The Darwin 2009 Festival - Day 3

Darwin and the evolution of 'why'?Professor Daniel C Dennett (Centre for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, USA). Summary: We human beings are the only living things that can represent, transmit and criticize reasons for doing things and making things. This creates a perspective for us that we can then use to interpret all the rest of the life on the planet, cautiously. Mother nature's reasons are not just like our reasons. It is our evolved capacity to ask, and answer, 'Why' questions that gives us, in the end, the kinds of free will worth wanting, the kinds that no other animal has.

Summary: On no area of human concern has Darwin's impact been as keenly felt as on matters of religion. Here I shall not dwell on popular constructions of conflict between 'creation' and 'evolution', which are often simplistic, but rather consider reasons why religious affiliation and practice continue to survive, despite the intellectual challenge of Darwinism. I shall suggest that through affirmative, creative responses to Darwin's ideas, as well as resistance to them, religious thinkers have sustained their positions. Two thinkers, deeply affected by Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley and William James, provide additional insights into the survival of a religious sensibility. Despite his denunciation of dogmatic theology, Huxley regarded the notional antagonism between science and religion as a contrivance on the part of short-sighted religious people and equally myopic scientists. More dramatically, James contended that in a Darwinian universe it is the religious who are best fitted to survive: 'every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith'. Do our attempts to give a naturalistic evolutionary account of the origins of religion result in making religion so 'natural' that it inexorably survives?

Darwin's displacement of intelligent design. Professor Robert J Richards (University of Chicago, Illinois, USA). Summary: Darwin constructed his theory utilizing some traditional resources, for the example final causes, purpose. Natural selection took on the properties of the recently departed deity, and thus acted intelligently and with moral concern. The end of the evolutionary process, as Darwin initially conceived it, was man with his moral sentiments. Darwin was not a neo-Darwinian.

Evolutionary Psychology and the Legacy of Sociobiology. Professor Philip Kitcher. (Columbia University, New York City, USA). Summary: The human sociobiology of the 1970s and 1980s was, I have argued, characterised by overly speculative hypotheses about human nature and the evolution of human tendencies to behaviour. Evolutionary psychology is often alleged to represent a significantly different, and significantly improved, application of evolutionary thinking to the human mind. In this talk I argue that the differences between the two programmes are largely cosmetic, and that evolutionary psychology remains as problematic as its predecessor.

Evolution and society. Professor Steve Jones (University College, London, UK). Summary: I will consider the way in which evolution can, and cannot, illuminate patterns of human society, and will suggest that its ability to do so is often overstated as the unique nature of many of our attributes makes it difficult to place them into biological context.

Voice of Darwin (in morning sessions) Terry Molloy is an actor, director, producer, trainer and corporate presenter. He is the voice of 'Mike Tucker' (the milkman from hell) in The Archers (BBC Radio 4), and has appeared on TV in Dr Who as the Doctor's nemesis 'Davros', creator of the Daleks, from 1983 to 1989, continuing through to today on audio CDs. He is currently appearing as 'Charles Darwin' in 'Re: Design' by Craig Baxter.