Speaker: Lu Qiaoying, Assistant Professor of Peking University

Time: 19:00-20:30 p.m., June 12, 2023, GMT+8

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Abstract:

Advocates of an “extended evolutionary synthesis” have suggested that standard evolutionary theory fails to accommodate epigenetics and extended heredity. But this problem is to a significant extent terminological. Incorporating these phenomena does not require a major revision of the formal models at the heart of contemporary evolutionary theory. Starting from Haig’s framework of the strategic gene and Griffiths and Neumann-Held’s concept of the evolutionary gene we define senses of “gene”, “environment” and “phenotype” that include only the necessary and sufficient conditions for each concept to play its role in formal evolutionary models. The evolutionary gene, we argue, need not be restricted to nucleic acids but can encompass other heritable units that we term “epialleles” and “exoalleles”. If facts about the mechanisms of heredity require evolutionary theory to be extended to include these new units, this will not require a major revision of existing formal evolutionary models.

Source: Department of Philosophy