Systems theory has laid the conceptual foundations of contemporary approaches. Systems biology is the marriage of these approaches with theoretical advances and databases of bioinformatics. Systems chemistry is a new field dealing with the analysis and synthesis of autocatalytic chemical systems. The roots of biological evolvability also lie within systems chemistry.
Darwin's now celebrated theory of evolution by natural selection got universally accepted when the Modern Synthesis was worked out about sixty years ago, uniting Darwinian reasoning with classical and population genetics. Now we are experiencing a phase of an extended evolutionary synthesis in which the Modern Synthesis is extended in width and depth. Evolution and development (evo-devo) and the theory of niche construction develop the theory in depth. Systems chemistry, evolutionary economics, possible evolutionary approaches to brain dynamics and some conceptualisations of linguistic phenomena apply the idea of evolutionary units and the Darwinian dynamics into areas where such thinking is novel and surprising. The meeting will bring together experts from all these fields in order to approach the power of evolutionary thought in many of its ramifications.
Darwin's now celebrated theory of evolution by natural selection got universally accepted when the Modern Synthesis was worked out about sixty years ago, uniting Darwinian reasoning with classical and population genetics. Now we are experiencing a phase of an extended evolutionary synthesis in which the Modern Synthesis is extended in width and depth. Evolution and development (evo-devo) and the theory of niche construction develop the theory in depth. Systems chemistry, evolutionary economics, possible evolutionary approaches to brain dynamics and some conceptualisations of linguistic phenomena apply the idea of evolutionary units and the Darwinian dynamics into areas where such thinking is novel and surprising. The meeting will bring together experts from all these fields in order to approach the power of evolutionary thought in many of its ramifications.
