Dr. David Sepkosky

Dr. David Sepkoski, Assistant Professor of History at UNCW, will be examining the context and 'deconstructing' the authorship of Eldredge and Gould's infamous 1972 paper on punctuated equilibria based on analysis of unpublished drafts and correspondence by the two authors.

UNCW's Department of Geography and Geology & Evolution Learning Community presents:

"Catastrophic Extinction of Non-bird Dinosaurs
at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary, 65 Million Years Ago"

by Dr. David Fastovsky (University of Rhode Island)

UNCW Computer Information Systems Building, Room 1008

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 7:00 pm (reception following)
Free and open to students, faculty and public.

Dr. David Fastovsky

Dr. Fastovsky is a world renowned paleontologist considered to be a dinosaur virtuoso. His research focuses on the paleoenvironments in which dinosaurs roamed and has taken him to dig sites from Mongolia to Montana to Mexico. He is co-author of the widely acclaimed college-level textbook, The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs, published in 2005.

Dr. Fastovsky will also provide a second professional talk entitled "The Day After (the Cretaceous-Tertiary asteroid): apocalypse or silent spring?", which will be held in UNCW's Deloach Hall (Room 114) on April 23, 2009 at 2:00 pm.

Dr. Philip Kitcher

This event has been cancelled in compliance with Governor Perdue's
budget freeze impacting all university spending. (posted: 4/14/09)

Philip Kitcher, an internationally famous philosopher of science, and John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, will be speaking on the impact of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution on science and culture. He is also the author of many books on science, ethics and evolution including Abusing Science, The Advancement of Science, In Mendel's Mirror, Living with Darwin, and The Lives to Come.

This event is co-sponsored by the UNCW Evolution Learning Community, funded by Academic Affairs, and the Excellence Fund of the College of Arts and Sciences, UNCW.

Dr. Kitcher will also deliver the talk, "Ethics in a Darwinian World," to students, faculty, and staff on Friday, April 17 in the UNCW Cultural Arts Building (Room 2033) at 10:00 am.

David Quammen

David Quammen, an award-winning author and science journalist, will deliver the talk titled "Charles Darwin Against Himself: Caution Versus Honesty in the Life of a Reluctant Revolutionary." Quammen will examine Darwin's life during the two decades after his epiphany that "natural selection" formed the basis of evolution, a time during which Darwin kept his explosive idea under wraps and pondered when and how to release it to the world.

Quammen is a contributing writer for National Geographic magazine and is the Wallace Stegner Professor of Western American Studies at Montana State University. In his book, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, he focuses careful attention on Darwin, the father of modern biology and the source of an idea so radical that its implications are still only imperfectly understood: evolution by natural selection.

A graduate of Yale University and a former Rhodes Scholar, Quammen travels on assignment throughout the world to jungles, deserts and swamps, writing about the fields of biology, ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation for numerous magazines. He is perhaps best known for his award-winning column, "Natural Acts," which was published in Outside magazine from 1981 to 1995. Quammen is the author of three fiction and seven non-fiction books including Wild Thoughts from Wild Places and The Song of the Dodo.

In celebration of this year's 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, L.A. Theatre Works, the country's leading radio theater company, performs The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial with a cast starring Edward Asner, John Heard and Jerry Hardin at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, February 18 in UNCW's Kenan Auditorium as part of the UNCW Arts in Action Performance Series. Based on transcripts of the famous Scopes trial and written by Peter Goodchild, the play is presented in a radio-theatre format with live sound effects.  The actors will host a post-performance discussion with audience members and WHQR Public Radio will record the Wilmington production for a one-time re-broadcast. For tickets and information, call Kenan Box Office at 910-962-3500 or visit www.uncw.edu/presents.

Dr. Dirk Robert Johnson

Dr. Johnson's scholarship explores the intellectual interaction between Charles Darwin and Friedrich Nietzsche, a late 19th Century German philosopher. Nietzsche's complex relationship to Darwin has been much explored, and readers have placed the two thinkers in conjunction from the very beginning. Nietzsche himself alluded to Darwinian interpretations of his ideas as early as 1888. In Ecce Homo (EH), Nietzsche felt compelled to disparage “scholarly cattle,” who suggested that his Übermensch, or overman, reflected Darwinian sympathies. In recent years, numerous studies have returned to the Nietzsche-Darwin axis, which indicates that they recognize that Nietzsche's connection to Darwin must reflect a significant component of his thought. Dr. Johnson's presentation will argue for the pre-eminence of Darwin for the development and articulation of Nietzsche's philosophy. But unlike current scholarship, its main thrust will be to emphasize the antagonistic character of the relationship and to show how Nietzsche's final critique against Darwin and his followers represents the key to understanding his broader (anti-)Darwinian position.

Dr. Eugenie Scott

Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education. A physical anthropologist, she is best known for her contributions to evolution education through the NCSE, a not-for-profit organization devoted to the defense of teaching evolution in the public schools. Scott is the author of Evolution vs Creationism and co-editor, with Glenn Branch, of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools.

Dr. Tina Gianquitto

A Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University in New York City, Dr. Tina Gianquitto is an associate professor in the Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. Her recent book Good Observers of Nature: American Women and the Scientific Study of the Natural World, 1820-1885 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007) investigates the roles four women played in the context of theories about the natural world during much of the nineteenth century. Her research specialty is the role women played in forwarding and in response to Darwin's thinking about evolution and natural selection. Of late, she is especially interested in studies of carnivorous plants in the context of the development of Darwin's theory of evolution. An indication of the importance of her work is the many recent fellowships and research awards she has received. She has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (2008), a three-year-long ACLS-Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship (2008-2011), and the Dibner History of Science Fellowship for work at the Huntington Library (2008).

Dr. Richard Leakey

Richard Leakey, the world renowned paleoanthropologist has made international headlines for more than 30 years for his work in Kenya. Former director of the National Museums of Kenya, Leakey is known for his work in early human origins, particularly his expeditions to the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya's Great Rift Valley. One of the most controversial, influential, and inspirational figures in African politics and world conservation today, he has authored or co-authored over 100 scientific articles and books, including The Origin of Humankind, Origins Reconsidered, and The Sixth Extinction.

Dr. Niles Eldredge

Dr. Niles Eldredge has been a paleontologist on the curatorial staff of the American Museum of Natural History since 1969. His specialty is the evolution of trilobites-a group of extinct arthropods that lived between 535 and 245 million years ago.

Eldredge's main professional passion is evolution. Throughout his career, he has used repeated patterns in the history of life to refine ideas on how the evolutionary process actually works. The theory of "punctuated equilibria," developed with Stephen Jay Gould in 1972, was an early milestone. Eldredge went on to develop a hierarchical vision of evolutionary and ecological systems, and in his book The Pattern of Evolution (1999) he has developed a comprehensive theory (the "sloshing bucket") that specifies in detail how environmental change governs the evolutionary process. (more ...)

Dr. Frederik Nijhout