125 | David Haig on the Evolution of Meaning from Darwin to Derrida

125 | David Haig on the Evolution of Meaning from Darwin to Derrida

Aristotle conceived of the world in terms of teleological "final causes"; Darwin, or so the story goes, erased purpose and meaning from the world, replacing them with a bloodless scientific algorithm. But should we abandon all talk of meanings and purposes, or instead conceptualize them as emergent rather than fundamental? Philosophers (and former Mindscape guests) Alex Rosenberg and Daniel Dennett recently had an exchange on just this subject, and today we're going to hear from a working scientist. David Haig is a geneticist and evolutionary biologist who argues that it's perfectly sensible to perceive meaning as arising through the course of evolution, even if evolution itself is purposeless.

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David Haig received his Ph.D. in biology from Macquarie University. He is currently the George Putnam Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. His research focuses on evolutionary aspects of cooperation, competition, and kinship, including the kinship theory of genomic imprinting. His new book is From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves, and the Meanings of Life.


Jaksot(424)

23 | Lisa Aziz-Zadeh on Embodied Cognition, Mirror Neurons, and Empathy

23 | Lisa Aziz-Zadeh on Embodied Cognition, Mirror Neurons, and Empathy

Brains are important things; they're where thinking happens. Or are they? The theory of "embodied cognition" posits that it's better to think of thinking as something that takes place in the body as a...

19 Marras 20181h 7min

22 | Joe Walston on Conservation, Urbanization, and the Way We Live on Earth

22 | Joe Walston on Conservation, Urbanization, and the Way We Live on Earth

There's no question that human activity is causing enormous changes on our planet's environment, from deforestation to mass extinction to climate change. But perhaps there is a tiny cause for optimism...

12 Marras 20181h 28min

21 | Alex Rosenberg on Naturalism, History, and Theory of Mind

21 | Alex Rosenberg on Naturalism, History, and Theory of Mind

We humans love to tell ourselves stories about why things happened the way they did; if the stories are sufficiently serious, we label this activity "history." Part of getting history right is simply ...

5 Marras 20181h 20min

20 | Scott Derrickson on Cinema, Blockbusters, Horror, and Mystery

20 | Scott Derrickson on Cinema, Blockbusters, Horror, and Mystery

Special Halloween edition? Scott Derrickson is a film-lover first and a director second, but he's been quite successful at the latter -- you may know him as the director and co-writer of Marvel's Doct...

29 Loka 20181h 23min

19 | Tyler Cowen on Maximizing Growth and Thinking for the Future

19 | Tyler Cowen on Maximizing Growth and Thinking for the Future

Economics, like other sciences (social and otherwise), is about what the world does; but it's natural for economists to occasionally wander out into the question of what we should do as we live in the...

22 Loka 201859min

18 | Clifford Johnson on What's So Great About Superstring Theory

18 | Clifford Johnson on What's So Great About Superstring Theory

String theory is a speculative and highly technical proposal for uniting the known forces of nature, including gravity, under a single quantum-mechanical framework. This doesn't seem like a recipe for...

15 Loka 20181h 12min

17 | Annalee Newitz on Science, Fiction, Economics, and Neurosis

17 | Annalee Newitz on Science, Fiction, Economics, and Neurosis

The job of science fiction isn't to predict the future; it's to tell interesting stories in an imaginative setting, exploring the implications of different ways the world could be different from our a...

8 Loka 20181h 11min

16 | Coleen Murphy on Aging, Biology, and the Future

16 | Coleen Murphy on Aging, Biology, and the Future

Aging -- everybody does it, very few people actually do something about it. Coleen Murphy is an exception. In her laboratory at Princeton, she and her team study aging in the famous C. Elegans roundwo...

1 Loka 20181h 4min

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