ANNOUNCEMENT: We’re delighted to announce that our Darwin Day panel has been rescheduled for Sunday, May 5. And it’s better than ever!
Sunday, May 5
6:00pm
Harvard Hall 201
Reception to Follow
Join us, along with Harvard Professor Joshua Greene, Brown Professor Fiery Cushman, Boston University Professors Catherine Caldwell-Harris and Peter Blake, Harvard Medical School Fellow Dr. Omar Haque, and Boston University post-doctoral researcher in cognitive evolution Adena Schachner for an evening of evolutionary psychology, rational revelry, and skeptical socializing in honor of Charles Darwin!
With special guest talented atheist activist and singer-songwriter Shelley Segal.
This year’s panel is a follow up to the one we hosted last year, revisiting some of the same topics as but also focusing on the evolution of compassion, cooperation, and community, with the special addition of panelist Catherine Caldwell-Harris. How do we study positive, pro-social emotions and how can we develop and cultivate them?
We will also host a special family-friendly science workshop before the event (4-5 pm, 12 Eliot Street), as part of the Humanist Learning Lab, our secular Sunday program. Read more here.
As part of our Values in Action program, this event will also feature a service component. During the reception after the panel, we will be recruiting donors for the national bone marrow registry. Since bone marrow donation requires a close genetic match, we don’t actually collect bone marrow en masse like a blood drive; instead, you just fill out a form with contact information and a brief medical history, and do a quick cheek swab so we can test and store your genetic typing information – the whole process takes about 15 minutes. A representative from Be the Match will be there to tell you more about the donation process and the urgent need for bone marrow, and can answer any questions you have!
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Please keep Darwin’s role in the theory of evolution in perspective. Hero worship can be dangerous. Be mindful that new concepts are not immediate revelations, but incremental building with many people having a part. He was standing on the shoulders of others. Before Charles Darwin’s 1859 “On the Origin of Species”, there was Robert Chambers’ 1844 “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation”. And before Chambers there was Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s 1802 “Recherches sur l’Organisation des Corps Vivants” (Research on the Organization of the Living Body). Each had to navigate the prevailing primative mindset and crack open the door a little more with each generation.
@Paul, I am with you in wishing to avoid hero worship. But I love to celebrate the process by which, for the first time (that we are aware of), life on this planet figured out its own origins. So I like to celebrate the publication date of Origin of Species, which I often do by feasting on turkey (since November 24th publication date often coincides with the USA Thanksgiving holiday). As you say, there was earlier work than Darwin’s on which he built, and there was later work, still being added to, that illuminates the amazing (you couldn’t make this up!) mechanisms underlying evolution, so the choice of any date is somewhat arbitrary. But I like a date that features the accomplishment, not the individual. And it’s easy to feel thankful about The Origin of Species.
I’d love to bring my 15 year old daughter to this. Unfortunately, I am not affiliated with Harvard (aside from working at a HMS affiliated hospital)and would have no idea how to find Harvard Hall 201. Googling directions did not work. Perhaps this is intentional so that attendance is limited to Harvard students and staff?
Anyway, it’s great that you’re doing this, and hopefully similar things will someday pop up in my area out in the western suburbs.
No Harvard affiliation is required in any way to attend! See you there.
http://www.map.harvard.edu/
type harvard hall (room 201) in search map
see you there
@Jim: Harvard Hall is circled in red on the map of Harvard Yard at http://wwww.harvardchina.org/www/backup/yard%20map.png
It’s half a block from the newsstand at the center of Harvard Square. If I remember correctly, 201 is on the second floor.