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Topic: Simon Conway Morris

	American Scientist Online - Cambrian Conflict: Crucible an Assault on Gould's Burgess Shale Interpretation (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Conway Morris is keen to explain how and why the Cambrian explosion took place, constructing a theory that combines genetic triggers for structural innovations with an ecological pressure generated by the origin of predators.
		Conway Morris believes that the combined limitations of the developmental pathways triggered by genetics and the demands of the environment mean that the possible outcomes of the evolutionary process are very limited.
		Conway Morris is quite clear about how far he wants to extend the power of convergence: It guarantees the emergence of high intelligence (in mollusks like the octopus and in vertebrates) and of human spiritual faculties (in the Neandertals as well as our own ancestors).
	www.americanscientist.org /template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/15570;jsessionid=baafhZuBDxEFP3 (1835 words)

	Dino Land Book Reviews: Life's Solution; Fossil Crinoids; The Primate Fossil Record
		Conway Morris, a recognized authority on the Burgess Shale Fossils, is known for his widely popular book The Crucible of Creation, which summarizes his Burgess Shale research and makes a powerful case for the importance of convergence as an evolutionary principle.
		Conway Morris, who took strong disliking to Gould’s view, instead forcibly argued that certain basic principles underlie the process of evolution, and even if the tape were rerun, much of what we see today, including complex human intelligence, would likely still be seen due to the forces of convergent evolution.
		It is unfortunate that Conway Morris opens his book with these chapters, as their inclusion likely will turn off many readers before they tackle the meat of the book: the strong evidence of convergence as a basic principle of evolution.
	www.geocities.com /CapeCanaveral/Galaxy/8152/cambridge3books.html (933 words)

	Pharyngula: Damn you, Simon Conway Morris! (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Conway Morris wants to go further, though, and considers a specifically human-like form and intelligence to be as certain as the appearance of critters that eat other critters.
		Conway Morris is spectacularly successful at tracking down and organizing examples of convergent evolution, but he admits that work to place convergences "into any sort of quantitative framework is still in its infancy".
		The tension between inevitability and loneliness leads Conway Morris towards a higher objective, which is to re-establish "notions of awe and wonder" in evolution and thus "allow a conversation with religious sensibilities".
	pharyngula.org /comments/109_0_1_0_C14 (2549 words)

	LRB \| Richard Fortey : Shock Lobsters (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Simon Conway Morris was one of the scientists who did the hard work of interpreting the fossils.
		Conway Morris now fully accepts this view, and, like any reputable scientist, he is of course allowed to change his mind.
		Conway Morris tries to achieve a compromise between the vernacular and the scholarly, by appending detailed, exhaustively referenced footnotes to a text which is variously humdrum or hubristic.
	www.lrb.co.uk /v20/n19/print/fort01_.html (2136 words)

	Amazon.com: The Crucible of Creation : The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals : Books (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Simon Conway Morris tries to undermine or oppose the views of S.J. Gould, and while he might scientifically be the most likely person to succeed in such a feat, he utterly fails to do so.
		Conway Morris is very hostile to the views presented in Gould's "wonderful life", which were largely based upon his OWN earlier view, and does little justice to the man who brought him under the public (although by no means scientific, a task in which he succeeded extremely well on his own merit) spotlights.
		Conway Morris is modest in his claims to knowledge, and fully acknowledges what he don't know, or not sure of (this goes to facts, not arguments) and noble in his efforts to relate his story to recent conservation issues.
	www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0198502567?v=glance (2607 words)

	Life's Solution : Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe
		Conway Morris proceeds through most of the book by discussing the actual science that is relevant to evolution, including the nature of our galaxy, our solar system, planet earth and its moon, molecular biology, genetics, and various morphological issues.
		Conway Morris will not soon be forgiven for that chapter, but readers of LIFE'S SOLUTION are likely to be grateful for both his lucid discussion of the science and his courageous attack on the orthodox pseudo-theologians of Darwinism who put their personal beliefs ahead of an objective presentation of science.
		Conway Morris' arguments seem to boil down to the assumptions that it is "obvious" that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, that atheists and agnostics are worse people than believers.
	www.freehosttalk.com /ebooks/isbn0521827043.html (1907 words)

	[No title]
		Conway Morris’s improbability-of-life arguments are fairly standard and, although updated by modern science, belong to the tradition going back at least to William Whewell who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, provided many reasons why life on earth is unique — the inhospitality of other planets and other solar systems and so forth.
		Conway Morris’s repeated point is that this sort of thing happens over and over again, showing that the historical course of nature is not random but strongly selection-constrained along certain pathways and to certain destinations.
		Conway Morris is a Christian (an Anglican, what Americans call Episcopalian), and he clearly thinks that the emergence of humans (or something human-like) was no mere chance.
	palaeo-electronica.org /2004_1/books/life.htm (1239 words)

	’Life’s Solution’: It Had to Happen
		Simon Conway Morris's bold new book, ''Life's Solution,'' challenges this Darwinian orthodoxy by extending ideas he presented in his ''Crucible of Creation.'' He is a booster of inevitability.
		Conway Morris builds his case for the inevitability of numerous evolutionary outcomes mostly on a Darwinian foundation.
		Conway Morris argues that convergence is a decisive objection to radical contingency.
	www.nytimes.com /2003/11/30/books/review/30SOBERT.html?ei=5007&en=e064f70660d646d6&ex=1385528400&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=print&position= (959 words)

	Conway-Morris and Gould, "Showdown on the Burgess Shale" 1998
		Simon Conway Morris (who has since rejected his original interpretation and reached a nearly opposite conclusion — in general, an admirable stance for a scientist, although in this particular case, I think that Conway Morris was right the first time around) recently challenged my reading in The Crucible of Creation, the impetus for this dialogue.
		Conway Morris rests his claim for substantial predictability upon the important evolutionary phenomenon of convergence, or the independent origins of similar and highly adaptive designs in separate lineages—with the wings of bats, birds, and pterosaurs (flying reptiles of dinosaur times) or the eyes of squid and vertebrates as classic examples.
		Finally, Conway Morris charges that my arguments for contingency arise "not from the evidence of paleontology but from Gould's personal credo about the nature of the evolutionary process." This claim, however ungenerously stated, is—and must be—true, for any general view of life must read evidence in the light of a favored theory.
	www.stephenjaygould.org /library/naturalhistory_cambrian.html (3913 words)

	Life's Solution
		To this Morris replies that mankind's big-brained mentality, with its heavy use of vocality and its high social intelligence, is unique in degree rather than kind.
		Morris argues that more than one primate was ready to make the leap to intelligence about the time that man's ancestors did.
		(Morris makes many playful asides, by the way: there is something to be said for any popular-science book that quotes Chesterton and repeatedly alludes to Tolkien.) He seems to be of the opinion that, if there are any other planets like Earth, they would indeed develop in much the way Earth did.
	pages.prodigy.net /aesir/liso.htm (2332 words)

	Paleobiology 22() - authorname
		Conway Morris uses molecular evidence of the commonality of developmental programs to argue that Cambrian animals and later ones were built with similar genetic foundations.
		Conway Morris suggests that the prevalence of evolutionary convergence, in which similar morphologies have arisen independently in taxa that are distantly related, indicates that certain constraints exert a major influence on the shape of evolutionary history.
		Conway Morris sounds affronted when answering what he sees as the underlying moral relativism in Wonderful Life and other aspects of Gould's work (for example, we hear the familiar dismissal of punctuated equilibrium as an exercise in Marxism—which for paleontologists is surely the least interesting aspect of the whole punctuated equilibrium debate).
	www.uic.edu /orgs/paleo/24-4/Pb244Hug.htm (1772 words)

	The Crucible of Creation
		Simon Conway Morris FRS, Professor of Evolutionary Paleobiology, University of Cambridge.
		Conway Morris is a real expert and a truly world-class scientist.
		He played a major role in the modern exploration and understanding of the Burgess Shale, was the first paleontologist to explore the Sirius Passet locality in Greenland, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1990, at the remarkably young age of 38.
	www.starcourse.org /crucible.html (2164 words)

	Science Show - 20/7/2002: ET & the Bioastronomy Conference
		Simon Conway Morris: Although indeed we have the most marvellous diversity of life it seems almost overwhelming, when we look more closely actually the number of solutions to life is remarkably limited.
		Simon Conway Morris thinks if earth is anything to go by the answer is yes.
		Simon Conway Morris: By the time you get to the mammals I think the likelihood of intelligence emerging sooner or later is basically inevitable.
	www.abc.net.au /rn/science/ss/stories/s609486.htm (1019 words)

	In the News: Book Review of "Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe" (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Conway Morris describes his book as a “Cambridge Sandwich”: a few set-up chapters in the beginning, two wrap-up chapters in the end, and the meat in the middle.
		Conway Morris dedicates his penultimate chapter to an integration of evolutionary theory (and its telic implications) with religious belief.
		However, Morris is every bit as trenchant in his criticisms of those who harbor doubts about evolution as he is to those who seek to glorify it.
	www.arn.org /docs2/news/RossReview121803.htm (384 words)

	Book Reviews: Morris
		Conway Morris sets the stage for much of the discussion that follows by stating that the role of contingency in evolution is flawed.
		Conway Morris uses the concept of a time machine of the imagination, in much the same way that Carl Sagan in his popular Public Television series Cosmos used the concept of a spaceship of the imagination, to take us on a trip to observe the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale biota in vivo.
		Simon Conway Morris’ The Crucible of Creation boldly challenges the ideas set forth in Wonderful Life in a thought-provoking manner that is sure to be the basis for many interesting discussions.
	palaeo-electronica.org /1999_1/books/morris.htm (1570 words)

	Hallucigenia (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Faced with an animal that has no obvious head and two types of appendages neither of which seems appropriate for any reasonable form of locomotion, Morris somewhat arbitrarily assigned the blob as the head and hypothesized that the spines were 'feet' and that the tentacles were feeding appendages.
		Morris was able to demonstrate a workable if improbable method of walking on the spines.
		Morris suggested that a hollow tube within each of the tentacles might be a mouth.
	www.termsdefined.net /ha/hallucigenia.html (828 words)

	Simon Conway Morris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Simon Conway Morris has written a number of books on Palaeobiology and evolution, including:
		He also contributed to Origination of Organismal Form: Beyond the Gene in Developmental and Evolutionary Biology with an article entitled: The Cambrian "Explosion" of Metazoans.
		Simon Conway Morris's webpage at the Earth Sciences department
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Simon_Conway_Morris (256 words)

	News
		Simon Conway Morris, professor of evolutionary paleobiology at Cambridge University, delivered the annual Harold T. Stearns ’21 Distinguished Lecture Monday evening, filling almost all seats in Shanklin 107.
		Morris peppered his paleontological presentation with plenty of clever witticisms, entertaining and informing even attendees whose presence was mandated.
		Morris is an expert on the Burgess Shale, a rock formation in the western Canadian Rockies which is stuffed with extraordinary fossils.
	www.wesleyan.edu /argus/oct1299/n5.html (520 words)

	Life's Solution : Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, Cambridge University Press, Simon Conway Morris
		In a crisp, passionate argument sure to draw the wrath of many biologists, Simon Conway Morris defends his belief that evolutionary science is misguided without a somewhat religious notion of the significance of human intelligence and existence.
		In outlining the direction and inevitability he believes is inherent in evolution, Conway Morris stacks up compelling evidence in the form of a revealed "protein hyperspace" that limits the possibilities of amino acid combination to a few, often repeated (pre-ordained?) forms.
		Simon Conway Morris is the Ad Hominen Professor in the Earth Science Department at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St. John's College and the Royal Society.
	allentech.net /bookstore/item_0521827043.html (1913 words)

	Book Review by Anthony Campbell: Life's Solution (Simon Conway Morris) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Conway Morris dwells on the degree of intelligent behaviour exemplified by these species and on convergences in the neurological basis for this behaviour.
		Conway Morris quotes with approval the late Fred Hoyle's opinion that the Universe is a set-up job.
		I am not convinced that Conway Morris has adequately made a case for the view that it was in some sense the "purpose" of evolution to give rise to intelligence.
	www.accampbell.uklinux.net /bookreviews/r/morris.html (1523 words)

	WetenWeek (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Simon Conway Morris (GB) is hoogleraar evolutionaire paleobiologie in Cambridge en auteur van o.a.
		Evolutionary biologist Simon Conway Morris presents a totally different view: the development of intelligence, the ability to create complex societies, culture – it’s all immanent in the laws of nature.
		Simon Conway Morris (GB) is professor of evolutionary paleobiology at Cambridge University and the author of a.o.
	www2.eur.nl /studium/wetenweek.html (201 words)

	Jack's Stacks: January, 1999
		I picked up this book initially because of the subject matter and noted author (Conway Morris is Professor of Evolutionary Paleontology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the Royal Society).
		Conway Morris de-emphasizes the role of contingency as logical but not the main influence on evolutionary pathways.
		Proof of this lies in the myriad cases of convergent evolution according to Conway Morris.
	drydredgers.org /jack9901.htm (773 words)

	Life's Solution - Cambridge University Press
		Simon Conway Morris explores the evidence demonstrating life’s almost eerie ability to navigate to a single solution, repeatedly.
		‘Simon Conway Morris's bold new book, Life's Solution, challenges this Darwinian orthodoxy by extending ideas he presented in his Crucible of Creation Conway Morris presents scores of fascinating examples that are less familiar.
		Drawing upon diverse biological evidence, Conway Morris convincingly argues that the general features of our bodies and minds are indeed written into the laws of the universe.
	www.cambridge.org /uk/catalogue/print.asp?isbn=0521827043&print=y (643 words)

	Showdown on the Burgess Shale, Stephen Jay Gould (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Conway Morris rests his claim for substantial predictability upon the important evolutionary phenomenon of convergence, or the independent origins of similar and highly adaptive designs in separate lineages--with the wings of bats, birds, and pterosaurs (flying reptiles of dinosaur times) or the eyes of squid and vertebrates as classic examples.
		Finally, Conway Morris charges that my arguments for contingency arise "not from the evidence of paleontology but from Gould's personal credo about the nature of the evolutionary process." This claim, however ungenerously stated, is--and must be--true, true, for any general view of life must read evidence in the light of a favored theory.
		Conway Morris's peculiar and undefended reversal of these usual arguments about probability can arise only from a "personal credo"--and I would value his explicit attention to the sources of his own unexamined beliefs.
	bookshop.dubery.com /Showdown.htm (3986 words)

	Becoming Human (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-08)
		Simon Conway Morris, Ph.D., Professor of Evolutionary Paleobiology, University of Cambridge
		Simon Conway Morris, Ph.D. is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost paleontologists of his time.
		Conway Morris is a fellow of The Royal Society and serves on the board of advisors of the John Templeton Foundation.
	www.metanexus.net /becoming_human/members_003.html (1361 words)

	Palaeos Paleozoic: Cambrian: Sirius Passet Lagerstätten
		Peel and Simon Conway Morris have returned to the site, in 1989, 1991 and 1994, and a field collection of perhaps 10,000 fossil specimens has been amassed.
		In fact there are generally few taxa having shelly skeletons; the trilobites, "rare hyoliths, a number of sponges with prominent spicules, a few small brachiopods, and no echinoderms or molluscs" (Conway Morris 1998, pp.
		Conway Morris, Simon; Peel, J.S.; Higgins, A.K.; Soper, N.J.; Davis, N.C. Burgess Shale-Like Fauna From the Lower Cambrian of North Greenland.
	www.palaeos.com /Paleozoic/Cambrian/Sirius_Passet.html (936 words)

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