The British Magazine for the Philosophy of Science (BJPS) has awarded its 2023 Popper Prize to James DiFrisco (Francis Crick Institute).
The BJPS Popper Prize is awarded to the thing judged to be the most productive revealed in that 12 months’s quantity of the magazine, as decided via the Editors-in-Leader and the BSPS Committee.
Dr. DiFrisco received the award for his article, “Towards a Concept of Homology: Construction and the De-coupling of Morphological and Molecular Evolution.”
Right here’s the paper’s summary:
Advances in developmental genetics and evo-devo within the final a number of many years have enabled the expansion of novel developmental approaches to the vintage theme of homology. Those approaches leave from the extra same old phylogenetic view via contending that homology between morphological characters is determined by developmental-genetic individuation and clarification. This text supplies a scientific re-assessment of the connection between developmental and phylogenetic homology in gentle of present proof from developmental and evolutionary genetics and genomics. I provide a qualitative type of the processes that purpose de-coupling of morphological and molecular evolution via developmental machine flow (DSD), and hypothesize that DSD is a popular and common stochastic procedure this is predictable from parameters comparable to inhabitants measurement, pleiotropy, and regulatory redundancy. Those theoretical findings reinforce an integrative means wherein fashions of DSD assist in figuring out when developmental-genetic explanations of homology follow and when different explanations comparable to stabilizing variety are wanted. I argue {that a} phylogenetic monism concerning the definition and standards of homology helps the mixing of various explanations right into a principle of homology higher than pluralism does.
The prize features a £500 award.
Extra details about the prize and a listing of its earlier winners can also be discovered right here.
