Evolutionary Convergence - What Is It?

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Ame: If we d the tape of life backwards, how similar would the outcomes be? Ame with great respect here, i think you chaps deal with fairly small change. The potential number of comminatorial immense of biological space is just stupidly large. And as a similar argument, with other anzimes, which accelerate various chemical reactions, ad think that suggests that there is a fundamental predictability to evolution.

Evolution by natural selection is one of the rare scientific theories that resonates within the wider culture as much as it does within science. But as much as people know about evolution, we also find the growth of corresponding myths. Simon Conway Morris is a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist who’s new book is From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution. He is known as a defender of evolutionary convergence and adaptationism — even when there is a mass extinction, he argues, the resulting shake-up simply accelerates the developments evolution would have made anyway. We talk about this, and also about the possible role of God in an evolutionary worldview.

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Simon Conway Morris received his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Cambridge. He is currently an emeritus professor of evolutionary paleobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge. Among his awards are the Walcott Medal of the National Academy of Sciences and the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London.

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