Edited by Grant Ramsey (NHC Fellow, 2015–16) and Charles H. Pence Humans, however much we would care to think otherwise, do not represent the fated pinnacle of ape evolution. The diversity of life, from single-celled organisms to multicellular animals and plants, is the result of a long, complex, and highly chancy history. But how profoundly … Continued
By Michael Lienesch (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) The current controversy over teaching evolution in the public schools has grabbed front-page headlines and topped news broadcasts all across the United States. In the Beginning investigates the movement that has ignited debate in state legislatures and at school board meetings. Reaching back to the origins of antievolutionism in the 1920s, … Continued
By Alexander Rosenberg (NHC Fellow, 2006–07) Is life a purely physical process? What is human nature? Which of our traits is essential to us? In this volume, Daniel McShea and Alex Rosenberg – a biologist and a philosopher, respectively – join forces to create a new gateway to the philosophy of biology; making the major … Continued
By William C. Wimsatt (NHC Fellow, 2000–01) Analytic philosophers once pantomimed physics: they tried to understand the world by breaking it down into the smallest possible bits. Thinkers from the Darwinian sciences now pose alternatives to this simplistic reductionism. In this intellectual tour—essays spanning thirty years—William C. Wimsatt argues that scientists seek to atomize phenomena only … Continued
By Nicolaas A. Rupke (NHC Fellow, 1988–89) Richard Owen (1804-92) was, after Darwin, the leading naturalist of nineteenth-century Britain. A distinguished anatomist and paleontologist, he was influential in Victorian scientific reform and in the debate over natural selection. Leader of the nineteenth-century museum movement, he founded London's monumental Natural History Museum, wrote and published copiously, … Continued
Historians who know nothing else about American religion often know one thing for sure: in July of 1925 fundamentalists got their noses rubbed in the dirt at the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee. That building, of course, housed the famous Monkey Trial, the place where rural traditionalism met and finally bowed to the forces … Continued
In July of 1925, the Tennessee jury in the Scopes “monkey” trial delivered its verdict, finding high school science teacher John T. Scopes guilty of teaching evolution. In a larger sense, however, the jury is still out. While we await the latest verdict, we can explore some questions that place the famous trial in the … Continued