The Philosophy and Biology Speaker Series on Science, Religion, and Human Values is pleased to sponsor a lecture by Professor Don Cronkite titled "'Words, like nature, half reveal': The Mythological Significance of the Huxley-Wilberforce 'Debate' of 1860," on Friday, April 7, at 3 p.m. in room B50 of the Peale Science Center.
The Philosophy and Biology Speaker Series on Science, Religion, and Human Values is pleased to sponsor a lecture by Professor Don Cronkite titled "'Words, like nature, half reveal': The Mythological Significance of the Huxley-Wilberforce 'Debate' of 1860," on Friday, April 7, at 3 p.m. in room B50 of the Peale Science Center.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
The "debate" between Thomas Henry Huxley and
Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in 1860 is a cultural icon.
People who know even a little about the struggle of
evolution to find a place in a creationist world often know
about the debate -- or think they do. The story has been
told and retold, and even dramatized for television by the
BBC.
As with other icons, this one tells us something
about the people who venerate it, and that is the
information we seek in this seminar. Why is the story told
the way it is? Its telling is often at variance with what
may have in fact happened. The principal characters in real
life were somewhat different from the ones created for his
story. There must be something behind all that.
But first, the story ...
Donald Cronkite is a professor of biology at Hope,
where he has been since 1978. His research interests are
cellular water regulation in ciliates, formation and
succession in bacterial biofilms, and the evolution-creation
controversy. He is also science editor of "Perspectives"
and the coordinator of pre-college outreach for the Division
of the Natural Sciences at Hope.
The seminar is part of a suite of "duets" in the
theme of evolution and creation which he began to assemble
while on sabbatical in the fall of 1999.
Refresments will be available.