150 years of Darwin’s book The descent of man, a meeting dedicated to Jean Gayon

Meeting oganized by Michel Veuille, professor at EPHE (PSL), Philippe Huneman, directeur de recherche at CNRS, Victor Petit, assistant-professor at Université technologique de Troyes, and Elisabeth Gayon, with the support of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study.
Funding institutions: EPHE (PSL), IHPST (CNRS, Paris-1 Panthéon Sorbonne), and ANR-DFG.

The meeting is in person only.
Registration is mandatory and free (see form below).

Presentation

150 years ago, Darwin published his famous book The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex (1871), followed by The expression of the emotions in man and animals (1872), where he showed that, even though humans are not “descended from the ape”, they share a common ancestor with other primates. He examined all the consequences of this thesis for ethics, the origin of cooperation and the effect of sexual choice. Philosophers, historians and biologists will present both the past and current topicality of the book, which remains influent in humanities and evolutionary biology.

Programme

July 5, 2022

09:00      
Gregory Radick.  “As man advances in civilisation…”:Darwin on the expanding circle of moral regard, from his day to ours.

09:50      
Eric Charmetant.
Virtues according to the Descent of Man. What relevance 150 years later?

10:40
Pause

11:00    
Hayley Clatterbuck
Reason and Morality in the Descent of Man.

11:50    
A moment dedicated to Jean Gayon’s work.

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14:00    
Michael Ruse
Darwin, the Descent, and homosexuality

14:50    
Elliott Sober
Darwin’s sex ratio argument in the 1st edition of Descent of Man and Its mysterious retraction in the 2nd

15:40
Pause

16:00    
Andre Ariew
Darwin and statistical methodology

16:50    
Steven H. Orzack
Darwin and Düsing: The found and lost history of the theory of sex ratio evolution

July 6, 2022

09:00      
Michel Veuille
Heredity, sex and prejudice: Darwin and the “great law of nature”.

09:50      
Laurent Loison
Darwin’s pangenesis. Why was it a blind spot in Jean Gayon’s work?

10:40    
Pause

11:00   
Hugh Desmond
Sexual Selection, Aesthetics, and Darwinism.

11:50    
Thierry Hoquet
Was there an Eclipse of sexual selection?

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14:00   
Jorge Martinez Contreras
Anthropoids and the origin of Humans in Darwin.

14:50  
Claudine Cohen
Darwin, the Descent, and the origin of gender.

15:40
Pause

16:00    
M.J.S. Hodge
Sexual selection: integrating conceptual analysis and socio-economic contextualisation

16:50    
Philippe Huneman et Agathe du Crest
Descendents of the Descent of Man: assessing old and new trends in Darwinian social science.

17:40
Barbara Stiegler
Neoliberalism versus Democracy? On a unknown debate about the legacy of Darwin

Practical information

Registration is mandatory and free (see form below).