Evolution: a View from the 21st Century, by James A. Shapiro

PUBLISHER:

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Shaun Johnston:
In modern times we've made two revolutionary discoveries. One is, how changes in physical matter can be accounted for in terms of physical laws that can predict precisely what will happen next. Having given rise to science (how this can be studied) and industry (how it can be applied) this revolution is well under way.

The second revolution is, how emergence of species of living creatures can be accounted for in terms of them evolving from one another. This revolution, despite its promise of how much it could tell us about ourselves, remains stillborn through the mistaken application to it of principles coming out of the first revolution--reductive physicalism.

For this second revolution to advance it should be taken from under the wing of science and studied on its own terms. Tip: one recent product of evolution is creatures with minds. Minds are better studied through methods of the humanities than through those of science. Tell me, does this interest you?

Details: Written by Shaun Johnston Shaun Johnston; Published: November 16, 2011 November 16, 2011; Hits: 4986 4986

The Modern Synthesis is dead. Evolution doesn’t take place the way we thought it did, the way we make a building out of individual bricks—genetic mutations— added one at a time through the action of natural selection. Instead it happens more the way we build a bridge, out of long sections already fully functional and configured ready to plug into an existing structure and extend it. That's the clear message in Evolution: A View from the 21st Century from one who should know, James A. Shapiro, professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago, for the last twelve years of her life a confidant of Barbara McClintock. More...