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SUMMARY:Global Darwin - Professor Jim Secord\, University of Cambridge
DTSTART:20090130T173000Z
DTEND:20090130T183000Z
UID:TALK13700@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Janet Gibson
DESCRIPTION:Abstract\n\nDarwin\, with his grizzled beard and deep sad eyes
 \, appears today as a ubiquitous icon\, his image appearing on posters\, b
 ook jackets\, banknotes\, and postage stamps from around the world.  The d
 ebates about his ideas are international\, and have been almost from the f
 irst publication of his main evolutionary books.  How did this come to be 
 the case?  To answer this we can begin by stepping back from the immediate
  impact of the Origin of Species and Descent of Man\, to view these books 
 in the context of long-standing controversies about evolution and material
 ism from the eighteenth century onwards. \n\nDarwin's work is important in
  this broader story for three reasons.  First\, with the reception of Darw
 in's books the topic of evolution\, which had long sparked conversation in
  the literary salons of the Atlantic world\, became much more closely tied
  with newly emerging forms of scientific research in laboratories\, univer
 sities and museums.  Second\, Darwin's own vision of nature\, like that of
  his great predecessors Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Lyell\, was glo
 bal from the start.  During the Beagle voyage and later through a vast cor
 respondence network\, Darwin attempted to encompass the entire natural wor
 ld (including humans) in his works.  His approach resulted in unusually op
 en texts\, with ambiguities and opportunities for interpretation that made
  them natural fault-lines for public discussion across a diverse cultural 
 range.  And finally\, Darwin's life coincided with an unprecedented expans
 ion in international communication.  Particularly significant were the new
 \, rapid-publication intellectual weeklies and monthlies in urban centres 
 from Buenos Aires to Cairo and from Melbourne to Beijing.    Evolutionary 
 controversy\, so familiar on the Internet and television today\, emerged i
 n these new media of the first great age of global communication.  In  the
 se forums\, debates about "Darwinism"\, as it soon was called\, became cen
 tral to grappling at a local level with economic modernisation\, scientifi
 c racism\, and economic imperialism.   What was the relation between scien
 ce and traditional religion?  Was it possible to harvest the economic frui
 ts of modern knowledge\, without adopting its conclusions about the origin
 s of the human mind and a hierarchy of human races?\n\nBiography\n\nJim Se
 cord is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University o
 f Cambridge\, and Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project.  His rese
 arch is on the history of science from the late eighteenth to the early tw
 entieth centuries. He has published several books\, including Controversy 
 in Victorian Geology (Princeton\, 1986) and editions of the works of Mary 
 Somerville\, Charles Lyell\, and Robert Chambers. Victorian Sensation: The
  Extraordinary Publication\, Reception\, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges
  of the Natural History of Creation (Chicago\, 2000)\, an account of the p
 ublic debates about evolution in the mid-nineteenth century\, won the Pfiz
 er Prize of the History of Science Society.  He has recently published on 
 scientific conversation\, scrapbook-keeping\, and public scientific displa
 ys.  His most recent publication is a selection of Darwin's evolutionary w
 ritings from Oxford University Press\, which includes the autobiographical
  Recollections and responses to Darwin's books from around the world.. He 
 is currently completing Nature as News\, a study of the relation between s
 cientific practice and the newspaper press in London\, Paris\, and New Yor
 k. \n\n
LOCATION:LMH\, Lady Mitchell Hall
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