Simon Conway Morris FRS (born 6 November 1951) is an English paleontologist who is best known for his detailed and careful study of the Burgess Shale fossils. The results of these discoveries were celebrated in Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould. Morris's own book on the subject, The Crucible of Creation, however, is critical of Gould's presentation and interpretation.

Biography [edit]

Early years [edit]

A native of Carshalton, Surrey, Conway Morris was brought up in London, England.^[1] and went on to study geology at Bristol University, achieving a First Class Honours degree. He then moved to Cambridge University and studied for a Ph.D under Harry Blackmore Whittington. He is Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge. He is renowned for his insights into early evolution and his studies of paleobiology. He gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture in 1996 on the subject of The History in our Bones. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society at age 39, was awarded the Walcott Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1987^[2] and the Lyell Medal of the Geological Society of London in 1998.

Work [edit]

Conway Morris is based in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge and is best known for his work on the Cambrian “explosion”, especially in terms of his study of the famous Burgess Shale fossil fauna and similar deposits in China and Greenland. In addition to working in these countries he has undertaken research in Australia, Canada, Mongolia and the United States. His studies on the Burgess Shale-type faunas, as well as the early evolution of skeletons, has encompassed a wide variety of groups, ranging from ctenophores to the earliest vertebrates. His thinking on the significance of the Burgess Shale has evolved and his current interest in evolutionary convergence and its wider significance — the topic of his 2007 Gifford Lectures - was in part spurred by Stephen Jay Gould’s arguments for the importance of contingency in the history of life.

Burgess Shale [edit]

Conway Morris' views on the Burgess Shale are reported in numerous technical papers and more generally in The Crucible of Creation (Oxford University Press, 1998). In recent years he has been investigating the phenomenon of evolutionary convergence, the main thesis of which is put forward in Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge University Press, 2003). He is now involved on a major project to investigate both the scientific ramifications of convergence and also to establish a web-site (www.mapoflife.org) that aims to provide an easily accessible introduction to the thousands of known examples of convergence. This work is funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Evolution, science and religion [edit]

Conway Morris is active in the public understanding of science and has done extensive radio and television work. The latter includes the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures delivered in 1996. A Christian, he is also actively involved in various science and religion debates, including arguments against intelligent design on the one hand and materialism on the other. In 2005 he gave the Second Boyle Lecture.^[3] He is an increasingly active participant in discussions relating to science and religion. He is active in the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion and has lectured there on "Evolution and fine-tuning in Biology".^[4] He gave the University of Edinburgh Gifford Lectures for 2007 in a series titled "Darwin's Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation".^[5] In these lectures Conway Morris makes several claims that evolution is compatible with belief in the existence of a God.^[6]

He is a strong critic of materialism and of reductionism:

That satisfactory definitions of life elude us may be one hint that when materialists step forward and declare with a brisk slap of the hands that this is it, we should be deeply skeptical. Whether the “it” be that of Richard Dawkins’ reductionist gene-centred worldpicture, the “universal acid” of Daniel Dennett’s meaningless Darwinism, or David Sloan Wilson’s faith in group selection (not least to explain the role of human religions), we certainly need to acknowledge each provides insights but as total explanations of what we see around us they are, to put it politely, somewhat incomplete.^[3]

and of:

the scientist who boomingly — and they always boom — declares that those who believe in the Deity are unavoidably crazy, “cracked” as my dear father would have said, although I should add that I have every reason to believe he was — and now hope is — on the side of the angels.^[3]

In March 2009 he was the opening speaker at the "Biological Evolution Facts and Theories Conference" held at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, as well as chairing one of the sessions. The conference was sponsored by the Catholic Church.^[7]

Appointments and accomplishments [edit]

Bibliography [edit]

• The Cambrian "Explosion" of Metazoans. OCLC 95979505 in Origination of Organismal Form: Beyond the Gene in Developmental and Evolutionary Biology ISBN 0-262-13419-5
• The Early Evolution of Metazoa and the Significance of Problematic Taxa. (ed., with Alberto M. Simonetta) Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-521-40242-5
• The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals. Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-850256-7
• Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-60325-0
• The Deep Structure of Biology. (ed.) Templeton Foundation Press, 2008. ISBN 1-59947-138-8
• Fitness of the Cosmos for Life: Biochemistry and Fine-Tuning. (ed., with John D. Barrow, Stephen J. Freeland, Charles L. Harper, Jr.) Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-521-87102-0
• Water and Life: The Unique Properties of H₂O. (ed., with Ruth. M. Lynden-Bell, John D. Barrow, John L. Finney, Charles Harper, Jr.) CRC Press, 2010. ISBN 1-4398-0356-0

References [edit]

External links [edit]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Simon Conway Morris

• Simon Conway Morris webpage at the Earth Sciences department, University of Cambridge
• Simon Conway Morris resource page at ISCAST
• Simon Conway Morris at the Notable Names Database