Welcome to the website for the OSU panel discussion of Pigliucci and Kaplan's new book: Making Sense of Evolution (University of Chicago Press, 2006). Below is the poster for the event. Photos of the participants in the discussion, and copies of some of their talks, follow. |
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Attempting to elicit positive comments from the panelists ahead of time, Jonathan Kaplan cooked dinner the night before the panel for the out-of town guests and some of the sponsors of the event. From L-R: John Dupre, MaryJo Nye, Karola Stotz, Bob Nye and Paul Griffiths. Paul was still deep in thought about his presentation. Indeed the next morning saw Jonathan, Karola and Paul all sitting at their laptops over breakfast finishing up last minute comments. Philosophy on the fly! |
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discussion the next day, Dr. Sharyn Clough, from the OSU Philosophy Department, moderated the panel, doing her best to keep everyone in line, well-fed, and excited about the potential for winning door prizes. |
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Here's Dianne, a student excited that she won the main prize - a copy of the book under discussion, signed by one of the co-authors, at least. Sadly, we couldn't get the other co-author, Massimo Pigliucci, to the event. He was pretty close - in Seattle at another conference - but not close enough. Check out Massimo's website "Genotype by Environment" here. |
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Seth White,
a
PhD student at OSU in Fisheries and Wildlife, kicked off the event with
an
excellent discussion of the role of metaphors in science.
Here he sets up his powerpoint presentation. You can read a copy of his outline here and download his powerpoint presentation here. He has a fun blog, too. Below left, the Indonesian shadow puppet metaphor used by Jonathan and Massimo in their book. Below right, Seth explains the importance of the metaphor. |
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Professor Emeritus Paul Roberts from the Department of Zoology at OSU, went next. He defended a reductionist account of genetic explanation for phenomena such as Tay Sachs and other genetic diseases. Be sure to visit his website and learn about his genetic research on fruit flies. |
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Here's
Sharyn
introducing Dr. Karola Stotz,
from Indiana University. Karola was the third panel discussant.
Karola complicated the reductionist picture with a compelling discussion of the "developmental niche construction" that is required before genes can "do" much of anything, that is, if we have a firm idea of what a gene is. D'oh! You can read a copy of her paper here. Below, Karola in action: |
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| The audience was
enthralled! On a Saturday! |
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Of course they were even more excited about the promise of a break, and more food, mid-way through the panel discussion. Here's Dr. Bill Loges, (New Media and Sociology), enjoying the break and showing his best side to our official photographer, Leonora Rianda, office assistant for the Philosophy Department (three cheers for Leonora!). |
| Right: The Chair of the Philosophy Dept., Professor Courtney Campbell, takes in the proceedings. We are grateful for his support, as well as the support of the University Honors College, the History Department, and the Horning Endowment. |  |
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Left: Dr.
Paul Griffiths from the University of Queensland sets up his
presentation to begin the final
round of panelists.
He argued that
we need both to know something about how that organ or system works in
the larger context of which it is a part, as well as how it came to be
selected by evolutionary processes to have its function. It turns out
that to talk about biological functions, even creationists have to be
evolutionists. How fun is that? He also had lots
of pictures of Australian wildlife. You can see his powerpoint
presentation here. And you
can read a copy of his paper here. |
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Professor
John Dupre from Exeter University was the last of the discussants.
(He
doesn't usually look this serious :) |
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- he warms up to his subject: Given that the explanatory details of reductionst mechanisms have so far proven to be to impossible to access in even the "simplest" organisms, is it worth arguing the further point that such explanatory stories are also empirically wrong-headed? John thinks it is worth arguing this point, because if the empirical point is not brought home, then scientists are likely to continue to spend inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to get the reductionist details "right" - and these are precious resources that we might spend more fruitfully elsewhere. Further, such reductionistic projects often have pernicious implications for how we think about the relationship between human organisms and the world. So, enough already! |
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Finally, Dr. Jonathan Kaplan gets
his
chance to respond to each of the five panelists - and like his fellow
speakers he too is kept to a strict 20 mins!
This was quite a trick, but he pulled it
off (of course :)
You can view his power point presentation, here. |
 Here, the panel gathers at the end of the session to respond to any remaining questions from the audience and each other. What a fabulous-looking group of scholars! And so we come to the end of an intellectually-challenging and engaging session: Some getting ready to travel the next day for the next conference - a philosopher's job is never done! - and all of us ready for a good drink. |
