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TIME | 23 April 2009, 4pm onwards
LOCATION | Seminar Room, Centre for Innovation, 87 St. David St.
SPEAKER | Dr. James Maclaurin
New Zealand’s biota is diverse in a large and open-ended number of respects. But conservation of our biodiversity requires practical decisions about disbursement of conservation funding and deployment of conservation effort. It simply isn’t possible to conserve every instance of every aspect of biological difference in New Zealand. This talk examines the question of what we should take to constitute our biodiversity for the purposes of conservation, particularly in light of the upheaval that may be wrought by global warming.
James Maclaurin is a philosopher of science with a particular interest in the life sciences. He teaches Critical Thinking, Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Biology at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Otago where he is Head of Department. He is co-author, with Kim Sterelny, of What is Biodiversity? (University of Chicago Press, 2008). He is also a council member of the Otago Institute.