KLI Colloquia are informal, public talks that are followed by extensive dissussions. Speakers are KLI fellows or visiting researchers who are interested in presenting their work to an interdisciplinary audience and discussing it in a wider research context. We offer three types of talks:
1. Current Research Talks. KLI fellows or visiting researchers present and discuss their most recent research with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.
2. Future Research Talks. Visiting researchers present and discuss future projects and ideas togehter with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.
3. Professional Developmental Talks. Experts about research grants and applications at the Austrian and European levels present career opportunities and strategies to late-PhD and post-doctoral researchers.
- The presentation language is English.
- If you are interested in presenting your current or future work at the KLI, please contact the Scientific Director or the Executive Manager.
Event Details
Topic description:
Long-term morphological stasis is an important pattern in macroevolution. According to one strand of thinking in evolutionary biology, stabilizing selection is the whole story about stasis. Following philosophers such as Kim Sterelny and Jonathan Kaplan, I argue that this extrapolationist approach is misguided. Other potential explanations of stasis invoke population structure, extinction selectivity, habitat tracking, and developmental constraints. I’ll argue that the challenge of explaining stasis is best understood as a problem of model integration, and that stasis might not be a unitary phenomenon. The same pattern could be generated by different processes in different cases.
Biographical note:
Derek Turner holds a PhD in Philosophy from Vanderbilt University, Nashville. He is a Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College and the Associate Director of the Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment of Connecticut College. Previously, Derek had fellowships at Goettingen and Pittsburgh, and he taught a summer school course on evolution in Lisbon in 2013.
