December 8, 2022 “Plasticity before and after Genetics: Mary Jane West-Eberhard and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis” Jonathan Basile

Thursday, December 8. 5:00 – 6:30 PM (Buchanan Tower 1112)

Jonthan Basile

Post-doctoral fellow, Department of English

http://jonathanbasile.info/

 

“Plasticity before and after Genetics: Mary Jane West-Eberhard and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

In the 21st Century, evolutionary theory has fragmented into myriad approaches to the study of life that have fundamentally placed in question the basic orthodoxies of the Modern Synthesis, population genetics, and gene selectionism. I will closely examine Mary Jane West-Eberhard’s theory of plasticity to better understand why the old models failed and yet why their successors fail to gel into a unified theory.