Talk: Defining Heredity (January 2015)
Special guest Dr Tobias Uller (Oxford, Lund).
Background reading: Uller, T. & Helanterä, H. 2014. Heredity in evolutionary theory. In Challenges to Evolutionary Biology: Development and Heredity (eds. P. Huneman & D. Walsh), Oxford University Press.
Reading Group: Darwinian and Cultural Evolution (January 2015)
Reading: Kronfeldner, M. 2010. Won’t you please unite? Darwinism, cultural evolution and kinds of synthesis. In A. Barahona, H.-J. Rheinberger & E. Suarez-Diaz (eds.),
The Hereditary Hourglass: Genetics and Epigenetics, 1868-2000. Max Planck Insititute for the History of Science. 111-125.
Talk: Niche Construction and Human Evolution (January 2015)
With guest speaker Dr John Odling-Smee (Oxford). With tea to follow.
Background reading: Odling-Smee, F.J.: ‘Niche construction’ (2012) in Hastings & Gross (eds.) Encyclopedia of Theoretical Ecology. University of California Press. 485-489.
Reading Group: On the Informational View of Cultural Inheritance (February 2015)
Reading: Lewens, Tim: ‘Cultural Information: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ (forthcoming) in M. C. Galavotti et al. (eds.) New Directions in the Philosophy of Science. Springer.
Reading Group: Non-Genetic Inheritance (February 2015)
Reading: Jablonka, Eva & Lamb, Marion: 2007 ‘Précis of Evolution in Four Dimensions’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences 30: 353-92. (NB Online version is followed by thirteen critical responses and then author’s replies).
Talk: The Role of Epigenetics in the Major Transitions (February 2015)
With guest speaker Professor Eva Jablonka (Cohn Institute, Tel Aviv). Background reading: Uller, T. & Helanterä, H. 2013 Non-genetic inheritance in evolutionary theory: A primer.
On the Evolution of Organismality (March 2015)
Speaker: Ellen Clarke (Philosophy, Oxford)
The Inheritance and Cooperation Reading Group held six reading groups in May and June 2015.
May 2015
Reading: Godfrey-Smith (2012) ‘Darwinism and cultural change’ Phil Trans R Soc B 367: 2160-70.
Reading: Sesardic (1993) ‘Heritability and causality’ Philosophy of Science 60(3): 396-418.
Reading: Sterelny (2013) 'Cooperation in a Complex World: The Role of Proximate Factors in Ultimate Explanations', Biological Theory, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 358-367.
Reading: Colleran and Mace (2011) ‘Contrasts and conflicts in anthropology and archaeology: the evolutionary/interpretive dichotomy in human behavioural research’, in Cochrane & Gardner (Eds) Evolutionary and Interpretive Archaeologies: a Dialogue, Left Coast Press.
June 2015
Reading: Francesca Merlin (Forthcoming) ‘Limited extended inheritance’
Reading: Birch (2014) ‘Gene mobility and the concept of relatedness’ Biol Phil 29(4): 95-107.
The Tribal Social Instincts Hypothesis (June 2015)
A talk given by Dr Pierrick Bourratt from the University of Sydney, on the topic of 'Questioning the relevance of the Multilevel Selection 1/ Multilevel Selection 2 Distinction in Evolutionary Transitions in Indivdiuality'.
Conference: Inheritance and Cooperation (June 2015)
Two-day philosophy of biology workshop
- Francesca Merlin (Philosophy, Paris): ‘Limited extended inheritance.’
- Heikki Helanterä (Biology, Helsinki): ‘Superorganisms as model systems.’
- Rachael Brown (Philosophy, Macquarie): ‘Generating benefit: Social learning and the other cooperation problem.’
- Simon Powers (Biology, Lausanne): ‘What drove the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies?’
- Jonathan Birch (Philosophy, London School of Economics): ‘Time and relatedness in microbes and humans.'
- Ellen Clarke (Philosophy, University of Oxford): ‘Inheritance and cooperation.’
- Peter J Richerson (Biology, UC Davis):
With responses from Cecilia Heyes, Tobias Uller, Michael Bentley, Jessica Laimann, John Odling-Smee and Matthew Clark.
Questioning the Relevance of the Multilevel Selection 1 (June 2016)
A talk given by Dr Pierrick Bourratt from the University of Sydney, on the topic of 'Questioning the relevance of the Multilevel Selection 1/ Multilevel Selection 2 Distinction in Evolutionary Transitions in Indivdiuality'.
