Darwinian Myths: Re-Reading the "Origin of Species"

Time: 4:00 - 5:00 p.m.

Place: Stiteler Hall B26, University of Pennsylvania

Information: goldfinh@mail.med.upenn.edu

One hundred and fifty years after it was written, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species continues to sell, to be discussed, attacked and defended. Among the many myths that surrounds Darwin's book is the idea that it caused a war between science and the church. Jim Endersby will demolish this and some of the other myths that surround the Origin, by looking at exactly what Darwin did and didn't say and examining how his contemporaries reacted to the book.

Jim Endersby, Senior Lecturer, Department of History, University of Sussex, is the prize-winning author of Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the practices of Victorian Science, A Guinea Pig’s History of Biology, and editor of a new scholarly edition of On the Origin of Species, published by Cambridge University Press.