Reading/Discussion group on Peter Godfrey-Smith's Darwinian Populations

Book Cover
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/Science/?view=usa&ci=9780199552047#
http://www.amazon.com/Darwinian-Populations-Natural-Selection-Godfrey-Smith/dp/0199552045
The Philosophy Department and the Bean Fund are sponsoring the NNEPA keynote address on October 15th by  Peter Godfrey-Smith of Harvard University, entitled "The Evolution of Meaning". There will also be a special session to discuss his work in Biology on the morning of Saturday October 16.

In conjunction with this visit we are inviting you to participate in a slow reading and discussion of  his recent book Darwinian Populations.
The online discussion will be at http://dbanach.com/course/course/view.php?id=60  . You can view as a guest or self-register to be able to post and participate in the discussion. You can also just email me and I will set up an account for you, if you prefer.  We will start around August 1 and I'll post summaries of the chapters as we go, to start the discussion.  Please feel free to pass this invitation along to anyone you think would be interested a well.

Contact me if you need help getting hold of a copy of the book. Dbanach@anselm.edu

Professor Godfrey-Smith's main research interests are in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind. He also works on pragmatism (especially John Dewey), general philosophy of science, and some parts of metaphysics and epistemology. He... has written three books, Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (Cambridge, 1996), Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Chicago, 2003), and Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (Oxford, 2009).

You can find out more about the author here:
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~pgs/index.html  and a sample chapter is here: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~pgs/Dpops_PGS_Sample_Chapter_4.pdf

Publisher's Summary

Description

In 1859 Darwin described a deceptively simple mechanism that he called "natural selection," a combination of variation, inheritance, and reproductive success. He argued that this mechanism was the key to explaining the most puzzling features of the natural world, and science and philosophy were changed forever as a result. The exact nature of the Darwinian process has been controversial ever since, however. Godfrey-Smith draws on new developments in biology, philosophy of science, and other fields to give a new analysis and extension of Darwin's idea. The central concept used is that of a "Darwinian population," a collection of things with the capacity to undergo change by natural selection. From this starting point, new analyses of the role of genes in evolution, the application of Darwinian ideas to cultural change, and "evolutionary transitions" that produce complex organisms and societies are developed. Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection will be essential reading for anyone interested in evolutionary theory.

Features


Reviews

"Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection will be something to be reckoned with for anybody interested in the conceptual foundations of evolutionary theory and in the applicability of Darwinian ideas beyond the strict confines of biological evolution."--Massimo Pigliucci, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"Peter Godfrey-Smith's Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection is a dense and deep work on the foundations of evolutionary biology.... Godfrey-Smith's book fruitfully forces us to think in new ways about evolution and natural selection."--Jay Odenbaugh, Science