Crystal symmetry in plankton, as depicted by Ernst Haeckel
Virtual
Seminar
  US Mountain Time
Speaker: 
Nicolaas Rupke (Washington & Lee University; Prof. Emeritus, History of Science at Göttingen University)

Abstract:  A more comprehensive approach to evolutionary theory than Darwin’s was developed from 1755 on, when Immanuel Kant published his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels. Kant’s unified theory has had many and eminent followers throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the wake of WW II and of the 1959 centenary of The Origin of Species, the Kantian approach lost ground and Darwinism, in the form of the New Synthesis, became “the only game in town.” In an ongoing project, I take stock of the structuralist tradition, recover the memory of its historical development, and reformulate its scientific arguments for present-day use. This talk offers a brief overview of the project and focuses on a number of structuralist phenomena that undergird the unified theory.   

Purpose: 
Research Collaboration
SFI Host: 
David Krakauer

More SFI Events