Visiting Speaker Series

The Distinguished Speaker Series invites distinguished scholars to present their work in the history and philosophy of science. The Allan Franklin New Ideas Speaker Series invites scholars to present their new and exciting work in the history and philosophy of science. It is named in honor of Allan Franklin, for his decades of unparalleled contributions to the history and philosophy of science. Dr. Franklin is best known for his work on the methods of physics.

Schedule for AY 26/27:

  • October 9, 2026 at 3:30pm, HLMS E110: Allan Franklin New Ideas Speaker Karen Kovaka (UC, San Diego)

    • "The Explanatory Value of Anisogamy"

      • Abstract: Anisogamy is sexual reproduction that occurs between gametes of two sizes, large and small. The conventional wisdom in evolutionary biology says that anisogamy, in addition to being the way many organisms reproduce, is also central to explaining the evolution, appearance, and behavior of these organisms. If you accept the conventional wisdom, anisogamy starts to look important for yet another reason: across species, you can categorize organisms based on the size of gametes they produce. This is known as the gametic view of sex, which in its simplest form says that males are individuals who produce small gametes, and females are individuals who produce large ones. Our aim in this paper is to examine this justification for the gametic view of sex—the idea that anisogamy explains. Our central question is: Does anisogamy have sufficient explanatory power to serve as the basis for biological sex categorization? Given the evidence currently available, we argue that the answer is no. Anisogamy is certainly an important biological phenomenon, but this does not mean that classifying organisms by gamete size pays its way epistemically.
         

  • October 14, 2026 at 5:30pm, HLMS N380: CHPS Speaker Douglas Erwin (National Museum of Natural History)

    • "Evolutionary Space: Search and Construction"

      • Abstract: Evolutionary spaces: search and construction:  Since geneticist Sewell Wright first proposed fitness landscapes in 1932 a variety of evolutionary spaces and landscapes have been invoked by evolutionary biologists, adaptive landscapes, protein spaces, morphospaces and phylomorphospaces,  among others.  In this talk I will discuss evolutionary novelty and innovation in terms of different evolutionary spaces and their topology, focusing in particular on differences between evolutionary spaces that exist a priori, such as sequence spaces of DNA, RNA and proteins, and those constructed by evolution, which often have less topological structure.  These distinctions between what Kauffman termed, respectively, pre-statable and non-prestatable spaces provide interesting insights into the dynamics of evolutionary novelty and innovation.  

  • December 1, 2026 (Tuesday) at 3:30pm: CHPS Speaker Nick Huggett (Chicago), TBA

  • February 19, 2027 at 3:30pm: Allan Franklin New Ideas Speaker Cameron Buckner (U of Florida), TBA

  • March 26, 2027 at 3:30pm: Distinguished Speaker, Heather Douglas (Michigan State), TBA

  • April 16, 2027 at 3:30pm: Distinguished Speaker, Kathleen Akins (Simon-Fraser), TBA