It’s 9 am in London and the third and final day of the Royal Society meeting on “New Trends in Evolutionary Biology” opens now. For my money the most dramatic outbursts so far, including the keeper “Not God — we’re excluding God,” were recorded by Paul Nelson yesterday.

Meanwhile, the group of scientists on hand who are sympathetic to intelligent design are excluded other than as spectators. As for the tension between neo-Darwinists and the “extended synthesis” crowd, still another ID-friendly scientist in the room minimizes the split’s profundity. He emails me:

After two days of this conference, my feeling is that there is not any deep discordance between neo-Darwinists and proponents of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis.

The EES school proponents think various hereditary mechanisms for acquired characteristics, such as niche construction, epigenetics, and maternal effects, should be included in evolutionary models. The ND guys agree, but they argue that these mechanisms can be put into their framework, and that they have been known for a long time.

The EES proponents reply that even if this was the case, the acquired hereditary mechanisms have been downplayed and not given their rightful attention. Putting them at the top of the table helps researchers formulate more useful hypotheses.

In any case, it seems that no novel mechanisms have been discussed that explain formation of totally novel structures.

That would seem to suggest the EES folks haven’t solved Darwin’s problem for him. We’ll have reports on Day 3 and further analysis of Day 2 coming later today.

Image credit: GFHund (The Royal Society 1952 London) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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