Susan Oyama, "Incidence, Essence, and Developmental Systems: Biologos
in Action"
Time: 4/19/12 - 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Location: Juan Ramon Jimenez, Room 0150
Trained at Harvard University and now Professor Emeritus at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate School and University Center (both of the City University of New York), Susan Oyama has written widely on the nature/nurture opposition and on the concepts of development, evolution, and genetic information. She is probably best known for her work on Developmental Systems Theory, to which many were introduced by her 1985 book, The Ontogeny of Information:Developmental Systems and Evolution. In 2000, that work was reissued in an expanded edition, along with her essay collection Evolution's Eye: A Systems View of the Biology-Culture Divide. With Paul
Griffiths and Russell Gray, Oyama has also edited Cycles of Contingency, a volume of papers on developmental systems by scholars from many fields. In more recent years, she has spoken and written on essentialism and representationism in biology.
Sponsored by the Honors Humanities program and the Integrated Life Sciences program.
