Professor Simon Conway Morris FRS
Professor Simon Conway Morris's Gifford lecture series 'Darwin's Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation' explores the seeming direction of evolution and the emergence of intelligence, and ponders whether mind might have existed before matter
Biography
Simon Conway Morris FRS, holds an ad hominem chair in Evolutionary Palaeobiology in the University of Cambridge. He will deliver a Series of Gifford Lectures in the University of Edinburgh in 2006 - 2007.
Event details
Lecture Series Theme: Darwin 's Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation
Dates: 19, 20, 22, 26, 27 February, 1 March 2007, 5.15pm
Venue: Playfair Library, Old College, South Bridge
Lecture 1: Life’s Solution: The Predictability of Evolution across the Galaxy (and Beyond)
As often as not when evolution is mentioned so too is randomness, be it the role of genetic mutation or a mass extinction triggered by a rogue bolide.
Lecture 2: Eyes to See, Brains to Think: The Inevitable Evolution of Intelligence
The striking similarity of the camera eye in the octopus and human (and other vertebrates) is perhaps the classic example of evolutionary convergence.
Lecture 3: Meeting the Aliens: Galactic Hide and Seek
If evolution is predictable in its outcomes on this planet then like any other science the results should apply universally.
Lecture 4: Becoming Human: The Continuing Mystery
Animals may navigate by the stars or use the Earth’s magnetic field, but only humans wish to map the celestial heavens or probe the atomic structure of magnetism.
Lecture 5: The Evolution of Consciousness: A Window on to Invisible Worlds?
The regularities of the physical world, be they the Euclidean geometry of three dimensional space or the three degrees of freedom shown by terrestrial illumination, strongly indicate (as Roger Shepard has shown) that there must be universal principles of mind.
Lecture 6: Towards an Eschatology of Evolution
Evolutionary convergence strongly suggests that evolution has inherent directionalities, and by implication end-points.