[spsp-members] Ford Doolittle, "Making Evolutionary Sense of Gaia" [PhilInBioMed Seminar, Sept 24]

[Thomas Pradeu]

Ford Doolittle (Dalhousie, Canada), Making Evolutionary Sense of Gaia
Virtual talk, September 24th, 5pm (French time, UTC+2) PhilInBioMed
Seminar, University of Bordeaux, France

All details: https://www.philinbiomed.org/event/ford-doolittle/


W. Ford Doolittle
<https://www.dal.ca/about-dal/dalhousie-originals/ford-doolittle.html> FRSC
FRS (born November 30, 1941, in Urbana, Illinois), Professor Emeritus at
the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology of the Dalhousie
University, Halifax, Canada, is an evolutionary and molecular biologist. He
is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Canada and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
He is also the winner of the 2013 Herzberg Medal of the Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the 2017 Killam Prize.

Doolittle has made significant contributions to the study of cyanobacteria.
He found evidence for the endosymbiont origins of chloroplasts, and
developed a theoretical basis for the initial evolution of eukaryotes. He
has shown the importance of horizontal gene transfer in prokaryotic
evolution.

As of 2007, he has been professor emeritus at Dalhousie University in
Halifax, Nova Scotia. He received his BA in biochemical sciences from
Harvard University in 1963 and his PhD from Stanford University in 1967,
under Charles Yanofsky. He went on to do postdoctoral fellowships with Sol
Spiegelman and Norman R. Pace.

Doolittle was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2023.

In addition to his contributions to evolutionary biology, Doolittle is an
artist who studied at NSCAD University, achieving a BA in photography.


*Abstract:*

After briefly describing James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis, I’ll argue that
Gaia does not reproduce, or rather that it has what Peter Godfrey-Smith
would term “too many parents” to undergo natural selection according to
Lewontin’s Recipe. So it does not make sense to most Darwinians. If that
recipe were extended to include differential persistence as well as
differential reproduction, or if the “gene’s-eye view” of Richard Dawkins
as further extended by David Hull and us were adopted, then the Gaia
Hypothesis would make sense. That’s what the *It’s the song not the
singer(s*) theory does.


*Recommended reading:*
Doolittle WF (2019) Making Evolutionary Sense of Gaia. *Trends in Ecology &
Evolution* 34:889–894. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.05.001

*Please contact me <thomas.pradeu at u-bordeaux.fr> if you'd like to attend
online.*

Sincerely,

Thomas Pradeu
CNRS Research Director in Philosophy of Science
Immunology Unit ImmunoConcEpT, UMR5164, CNRS & University of Bordeaux
Presidential Fellow, Chapman University, CA, USA
Team Leader Conceptual Biology and Medicine Team
<https://immunoconcept.cnrs.fr/conceptual-biology-medicine/>
Coordinator of the Philosophy in Biology and Medicine Network
<https://www.philinbiomed.org/> (PhilInBioMed)
*Recent publications:*
- Philosophy in Science: Can philosophers of science permeate through
science and produce scientific knowledge?  <https://doi.org/10.1086/715518>(
*BJPS*, 2024).
- The conceptual foundations of innate immunity: Taking stock 30 years later
<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2024.03.007> (*Immunity*, 2024)
- Reuniting philosophy and science to advance cancer research
<https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12971> (*Biological Reviews*, 2023)
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