The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited

Preface and Acknowledgments

Preface and Acknowledgments As with other volumes in this series, this book had its roots in a KLI workshop, one organized around themes similar to those of the volume. KLI workshops are immensely productive and enjoyable intellectual experiences, but they are also very intense. The workshop participants spend three days in sustained, focused, and cumulative discussion. Each of the participants’talks is followed with a typical question and answer session, but that is just the beginning. The discussion is supplemented and extended with further (often probing) talk over coffee, lunch, dinner, and drinks. As the group interacts, points are made, ideas are thrashed out, and theories develop, with each session building on the previous one. All of this takes a great deal of time and intellectual energy, so we want to thank all the workshop participants for giving so generously: Lindell Bromham, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Ben Kerr, Andy Knoll, Michael Lachmann, Rick Michod, Samir Okasha, Alirio Roslaes, Carl Simpson , and Eörs Szathmáry. In addition, Werner Callebaut, Gerd Müller, and a number of visitors to the KLI were able to join in the discussion and contribute to the workshop. Maintaining this intensity, and still managing to have a fantastic time, was possible only because of an enormous amount of work done by those at the KLI institute. Everyone went to great lengths to ensure that everything ran smoothly and easily, so we could all concentrate on major transitions (rather than, say, Internet connections or flight details). In particular , Eva Karner went far beyond any conceivable duty; she was endlessly helpful before, during, and after the workshop to us both. And once the day’s papers were done and dissected, the Institute was generous and imaginative in making sure we all had a good time, and that wine, beer, and pork were never in short supply. We must especially thank Werner Callebaut for this. Werner was part of the intellectual life of the workshop, but he was also the prime mover of its social life. The workshop was preceded and followed by our own collaborative work on major transitions and, more generally, on macroevolutionary dynamics and their relation to microevolution . That began when Brett was a graduate student, but we owe a great debt to the Templeton Foundation for the opportunity to develop and extend it, for that foundation funded Brett to work as a postdoctoral fellow on the evolution of complexity. Their support allowed Brett to work on the issues canvassed by the workshop and to prepare a presentation x Preface and Acknowledgments for it. But it also enabled him to play a central role in organizing the workshop and editing the collection that has emerged from it. More recently, the philosophy program of the Australian National University (ANU) has supported Brett to work on these issues (as, along with Victoria University Wellington, it has long supported Kim). This collection has been longer coming than we hoped. As always, not everyone who attended the workshop was able to deliver a chapter. We also wanted to broaden the range of the volume, and at Gerd Müller’s suggestion, we solicited papers from other sources. All this took time, as did refereeing, revising, and updating. But the collection has come, and we hope it testifies to the originality and vitality of the extraordinarily fertile mind of John Maynard-Smith over his long career, and to the insight generated by his collaboration with Eörs Szathmáry. ...