Simon Conway-Morris
(1951-)
Simon Conway-Morris is a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and astrobiologist whose study of the Burgess Shale and Cambrian explosion led him to criticize Stephen Jay Gould's classic analysis of the Burgess Shale in Gould's 1989 book
Wonderful Life.
Conway-Morris holds the Chair of Evolutionary Palaeobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge since 1995.
As a Christian, Conway-Morris supports theistic views of biological evolution, like those of
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and supporters of
Creationism or
Intelligent Design, a replacement term created by author
George Gilder's
Discovery Institute to get around the Supreme Court ruling against the teaching of Creationism in public schools.
Conway-Morris' best-known book,
Life's Solution, cites numerous examples of "convergent evolution" as evidence of
purpose long before humans came into existence. In our view, his thesis is correct because
purpose came into the universe with the
origin of life.
His latest book is
From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution. His first "myth" is that evolution is the result of randomness or
chance.
Conway-Morris was recently interviewed on the podcast
Purposeful Universe.
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