257. Simon Conway Morris on Design in Evolution & the Possibility of Purpose in the Cosmos

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2022

⏱️ 120 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If extraterrestrial intelligences exist, will look anything like us? Are we alone in the cosmos? If we reran the tape of life, would humans appear again? Is there purpose in the cosmos?

Shermer speaks with Cambridge evolutionary palaeobiologist Simon Conway Morris whose latest book challenges six assumptions that too often pass as unquestioned truths amongst the evolutionary orthodox. These include the idea that evolution is boundless in the kinds of biological systems it can produce. Not true, he says. The process is highly circumscribed and delimited. Nor is it random. This popular notion holds that evolution proceeds blindly, with no endgame. But Conway Morris suggests otherwise, pointing to evidence that the processes of evolution are “seeded with inevitabilities.”

Shermer and Morris also discuss: convergent evolution and directionality in evolution; chance, contingency, and law in evolution; theistic evolution and teleology in nature; why Morris is a Christian but rejects Intelligent Design creationism; free will and determinism; and whether there good arguments for God’s existence.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Michael Sherman Shower
0:17.0	Welcome to the Michael Shimmer Show. I'm your host Michael Shimmer. My guest today is Simon Conway Morris.
0:20.0	He is a paleobiologist at... Well, I'll give you the whole bio in a second. His new book is from
0:25.5	extraterrestrials to animal minds, sixth myths of evolution. Simon is the emeritus professor of evolutionary paleobiology at the University of Cambridge.
0:38.0	He's a fellow of the Royal Society and has written several books including Life's Solution and The Ruins of Evolution.
0:46.0	Dr Morris has been honored with the Walcott Medal from the National Academy of Sciences,
0:51.0	the Charles Schu-Shu-Shu-Shu-Shu-Shu-Shu-Shu-Shu-Shu-Shu-Sha-Ad Award from the Paleontological Society, and the Lyle Medal
0:57.3	from the Geological Society of London, named after Charles Lyle, and the Schu shirt Award
1:01.8	is for the best and most influential. after Charles Lyle and the Shoe Shoe Shoe Shoe Shoeyantologist under the age of 40.
1:07.0	He is well known for his work on the Cambrian explosion and his extensive studies on convergent evolution.
1:13.7	I encountered his name when after Gould wrote his book,
1:18.6	wonderful life about the Burgess Shale and the role of randomness and chance in how life turns out in
1:26.0	evolutionary deep time. And Morris counters that and says actually it's not as
1:31.2	random and contingent as Google made it out to be.
1:33.7	There's a kind of a directionality to evolution almost a teleology based on this
1:39.1	principle of convergent evolution. There's only so many ways to see the world or fly through the air,
1:44.0	swim through the water, and so on, and many organisms end up with the same kind of
1:48.8	solution. That's the title of his book Life Solution. His other books, by the way, published by the Templeton Press this is the
1:55.8	Templeton Foundation that tries to bridge science and religion his other book
2:00.0	is the deep structure of biology is convergence sufficiently ubiquitous to give a directional signal
2:06.8	directional signal.
2:07.8	Interesting.
	...

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