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This information pertains to Summer Session 2009. If you would like to be notified when information about Summer Session 2010 is available, please sign up for e-mail updates.

BIOEE 4670 Seminar in the History of Biology

Course description

Specific topics change each year.

BIOEE 4670 100-SEM

Class number: 1502
Session: 6-week session
Class dates: June 22-July 31, 2009
Final exam dates: Will be provided by instructor (see Final Exams)
Days/times: TR 6 PM - 9 PM Dale R Corson Bio Science Wing A409
Credit: 4
Grade option: GRD or SUS
Instructor: MacNeill, A. (adm6)
Max. enrollment: 18
To enroll: Enrollment for this class is closed.
Related classes: Cross-list: STS 4471 100-SEM
Cross-list: HIST 4150 100-SEM
Cross-list: BSOC 4471 100-SEM

Evolution and Free Will: Is Free Will an Illusion? - This seminar addresses, in historical perspective, controversies about the cultural, philosophical, and scientific implications of evolutionary biology. Discussions focus upon questions about gods, free will, foundations for ethics, meaning in life, and life after death. Readings range from Charles Darwin to the present.

BIOEE 4670 101-SEM


BIOEE 4670 101-SEM has been canceled.
Class number: 3001
Session: 6-week session
Class dates: June 22-July 31, 2009
Days/times: MW 1 PM - 4 PM
Credit: 4
Grade option: GRD or SUS
Instructor: TBA
Max. enrollment: 18
Related classes: Cross-list: HIST 4150 101-SEM
Cross-list: STS 4471 101-SEM
Cross-list: BSOC 4471 101-SEM

The origins of our own origin myth: Choosing a theory of human evolution In the first edition of On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin devoted only three sentences to subject of human evolution: ¿In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.¿ Since 1859, biologists, social scientists and critics have taken up the charge of pursuing (or disrupting) the contentious, broad research program Darwin suggested. In the course, we will follow that line of work, exploring some of the most important historical and modern debates about how our species evolved and why we ought to prefer one explanation to another. Students interested in the sciences and humanities are all welcome in this small seminar. Together we will build an understanding of Darwin¿s causal theory of evolution, as well as the special problems involved in the scientific study of a natural process too slow for direct observation. We then take a detailed look at some of the best work on hominid evolution, the evidence and proposed evolutionary scenarios offered by comparative anatomists and paleoanthropologists, students of genomics, molecular biology and sociobiology. We will also consider some of the most compelling arguments against the possibility (and wisdom) of pretending that even the most rigorous scientific work on human evolution escapes a cultural context that includes obvious patterns of racism, sexism and classism. Through class discussions and a sequential series of varied writing assignments, each student is invited to produce a final research project of his or her own design that engages with some issue related to the study of human origins.

Tuition and fees

See "Tuition" for more information.

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