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sellers.

Welcome to Scientific American Science Talk posted on September 27th, 2017. I'm Steve Merski.

On this episode... And we now realize that there is plenty of convergence around us. Well, that has led some people to argue, in fact, that evolution is very

deterministic, that the environment poses certain problems for organisms, and that there are

best solutions that natural selection finds repeatedly. That's Jonathan Lawsus, spelled L-O-S-O-S.

He's a biology professor at Harvard and curator of herpetology at the

University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. And his latest book is Improbable Destinies, Fate,

Chance, and the Future of Evolution, in which he addresses a question that's been the subject of

debate in evolution circles for decades.

Given the same starting point, does evolution happen the same way over and over again?

Or will each unspooling of the tape give rise to a different set of outcomes?

Stephen Jay Gould argued that evolution should not repeat itself, and that's where we begin.

Laws has sat down with me at the Scientific American Office. Be advised that almost three minutes into the interview,

I utter a vulgar expression, which has been used repeatedly over the years by Scientific

American columnist John Horgan to sum up Gould's overarching view of evolution. So consider yourself warned. Maybe a good place to

start is by talking about Stephen J. Gould and the outsized effect, his musings really sometimes,

have had on the whole field of evolutionary biology.

...