Simon Conway Morris | Complete Imponderables

The science of evolution in general has been solidified for a long time now, but there are still plenty of new discoveries and implications being drawn out of the specific details of how our world evolved. Among the scientists doing fascinating work in these areas is Simon Conway Morris, who has become relatively famous both in and outside the professional scientific community for his work on fossils from the Burgess Shale, the Cambrian Explosion, and convergent evolution. Morris’ new book, From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution, draws from a number of these areas to make its claims.

In this episode, we chat about the book, some of the well-established tenets of convergent evolution, and even some more controversial hypotheses on human uniqueness among animals and extraterrestrial intelligent life. While not all scientists agree with the conclusions Morris comes to, our conversation still brings clarity to the obscure limits of science and what these limits mean for us as Christians.

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The most obvious examples I know of for convergent evolution (in what I work on) are limpet-shaped shells and vitrinelliform-naticiform shells. Offhand, I can think of 15 and 25 independant appearances within Gastropoda.

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