*Announcement #1*

*Ford Doolittle (Dalhousie, Canada), Making Evolutionary Sense of Gaia*
Virtual talk, September 24th, 5pm (French time, UTC+2)
PhilInBioMed Seminar, University of Bordeaux, France
All details: https://www.philinbiomed.org/event/ford-doolittle/

W. Ford Doolittle
<https://www.dal.ca/about-dal/dalhousie-originals/ford-doolittle.html> FRSC
FRS (born November 30, 1941, in Urbana, Illinois), Professor Emeritus at
the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology of the Dalhousie
University, Halifax, Canada, is an evolutionary and molecular biologist. He
is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Canada and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
He is also the winner of the 2013 Herzberg Medal of the Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the 2017 Killam Prize.

Doolittle has made significant contributions to the study of cyanobacteria.
He found evidence for the endosymbiont origins of chloroplasts, and
developed a theoretical basis for the initial evolution of eukaryotes. He
has shown the importance of horizontal gene transfer in prokaryotic
evolution.

As of 2007, he has been professor emeritus at Dalhousie University in
Halifax, Nova Scotia. He received his BA in biochemical sciences from
Harvard University in 1963 and his PhD from Stanford University in 1967,
under Charles Yanofsky. He went on to do postdoctoral fellowships with Sol
Spiegelman and Norman R. Pace.

Doolittle was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2023.

In addition to his contributions to evolutionary biology, Doolittle is an
artist who studied at NSCAD University, achieving a BA in photography.

*Abstract:*

After briefly describing James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis, I’ll argue that
Gaia does not reproduce, or rather that it has what Peter Godfrey-Smith
would term “too many parents” to undergo natural selection according to
Lewontin’s Recipe. So it does not make sense to most Darwinians. If that
recipe were extended to include differential persistence as well as
differential reproduction, or if the “gene’s-eye view” of Richard Dawkins
as further extended by David Hull and us were adopted, then the Gaia
Hypothesis would make sense. That’s what the *It’s the song not the
singer(s*) theory does.

*Recommended reading:*
Doolittle WF (2019) Making Evolutionary Sense of Gaia. *Trends in Ecology &
Evolution* 34:889–894. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.05.001

Please contact me <[log in to unmask]> if you'd like to attend
online.

Sincerely,
Thomas Pradeu

*Announcement #2*

The Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh
invites you to join us online for our upcoming lecture. This lecture will
be live streamed on YouTube at
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg or you can join
with Zoom at  https://pitt.zoom.us/j/95274742428



*Featured Former Fellow – Soazig Le Bihan*

Tuesday, September 17th @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EST

*Title:* *How to Secure Public Trust in Value-Laden Science – A Fiduciary
Model.*

*Abstract:*

Many philosophers of science agree that science cannot, and in some
contexts should not, be value-free. Values, whether epistemic or not,
influence scientific practices in multiple ways (See Elliott 2022 and
references therein). One worry is that value influence undermines public
trust (Bright 2018, Lusk 2021).  Public trust in value-laden science may
not be warranted unless the values involved align with the public’s. The
question is thus: how to conceive of value influence so as to ensure public
trust in value-laden science? One proposed remedy to this conundrum is to
require that scientists appeal to democratic values (Kourany 2010, Inteman
2015, Elliott 2017, Schroeder 2021, 2022 Lusk 2021). Democratic processes,
after all, are a well-worn legitimization tool for authority. However, I
argued that this strategy faces serious challenges, including the problems
of marginalization and polarization (Le Bihan, 2023). In this talk, I offer
an alternative model—The Fiduciary Model. I propose to import some of the
concepts from Fiduciary Political Theory (FPT) to the field of Science and
Values.  FPT advocates defend a fiduciary model of government authority
(Leib and Galoob 2016, Criddle at al. 2018, Galoob and Leib 2018). I argue
that a fiduciary model of value-laden science could warrantee public trust.

Link to Join Webinar:  https://pitt.zoom.us/s/94500243796

It will also be live streamed on YouTube at
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.

*Getting to know Soazig:*

*Where are you now? *University of Montana

*What are you working on? *A book! *Problems and Possibilities, A Pragmatic
View of Scientific Understanding. *

*Favorite memory of The Center? *The weekly reading group and banana bread ?

*Greatest non-professional achievement since leaving the Center (can be
anything from running a marathon to organizing your sock drawer!)? *I
helped building a 6-foot fence all around an exotic animal sanctuary so
that the sanctuary could abide by new regulations from the USDA.

*Best book/movie/tv you’ve seen lately? **Everything Everywhere All at
Once. *And also: *The Boy and the Heron*