Darwin’s Descendants and the Evolution of an Idea

Darwin’s Descendants and the Evolution of an Idea

Date

3-29-2014

Author Bio(s)

Glenn J. Scheyd, Ph.D., associate professor and assistant director of the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences’ Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences, is an evolutionary psychologist. He therefore concerns himself with identifying the ways in which people’s behaviors today can be better understood as responses that would have been genetically beneficial to our ancestors over tens of thousands of generations, rather than as rational solutions to modern problems. He earned his doctorate from the University of New Mexico. His research interests include attractiveness perception; mate selection; and, most recently, parent-offspring conflict. Scheyd has a three-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter.

Talk Description

Life existed on our planet for billions of years before anyone tried to make sense of it. The discovery of the principles of natural selection represents the most game-changing shift humans have made in our ability to understand ourselves. Only in combination with an understanding of genetic inheritance, however, was the more sophisticated work of Darwinian science possible. It is tempting for us, as it must have been for Darwin’s contemporaries, to think we finally have things figured out. The history of science should teach us otherwise.

Streaming Media

Darwin’s Descendants and the Evolution of an Idea

Share

COinS