Parallels between Economics and Evolution, or What Happens When Ideas Have Sex

A talk by

Matt Ridley

[9.30.09]

Farming — a division of labour between humans and other species; Fossil fuels — a division of labour between humans and extinct species?

Darwin and the Evolution of Reasons

A Talk by

Daniel C. Dennett

[9.30.09]

http://www.edge.org/events/darwin-in-chile Some people think today that it is impossible for a mindless process to produce evolution. ... It isn't. ...There may be an intelligent God hidden in the evolution process, but if so, he might as well be asleep, since there is no work for him to do!

Beauty's Child: Sexual Selection, Nature Worship and the Love of God

A talk by

Nicholas Humphrey

[9.30.09]

...I want to engage you in a discussion of the deep history of beauty. By deep I mean as seen from an evolutionary perspective. I am an "evolutionary psychologist". I believe that to understand and fully appreciate human mental traits, we need to know why they are there — which is to say what biological function they are serving. Evolutionary psychology has been making pretty good progress. But, as we say, "there are still some elephants in the living room" — big issues that no one wants to talk about. And human beings worship of the beautiful remains one of the biggest.

Beauty's Child: Sexual Selection, Nature Worship and the Love of God

Topic:

LIFE

http://vimeo.com/80904859

"...I want to engage you in a discussion of the deep history of beauty. By deep I mean as seen from an evolutionary perspective. I am an "evolutionary psychologist". I believe that to understand and fully appreciate human mental traits, we need to know why they are there — which is to say what biological function they are serving. Evolutionary psychology has been making pretty good progress. But, as we say, "there are still some elephants in the living room" — big issues that no one wants to talk about.

Why Sex Differences Matter: The Darwinian Perspective

Topic:

LIFE

http://vimeo.com/105885898

"If we want to change the world, we need first to understand it. And when it comes to understanding human nature — male and female — Darwinian science is indispensable."

Parallels between Economics and Evolution, or What Happens When Ideas Have Sex

Topic:

LIFE

"Farming — a division of labour between humans and other species; Fossil fuels — a division of labour between humans and extinct species?"

Darwin and the Evolution of Reasons

Topic:

LIFE

http://vimeo.com/105894914

"Some people think today that it is impossible for a mindless process to produce evolution. ... It isn't. ...There may be an intelligent God hidden in the evolution process, but if so, he might as well be asleep, since there is no work for him to do!"

THERE IS GRANDEUR IN THIS VIEW OF LIFE

By

Richard Dawkins

[9.22.09]

It is no accident that we see green almost wherever we look. It is no accident that we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life; no accident that we are surrounded by millions of other species, eating, growing, rotting, swimming, walking, flying, burrowing, stalking, chasing, fleeing, outpacing, outwitting. Without green plants to outnumber us at least ten to one there would be no energy to power us. Without the ever-escalating arms races between predators and prey, parasites and hosts, without Darwin’s ‘war of nature’, without his ‘famine and death’ there would be no nervous systems capable of seeing anything at all, let alone of appreciating and understanding it. We are surrounded by endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random natural selection – the only game in town, the greatest show on Earth.

RICHARD DAWKINS, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May, 2001, is a writer known for his popularization of Darwinian ideas as well as for original thinking on evolutionary theory.

Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and the former Charles Simonyi Professor For The Understanding Of Science at Oxford University; Fellow of New College; author of The Selfish Gene, The Extended Phenotype, The Blind Watchmaker, River out of Eden (ScienceMasters Series), Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Devil's Chaplain, The Ancestor's Tale, and The God Delusion.

Richard Dawkins's Edge Bio Page

Darwin's Intellectual Legacy to the 21st Century

Why Chile?

Program Director

Alvaro Fischer

[9.7.09]

Leda Cosmides


Ian McEwan	Steven Pinker	Matt Ridley	John Tooby

Date: September 7-8, 2009

Venue: CasaPiedra
Av. San José María Escrivá de Balaguer 5600, Vitacura, Santiago.

ED. NOTE: Edge has been invited by the organizers to attend the Darwin Seminar in Santiago and join the eight speakers (all Edge contributors) on a trip to the "extreme south" including a trip along "The Beagle Channel", named after the ship HMS Beagle which surveyed the coasts of the southern part of South America from 1826 to 1830.

Charles Darwin, on the second trip of HMS Beagle under Captain Robert FitzRoy, wrote in his field notebook in 1833, "many glaciers beryl blue most beautiful contrasted with snow". [...] [...] [...] [...].

From the Program Notes: Our intention is to illuminate and discuss how Darwinian thought influenced the disciplines that focus on the study the individuals (biology, neuroscience, psychology); the individual within their social interactions (anthropology, sociology, economy, political science); and how these concepts pertain, in general, to a moral philosophy.

We wish to explore how, from Darwinian thought, there emerges a vision of what it is to be a human being. And that this vision is fundamental and coherent with the entire body of accumulated scientific knowledge. With reverence for the details of their application, it is the impact of Darwin's ideas that is the reason we are celebrating Darwin's anniversary.

Edge looks forward to publishing video highlights of the trip as part of our celebration the three hundredth edition of Edge, later in September.

— JB

Darwin's Intellectual Legacy to the 21st Century

Topic:

LIFE

http://vimeo.com/82231559

From the Program Notes: "Our intention is to illuminate and discuss how Darwinian thought influenced the disciplines that focus on the study the individuals (biology, neuroscience, psychology); the individual within their social interactions (anthropology, sociology, economy, political science); and how these concepts pertain, in general, to a moral philosophy.

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