Dear all,

You are kindly invited to the meeting of the cultural evolution seminar this Thursday,
December 15. This time, Prof. Kalevi Kull (University of Tartu) will give a talk What kind
of evolutionary biology suits cultural sciences?
Where: likooli 16-109.
When: Dec 15, at 18.15
We will try also make a live stream of this lecture. We will post the link here
https://evocultures.wordpress.com/stream/.
Abstract
Theory of evolution of semiotic systems has fascinating history. I shall speak about some
debates between Darwinian and non-selectionist views, and in particular about a recent Royal
Society meeting on current trends in modelling evolution. Evolution is not Darwinian, in most
cases.
Short bio
Professor Kalevi Kull is the Head of the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu.
His main interests include biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, theory of evolution, theoretical biology,
and history and philosophy of life science. He is the editor of the journal Sign Systems
Studies and coeditor (with Paul Cobley) of book series Semiotics, Communication, Cognition
(Mouton de Gruyter) and Biosemiotics (Springer). His publications include papers in the
journals Semiotica, Sign Systems Studies, Biosemiotics, Biological Journal of the Linnean
Society, European Journal of Semiotics, and many others.
As background reading, we may recommend these papers:
Kull, Kalevi (2014). Adaptive evolution without natural selection. Biological Journal of the
Linnean Society 112(2): 287294, bij.12124. [Link]
Kull, Kalevi (2015). Evolution, choice, and scaffolding: Semiosis is changing its own
building. Biosemiotics 8(2): 223234, s12304-015-9243-2. [Link]
Kull, Kalevi (2016). The biosemiotic concept of the species. Biosemiotics 9(1): 6171,
10.1007/s12304-016-9259-2. [Link]
Laland, K., T. Uller, M. Feldman, K. Sterelny, G. Mller, A. Moczek, E. Jablonka, J. OdlingSmee, G. A. Wray, H. E. Hoekstra, D. J. Futuyma, R. E. Lenski, T. F. C. Mackay, D. Schluter,
and J. E. Strassmann (2014). Does evolutionary theory need a rethink? Nature 514: 161164.
[Link]
Laland K., T. Uller, M. Feldman, K. Sterelny, G. Mller, A. Moczek, E. Jablonka, and J.
Odling-Smee (2015). The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and
predictions. Proc. R. Soc. B 282: 20151019. [Link]
Also, this news article on the Royal Society Meeting may be useful too.
All welcome!
CES organizers