I. Styles of Science, Modes of History, and Theories of the Earth |
| February
1 |
Questioning the New Millenium: Why we can't predict
the future but can (in principle at least) explain the past. |
| February
6 |
The nature of science and the nature of history. |
| February
8 |
Contingency, and Laplace's demon at the battle of Gettysburg.
The kinds of questions that science can and cannot answer. |
| February
13 |
Deep time as geology's greatest revolutionary concept.
Absolute and relative dating for the earth's history. |
| February
15 |
Inherit the Wind. |
| February
20 |
The scientific revolution and the early history of paleontology. |
| February
22 |
The arrows and cycles of time. Thomas Burnet's late
17th century Sacred Theory of the Earth. |
| February
27 |
James Hutton's "world machine." "Time is, to nature,
endless and as nothing." |
| March
1 |
Charles Lyell and the principle of uniformity. The power
of cultural expectations in theories about the nature of things. |
II. Evolutionary Theories and Fallacies |
| March
6 |
Charles Darwin's revolution in thought. |
| March
8 |
The factual basis of evolution. |
| March
13 |
Creationism as an American sociocultural phenomenon |
| March
15 |
Where adaptation and physical modeling work: size and
shape from planetary surfaces to human brains to the architecture
of the cathedral. |
| March
20 |
Critique of adaptationism and "evolutionary psychology":
sandals and spandrels. |
| March
22 |
Midterm exam |
| April
3 |
Critique of gradualism and the theory of punctuated
equilibrium. |
| April
5 |
Full House: critique of progress and the perennial Age
of Bacteria, or why no one hits .400 in baseball anymore. |
| April
10 |
Wonderful Life: critique of determinism and the fractality
of contingency from the origin of animals to patterns of human history.
|
III. Evolution and the Patterns in the History of Life |
| April
12 |
The origin and early history of life: problems of drawing
conclusions from one experiment and thoughts on the grandest of all
unanswerable (for now) questions: intelligent life (or life at all)
on other worlds. |
| April
18 |
Using the fossil record and the developmental genetics
of modern organisms to understand the relationship and early history
of animal phyla. |
| April
20 |
The Earth's first two multicellular faunas: Ediacara
and the Cambrian Explosion. |
| April
24 |
Mass extinctions: Are they catastrophic? How do they
pattern the history of life: expeditors of progress or the joker in
the deck? |
| April
26 |
Contingent patterns in the evolution of vertebrates. |
| May
1 |
Human origins and modern racial variation: equality
as a contingent fact of history. |
| May
3 |
Why contingent human history will not allow us to forecast
and indeterminate future. Reasons for optimism despite these deepest
uncertainties.
| |
B16 Course