|
|
|
Talk on :
Is Human Existence Biologically Inevitable?
Date: |
7 October 2008 |
Location: |
Seminar Room B, Level 1, The Shaw Foundation Building, AS7, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS
|
Organized by Religion Research Cluster, FASS, NUS.
Speaker:
-
Dr. Denis Alexander, The Faraday Institute, St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge
-
About the Speaker: Denis Alexander is Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at St. Edmunds College, Cambridge, UK (www.faraday-institute.org). He was previously an open scholar at Oxford University where he read biochemistry before carrying out research for a PhD in neurochemistry at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. Following this he spent 15 years in academic positions in the Middle East, latterly (1981-86) as Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Upon his return to the UK he worked at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK) and since 1989 at The Babraham Institute where he was Chair of the Molecular Immunology Programme and Head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Signalling and Development, before leaving to work full-time with the Faraday Institute in July 2008. Dr Alexander has published numerous articles and reviews, particularly in the research field of lymphocyte signalling and development. He is also Editor of the journal Science & Christian Belief and contributes papers as part of the Cambridge Papers writing group. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Rebuilding the Matrix - Science and Faith in the 21st Century (Oxford: Lion Publishing, 2001) which provides a general overview of the science-religion debate. He has also co-authored (with Robert White FRS) 'Science, Faith and Ethics: Grid or Gridlock?' Hendrickson, 219pp (2006), and his most recent book is 'Creation or Evolution - Do we Have to Choose?' (2008, Oxford: Monarch, pb, 384pp).
Abstract:
-
The year 2009 represents a double anniversary for Charles Darwin: his birth in 1809, and the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859. The theory of evolution represents a classic example in the history and philosophy of science whereby a scientific theory can be socially transformed to support a wide range of non-biological ideologies that form no part of the core theory. In its time evolution has been used to support socialism, capitalism, eugenics, racism, theism, atheism and natural theology, despite the fact that the purpose of the theory is merely to provide the best current explanation that we have for the origins of biological diversity. In the late 20th century some influential biologists and philosophers revived the idea that Darwinian theory is incompatible with the idea of overall purpose in evolutionary history. Yet the most recent biological data do not support such an interpretation. Evolution is a highly constrained and organized process in which the outcomes may to some extent be predictable, if not inevitable. It may be argued that evolution itself not only has no particular ideological overtones, but also that our increased understanding of evolutionary mechanisms excludes the metascientific idea that it is necessarily purposeless. Of course, based on n = 1, we do not know whether human life is biologically inevitable, but the fact that the question can now be sensibly asked, with some hope of future resolution, is itself a significant development.
Please email Rodney Sebastian at: fasrodn{at}nus{dot}edu{dot}sg if you are interested in attending .
|
| |
|
