CFP: Evolution and Historical Explanation: Contingency, Convergence, and Teleology

(Note: this conference follows the 2014 IRC Conference on Special Divine
Action, 13-16 July)

As part of the “Science, Progress and History” project, funded by the
Templeton World Charity Foundation, the Centre for the History of European
Discourses, University of Queensland (CHED), and the Ian Ramsey Centre
(IRC), Oxford, will be convening a joint conference at St Anne's College,
Oxford, 17-19 July 2014 on the theme of Evolution and Historical
Explanation: Contingency, Convergence, and Teleology.

PLENARY SPEAKERS

– Simon Conway Morris (Cambridge)
– John Beatty (University of British Columbia)
– Allan Megill (University of Virginia)
– Betül Kacar (Georgia Tech)
– Michael Ruse (Florida State University)

This is an interdisciplinary conference that seeks to bring together
scholars from a wide range of disciplines in both the humanities and the
sciences. We are interested to explore questions at the interface of
history and the natural sciences, particularly by focusing on laws,
patterns and narrative structures in human history, evolutionary history,
and cosmology.

The conference will begin at 4pm on Thursday 17 July (registration from
2pm) and finish with dinner on Saturday 19 July. Registration for this
conference is online via the Oxford University online store - CHED/IRC
conference.

CALL FOR PAPERS

There will be opportunities for short paper presentations of 20 mins
duration, followed by 10 mins of questions. Please send paper proposals of
200–300 words to Ian Hesketh at [email protected] along with your
institutional affiliation and a one-paragraph autobiographical statement
suitable for use in conference materials.

The organisers are happy to consider any proposals that deal with the broad
themes of the conference. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

HISTORY

– How have conceptions of historical purpose or directionality influenced
the emerging historical sciences (geology, evolutionary biology,
cosmology)? These conceptions might include religious ideas (providential
and eschatological), philosophical ideas (Hegelianism) sociological
conceptions (Comte, Marx), or economics (Hayek).
– In what sense was natural history a historical discipline, and what
significance can be attached to its gradual displacement by biology?

BIOLOGY

– Are there patterns, or evidence of directionality in evolutionary history?
– Do the biological sciences, and evolutionary biology in particular,
have ‘laws’ or allow for predictability in any strict sense?
– What relationship, if any, is there been contingent or random processes,
and the appearance of order, regularity, or directionality?

GENERAL AND BRIDGING ISSUES

– If historical conceptions of directionality and order in history did in
fact influence the development of the historical sciences, can the vestiges
of these influences still be discerned?
– Does the popularization or communication of the sciences to a general
public require that they be given some kind of narrative structure –
e.g. ‘big history’, ‘the epic of evolution’? Does this structure distort
these sciences or might it be an essential ingredient?
– Is ‘counterfactual history’ a useful explanatory tool in both spheres
(history and the historical sciences)?
– Are there similarities between the ways in which contingency and order
are understood in these two spheres?
– Has teleological explanation found its way back into biology and history?
– What is the significance of recent philosophical critiques of
evolutionary theory mounted by philosophers such as Thomas Nagel and Jerry
Fodor?

Please send paper proposals of 200–300 words to Ian Hesketh at
[email protected] along with your institutional affiliation and a one-
paragraph autobiographical statement suitable for use in conference
materials.

Closing date for abstract submissions: Wednesday 30th April, 2014

Notification of accepted papers will take place by Friday 9th May 2014.