12/8,9/05:
Final papers, due Tuesday 12/13 at 125 Hum by 5pm, will be returned to you via a box placed outside my office door at 572 Hum by Friday, January 6. The Nexa office is no longer active.

Some notes from the final lecture summing up course themes are here (local link).

A note on wikipedia: its reliablity problems are discussed in this story at sfgate.com - but on the whole the wikipedia is astonishingly good as a public project.

12/6/05: LECTURE CANCELED due to illness. Web site updates Thursday.

12/01/05:
In Appleman: E. O. Wilson on 'Consilience', in which biology encompasses all of human affairs, and Barbara Ehrenreich's (of NICKLE & DIMED book fame) report on some who reject any such biologizing. For the existential meaning of it all: we've read Auden's poem Bestiaries Are Out earlier in the handout which accompanied the Angels & Insects movie (recall its scene admiring the 'altruism' in ant colonies). A more extensive discussion is David Barash's "Evolutionary Existentialism, Sociobiology, and the Meaning of Life." (text page) (PDF file (1.3MB)) -which ends with the hopeful observation that we're a species which can learn to clean up its act, even if that act evolved and is innate.
Such hopefulness also motivates efforts at social/economic insights from studying evolution, in last week's readings by Nowak, DeWaal and Ridley in Appleman, and of course medical insights per Nesse.

11/23/05 (& 11/25):
Final essay topics are posted here.
The file I showed in class with Caporael excerpts and my annotations is here.

We'll consider the syllabus topic 'evolution for design' next week. This includes computer-based creative systems which use evolutionary techniques, as well as the evolutionary origin and operation of human creativity.
OPTIONAL:
•Dutton 2001: "What is Genius" - creativity in science and art:
http://www.denisdutton.com/what_is_genius.htm
This is a short somewhat helpful discussion.
An optional long review is by Geoffrey Miller, on Protean creativity in the evolution of primates:
http://www.unm.edu/~psych/faculty/protean_primates.htm:

If you're especially interested in last week's theme of literatury analysis from an evolutionary psychology perspective, there's an interesting collection of related papers by our 'Origins..." editor Joseph Carroll (U. Missouri English Dept.) at his website:
http://www.umsl.edu/~engjcarr/

11/17/05:
Next week we'll discuss evolutionary psychology further (Caporael's proposed alternative, and Cronin's (2005) critique of this), then focus on claims that aesthetic preferences are partly shaped by evolutionary biases. The Dutton reading on this claim is two articles:

http://www.denisdutton.com/aesthetics_&_evolutionary_psychology.htm
--"Aesthetics and Evolutionary Psychology"
http://denisdutton.com/miller_review.htm
--"Art and Sexual Selection 2000"

And reading on ‘literary naturalism’ (analyses of story-telling preferences via evolutionary psychology):

•Fromm 2003:”The New Darwinism in the Humanities” (.pdf file: 100k)
•Boyd 1998: “Jane, Meet Charles” (.pdf file: 130k)( text page: 80k)
•Currie 2000:”How to Think About the Modularity of Mind-Reading” (.pdf file: 170k)
These deal in order with the humanities, with a case study using Jane Austin's novels, and a philosophical-psychological study of the distinctly human process by which we infer another person's viewpoint (few if any other animals have this, and it emerges in infants at several years of age, and autism may be defined as its absence).
Optional: the Fromm article is Part II only of his two-part piece. Part I simply reviews human evolution for humanists, in a sketchy and provocative manner. The full article is at http://www.hudsonreview.com/frommSpSu03.html.

See News & Notes page for other notes related to this week's material.

11/10/05:
Last week focused on the ultimate (evolutionary) origins of human psychology via mate selection for brains, esteem, and kindness as fitness indicators, per Geoffrey Miller's thesis in THE MATING MIND (2000) (the News&Notes page links to a useful precis of the book).  This week will focus on more proximal aspects of evolutionary psychology- what aspects of our thinking and feeling display legacies and biases from our evolutionary history?  Cronin's Ch. 15 is useful here (mostly the first 1/4- the remainder is historical, about Wallace, Huxley and Spencer).  The readings by Pinker and Jones are interesting reactions to the topic but very sketchy as tutorials, so:
Recommended: A brief (simplistic?) and graphics-rich tutorial is at U. Plymouth in the U.K:
http://salmon.psy.plym.ac.uk/year3/PSY339EvolutionaryPsychology/EvolutionaryPsychology.htm
and this links to more sophisticated primers by Cosmides and Toobey, two researchers prominent in creating the field, and further reading.

Caporael attempts to provide a broader environment-focused context for evolutionary psychology than its current focus on adaptative mental 'modules'. The text of the Caporael article on your reading list is available here (local link)(72K). You may wish to download this fully formatted .pdf version (220K). Does her perspective seem credible? Useful for research?  Even after reading Cronin's defense (2005) of the gene-centric view of environments (local link) ? 
We will not discuss the Buller article listed in the syllabus.

10/30/05:  
For lecture 11 (Nov 8) Cronin's Ch. 15 exploring altruism in humans is focal.  It's among the least speculative introductions to the modern field of 'evolutionary psychology'.

Additional readings are:
* Ekman on "Why don't we catch liars?": (local link)
Paul Ekman is a long-time researcher at UCSF (now emeritus).  He recently republished Darwin's book The Expression of the Emotions from the 1870's including full modern footnotes and a full historical preface.   This Calif. Academy of Sciences article provides some background on his career, in which he focused on documenting the cross-cultural universality of human emotions and their expressions (which Darwin also argued for based on fundamental evolutionary principles, though the concept fell out of favor among American anthropologists of the 1920's-60's due to  Margaret Mead's claims of complete cultural dependence):
http://www.calacademy.org/calwild/2004spring/stories/counterpoints.html Ekman maintains his own web site at  http://www.paulekman.com/  --- interesting applications.
* Auden's short poem "Their Lonely Betters" is here (local link). It's a succinct summary of some uses for our singular trait (adaptive module?) of language, a topic of lecture 12.

10/20/05:
For next week's reading on altruism: Cronin is again the focus: part 3 on altruism, excluding Ch. 15.
Her Chapters 11 and 12 are central. They summarize the conceptual issues of apparent altruism. 'Apparent' only when seen from the modern gene-centered perspective (Ch.11); more real when viewed classically (Ch.12), though Cronin points out such viewing was scarce. In the classical view, altruism’s costs to individuals weren’t realized or were presumed absorbed for “the good of the group” - a logic which the 1960’s found fundamentally flawed, which is our interest in Ch. 12.
Read only lightly in Ch. 13 about social insects (ants, termites, wasps, etc), which are altruistic and have neuter castes with specialized morphologies - Darwin was most puzzled by the morphologies and guessed rightly at the answer of kin selection. Modern work is focused equally on their altruism now that its costs are appreciated. Lots of technical details.
Ch. 14 looks at the ‘altruism’ of animal fighters, to introduce the core concept of “evolutionarily stable strategies” (ESS) in 'game theory'. Altruistic fights? As we saw for sexual selection's effect within a species, one sex competes within itself for access to the other. But this aggression is usually ritualized, rarely fatal - fatalities are not an ESS. Short and non-mathematical, unlike most discussions of this topic. And perhaps of interest: the Appleman reading by Kropotkin is an early discussion of animal cooperation; the Nowak reading (unassigned) which follows it is a modern interpretation of this, via games consistent with ESS.
Ch. 16 is not of interest for our purposes.
Explaining altruism via kin-selection focuses on the gene-centered (rather than organismal) view of selection ('selfish gene' sensu Dawkins' book so titled). Recall that Cronin's Ch. 3 introduces the concept somewhat; also, the wikipedia entry for Selfish Gene is a concise general summary. This view was developed into a comprehensive field called sociobiology by E.O. Wilson (1975; Appleman p. 409), which when first applied to humans generated controversy as in the Gould reading. Since then the human applications have somewhat matured into ‘evolutionary psychology’, some issues of which we’ll consider later .

To review human evolution, which we presume knowledge of as we discuss evolutionary psychology later (and which is intrinsically fascinating), recall the Appleman readings from last week (Richards, Tanner), and those mentioned 9/30 (below: Kuper, Tattersall). Extra: some public libraries have the book and/or DVD of a recent BBC production WALKING WITH CAVEMEN which is a current summary of our knowledge of the several other human species. This documentary is only slightly reminiscent of QUEST FOR FIRE (both involve actors rather than animations).

10/13/05: For readings on sexual selection: emphasize
* Cronin’s Ch. 3 review of the ‘new’ ideas since Classical Darwinism
* Her part two on sexual selection: lots of pages, so focus at least on first and concluding chapters
The two readings in Appleman are less critical but pertinent: Richards discusses sexual selection as seen by modern feminism, while Tanner summarizes current anthropological knowledge of early humans, both men and women.
For Cronin's part 2 on sexual selection, does it seem odd that her concluding chapter says that sex. sel. 'dissolves' from the modern (1966+) gene-centered perspective and yet she also emphasizes sex. sel.'s unique runaway dynamics, several times noting Darwin's phrase 'no definite limit' to sex.sel? We'll revisit the runaway dynamics - it’s distinctive and an increasingly popular candidate to explain human evolution of flamboyantly large brains, language and music (e.g. these semi-popular books: Matt Ridley, RED QUEEN; Geoffrey Miller, MATING MIND). Check the 'News & Notes' page for other comments.

10/6/05: For next week, we'll review the exam and catch up with the material on human evolution and Darwin's Descent of Man. We'll watch the video Quest for Fire - a vivid speculative reconstruction of early human lives for which our Reserve book ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EVOLUTION by Milner (see syllabus) supplies a lot of interesting background information. And we'll briefly consider responses by external critics and by biologists to the "classsical Darwinism" we've discussed so far (the Cronin reading described below willl bring us to "modern Darwinism" of 1960+).

External critics to all Darwinism are discussed by the Eugenie Scott readings in Appleman (there are two): p. 534 summarizes modern anti-evolutionary efforts in the US; at p.586 Scott reviews P. Johnson’s book Darwin on Trial (an excerpt of which precedes). Consider the latter in light of our early movie/lecture by Gould on the Darwinian revolution as basically about materialism. Appleman has many other excerpts about Creationism and the other alternatives, such as Richard Dawkins' excerpt written with his usual articulateness. Such controversial issues are well addressed at the talkorigins.org website. And the October 2004 Wired magazine has a cover story about Creationist challenges to evolution. The story is useful and is online for free:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/evolution_pr.html
The quote from Gilder, a “technogeek guru” (like Spencer?) who disparages Darwin at the end of story is especially provocative.
The reluctance to accept evolution is still with us. There is a current Federal court case in Pensylvania challenging a local requirement that Intelligent Design be taught in public schools in "equal time" with Darwinian evolution. The Dover, Pa. school board recently adopted this requirement, consistent with the national campaign of the Discovery Institute (Seattle) to "teach the controversy" between evolution and creationism, etc., and the requirement has been legally challenged by district parents with ACLU assistance. Eugenie Scott and others have argued that there is no controversy among scientists, and that Intelligent Design is repackaged Creationism, thus inappropriate for public classroom discussion - ask me if you'd like more references.

For responses to Darwin within science, Appleman’s Bowler excerpt describes the history of biologists (Haldane, Fisher, Wright - and Stebbins in botany) who vindicated “classical Darwinism” by incorporating into it the discoveries of Mendelian and polygenic genetics (which at first seemed to refute Darwinism- especially Mendelism with its non-gradual changes). They created the “modern synthesis” of evolution in the 1930’s, thus filling Darwin’s gap of unknown genetics - this is the basic view of modern evolutionists.
Though Bowler is an authoritative and wide-ranging historian of evolutionary thought, this first reconciliation with genetics is of less interest to us than is Cronin’s history in her Chapter 3. Here she describes the further implications of a genetic perspective, which we will emphasize. These changes in perspectives started in the 1960’s to form “modern Darwinism”. This focuses on several kinds of selection now, operating at the level of genes rather than of entire organisms (metaphorically “Selfish Genes” per Dawkins' famous 1976 book of that title: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfish_gene). It also focuses on the selection of alternative innate behaviors (she calls them ‘strategies) as much as selection of morphologies - the study of animal behavior was finally linked to evolutionary logic to explain its rich natural history of diversity. Chapter 3 is the groundwork for the rest of her book, parts 2 & 3 of which discuss the modern problems of "the ant" and "the peacock".

To discuss Darwin's DESCENT OF MAN, we'll again be discussing races ("subspecies" to biologists). Much of Darwin's motivation for his theory of sexual selection was to explain the origin of racial traits, most apparently irrelevant to natural selection - despite popular misunderstandings. As noted last week (and worth repeating): Darwin proposed that racial variation is due to sexual selection, as discussed by Jared Diamond here, briefly and clearly (from his 1992 THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE) (recommended): Sexual Selection and Origin of Human Races The great majority of racial differences are literally only skin-deep, affecting appearances as "markers" - just the sort of traits sexual selection can favor.
Controversy about the reality of biological ‘race’in humans is discussed by NOVA here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/first/race.html
In class we saw Steve Jones' BBC video "IN THE BLOOD: Native American Gamble":
http://www.sfsu.edu/~avitv/avcatalog/81920.htm - which closed by asserting that claims to group identity based on racial genetics or 'blood' instead of culture are very fragile (and from a European perspective especially suspect). I introduced it with mention of another video discussing similar issues more abstractly: That is a PBS-hosted Harvard seminar "Genes on Trial" in which nationally prominent commentators discuss hypothetical cases such as a population of Americans from an island (like Puerto Rico) who have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism (like American Indians) - what are the legal issues in assigning liablility to such persons for acts while drunk? Lively discussions, very articulate (includes as panelists the late Johnny Cochran (OJ's lawyer), Dean Hamer (scientist who's claimed discovery of genes for 'gayness' - and for faith in God!), and PBS news anchor Gwen Ifil - rarely dull):
http://www.sfsu.edu/~avitv/avcatalog/66273.htm with an excellent resource page at
http://www.pbs.org/inthebalance/archives/ourgenes/genes_on_trial/genes_index.html
NOVA sketches the principles of sexual selection here, though not in relation to race:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/educators/course/session4/ (Includes nice video of flying peacocks - pretty but unadaptive!)

9/30/05: For Hardy's Tess, we've discussed one of his evolutionary themes, heredity as a kind of fate. We'll discuss the other next week: his belief in degenerative trends in lineages. See the News & Notes page for several notes.

We won’t go into much detail on human evolution, only hinted at (but generally presciently) in Darwin’s Descent of Man. The Huxley excerpt argues for the continuity of humans with other primates by using comparative anatomy- much less controversial than behavioral comparisons, then and now.
The modern understanding of human evolutions is summarized in two excerpts in Appleman (optional, especially the second): ‘The Chosen Primate’, Kuper, p.326, and ‘Out of Africa Again ... and Again’, Tattersall, p.335.
For optional reference:
PBS’s NOVA “teacher’s page” with links on human evolution is here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/educators/teachstuds/unit5.html The online encyclopedia is useful and concise as usual
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution - evolutionary history of all human species
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_the_origin_of_humans - links include non-evolutionary theories
And fictional presentations of pre-modern humans are listed with comments here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/fiction.html
(And of course talkorigins.org also has much non-fiction material)

To discuss human evolution with its many unadaptive traits (hairlessness, huge brain, etc), Darwin also presents in the Descent his theory of sexual selection, which we’ve yet to describe. The Appleman excerpt of Descent includes a little of its Ch. 8, “Principles of Sexual Selection” (p.230). Although we won't discusss this much until another few weeks, Cronin will have details about the main principles of sexual selection, now based on differing parental investments starting with differing costs of eggs and sperm. These define what are male and female, and lead to intra-sexual competition for mates, and inter-sexual mate choices. Darwin’s own principle (only hinted at in this excerpt) was the generalization that “males always seek females - rarely vice versa” - this is consistent but not fundamental. Most of the chapter then discusses how even monogamous birds are affected by sexual selection.

Some of Darwin's motivation for his theory of sexual selection was to explain the origin of racial traits, most apparently irrelevant to natural selection - despite popular misunderstandings. Darwin's analysis is discussed by Jared Diamond here, briefly and clearly (from his 1992 THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE) (recommended):
Sexual Selection and Origin of Human Races

9/22/05: For exam prep: Review questions and vocabulary are posted on the EXAMS page. You should also review questions previously posted in this Readings page. And last week's handout included my choice of excerpts from Darwin's ORIGIN. What is the context for each in the "one long argument" as some people call the Origin? Judge why each was chosen as an excerpt. The handout is available here.

The poems by Arnold and Hardy (Dover Beach; Hap) in our handouts are also available online at a site which includes commentaries, sometimes usefully:
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold/writings/doverbeach.html
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/poems/hap.html

For reading Tess (which will not be on this exam):
For this “Darwinian Revolution” course we’re not doing a full literary critique of Tess, only of Hardy's evolutionary themes. For example:
* his notions of hereditary and nearly deterministic degeneration within lineages,
* his characterization of differing male and female psychologies of jealousy and the double standards of sexual behavior, and
* the near-autonomy of choices (reasoned and/or felt) in human mate selection (recall Byatt’s final comment describing her book).

Some example issues in more detail:
*An early reviewer of Tess noted: “Prof. Huxley once compared life to a game of chess played by man against an enemy, invisible, relentless, wresting every terror and every accident to his own advantage. Some such idea must have influenced Mr Hardy in his narrative of the fortunes of Tess Durbeyfield.” What elements of this enemy are of natural origin, and which of social construction, in Tess? How distinct, ultimately, are the two?
*While writing Tess it seems Hardy included the theme of heredity degeneration relatively late. Speculate on what the plot summary would be without this theme. How central is this theme to the enduring interest of Tess? [Historical background: in addition to reading Darwin, Hardy also read Weismann’s later work (see Cronin p. 35-41 et seq) establishing the fact that heredity works via “an immortal river of germ-plasm” rather than Lamarckian inheritance of acquired traits. Lamarck thought these acquisitions included self-willed traits, thus offering an avenue for continued evolutionary progress via human striving. Weismannism precluded this, and also seemed to warn of a constant tendency toward degeneration via ‘panmixia’, prevented only by constant natural selection - thus, the idle rich degenerate. (And Dr. G. notes: this presumes human families become rich, at least originally, due to differences from the poor in heritable traits.)]
*Double Standard for husbands/wives: Tess’s confession to Angel produces a very different response than she gave to his. A too-broad generalization is apt: ‘women may ignore sexual transgressions but not emotional infidelity, while men are least forgiving of the former.’
-why might these differing emotions arise in men and women? What evolutionary logic might favor such differing feelings?
*Clare’s love for Tess is described early on as abstract, more cognitive than emotional in character; it later becomes somewhat more emotional and (coincidentally?) his commitment is restored. Speculate on the varieties of love - maternal, fraternal, romantic, passionate, et al - and their evolutionary lineages and adaptedness (reference to books such as Melvin Konner’s THE TANGLED WING (2002) recommended (SFSU lib has only the original 1982 release: useful but dated)).

RECOMMENDED SUPPLEMENTAL READING:
A site discussing evolutionary themes in Victorian literature including Hardy’s:
http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/english/VScience/VS_Contents.htm
Chapter 7 discusses Hardy (and S. Butler). If page layout seems odd, try this link:
http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/PeterMorton/vs_contents.htm
or a Google search on 'Peter Morton Victorian Science'

There are two film adaptations of Tess, each a bit over three hours:
Tess 1979 Roman Polanski. Beautiful scenery and characteriztions. Available at SFSU and some public libraries. (Dedicated to Polanski's wife Sharon Tate, whom the Manson gang in LA murdered in 1969.)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles 1998, A&E miniseries now on DVD. Arguably comparable to Polanski's. Available at SFSU and public libraries.

9/15/05: For next week's reading (Cronin's Part 1, and poems (see handout) by Hardy and Arnold):
* Cronin is very rich in historical detail - beyond our needs. Focus on her broad history and concepts.
* Extra: Helena Cronin was interviewed in 2000 about her views on the evolution of human nature:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/cronin/cronin_index.html
--the interview links to a 5-minute video and is prefaced with a brief biography.
* What two extreme alternatives does Cronin say Darwin/Wallace provide a 'third path' between? (p.20-25). How do flat-fish eyes demonstrate the third path rather than either extreme? How do male mammaries in mammals?
* How does idealism (transcendentalism) explain the puzzle of biological likeness within diversity? How might one define a species with idealism, compared to our actual definition? (Ch. 2)
* What are the central notions of Lamarckism for Cronin? What are Weismann and Cronin's criticisms of these? (p.36-45)
* Who does Cronin claim 'kept the faith' of explaining specifically adaptive traits via natural selection rather than via a plurality of causes? When and why did pluralism prevail (the "Eclipse of Darwinism")? How do the colors of external and internal features of animals illustrate adaptive and non-adaptive explanations? (Ch. 4).
See News & Notes page for other notes related to this week's material.

9/8/05: The ORIGIN itself is this week's focus, especially Ch. 1-4 for its development of the core concept of Natural Selection, echoed in the Wallace paper and both inspired by Malthus. Compare the full Origin text in Carroll's edition to the skillfully excerpted version in Appleman; read chapters V-VII entirely from Appleman's abridgement. Our focus is on Darwin's ideas, not his biological details (Moore's article includes helpful chapter summaries).

For Malthus: these wikipedia links are helpful for background including the enduring controversy on his relevance for humans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation
- as usual the human relationship to biology is complex, since we have the demographic transition and the Green Revolution - and contraception - shaping our population and resources (although our oil resource may prove just as limiting as the food resource Malthus focused on).

For non-human species, excess population production is the norm and well documented before and after Darwin - his generalization of Malthus' logic is apt and as Carroll notes is not merely an anology.

What is the one and only figure in The Origin? It's the schematic tree which appears in Ch. 4 (p.168-9 of CD). This represents ten species within a genus, and some of their descendents with modifications including divergences from each other. It's important as Darwin's only figure here - take time to read his discussion of it. What does it mean to use a tree rather than a ladder or other sequential image to represent species change?
We'll discuss species and speciation in more detail the next few lectures. It may help to consider this article which reviews species definitions and namings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnaean_taxonomy

We also read Lamarck (1744-1829), a pre-Darwinian discussion of species which was the first to acknowledge the lability of species and the relatedness of all species, although he did so in the context of a progressive “Great Chain of Being” and misunderstood the prevalence of extinctions. And he accepted the then-common belief that traits acquired in one’s life - e.g. a giraffe’s neck elongated by stretching upward to leaves - could be inherited by its offspring. But Lamarck’s basic perspective on species’ plasticity was a significant insight, as noted in Carroll’s Intro in CD.

9/3/05: READING for this week as per the syllabus: Appears to be a lot but each is relatively short except Carroll's Intro. Note the abbreviated format in which the syllabus lists this and the other readings: "CD:Intro §1-10, espec. 3,4.6,7,9..." . The syllabus groups together related readings in [brackets].

They should be prioritized thus:

Emphasize Carroll's Introduction to ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES - this is a good overview essay.

Second, Tennyson's poem In Memoriam (1850, before Darwin's public work) is online at TennysonPoetry.home.att.net/IMAHH.htm - focus on §55-§56. The poem is interestingly discussed in Adams' article in Appleman (p.444). Some brief background is at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Memoriam_A.H.H
Tennyson was reacting only to Deep Time as geologists were describing it, prior to Darwin's further insights. Compare this to our movie of Gould describing the reluctant acceptance of materialism implied in Darwin's theory. Tennyson - and we - would prefer that Mother Nature was more like ... Mom. Adams points out the Darwin offered a compromise here - not exactly Mom, but a careful "invisible hand". (Even China's mystical religion Taoism gives the source of all things a feminine character. Taoism also notes that this source in nature acts always without any individual regard for 'the ten thousand things' - that is, for all the lives within nature, which are 'straw dogs', discardable after their use.)

The short Moore article introduces the ORIGIN as a persuasive organized argument, and includes a two-page summary of each chapter's main points: highly recommended.
Moore 1997: "The Persuasive Mr. Darwin" (.pdf file, ~850KB)
(or see this text-page version - much smaller, less well formatted.)

The state of geological knowledge in Darwin's time is the subject of Darwin's Chapters IX-X in ON THE ORIGIN..., and of Lyell's short excerpt also in CD. Don't emphasize these - we only care that Darwin was aware of the 'abyss of time' if not its precise depth...

Don't worry much about Malthus at all this week - delay to next week when he'll be also discussed in class as providing the insight into population growth upon which both Darwin and Wallace based their theories.

The movies we watched: both are in the SFSU a/v library, available for student viewing in the library (small groups also). They're
#10561 'Macroevolution', (just the first 20 minutes) and
#85417 "Darwinian Revolution", 50 minutes by S.J. Gould 1995. (see my Gould notes)
The final few minutes of Gould's lecture which we missed include his familiar statement that in general evolutionary materialism doesn't address (thus doesn't contradict) religious questions although it does contradict the specific "argument from design" once popular in Christian theology (e.g. Paley's watchmaker argument, described in pages 41-44 and 301-304 in the Appleman reader). Of interest here, Appleman includes (p.527) Pope John Paul II's 1996 statement that the Church finds evolution to be 'a serious hypothesis'. Appleman also includes statements from other religions.