It is no secret that all great evolutionary transitions are questions
that are more or less unanswered at this point. What is exciting now is
the origin of the genetic code and the human aptitude for language.
Both phenomena imply a radical innovation in storing and transmitting
information. Many consider the origin of language one of the hardest
nuts to crack. It is a process that involves three temporal scales:
individual learning, the spread of language in a population and the
genetic evolution of learning mechanisms. None of them is independent
of the other two. On the other hand, the language used at the time by
the other individuals of the same species also influenced biological
fitness; in other words, natural selection depended on frequency, just
as in evolutionary game theory, one of the important contributions made by
Maynard Smith to science.
The school is
aimed to bring together leaders from different disciplines with
students that wish to place their careers at the boundary between the
various domains. As in the previous similar schools, the hope is to
initiate as a result of the courses, projects that realize a genuine
synthesis of theoretical and empirical concepts from different domains
without violating, but rather emphasizing the crucial features specific
to each domain.
Deadline for application is 18th January, 2008.