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Darwinian Controversies: An Historiographical Recounting, David Depew
Darwinian Controversies: An Historiographical Recounting, David Depew
David J Depew
This essay reviews key controversies in the history of the Darwinian research tradition: the Wilberforce-Huxley debate in 1860, early twentieth-century debates about the heritability of acquired characteristics and the consistency of Mendelian genetics with natural selection; the 1925 Scopes trial about teaching evolution; tensions about race, culture, and eugenics at the 1959 centenary celebration Darwin’s Origin of Species; adaptationism and its critics in the Sociobiology debate of 1970s and, more recently, Evolutionary Psychology; and current disputes about Intelligent Design. These controversies, I argue, are etched into public memory because they occur at the emotionally charged boundaries between public-political, technical-scientific, and …
The Rhetoric Of The Origin Of Species, David Depew
The Rhetoric Of The Origin Of Species, David Depew
David J Depew
In 1828, the Oxford don Richard Whately, having in his Elements of Logic (1826) defined argument as the connection between a claim and its support, proposed in its newly published counterpart, Elements of Rhetoric, to “treat argumentative composition as a species of rhetoric. . . . The office of the logician is to infer, but the office of the rhetorician is to advocate by adducing proofs. . . . Thus even the philosopher who undertakes by writing or speaking to convey his notion to others assumes for the time being the character of advocate of the doctrines he maintains.” (Whately …
Inheriting Inherit The Wind: Debating The Play As A Teaching Tool, Edward Larson, David Depew, Ronald Isetti
Inheriting Inherit The Wind: Debating The Play As A Teaching Tool, Edward Larson, David Depew, Ronald Isetti
David J Depew
No abstract provided.
Darwinism, Design And Complex Systems Dynamics, David Depew, Bruce Weber
Darwinism, Design And Complex Systems Dynamics, David Depew, Bruce Weber
David J Depew
No abstract provided.
Genetically Altered Crops, Ecological Irreversibility And The Precautionary Principle, David Depew
Genetically Altered Crops, Ecological Irreversibility And The Precautionary Principle, David Depew
David J Depew
No abstract provided.
The Baldwin Effect: An Archeology, David Depew
The Baldwin Effect: An Archeology, David Depew
David J Depew
Abstract: “The Baldwin effect” stands for a wide variety of ways in which learn ing can be conceived as guiding adap tive evolution ary change. An analysis of the history of this notion reveals that it does not reliably refer either to a theory-neutral empirical phenomenon or to a single theoretical hypothesis. On the contrary, articulations of the general idea depend on distinctive, but in commensurable, theoretical backgrounds. In reconstructing the conceptual history of the Baldwin effect I hope to support contemporary explorations of idea by encouraging the articulation of new theoretical frameworks in which it might make sense. I …