Professor of Philosophy and Humanities
Reed College, Portland
Systems Science Program
Portland State University
European Center for Living Technology, Italy

“The Mystery and Majesty of Life’s Burgeoning Creativity”
SATURDAY, APRIL 8 • 5:30-7:00p

Mark Bedau’s current research interests include: dynamical emergent processes, measuring and visualizing evolutionary dynamics, evolutionary design of chemical systems, the creativity of cultural and technological evolution, along with the science, social and ethical implications of (re)creating life.

Bedau is coeditor of The Nature of Life: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives from Philosophy and Science with Carol Cleland (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010) and Mariano Sánchez-Ventura in Spanish (Fondo de Cultura Economica, 2016), as well as The Ethics of Protocells: Moral and Social Implications of Creating Life in the Laboratory with Emily C. Parke (MIT Press, 2009) and Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science with Paul A. Humphreys (MIT Press, 2008).

He is coauthor of “Open-ended Evolution: Perspectives from the OEE Workshop in York” with Tim Taylor and Alastair Channon (Artificial Life, 2016), “Policy-Making and Systemic Complexity” (Hastings Center Report, 2014), “Introduction to Recent Developments in Living Technology” with John S. McCaskill, Norman H. Packard, Emily C. Parke, and Steen R. Rasmussen (Artificial Life, 2013), “Weak Emergence Drives the Science, Epistemology, and Metaphysics of Synthetic Biology” (Biological Theory, 2013), “Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Emergence” with Hugues Bersini, Pasquale Stano, and Pier Luigi Luisi (Synthese, 2012), and “Introduction to Philosophical Problems About Life” (Synthese, 2012).

Bedau is currently Editor-in-Chief of the MIT Press journal, Artificial Life, and co-founder of the European Center for Living Technology in Venice, Italy. He is partner in the EU-funded Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution program, and was co-organizer of the Eleventh International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (Artificial Life XI). Bedau is also a Visiting Professor in the Life Sciences Ph.D. Program at the European School of Molecular Medicine in Milan, Italy.

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