This is a reminder for:
Title: Maureen O'Malley
The Tree of Life: Hypothesis, Model or Heuristic?
The tree of life (TOL) is under assault as an accurate and appropriate
representation of the evolution of life forms. Molecular data have revealed
the extent of processes such as lateral gene transfer (LGT) that cannot be
represented as ever-branching patterns of speciation. Nevertheless, the
popularity of the tree as an overarching symbol for evolutionary pattern and
process persists — not only in metazoan phylogeny but also in all the
disciplines that study evolution, including evolutionary microbiology. Some
commentators have argued that at least in prokaryote phylogeny the TOL has
to give way to newer and more inclusive representations. Others argue that
tree concepts and methods can be modified to meet the challenges of dealing
with non-tree-like processes. But amidst these debates, there has been
little sustained discussion about what exactly the TOL is. Biologists and
philosophers have contested the ontology of the TOL (whether it is a tree of
genes, a tree of genomes, a tree of species, or a tree of cells), and many
others have focused on evaluating different methodologies used to approach
the tree, but the actual role of the TOL in scientific practice has had
little attention. There are a several candidates for the role the TOL plays
in evolutionary biology, and these include that of an axiom, a hypothesis or
theory, a model or set of models of some sort, a metaphor, a ‘myth’ (or more
bluntly, a mistake), or a heuristic. I want to examine a range of these
possibilities with the particular aim of understanding why the TOL endures
despite the evidence against it, and whether one of these descriptions of
what the TOL is enables us to extract greater epistemic value from it.
When: Mon Feb 21 1pm – 3:30pm Eastern Time - Melbourne, Sydney
Where: University of Sydney philosophy common room
Calendar: Current Projects
Who:
* [email protected] - creator
Event details:
https://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=VIEW&eid=XzZvb2o4ZGkyNjUyMzRiOXA2c3A0YWI5azg4b2s0YjlwNnNzM2NiOWw2dDFqNmNwZzY1MTM4aDI0ODggZmV2MWxkcjRsa2h2MDM2b2U0aW4yanR0ZGdAZw
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