theories one made of extrapolationists so like Simpson and Evgeny for for whom macro evolution does not require other princesses than micro evolution it's an extrapolation of micro evolution whereas some discontinuist would argue that macro evolution is not derivable from macro evolution and it's famous to what Wood was saying but interestingly that was also the point of several Russians biologists including Finchenko of whom Dmitryanski was a student so but if now now I will argue that uh between my two questions so between the uh the the theory and the modern sense is a theory and modern sense is a social fact there is something that is very important this is the the language and the rhetorics and I think one of the strengths of David Deepu's work is to to to show uh to to to make this point actually so considering this other paper uh concept change and the rhetoric of evolution theory for Stoke and his case study it's a 2014 paper um I think it's a very useful paper because it deflates a nontological controversy about evolutionary theory that is familiar to many philosophers of biology now so the question is is natural selection a cause or a force or is it a statistical construct and this question has been famously raised by Dennis Walsh and Graham Yulmohan Mathem and Tim Lewens uh and it's what they call statisticalism so the claim is that here uh natural selection is just the aggregated result of myriad of integral ecological interactions not a cause acting on populations and this is in straight contrast with the classical view of selection which for philosophers have been given by so there's natural selection in 1984 namely that selection is one of the four forces acting on gene frequencies a limitation migration and drift or a selection is a cause of evolution and here that the concept of force includes the Newtonian analogy so the force explain a departure from a state of inertia the notion of cause refers to either a process view of causation or counterfactual deposition and the notion of factors would refer to um equations or linear linear regression and uh it involves it is much less neutral in terms of ontology and David Deepio's favorite paper is precisely uh paying attention to this notion this term the factor of evolution that is neglected by the sides of the both sides of the debate about that it has stated ticalism and in this paper Deepio tells us that Darwin was talking about forces and then uh later on uh other biologists including Halden was talking about causes of evolution that's the title of Halden's book and in the 40s sorry in the 50s the modern synthesis started to talk about factors of evolution and uh they uh they gave up the interactive metaphors of force and design and uh David Deepio says that uh that this is no accident that the classical text of the modern synthesis speak of natural selection mutation genetic drift and gene flow as factors of processors and agents not as forces or mechanisms but after the 60s the force took uh comes back through behavioral ecology because it comes with the need to talk about design so when one looks at the context in which those terms are used rather than abstractly in terms of uh the the the metaphysical opposition between causes and statistics one has a better look at what was going on in the modern synthesis there were strategic motivation for using the terms force factor and cause and those terms had a role in the social process of making disciplines and then producing an academic identity for the Darwinism at various stages of the synthesis so the metaphysical dispute about statisticalism forgets that world choices have a history which reflects strategies in the social context and more generally the modern synthesis as a theory and the modern synthesis as a social event are connected via rhetoric whose evolution and splits transfer social processes and conflicts into the theoretical sphere so that's why maybe the various synthesis may not be countable because the counting them at the theoretical and social level doesn't not make sense separated so my last question was are we witnessing a new synthesis so a second or a sort of first one um the argument for that now is that there would be a second synthesis that would encompass new phenomena or or uh phenomena overlooked by the modern synthesis so inclusive inheritance director of variation and development at constraint niche construction phenotypic plasticity mass extinction and so on all those uh new concepts make all for unevolved evolutionary synthesis that is argued for by many biologists including for famous Kevin Leyland, Gert Müller, Massimo Pugliucci and others. However the modern synthesis has always worked by integrating things that seem very different the best example is that in the 16th king and jugs came up with what they called non-Dawinian evolution and that was a chimera chimera's neutral evolution but now neutralism is building brick of modern the modern Darwinism or the modern modern synthesis which also integrated the phenotypic viewpoint of behavioral ecology that was actually quite different from classical classical evolutionist thinking in the 60s. um so Darwinism evolving uh the book by Depew and Weber says that novel concepts are an occasion for the modern sense Darwinism to transform itself once again into an even more powerful explanatory theory so there would be no disruption and I think that this uh view would still hold with uh the claim for uh new synthesis so what Darwinism evolving addresses is mostly the evodivo challenge that was very powerful in the 90s including the role of self-organizing theories and actually uh self-organization and natural section are two ways of generating uh grossly speaking order from randomness and they are not formally similar so there is a philosophical issue about how to articulate them that underlies the relation between evodivo and uh classical modern synthesis theory so and leaving aside the question of idealism versus materialism uh that is uh that is implicitly contained in this in this debate but the the fact is that this novel synthesis the one that we are witnessing now on the various names that is supposed to overcome the modern synthesis is very heterogeneous so um I tried to build the explanatory to to draw the explanatory structure of the modern synthesis on the right uh button and the as contrasted to the explanatory structure of the modern synthesis and the modern synthesis is uh strictly centered on natural selection and adaptation while if one quickly looks at those drawings the alternative explanatory schemas so the claims for new synthesis uh it's much more complex and not centered on one concept that our plasticity niche construction that with mental constraints all of them play a role uh you know in the explanation of the major explanatory biology namely adaptation diversity and the unity of productivity so is uh the new synthesis rally novel there are many candidates and that's a lot of them beside the production and those extended synthesis for example uh for the little uh it's not theory uh etienne doshan's inclusive synthesis or hodgson and nixon universal Darwinism um so quickly said well I think there is a major grain issue to which David Depu is very uh sensitive here so at the fine grain something can seem novel for example at the final grain epigenetics is very novel because it's about the ability to question of genomes and it requests some findings in molecular biology and genomics to be a field of uh investigation whereas at the core grain there is a long history of the concept of soft inheritance and epigenetics uh is a part of it actually and in the same way niche construction on the final grain uh started with an indication by declare one team and the incorporation of those indication by odd links me lay on and felman in their 2003 book on the neglected processes in evolution and they were relying on uh the idea of engineering ecosystem engineering developed at the same time by ecologists however on the course of grain if one looks at for example elton elton animal ecology and evolution elton already says that in evolution there exist two processes uh the one which is the selection of the environment by the animal and the one which is the natural of selection of the animal by the environment and those two directions parallel the two directions of niche construction on the one hand and natural selection on the other hand according to elton links me and his co-authors so there is a long term story history of the notion of niche construction um at the at the core's main of history so now if one looks at the social dimension of those uh series of those new claims for of the sorry those claims and uh vindication for novel synthesis uh there is still a gradient between uh how much it is theory and how much it is a social fact and uh i think the question why is the extended synthesis so the ones developed in the two thousand and two books and mostly advocated by layland or nixley let's say layland the ruler and kiyoshi uh as superseded all alternatives because in many major conferences and and papers now when people talk about a new synthesis they are mostly talking about this version of an alternative to modern synthesis and i think the question why these extended synthesis that is now a label has superseded all alternatives should be formulated in this gradient the gradient that goes from theory to social facts and um there are many strategical factors here for example they would explain why the niche construction uh series telling me and layland or the multi-level selection series David so we can finally join this version of another alternative to the modern synthesis um and i think what david david teaches us is that strategies and social forces plays always a major role and even in the shaping of what will be uh the the accepted series and that that's also a lesson of the foster paper and for example what here could look at the major role of funding agencies in the uh elaboration of those alternatives to the modern synthesis and the competition between various alternatives to the modern synthesis during the last two decades so as a conclusion i think that uh well i wanted to show uh in this talk the the as an example of what david deepu's work is showing us i wanted to to to to give an example of the fruitfulness of an integrated reading that joins this course rhetorical analysis conceptual analysis and history and um uh show with david deepu that the notions of rhetorics and strategy bridge the theory the serial aspect and the social institutional aspect one one talk about talks about the modern synthesis the bridge internalism and externalism in history and philosophy of science and um this allows a better understanding not only of the modern synthesis but of what happens now of Darwinism evolving thank you and i'm going to turn over sorry a bit of a delay i'm going to turn over the q and a session to betty and uh go ahead when you yeah thank you thank you so much philly so are there any questions from audience members you can just use the chat function or the q and a i think the q and a is what we're using i have lots but i'm hoping that right i'm hoping so betty in the interim because we only have five minutes so betty in the interim i think it would be really great because your your presentation intersects so much with what flip is saying and also there's some differences approaches i can certainly say you see that you know if you could give a a short comment and then we can get people give people time for some questions yeah first of all i have a question i find it really interesting that philly as the closest colleague to john gallo and i think we should mention john because he um you know he's a he's a real he has been a real force in um especially 20th century even late 19th century that book of his darwin and after darwin is so important and what i got out of it especially that i thought was novel was all the work that has been done um by french uh theoretical population geneticist so i find it interesting that you are talking about the english versus uh the americans but you didn't mention the french theoretical population genetic school is there a french equivalent to the uk and to america well i think uh first of all there is a question of let's say of period periodization so well first of all actually i was relying on david's paper on uh the chansky and i think i was uh uh extracting from this paper this idea that you have two dominant threads in the in the synthesis so the more more american one and more british one and what's interesting here is that they are here from the beginning because it's basically right and fissure uh even though of course the geography is not perfect because williams would be rather you know like he and actually he started by reacting against a merson who was uh like a key figure of the chicago school of ecology so but then there is this issue of a call grain or fine grain so if you want to zoom zoom in you'll find out that there will be a german or russian that that that's absolutely very important or a french school of but but i think what david is is looking at is not exactly what sociologists would call a school because it intersects with school in terms of sociology namely some people working together and having institutions chair journals and so on but it's also more precisely more theoretical and it can be shared by people who are not sociologically in this uh putative school so and that's why williams could be more sort of um more like may not may not miss like a british inspired synthesis than an american inspired synthesis and so at a finer grain you would find also schools in terms of sociology and schools in terms of what uh david identifies as the brands of the synthesis however the schools would be more um they will not be be here from the beginning and so that's why the french school is massively represented around uh was started with meritier and tissier and their work is um i think it's very interesting because the first there is malico but malico had his effect very late well maybe through people like um right but uh his deepest effect started in the 70s or the 80s so he started with the new population genetics neutralism and so on and malico was a sort of free rider because and he was not very much integrated he was not really speaking uh he was not writing in english but then the the the french school as integrated within the synthesis would start would be starting in the like 50s or 60s with the rittier and tissier and then it has first an identity that was relying on the flies i mean on on on on the cages the cages used by tissier to to work on on on drosophila and to make experimental evolutionary biology and and i think in terms of proximity it would it would be rather uh more closer to the american brand of more interdiversity than in adaptation for example polymorphism was the key question for those people evolution of polymorphism the the classics versus balance debate and and then it had also to face internal uh resistances in terms of the french academia in biology that was dominated by isola marquian or people more interested in physiology than uh well more interested in one that what ensmar would call proximate causes physiology than than genetic revolution and um so uh there was definitely a french tradition in the modern synthesis especially in social and legal terms i'm not sure that there was uh there that there is a tradition uh there is a brand of the synthesis that could be as massive as the uk brand and the us brand as they have been i think identified in in david paper and david books i don't know if that that's that is a uh but that's the answer the short thank you thank you do we have um i don't i think we've run out of time but we have can i just suggest perhaps that um philip benjamin and kimler my favorite my favorite historian of biology here um and bill could you hold on to your questions because they will come up again after um i give my talk do we have time to respond to these i think if uh we certainly have a little bit of time to respond to these questions in a brief way we're cutting a little bit into the break so i'm gonna have to everyone off after after five minutes or so let's go to philip philip's question um can you tell the story of the synthesis as one of selectionist versus pluralist it seems in mid mid period synthesis the most notable phenomenon is the gatekeeping of people like mayer and simpson about what is and isn't kosher in evolutionary theory and the critique of the adaptationism and extended synthesis were about saying yes natural selection is important but there are other factors that are important too and right is clearly a predecessor of the pluralist while fisher is a predecessor of the selectionist what would be missing by telling the story this way did you follow that philip yeah sure um well i think this is the classical way of you know looking at the debate and especially in terms of fisher versus right and i was interested in david paper because i think it it gives another take on the story it allows one to um i think it allows one to to to think in terms of what were their takes on the organism and i think that that's very important uh it also uh allows one to look at the um uh as i was doing i think it's very inspirational uh for someone who wants to understand the various emergencies of traditions in community ecology and this an ecology at this time and the relation between evolutionary biology and ecology and uh so uh and also it it allows one to connect the um uh the theory and the purely purely theoretical view of uh biology so is it selection or should we be pluralist it connects this theoretical perspective to precisely the sociological perspective i mean the uk and the us and uh i mean of course we know that you know fisher versus right it's like the purely selectionist versus the the more pluralist and the more you know uh the the the the more um uh the less adaptationist views but but this left this leaves the sociology out of the picture and i think that one of the forces of david's approach is that it it allows us to connect the sociological processes and the purely theoretical level and that that that falls the the uh the center of my talk and last um it also uh in terms of explananda i think it's quite diminutive to to to show that not only uh the two traditions are not uh agreeing i don't know what's the explanatory so is it only selection or mostly selection or is it like lots of things and and i am perfectly okay with the story i mean that's right but it's also about the explananda what's worth being explained and for example dokins i mean it's to to understand the debates about about dokins i mean dokins thinks that what should be explained it's complex adaptation and actually it's very um isolated position uh among the the very rich uh historian cartography of the modern synthesis and it can be explained uh uh by locating dokins in this uh uk tradition okay one um benjamin feldman wants to know do you have any thoughts on whether the theory of facilitated variation is expressed in the plausibility of life by garhart and kirchner might be considered a new synthesis well actually uh the the very question i mean you know it can be or it kind of i i see that the question uh in which i'm more more interested is that uh i listed some of the putative new synthesis and garhart and kirchner are obviously i mean facilitated variation is obviously another uh synthesis because it's it indicates a mechanism that can be seen as novel facilitated variation and it has also a sort of um wide theoretical ambitions or some people are would be uh are focusing on one maybe new mechanism or one overlooked mechanism but they are not trying to to design a new understanding of evolution but the point is that uh garhart and kirchner is possibly a new synthesis and there are many of them actually in the market more than maybe when david and veber were writing that when is them evolving in the late 90s and uh and the question is you know uh is there one that is winning one that is uh superseding the others and it's possible and and the and and the reason the reason why is interesting the also question is how do they all connect so how do how does facilitated variation connect with directed variation with uh uh let's for example armin stolfus series of mutations as directing evolution or with um series of evolvability uh that are also about exploring the phenotype genotype maps and and and that for me that's a more interesting question i think the question is ex novel or not is always related to your grain of description you know and and to some extent i maybe the the most uh condensing answer as our sociological so but but yeah that could be my one final really quick question um bill kimler wants to know um if uh he thinks that there's a parallel historiography about this with the scientific revolution and he says recent work there has emphasized not was created as unity but what was lost is there a parallel way of seeing the synthesis as removal or rejection of older concepts a core unity over what was no longer legitimate yeah absolutely and i think uh the the for example good's famous paper on hardening the synthesis is about how the synthesis has been directing more and more concepts but start starting with the the the the the synthesis the classical synthesis they uh got rid of uh the directed the variation or progenesis i mean they got rid of many things that were uh legitimacy explanatory for dowing and immediate successors including vice man for example and uh and in this sense i think they what would be for me the most interesting would be to compare with the russians because the russian school of all those people the transki team of asprasovsky and all the reshma house and all noses uh had lots of explanation processes causes and for example the pshensky did his contribution to the to the synthesis also as a discussion with his master as especially chenco and uh so people who are not great realists who would admit all the revolutionary causes and so on so uh so i am i'm absolutely absolutely um in agreement with this with this um uh with this perspective i was reading william kimler's question right now about david wudson the invention of science yeah thank you for the references yeah i i didn't know those ones okay thank you thank you philip thank you to the audience members and we've gone over time but it was the break right yeah thank you for your patience and the attention and thank you thanks a lot david for being so inspirational and friendly and uh christ for having uh organized absolutely philip and thank you so much for this wonderful talk i will have to say just as a comment that i'm a little worried in terms of the discussion of the synthesis at what point does it become so broad and so complex that it loses explanatory force and this is for any definition of say generalized darlinism and we can talk about this more so there is a 45 minute or so break and we are reconvening at two o'clock with charles wolf's talk um and we hope to see you then and thank you very much uh for your participation thank you very much philip that was wonderful yeah same same so