Ronald Numbers
Experiencing Evolution: Darwinism and the
Diminution of Religious Belief
Thursday February 6 2003, 7:30 - 9:30 PM, Corwin Pavilion, University
Center
Discussant: Jim Reichman (National Center for Ecological Analysis and
Synthesis)
Discussant: Janice Willms (College of Creative Studies)
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Abstract
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Recently the New York Times
told of a high-school student in Seattle who has "been an
atheist since studying evolution in the ninth grade." Although
we know that most evolutionists have not become atheists, such
stories have circulated for over a century. Indeed, they have fueled
the various campaigns against evolution. But the spiritual effects
of accepting (or rejecting) evolution remain vague. Drawing on
autobiographical accounts from the time of Charles Darwin to the
present, this lecture seeks to illuminate the private world in
which scientists and laypersons alike have experienced the implications
of creation and evolution.
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Ronald L. Numbers is Hilldale
and William Coleman Professor of the History of Science and Medicine
and chair of the department of medical history and bioethics at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has taught for over a quarter-century.
He has written or edited more than two dozen books, including, most
recently, The Creationists (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 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. 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 Cambridge University
Press), 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 History of Science
Society and the American Society of Church History. 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. |
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