Simon Conway Morris, Author at ��è��Ƶ

Review: Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

Simon Conway Morris — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:00:00 +0000

Neil Shubin writes compellingly about the transformation of fish into humans. But evolution isn't the end of the story, says Simon Conway Morris

Simon Conway Morris forecasts the future

Simon Conway Morris — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:46:00 +0000

“Well done,” murmured the King of Sweden as he presented Professor Mortimer with the medal. The citation ran as follows: “In a stroke of imaginative genius our understanding of consciousness was radically transformed, but in an entirely unexpected way. Critical clues came from diffuse nerve nets and, even more extraordinarily, plant neurobiology. Banished forever was the idea that the brain alone was the seat of consciousness. Rather, it is an ‘antenna’ embedded in a hyperdimensional matrix. The depths of reality are only now being uncovered, but now the springs of imagination, intuition, abstraction and even pre-cognition are revealed. What was once called the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics was simply a clue to a superbly structured universe where mind is an integral component, instantiated at the big bang or maybe even before? Future exploration offers dizzying prospects, but we are not the first to venture forth. Far in advance of the emergence of human consciousness, innumerable galactic civilisations had slipped into what we now call the Mortimer Manifold. No wonder we never heard from extraterrestrials. Farewell to Cartesian dualism. Mind and matter re-link, and so propel humanity to the strangest of destinations.” “Professor Mortimer, I present to you the 2056 Nobel prize”.

Simon Conway Morris is professor of evolutionary palaeobiology at the University of Cambridge

Brilliant Minds Forecast the Next 50 Years – find many more in our exclusive Special Report. You can also have your say on what the biggest breakthrough of the next 50 years will be, in our

Once we were worms

Simon Conway Morris — Fri, 01 Aug 2003 23:00:00 +0000

What could we humans possibly have in common with sea squirts, bag-like creatures that attach themselves to the seafloor and feed by filtering seawater? Simon Conway Morris goes in search of missing links

We were meant to be…

Simon Conway Morris — Sat, 16 Nov 2002 00:00:00 +0000

If you think human intelligence is unique, think again. Its evolution on Earth was inevitable and it may have sprung up all over the Universe, argues Simon Conway Morris

Palaeontology’s hidden agenda

Simon Conway Morris — Fri, 10 Aug 1990 23:00:00 +0000