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Evolution at the Edges of Life: Origins, Artificial Systems, and the Conceptual Limits of Evolutionary Theory

22 avr 2024 09:00 - 23 avr 2024 17:15
IEA de Paris
17 quai d'Anjou
75004 Paris
information@paris-iea.fr
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Colloque organisé par le CNRS, l'Université d'Hanovre, l'IHPST, et l'Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, avec le soutien de l'ANR (Programme ANR-DFG GenDar) et de l'IEA de Paris.

Entrée libre dans la limite des places disponibles, sur inscription (voir formulaire d'inscription en bas de page)

Présentation

Ever since Darwin, evolutionary biology has shed an impressive light upon the various phenomena of life. The unity of the living, the diversity of organisms, the history of living species, the exquisite adaptations of living creatures, and various other aspects of life are all explained, or at least better understood, through a reference to evolution by natural selection. However, researchers very early on realized that this theory had the potential of answering many questions outside the proper domain of biology. Aspects of human cultures and history, the diversity of languages, aspects of economic change, human psychology, and many other phenomena have been investigated using the concepts of mutation, natural selection, and inheritance, and by applying evolutionary models and devising evolutionary explanations. 

This conference is the closing conference of a research project titled The Explanatory Scope of Generalized Darwinism: Towards Criteria for Evolutionary Explanations Outside Biology (GenDar) that is jointly funded by ANR and DFG, is led by Thomas Reydon (Hannover) and Philippe Huneman (Paris) and is carried out collaboratively by researchers at Leibniz University Hannover and the Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques (CNRS / Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne). The project is devoted to a philosophical assessment of evolutionary accounts of non-biological phenomena.

This international meeting will focus on evolution at the “edges of life”, i.e., chemical evolution at the origin of life and evolution in artificial systems, and will examine theoretical accounts in these domains that rely on Darwinian ideas in order to make sense of phenomena that are neither biological nor cultural or social. Speakers will address chemical phenomena involved in the origin of life, the physics of the living, and the fecundity of Darwinian concepts with respect to computational algorithms and robotics. Speakers include biologists, chemists, physicists, computer scientists and philosophers of science, who will discuss the uses of evolutionary frameworks, the varieties of Darwinian conceptions, as well as general issues raised by the ambition of expanding evolutionary thinking outside biology.

Programme


Monday, April 22

09.00 – 09.15
Introduction
Philippe Huneman, CNRS, IHPST Paris & Thomas Reydon, Leibniz Universität Hannover

09.15 – 09.45
Presentation of the book Evolutionary Thinking Across Disciplines: Problems and Perspectives in Generalized Darwinism (Springer, 2023) presented by Agathe du Crest (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) & Martina Valković (Leibniz Universität Hannover)

 9.45 – 10.15
Presentation of the book Sex, Gender, Ethics and the Darwinian Evolution of Mankind: 150 years of Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man’ (Routledge, 2024) presented by Michel Veuille (École Pratique des Hautes Études)

10.15 – 10.45 Coffee Break

10.45 – 11.45
André Ariew (University of Missouri)
Why is natural selection so hard to understand?

11.45 – 12.45
Hugh Desmond (Leibniz Universität Hannover)
Darwinism, natural selection and minimal agency

12.45 – 14.00 Lunch Break

14.00 – 15.00
Sylvain Charlat (Université Lyon 1)
How does evolution begin?

15.00 – 16.00
Ludo Schoenmakers (Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research)
Minimal evolutionary theory at the origins of life


Tuesday, April 23

9.30 – 10.30
Thomas Heams (AgroParisTech)
Edges of life or life without edges?

10.30 – 11.00 Coffee Break

11.00 – 12.00
Karim Baraghith (Leibniz Universität Hannover)
From tradition to algorithm: Emerging dynamics of human-AI cultural evolution

12.00 – 13.00
Andreas Kirschning (Leibniz Universität Hannover)
Approaches to the origin of life - from prebiotic chemistry to the first forms of life

13-14.30 Lunch break

14.30-15.30
Nicolas Bredeche (Sorbonne Université)
Exploring Adaptive Collective Systems with Swarms of Learning Robots

15.30-16.30
Olivier Rivoire (Collège de France)
From physics to evolution

16.30-17.15
Future Directions (Philippe Huneman, Thomas Reydon)

Informations

Entrée libre dans la limite des places disponibles, sur inscription (voir formulaire d'inscription en bas de page)
Pour le détail des interventions, voir pdf.

Date dépassée
23 Avr 2024 17:15
Oui
31844
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