Darwin Celebrations at the University of Toronto

 
The University of Toronto is hosting a celebration of Darwin next Novermber [Origin of Species at 150: a celebratory conference].

150 Years after Origin: Biological, Historical, and Philosophical Perspectives

Victoria College, University of Toronto, November 21-24, 2009
Darwin wrote in his autobiography, “In July [1837] I opened my first notebook for facts in relation to the Origin of Species, about which I had long reflected, and never ceased working for the next twenty years.” In 1842, he wrote a “very brief abstract” of his theory (35 pages), which in the summer of 1844 he expanded to 230 pages. Beginning in September 1858, after receiving an essay from Alfred Russell Wallace, “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,” which outlined the central mechanism of evolution on which Darwin had been working, he began work on completing the manuscript of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. John Murray, the publisher, launched the book on November 24, 1859 by releasing 1,250 copies. The impact of The Origin of Species has equalled the impact of Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. It is the unifying theoretical framework for all modern biology.

November 24, 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin and The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and the Department of Philosophy at University of Toronto are mounting a Gala Celebratory Conference. The conference will culminate in a gala dinner on November 24 at which participants will toast the tremendous achievement of Charles Robert Darwin.

Five multi-disciplinary symposia have been organized. For each symposium, the panel consists of a biologist, a historian of biology and a philosopher of biology.

The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology is located on the elegant, historic Victoria University campus (one of the University of Toronto’s federated universities) and the conference will be held in that location

The emphasis is on history and philosophy. It would be a perfect opportunity to put Darwin into the context of the modern world. It would be a crying shame if the conference was wasted on promoting natural selection and misrepresenting modern evolutionary theory. Do the conference organizers really mean it when they say that a 150 year old book, Origin of Species, is, "the unifying theoretical framework for all modern biology?

Here's the preliminary program.

Saturday November 21, 2009

6-7 pm: Keynote Address: to be announced

7-9pm: Reception

Sunday November 22, 2009

9-10 am: Keynote Address
Evelyn Fox Keller (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

10 am-12 pm: Symposium:
Gender, Evolution, and Sexual Selection
Lisa Lloyd (Indiana University)
Marlene Zuk (University of California)
Erika Milam (Clemson University)

12-2 pm: Lunch Break

2-3 pm: Keynote Address
Michael Ruse (Florida State University)

3-4 pm: Contributed Papers Session
to be announced

4-5 pm: Contributed Papers Session
to be announced

5-6 pm: Keynote Address
James Moore (University of Cambridge)

Monday November 23, 2009

9-11 am: Symposium:
Evolution and Development
Manfred Laubichler (Arizona State University)
Jane Maienschein (Arizona State University)
Michael Dietrich (Dartmouth College)

11am-12pm: Contributed Papers Session
to be announced

12-2 pm: Lunch Break

2-4 pm: Symposium:
Species
John Beatty (University of British Columbia)
Kevin de Queiroz (National Museum of Natural History)
Marc Ereshefsky (University of Calgary)

4-5 pm: Contributed Papers Session
to be announced

5-6 pm: Keynote Address
Alison Pearn (Darwin Correspondence Project)

6-7 pm: Special Presentation
A Play: "Re: Design (A Dramatisation of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin and Asa Gray)"

Tuesday November 24, 2009

9-11 am: Symposium:
Taxonomy
Mary Winsor (University of Toronto)
Kevin Padian (Berkeley)
Richard Richards (University of Alabama)

11am-12pm

Contributed Papers Session
to be announced

12-2 pm: Lunch Break

2-4 pm: Symposium:
Ecology
Joan Roughgarden (Stanford University)
Gregg Mitman (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Gregory Cooper (Washington and Lee University)

4-5 pm: Contributed Papers Session
to be announced

5-6 pm: Keynote Address
Sean Carroll (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

6-7 pm: Break

7-8 pm: Keynote Address
Spencer Barrett (University of Toronto)

8-10:30 pm: Origin at 150 Gala Dinner

Most of the speakers are strangers to me. I have no idea where they might be coming from in terms of their understanding of evolutionary theory.

Of the ones I do know, Sean Carroll is a fan of natural selection and Spencer Barrett is a classic adaptationist. It's worrisome that the organizers invited Michael Ruse to give a keynote address. As I've mentioned before, Ruse does not seem to have a very good handle on modern evolutionary theory. I fear that the conference participants will be subjected to a particular point of view that will not be a fair description of how Darwin contributed to modern biology.

If The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science thinks Michael Ruse is going to give a good overview of Darwin's contribution then this does not bode well for the conference. They should have learned from his appearance at the Royal Ontario Museum last June [Darwinism at the ROM].

At that symposium Ruse asked, "Is Darwin's Theory Past Its "Sell By" Date." I think Michael Ruse has passed his "best before" date. It's time for him to retire.

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