Happy Birthday to Charles: Associate Professor of Biology George Gilchrist moderated a panel of eight professors from across as many disciplines at an event marking the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.
Photo by Suzanne Seurattan
The answer is: During the 90-minute discussion panelists took questions from the audience. Here Barbara King (l), professor of anthropology and Lee Kirkpatrick (r), associate professor of psychology respond.
Photo by Suzanne Seurattan
A W&M forum: Darwin across the disciplines
| March 13, 2009Faculty at the College of William and Mary observed Darwin Day with a symposium titled Darwin Across the Disciplines. The event was held on Feb. 12, 2009, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, in the Sadler Center’s Commonwealth Auditorium.
The symposium featured short presentations from faculty experts in fields ranging from biology to philosophy to religion. George Gilchrist, Marjorie S. Curtis Term Distinguished Associate Professor of Biology at William & Mary, moderated the session.
“The idea was for each panelist to present a short, pity address on the contributions of Darwinian ideas to his or her academic discipline,” Gilchrist said. “Our goal was to show how much evolutionary ideas have influenced our intellectual life.”
Presenters and topics:
* George W. Gilchrist (biology) gave a short introduction to Darwin's key theories, common descent and natural selection and points out the importance of evolutionary science for medicine and public health.
* Gregory A. Wray ’81 (biology, Duke University) discussed the influence of Darwin's ideas within the biological sciences, in particular their impact on studies of embryonic development.
* Barbara J. King (anthropology) talked about humans’ common ancestry with apes, then considered the strengths and limitations of applying evolutionary science to an understanding of human behavior.
* Paul Davies (philosophy) described two ways in which Darwin has been adapted to contemporary philosophical reflection.
* Rowan Lockwood (geology) explained the impact of the fossil record on Darwin's ideas and vice versa. She discussed the quality of the fossil record, transitional fossils and graduated vs. punctuated change.
* Lee A. Kirkpatrick (psychology) explored the history of evolutionary ideas in psychology, focusing on the recent emergence of evolutionary psychology as a paradigmatic alternative to extant (non-evolutionary) approaches to psychological science.
* George Greenia (modern languages and literatures) spoke on linguistics and the debate about how language itself emerged as an adaptive trait, and also how the language of evolutionary biology could serve as a guide in understanding how real languages change over time.
* Jeanne Wilson (organizational behavior) discussed organizational ecology, the branch of organizational science that tries to explain how business conditions affect the diversity of organizational forms that survive and persist.
* John Maxwell Kerr examined a few aspects of the impact of Darwin’s theory relative to theology and theological ethics. Kerr is the Episcopal chaplain to William & Mary and is a founder of the Society of Ordained Scientists.
