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SUMMARY:How to count organisms - Ellen Clarke (All Souls College\, Oxford)
DTSTART:20120223T163000Z
DTEND:20120223T180000Z
UID:TALK35057@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Karin Ekholm
DESCRIPTION:Organisms are indispensable objects in our everyday ontology a
 nd in biology. We know that counting particular lumps of living matter\, a
 nd not others\, allows us to describe and make predictions about evolution
 ary processes. Yet we lack a theory telling us which lumps to count. In so
 me cases the answer is obvious\; we find it easy to count piglets without 
 worrying that we have confused parts of the mother with her babies. Yet on
 ce we turn to organisms which reproduce by tearing themselves in half (sta
 rfish) or growing copies of themselves at the ends of their limbs (plants)
  our intuitions desert us. Darwin's _Origin of the Species_ describes how 
 the differential births and deaths of individuals produce evolutionary cha
 nge. If we cannot decide how to count some creatures then we cannot apply 
 our evolutionary theory to them. Do they fall outside of evolution then? O
 r is the intuitive organism really less obvious than we think? I present a
  novel definition of the organism which achieves a reconciliation of confl
 icting accounts by identifying a common functional effect of the mechanism
 s identified in those different accounts.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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