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The theory of evolution and its impact
Abstract
Year 2009 was the triumph of Darwin as a global superstar, spinning from the pop icon to the actual understanding to what make him a great innovator, able to give a turn to whole modern culture. Does all this activity mean evolution has lost its ability to excite fear and opposition? After such a deluge of books, conferences, reviews, gadgets, what is today our vision on theory of Evolution and its Impact? These are the questions asked at an inter-academy conference held in Torino (May 27-29, 2010) among the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. The present book collects the contributions from the meeting, mixing styles, arguments, topics, history and philosophy of science, modern biology and epistemology . This kind of inter-disciplinary approach may appear erratic, but it conveys flashes of lights on the changing scene where the theory of evolution plays. This is in line with the idea to reopen the file of the Two Cultures, looking at shared problems, which are not yet really the Third Culture invoked by Charles Percy Snow half a century ago, but they can foster it, at least in such a pivotal domain as evolution. According to the philosopher Michael Ruse, the conclusion is "that in fifty years or a hundred years we will still have the theory of the Origin around. Great, precisely because it does not stand still, but remakes itself and grows and changes by virtue of the fact that it gives such a terrific foundation. Is Darwinism past its sell-by date? Not by a long chalk yet!"
Details | Table of Contents
the sand walk (on the Darwin's steps)
pp.1-10
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1974-4_1Lamarck, politics and religion in the early nineteenth century
pp.11-39
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1974-4_2is it past its "sell-by" date?
pp.41-51
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1974-4_3pp.53-68
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1974-4_4selection, retention and extinction of a metaphor
pp.69-82
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1974-4_5pp.83-102
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1974-4_6pp.131-158
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1974-4_9selective versus constructive strategies in the development and plasticity of the nervous system
pp.159-174
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1974-4_10animacy and the origins of beliefs
pp.189-199
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1974-4_12remarks on the history of a concept adopted by Darwin
pp.201-210
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1974-4_13the structure of evolutionary theory from a Lakatosian perspective
pp.211-228
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1974-4_14Publication details
Publisher: Springer
Place: Dordrecht
Year: 2012
Pages: 228
DOI: 10.1007/978-88-470-1974-4
ISBN (hardback): 978-88-470-1973-7
ISBN (digital): 978-88-470-1974-4
Full citation:
Fasolo Aldo (2012) The theory of evolution and its impact. Dordrecht, Springer.