An incredible mix

Lunch: Pasta agli spinaci, Coniglio al forno con patate, insalata amp, FruttaSiesta time here Rosetta Stone at the Palazzo Feltrinelli (pictured here from the breakfast table) and time to reflect on a fascinating morning. A minor humiliation at lunch. I was engaged in a wonderful eclectic conversation with Peter Allen, John Odling-Smee and Geoffrey Hodgson which ranged from determinism through causality to the personal proclivities of Prigogine. I was so engaged that I took my share of baked rabbit onto the base of the dinner plate, much to the amusement of the catering staff when the came to clear the table.A series of eight presentations, plus an introduction before lunch is just too rich to conference blog, so I'm going to attempt a high level summary here. Pierpallo Andriani (who stands along with Max Boisot in the list of interesting people who introduce me too interesting ideas and people) starts by summarising the potential of exaptation to enable an understanding of radical innovation, speciation, emergence of niches in economic, creativity amp, entrepreneurship. He was followed by an excellent summary of exaptation and its place in evolutionary theory, material on conceptual blending amp, innovation, the role of modularity, the inevitability of heterogeneity, cancer treatment and open source software. An incredible mix, full list belowI'm the last speaker on Rosetta Stone Software Wednesday with a responsibility to respond/summarise.So what did I learn? Well in no particular order, and an incomplete summary anyway .. I need to go back and read some of Darwin's notebooks in which the ideas of evolutionary theory (some more radical and modern that were published in Origin of the Species) were expounded early and in secret. His early recognition that imperfections (a man's nipples) showed that evolution was more about adaptive contingency. The Tree (Coral) of life drawing in Notebook B July 1837 on adaption and his "absurd to the highest degree" comment on the difficulty of accounting for the sophistication of the human eye by staged evolution. Sub-optimality of adaption is due to constraints, current use does not always correspond to historical origins. Ex-aptation and Ad-aption, the way in which the former accounts for evolution of the mind and cultural evolution along with the evolution of unselfish behaviours. I love this stuff, complexity theory gives us a whole new take on old problems like objective ethical values, free will and the like. In parallel a lot of evolutionary theory is giving us radical new insights into human systems beyond the obviously (deliberate choice of words there) biological. To communicate with cancer (fascinating ideas here) we need to speak the language of embryos.Monday's Pre-lunch ProgrammeTelmo Pievani (h. 9:00)"From Darwinian pre-adaptation to exaptation by Gould-Vrba: history of a concept"Massimo Warglien and Anna Comacchio (h. 9:40)"Conceptual blend and the innovation process"Pierpaolo Andriani, G. Carignani and Jack Cohen (h. 10:00)"Innovation in biology and technology: exaptation precedes adaptation"Peter Allen (h. 10:20)"Complexity: the Inevitability of Heterogeneity and Exaptation"Bruno Murari (h. 11:20)"Technical developments and functional shifts in the evolution of MEMS"Pier Mario Biava (h. 11:40)"A New Vision of Cancer Treatment Based on Complexity Model"Fiorello Cortiana (h. 12:00)"Information Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin) and exaptation"Cedric Thomas (h. 12:20)"Commercial open source software and the commoditization catalyst".