News and Events

Why Darwin Still Matters

Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of On the Origin of Species

 

Program Information

Pepperdine University
November 20-21, 2009
Elkins Auditorium

Preliminary schedule:

Friday
9:00-10:00	Ron Numbers, "Creationism Goes Global" Faculty respondent: Dyron Daughrity
10:30-11:30	Michael Ruse, "Has Darwinism Passed Its 'Sell-By' Date?: Reflections on the Origin of Species at 150 Years" Faculty respondent: Chris Doran
11:30-1:30	Lunch break
1:30-2:30	Ed Larson, "Darwin and the Victorian Soul" Faculty respondent: Paul Contino
2:45-3:15	Film, "What a Piece of Work is Man"
3:15-4:15	Round Table Discussion
4:15-4:30	Nancey Murphy, closing comments

Saturday
9:00-10:00	David Mindell, “Evolution in the Everyday World” Faculty respondent: Rodney Honeycutt
10:30-11:30	Eugenie Scott, “Demonizing Darwin” Faculty respondent: Chris Soper
11:30-12:15	Lunch break; optional viewing of film, "Of Sound and Fury"
1:30-2:30	Patricia Gowaty, “What Darwin Didn't Want to Talk About: Difficulties in the Act” Faculty respondent: Donna Nofziger Plank
3:00-4:00	Roundtable discussion

Speakers

Ron Numbers (Coleman and Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine, University of Wisconsin, Madison), Antievolution in America: From Creation Science to Intelligent Design

Creationism Goes Global
Despite growing evidence to the contrary, evolutionists in the late 20th and early 21st centuries clung to the belief that creationism could be geographically contained. In 1986 the usually reliable American paleontologist and anti-creationist Stephen Jay Gould, then visiting Auckland, assured New Zealanders that they had little to fear from scientific creationism. Because the movement was so “peculiarly American,” he thought it stood little chance of “catching on overseas.” Fourteen years later he was still assuring listeners that creationism was not contagious. “As insidious as it may seem, at least it's not a worldwide movement,” he said reassuringly. “I hope everyone realizes the extent to which this is a local, indigenous, American bizarrity." Although Gould remained oblivious to it, the worldwide growth of creationism by 2000 had already proven him utterly wrong. Antievolutionism had become a global phenomenon, as readily exportable as hip-hop and blue jeans. In the past few decades it has quietly spread from America throughout the world and from evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism, and even Hinduism.

Bio: Ronald L. Numbers is the Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has taught for 35 years. He has written or edited some 30 books, including Science and Christianity in Pulpit and Pew (Oxford University Press, 2007), The Creationists (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, republished by Harvard University Press in 2006), Darwinism Comes to America (Harvard University Press, 1998), and Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender (Cambridge University Press, 1999), coedited with John Stenhouse. Most recently, he edited the book Galileo Goes to Jail, and Other Myths about Science and Religion (Harvard University Press, 2009). For five years (1989-1993) he edited Isis, the flagship journal of the history of science. He is writing a history of science in America (for Basic Books), editing a series of monographs on the history of medicine, science, and religion for the Johns Hopkins University Press, and coediting, with David Lindberg, the eight-volume Cambridge History of Science. He is a past president of both the American Society of Church History and the History of Science Society, and currently the president of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science. A former Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the International Academy of the History of Science.

^top

Ed Larson (University Professor and Hugh & Hazel Darling Chair in Law, Pepperdine University)

Darwin and the Victorian Soul
In this presentation, Larson will discuss the initial response to Darwinism in late Victorian England focusing of the paired reaction of the widespread acceptance of the biological concept of common descent and the persistence resistance to the notion that human morality and mentality had a purely naturalistic origin. This led to markedly different reactions to Origin of Species versus Descent of Man. Larson will conclude that the popular and scientific debate over the origins of higher human consciousness and altruistic behavior, born in the earliest responses to Darwin's work, carry forward to the present.

Bio: Edward J. Larson holds the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law and is University Professor of History at Pepperdine University and recipient of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in History. The author of seven books and over 100 published articles, Larson writes mostly about issues of science, medicine and law from an historical perspective. His books include A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (2007); Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory (2005, 2006 rev. ed.); Evolution’s Workshop: God and Science in the Galapagos Islands (2001), Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South (1995), Trial and Error: The American Controversy Over Creation and Evolution (1985, 2003 rev. ed.) and the Pulitzer Prize winning Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (1997). His articles have appeared in such varied publications as Nature, Atlantic Monthly, Time, Scientific American, The Nation, American History, The Georgia Quarterly, Virginia Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, The Wilson Quarterly, and Isis.

^top

Michael Ruse (Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor, Florida State University)

Has Darwinism Passed Its “Sell-By” Date?: Reflections on the Origin of Species at 150 Years
In this talk I compare the theory of Charles Darwin in his Origin of Species, published 150 years ago in 1859, with the modern theory of evolution, the theory of 2009. I want to see if any parts of Darwin's thinking persist to this day and, if so, what has been changed or discarded and why. In respects, I argue that Darwin's theory is like the People's Car of Germany in the 1930s. Today, there is not one piece of that car still being manufactured and incorporated into today's cars. And yet, the Beetle of today is still recognizably the car of yesterday. To make my case, I look both at the structure of Darwin's theory and then at the various parts of biology—instinct, paleontology, biogeography, systematics, morphology, embryology—and see how they fare today. In the light of my conclusions, I am then able to make some brief critical remarks about those today who either deny evolution entirely or who question the efficacy of natural selection.

Bio: Michael Ruse is the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. His is the author of many books on the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology, including Can a Darwinian be a Christian? The Relationship between Science and Religion, and Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology. Recently he was the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Origin of Species.

^top

Nancey Murphy (Fuller Theological Seminary)

Closing Comments

Bio: Nancey Murphy serves as professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary. She is highly sought as a speaker at national and international conferences on philosophy and the relationship between theology and science. Murphy serves on the board of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Berkeley, and is a member of the Planning Committee for conferences on science and theology sponsored by the Vatican Observatory. A prolific writer, Murphy’s first book, Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning, received awards from the Templeton Foundation and the American Academy of Religion. Her most recent publications are: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action: Twenty Years of Challenge and Progress (2008), Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will (co-authored with Warren Brown; Oxford University, 2007); Physics and Cosmology: Scientific Perspectives on the Problem of Natural Evil (co-edited with Robert Russell and William Stoeger, SJ; Vatican Observatory Press, 2007); Evolution and Emergence: Systems, Organisms, Persons (co-edited with William Stoeger, SJ; Oxford University Press, 2007); and Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (Cambridge University, 2006).

^top

David Mindell (Dean of Science, Harry W. and Diana V. Hind Chair, California Academy of Sciences)

Evolution in the Everyday World
David Mindell will discuss the many applications of evolution to our everyday lives. Knowledge of evolution is applied in domestication of wild species for agriculture; in managing our exposure to pathogens and severity of epidemics; in promoting individual health; in fostering the diversity of species, which safeguard functional ecosystems; in the pursuit of justice within the legal system, and in promoting scientific discovery through education and research. These and other topics will be discussed, showing that understanding and application of evolutionary science has become indispensable in modern societies.

Bio: David P. Mindell is Dean of Science and Harry W. and Diana V. Hind Chair at the California Academy of Sciences. He is an evolutionary biologist with primary long-term research interest in the molecular phylogenetics and evolution of the orders and families of birds. His recent book, The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life (Harvard University Press) won the 2007 Independent Publisher Gold Medal award for Best Book in the science category. He was a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan until 2008. He held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard and Tel Aviv University.

^top

Eugenie Scott (Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education)

Demonizing Darwin
Although Charles Darwin is recognized internationally as the founding father of evolutionary biology and one of the world's most influential scientists, in the creationist world, Darwin's ideas and Darwin as scientist and scholar are routinely denigrated. Two basic themes characterize this demonization: Darwin is presented as an incompetent, lazy, or plagiarizing scientist, and secondly as the atheist founder of a materialist science (evolution) dedicated to undermining Christianity. Of course, the actual Darwin contrasts strikingly with these mischaracterizations -- but the mischaracterizations serve to promote an overall anti-evolutionary agenda that survey research has shown has been embraced by a surprisingly large percentage of Americans.

Bio: Dr. Eugenie C. Scott is executive director of the National Center for Science Education, Inc., a not-for-profit membership organization of scientists, teachers, and others that works to improve the teaching of evolution, and of science as a way of knowing. It opposes the teaching of “scientific” creationism and other religiously based views in science classes. A former college professor, Dr. Scott is an internationally known expert on the creationism and evolution controversy, and is called upon by the press and other media to explain science and evolution to the general public. The author of Evolution vs Creationism: An Introduction and co-editor with Glenn Branch of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design is Wrong for our Schools, she is the recipient of numerous awards from scientists and educators, and has been awarded six honorary degrees.

^top

Patricia Gowaty, (Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles)

“What Darwin Didn't Want to Talk About: Difficulties in the Act”
In Darwin's volume Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, he excluded from consideration "the many singular contrivances possessed by the males, such as great jaws, adhesive cushions, spines, elongated legs, etc., for seizing the female." He thought these traits curious, but unlikely to be clearly attributed to natural selection or sexual selection. He claimed it was safer to put their consideration aside. Nevertheless, he inferred from their existence "that there is some difficulty in the act" by which he meant copulation. In this talk I will describe the Killing Time Hypothesis (KTH), which comes from a theorem that assumes that the difficulty was that some females resist mating with some males and attempt to escape from these males, so that these "contrivances for grabbing and holding females" evolved in the context of conflict between some females with some males over mating. The KTH says that the benefit of male contrivances for seizing and holding females is not just to limit females' abilities to encounter and perhaps mate with other males, but to also persuade females to use, rather than to kill or sequester the sperm of a previously rejected male. When males seize and hold females against their will before copulating, the KTH says that males decrease females' absolute time available for mating and future reproduction, and as a female loses more time, a greater fraction of males in the population become acceptable to her to mate. Killing time is thus a mechanism of sexual selection and sexual conflict with effects on the fitnesses of females and males.

Bio: Dr. Patricia Adair Gowaty is a Distinguished Professor at UCLA and a Distinguished Research Professor Emerita at the University of Georgia. She is an evolutionary biologist who studies the adaptive significance and evolutionary dynamics of social behavior. She studied eastern bluebirds in the field for over 30 years. She pioneered studies on extra-pair paternity in socially monogamous birds, naturalistic observations of female-female aggression, and sex allocation in birds with helpers at the nest. Her most recent work is theoretical that includes a new hypothesis of fertility variation called the Reproductive Compensation Hypothesis, and a new hypothesis of the origins of sex differences in reproductive decision-making.

^top 

^return to main page