In the six decades since the publication of Julian Huxley's Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, spectacular empirical advances in the biological sciences have been accompanied by equally significant developments within the core theoretical framework of the discipline. As a result, evolutionary theory today includes concepts and even entire new fields that were not part of the foundational structure of the Modern Synthesis. In this volume, sixteen leading evolutionary biologists and philosophers of science survey the conceptual changes that have emerged since Huxley's (...) landmark publication, not only in such traditional domains of evolutionary biology as quantitative genetics and paleontology but also in such new fields of research as genomics and EvoDevo. Most of the contributors to Evolution—The Extended Synthesis accept many of the tenets of the classical framework but want to relax some of its assumptions and introduce significant conceptual augmentations of the basic Modern Synthesis structure—just as the architects of the Modern Synthesis themselves expanded and modulated previous versions of Darwinism. This continuing revision of a theoretical edifice the foundations of which were laid in the middle of the nineteenth century—the reexamination of old ideas, proposals of new ones, and the synthesis of the most suitable—shows us how science works, and how scientists have painstakingly built a solid set of explanations for what Darwin called the "grandeur" of life. (shrink)

What sets the practice of rigorously tested, sound science apart from pseudoscience? In this volume, the contributors seek to answer this question, known to philosophers of science as “the demarcation problem.” This issue has a long history in philosophy, stretching as far back as the early twentieth century and the work of Karl Popper. But by the late 1980s, scholars in the field began to treat the demarcation problem as impossible to solve and futile to ponder. However, the essays that (...) Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry have assembled in this volume make a rousing case for the unequivocal importance of reflecting on the separation between pseudoscience and sound science. (shrink)

Evolutionary theory is undergoing an intense period of discussion and reevaluation. This, contrary to the misleading claims of creationists and other pseudoscientists, is no harbinger of a crisis but rather the opposite: the field is expanding dramatically in terms of both empirical discoveries and new ideas. In this essay I briefly trace the conceptual history of evolutionary theory from Darwinism to neo-Darwinism, and from the Modern Synthesis to what I refer to as the Extended Synthesis, a more inclusive conceptual framework (...) containing among others evo–devo, an expanded theory of heredity, elements of complexity theory, ideas about evolvability, and a reevaluation of levels of selection. I argue that evolutionary biology has never seen a paradigm shift, in the philosophical sense of the term, except when it moved from natural theology to empirical science in the middle of the 19th century. The Extended Synthesis, accordingly, is an expansion of the Modern Synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s, and one that—like its predecessor—will probably take decades to complete. (shrink)

Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life. No goal is more elusive. In How to Be a Stoic, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to attain it. Stoicism is a pragmatic philosophy that teaches us to act depending on what is within our control and separate things worth (...) getting upset about from those that are not. By understanding Stoicism, we can learn to answer crucial questions: Should we get married or divorced? How should we bank in a world nearly destroyed by a financial crisis? How can we survive great personal tragedy? Whoever you are, Stoicism has something for you—and How to Be a Stoic is your essential guide. (shrink)

The central idea developed by the contributions to this book is that the split between analytic philosophy and phenomenology - perhaps the most impor tant schism in twentieth-century philosophy - resulted from a radicalization of reciprocal partialities. Both schools of thought share, in fact, the same cultural background and their same initial stimulus in the thought of Franz Brentano. And one outcome of the subsequent rift between them was the oblivion into which the figure and thought of Brentano have fallen. (...) The first step to take in remedying this split is to return to Brentano and to reconstruct the 'map' of Brent ani sm. The second task (which has been addressed by this book) is to revive inter est in the theoretical complexity of Brentano' s thought and of his pupils and to revitalize those aspects that have been neglected by subsequent debate within the various movements of Brentanian inspiration. We have accordingly decided to organize the book into two introductory es says followed by two sections (Parts 1 and 2) which systematically examine Brentano's thought and that of his followers. The two introductory essays re construct the reasons for the 'invisibility', so to speak, of Brentano and set out of his philosophical doctrine. Part 1 of the book then ex the essential features amines six of Brentano's most outstanding pupils (Marty, Stumpf, Meinong, Ehrenfels, Husserl and Twardowski). Part 2 contains nine essays concentrating on the principal topics addressed by the Brentanians. (shrink)

The study of phenotypic plasticity has progressed significantly over the past few decades. We have moved from variation for plasticity being considered as a nuisance in evolutionary studies to it being the primary target of investigations that use an array of methods, including quantitative and molecular genetics, as well as of several approaches that model the evolution of plastic responses. Here, I consider some of the major aspects of research on phenotypic plasticity, assessing where progress has been made and where (...) additional effort is required. I suggest that some areas of research, such the study of the quantitative genetic underpinning of plasticity, have been either settled in broad outline or superseded by new approaches and questions. Other issues, such as the costs of plasticity are currently at the forefront of research in this field, and are likely to be areas of major future development. (shrink)

Is integrative biology a good idea, or even possible? There has been much interest lately in the unifica- tion of biology and the integration of traditionally separate disciplines such as molecular and develop- mental biology on one hand, and ecology and evolutionary biology on the other. In this paper I ask if and under what circumstances such integration of efforts actually makes sense. I develop by example an analogy with Aristotle’s famous four “causes” that one can investigate concerning any object (...) or phenomenon: material (what something is made of), formal (what distinguishes that particular object from others), efficient (how was the object made) and final (why was the object made). The example is provided by ongoing research on different aspects of flowering time in the model system Arabidop- sis, a small weed belonging to the mustard family. I show that understanding how flowering time is controlled is an epistemologically different sort of question from why and how it evolved, and that the two research agendas can be pursued largely independently of each other. Toward the end, I propose that the real goal of integrative biology is to understand the boundary layers between levels of biologi- cal analysis, something to which modern philosophy of science can contribute significantly. (shrink)

Are science and religion compatible when it comes to understanding cosmology (the origin of the universe), biology (the origin of life and of the human species), ethics, and the human mind (minds, brains, souls, and free will)? Do science and religion occupy non-overlapping magisteria? Is Intelligent Design a scientific theory? How do the various faith traditions view the relationship between science and religion? What, if any, are the limits of scientific explanation? What are the most important open questions, problems, or (...) challenges confronting the relationship between science and religion, and what are the prospects for progress? These and other questions are explored in Science and Religion: 5 Questions--a collection of thirty-three interviews based on 5 questions presented to some of the world's most influential and prominent philosophers, scientists, theologians, apologists, and atheists. Contributions by Simon Blackburn, Susan Blackmore, Sean Carroll, William Lane Craig, William Dembski, Daniel C. Dennett, George F.R. Ellis, Owen Flanagan, Owen Gingerich, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, John F. Haught, Muzaffar Iqbal, Lawrence Krauss, Colin McGinn, Alister McGrath, Mary Midgley, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Timothy O'Connor, Massimo Pigliucci, John Polkinghorne, James Randi, Alex Rosenberg, Michael Ruse, Robert John Russell, John Searle, Michael Shermer, Victor J. Stenger, Robert Thurman, Michael Tooley, Charles Townes, Peter van Inwagen, Keith Ward, Rabbi David Wolpe. (shrink)

The interview reconstructs Jeffrey Schnapp's brilliant career from his origins as a scholar of Dante and the Middle Ages to his current multiple interdisciplinary interests. Among other things, Schnapp deals with knowledge design, media history and theory, history of the book, the future of archives, museums, and libraries. The main themes of the interview concern the relationships between technology and pedagogy, the future of reading, and artificial intelligence.

This paper is about the development of a face-to-face collaborative technology to support shifting attitudes of participants in conflict via a narration task. The work is based on two cultural elements: conflict resolution theory and the design of a collaboration enforcing interface designed specifically for the task. The general claim is that participants may achieve a greater understanding of and appreciation for the other’s viewpoint under conditions that support partaking in a tangible joint task and creating a shared narration. Specifically, (...) a co-located interface for producing a joint narration as a tool for favoring reconciliation is presented and discussed. The process based on this technology implicitly includes classical steps in conflict resolution approaches, such as escalation and de-escalation. Our goal is to show that this interface is effective and constitutes an alternative to a typical face-to-face moderated discussion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Gaia?Massimo Pigliucci (bio)The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet, Michael Ruse, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. 272 pages.“The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a Pagan Planet tells a story that comes out of the 1960s, a story that reflects all of the beliefs and enthusiasms and tensions of that decade.” So begins Michael Ruse’s fascinating, if at times puzzling, exploration of James Lovelock’s famous idea that (...) our planet is, in a serious scientific sense, a living organism with a tendency of taking care of (her)self. But why tell this particular story, especially considering that Gaia hardly makes an appearance in today’s scientific or philosophical publications, and doesn’t even seem quite that popular with the lay public as it used to be? Because, as Ruse tells us near the end of the book, at the onset of chapter seven: “the paradox that set us on our path [is] why the scientific community reacted so negatively to the Gaia hypothesis, whereas the public reaction was so positive.”As it turns out, there is a good answer to that conundrum, one that Ruse himself lays out clearly in the last chapter of the book, and which makes the reader wonder why this should count a paradox at all. But we will get there in due time. First, the basics: the so-called Gaia hypothesis is the brainchild of iconoclastic inventor-turned-independent-scientist James Lovelock, who later got significant help in elaborating (and promoting) his ideas from another iconoclast, biologist Lynn Margulis. By the time you get to the end of Ruse’s engaging book, however, you won’t have gained a particularly good understanding of what the hypothesis actually consists. But that’s not Ruse’s fault, it is Lovelock’s (and Margulis’). At times it sounds like the entirely uncontroversial claim that the Earth’s [End Page 117] biosphere is a somewhat homeostatic system—i.e., a biophysical system that is resistant to major changes, at the least within a certain range (the planet’s atmosphere, after all, did change dramatically early on, increasing its oxygen content as a result of the evolution of photosynthetic organisms—the anaerobic life forms that had up to that point been dominant did not appreciate the novelty). At other times the claim is downright preposterous: the Earth literally is a living organism (according to Lovelock) (Chapter 7),1 a finding that allegedly puts in question the whole Darwinian view of biological evolution (according to Margulis) (Chapter 7), a position that can only be characterized as nonsense on stilts. At yet other moments, Gaia is presented as just a metaphor to help us wrap our minds around the complexities (and homeostatic properties) of the world’s ecosystems (Chapter 8). It is this never-ending oscillation between the trivial and the bizarre that has led the majority of scientists to write off Gaia, to the chagrin of Lovelock, Margulis, and a large number of New Age tree huggers from the 1960s.Indeed, the scientific reaction to Gaia was swift and ranging from the condescending to the unforgiving. Evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith—never one to mince words—called it “an evil religion” (Chapter 2). Another evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould (whose own disagreements with Maynard Smith became legendary) said that “Gaia strikes me as a metaphor, not a mechanism” (Chapter 2). Ecologist Robert May, who eventually became president of the Royal Society, called Lovelock “a holy fool” (Chapter 2). The highly respected theoretical biologist W.D. Hamilton said that in order for the hypothesis to work, it would require “treaties between Neptune and Zeus, a Gaian Interpol, conventions about bills of lading for chemical transport by air and water, and so on” (Chapter 7). Finally, Richard Dawkins accused Lovelock of committing the fallacy of “the BBC theorem,” assuming (or wishfully thinking) that the world is a harmonious place, just like in naive BBC nature documentaries (Chapter 2).You get the gist: pretty much from the beginning, and with very few exceptions, the scientific establishment rejected Gaia on the grounds that it is not a scientific hypothesis at all, and that its main tenets actually go against pretty... (shrink)

Si esamina, nell'esperienza giuridica, lo stato di eccezione nel senso più generale, come fenomeno straordinario, eventuale, ma che, una volta verificatosi, non possa rimanere giuridicamente ignorato né inspiegabile, analogamente al concetto del miracolo in teologia. Lo stato di eccezione non può essere neppure limitato alle sole condizioni di necessità; non può essere affrontato e risolto con le sole argomentazioni inerenti lo stato di costrizione, che rappresenta solo un aspetto della sua casistica, comprendente anche fattispecie create dall'esclusivo e libero esercizio della (...) volontà di chi provoca o determina lo stesso stato di eccezione. Per analizzare le caratteristiche del ragionamento giuridico nello stato di eccezione, si esaminano due casi. Il primo caso riguarda la cospirazione, il secondo caso di eccezione è la definizione giuridica dei diritti umani. (shrink)

In a life-span perspective, Baglio and Marchetti make the hypothesis of “the existence of multiple kinds of Theory of Mind” and urge the transition from a discrete to a dimensional approach in the study of mentalization (“ToM may vary along a quantitative and a qualitative continuum”). We resist such a plea and argue that we can stick to a discrete approach which posits just a single early-developing mindreading system, and then works out a “third-person first” perspective on mentalization, according to (...) which the understanding of other minds both ontogenetically precedes and grounds the understanding of our own minds. In this third-person first framework, Baglio and Marchetti’s claim that mentalization is “a multifaceted set of competences liable to influence -- and be influenced by -- a manifold of psychosocial aspects” is reformulated as follows: first-person mentalization evolves in an interplay of third-person mentalization, autobiographical memory and socio-communicative skills attuned by cultural variables. Let us examine these points one by one.In the first place, we take a nativist-modularist perspective on third-person mentalization (henceforth “mindreading”). After Onishi and Baillargeon’s (2005) groundbreaking paper, enough evidence has accumulated to endorse the hypothesis that a form of primary mindreading is not a developmental achievement, but an innate social-cognitive evolutionary adaptation (Baillargeon et al., 2013, 2014). Such adaptation is implemented... (shrink)

If evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. His Tales of the Rational defines an intellectual space as far removed as hardcore religious fundamentalism from mainstream thinking--but it may be coming closer as scientists and skeptics launch more aggressive attacks on pseudoscience and fuzzy thinking. Pigliucci, a rising star on the evolution-creationism debate circuit, pulls out all the stops in his work, not content merely to defend science against its detractors, but eagerly undermining (...) belief in religion and the existence of any gods at all. Using writing that is strong if rarely eloquent, he defines his terms precisely, makes short work of creationists William Lane Craig and Duane Gish, challenges religious preconceptions, and even ventures to hose down the flames of pseudoscience spouting from chaos theory. Readers with any sympathy for spirituality will run face-first into statements like "I do not see what science has to gain from being reconciled with a system of superstitious beliefs that stands for the exact opposite of free inquiry.". (shrink)

This chapter examines the real status of the scientific theory of evolution and what people mean by intelligent design. More generally, it explores the proper relationship between science and religion, not to mention politics, in early 21st century America. These concepts are examined through the inquiring minds and sharp tongues of Jon Stewart, Lewis Black of the “Evolution, Schmevolution” series, and former Daily Show “correspondent” Ed Helms.

: In this article we shall deal with the construction and defense of subjective identity as a topic at the intersection of psychology and anthropology. In this perspective, defense mechanisms are seen as falling along a spectrum that stretches from the individual to the collective level. The individual mind is the sphere of the intrapsychic defenses and the interpersonal maneuvers to which each of us appeals, in the relationship with other people and with one’s own environment, to defend one’s own (...) self-describability and, indissolubly, the solidity of one’s own self-conscious being. At a social and collective level, on the other hand, the individual self-protective structures are supported by cultural interventions that organize and intersubjectively “domesticate” our subjectivity and our feeling of being-there. Keywords: Autobiographical Reasoning; Defense Mechanisms; Grief; Narrative Identity; Ontological Insecurity Meccanismi di difesa: dall’individuale al collettivo Riassunto: L’articolo si occupa di costruzione e difesa dell’identità soggettiva come tema all’intersezione di psicologia e antropologia. In questa prospettiva, i meccanismi di difesa si dispongono lungo uno spettro che dal livello individuale conduce a quello collettivo. La mente individuale è la sfera delle difese intrapsichiche e delle manovre interpersonali a cui ognuno di noi fa ricorso, nella relazione con gli altri e col proprio ambiente, per difendere la propria autodescrivibilità e, inscindibilmente, la solidità del proprio essere autocosciente. Al livello sociale e collettivo, invece, le strutture autoprotettive dell’individuo sono sorrette da interventi culturali che organizzano e “addomesticano” intersoggettivamente la nostra soggettività e il nostro sentirci esistere. Parole chiave: Ragionamento autobiografico; Meccanismi di difesa; Cordoglio; Identità narrativa; Insicurezza ontologica. (shrink)

In questo articolo ci proponiamo di portare alla luce i netti confini che separano i concetti di mindreading, introspezione e metacognizione con l’obiettivo di dissipare alcuni fraintendimenti presenti nella letteratura clinica. A tal fine, iniziamo identificando due posizioni principali nell’odierno dibattito filosofico cognitivo sull’introspezione: da un lato le teorie che sostengono che “introspezione” è la denominazione impropria per un processo interpretativo; da un altro lato le teorie che continuano a ritenere che almeno in alcuni casi l’accesso alla propria mente sia (...) diretto e non interpretativo. Dopodiché prendiamo posizione contro le teorie dell’accesso diretto e in favore di una certa versione dell’approccio interpretativista. Infine, da questo approccio ricaviamo alcune linee guida per l’uso della Theory of Mind in neuropsichiatria cognitiva. (shrink)

A new conceptual essay introducing one of the classics of the evolutionary biological literature.

This paper deals with a number of technical achievements that are instrumental for a dis-solution of the so-called "Hole Argument" in general relativity. Such achievements include: 1) the analysis of the "Hole" phenomenology in strict connection with the Hamiltonian treatment of the initial value problem. The work is carried through in metric gravity for the class of Christoudoulou-Klainermann space-times, in which the temporal evolution is ruled by the "weak" ADM energy; 2) a re-interpretation of "active" diffeomorphisms as "passive and metric-dependent" (...) dynamical symmetries of Einstein's equations, a re-interpretation which enables to disclose their (up to now unknown) connection to gauge transformations on-shell; understanding such connection also enlightens the real content of the Hole Argument or, better, dis-solves it together with its alleged "indeterminism"; 3) the utilization of the Bergmann-Komar "intrinsic pseudo-coordinates", defined as suitable functionals of the Weyl curvature scalars, as tools for a peculiar gauge-fixing to the super-hamiltonian and super-momentum constraints; 4) the consequent construction of a "physical atlas" of 4-coordinate systems for the 4-dimensional "mathematical" manifold, in terms of the highly non-local degrees of freedom of the gravitational field (its four independent "Dirac observables"). Such construction embodies the "physical individuation" of the points of space-time as "point-events", independently of the presence of matter, and associates a "non-commutative structure" to each gauge fixing or four-dimensional coordinate system; 5) a clarification of the multiple definition given by Peter Bergmann of the concept of "(Bergmann) observable" in general relativity. This clarification leads to the proposal of a "main conjecture" asserting the existence of i) special Dirac's observables which are also Bergmann's observables, ii) gauge variables that are coordinate independent (namely they behave like the tetradic scalar fields of the Newman-Penrose formalism). A by-product of this achievements is the falsification of a recently advanced argument asserting the absence of (any kind of) "change" in the observable quantities of general relativity. 6) a clarification of the physical role of Dirac and gauge variables as their being related to "tidal-like" and "inertial-like" effects, respectively. This clarification is mainly due to the fact that, unlike the standard formulations of the equivalence principle, the Hamiltonian formalism allows to define notion of "force" in general relativity in a natural way; 7) a proposal showing how the physical individuation of point-events could in principle be implemented as an experimental setup and protocol leading to a "standard of space-time" more or less like atomic clocks define standards of time. We conclude that, besides being operationally essential for building measuring apparatuses for the gravitational field, the role of matter in the non-vacuum gravitational case is also that of "participating directly" in the individuation process, being involved in the determination of the Dirac observables. This circumstance leads naturally to a peculiar new kind of "structuralist" view of the general-relativistic concept of space-time, a view that embodies some elements of both the traditional "absolutist" and "relational" conceptions. In the end, space-time point-events maintain a "peculiar sort of objectivity". Some hints following from our approach for the quantum gravity programme are also given. (shrink)

Concerning how to educate science educators about the nature of science, in the context of the creationism debates.

Does syllogistic logic have the resources to capture mathematical proof? This volume provides the first unified account of the history of attempts to answer this question, the reasoning behind the different positions taken, and their far-reaching implications. Aristotle had claimed that scientific knowledge, which includes mathematics, is provided by syllogisms of a special sort: 'scientific' ('demonstrative') syllogisms. In ancient Greece and in the Middle Ages, the claim that Euclid's theorems could be recast syllogistically was accepted without further scrutiny. Nevertheless, as (...) early as Galen, the importance of relational reasoning for mathematics had already been recognized. Further critical voices emerged in the Renaissance and the question of whether mathematical proofs could be recast syllogistically attracted more sustained attention over the following three centuries. Supported by more detailed analyses of Euclidean theorems, this led to attempts to extend logical theory to include relational reasoning, and to arguments purporting to reduce relational reasoning to a syllogistic form. Philosophical proposals to the effect that mathematical reasoning is heterogenous with respect to logical proofs were famously defended by Kant, and the implications of the debate about the adequacy of syllogistic logic for mathematics are at the very core of Kant's account of synthetic a priori judgments. While it is now widely accepted that syllogistic logic is not sufficient to account for the logic of mathematical proof, the history and the analysis of this debate, running from Aristotle to de Morgan and beyond, is a fascinating and crucial insight into the relationship between philosophy and mathematics. (shrink)