Download 2015-16

Department of
Science and Technology Studies
HPSC2013
Evolution in Science and Culture
Syllabus
Session
2015-16
Web site
www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/2013
Moodle site
moodle.ucl.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=4923
Timetable
<www.ucl.ac.uk/timetable> or <tinyurl.com/hpsc2013>
Description
A historical survey of evolutionary thinking from the Enlightenment to the present. Content
includes the history of scientific ideas and the context for those ideas. It also considers the
influence of evolutionary ideas, especially Darwinism, on society and vice versa.
Key Information
Assessment
50%
essay (2,500 words)
50%
exam
Prerequisites
none
Required texts
readings listed below
HPSC2013 Evolution in Science and Culture
2015-16 syllabus
Module tutor
Module tutor
Professor Joe Cain
Contact
[email protected] | t: 020 7679 3041
Web
www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/cain
Office location
22 Gordon Square, Room 1.1
Office hours:
Tuesdays 16:15-17:15
Wednesdays 10:00-11:00
Ms Connie Ekpenyong <[email protected]> manages
Professor Cain's appointments diary. To book an appointment, which
you are welcome to do, outside his office hours please contact her. Her
desk is located in Room G2.
Aims and objectives
aims
As an intermediate module, HPSC2013 pursues several kinds of goals. To develop knowledge of
content in the history and context of evolutionary studies, this module surveys major themes, actors,
and conceptual shifts – in short, what are the big ideas associated with evolution and Darwinism? It
seeks to integrate broad historical themes and contexts into this survey.
Primary sources are the foundation of required readings for this module so students may develop
skills working with original source materials: their reading, weighting, and critical assessment. To
further develop skills in textual analysis and critical assessment, attention will be paid to close
reading of secondary materials from different types of sources. This module also asks critical
questions about historiography.
The teaching method for this module during contact hours will be lectures and in-class discussions.
A schedule of independent reading and research also is set. Module assessment is integrated into
this programme.
objectives
By the end of this module students should be able to:
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demonstrate content knowledge for the module's domain and historiographical insight into
relevant scholarly literature
demonstrate the ability to critically interpret both primary and secondary sources
demonstrate skill in historical reasoning and comparative analysis
approach new material in this module's domain from a historical perspective and with a critical
historian's eye
demonstrate an appreciation for principles of historical contingency, myth making, and icon
construction
Module plan
Student responsibilities in this module will revolve around three components: lectures, a project, and
an examination.
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2015-16 syllabus
lecture
A lecture schedule is set. Lectures are related to specific required reading. Lectures critically
survey key content and historiography relevant to each themes. This also includes discussions of
set readings. Students are encouraged to come to lecture having read and reflected on readings
set for the lecture. Specific discussions will be announced in advance. Additional readings and
Web sites are suggested for continued investigation of module topics.
essay
One essay is set for HPSC2013, not to exceed 2,500 words. This essay contributes 50% of the
final module mark. See separate guidance for expectations.
examination
A 3-hour closed-book examination will take place during Term 3 and contributes 50% of the final
module mark.
This examination will place considerable emphasis on the required readings for the module and
on themes developed in lecture. Students should remind themselves of module expectations as
they revise. All required readings and lecture materials are fair game for examination.
The examination's format and domain will be discussed in lecture and in an optional revision
session prior to the examination. At the end of Term 2, I will publish a “mock examination”
for this module. Past exam scripts are available, too. Because this module has been
renumbered, search for exams under the module code “HPSC3027”.
Students not attending UCL during Term 3 will have alternative assessment in lieu of
examination as follows: a second research paper will be assigned, due by the 10 January
2016. Each essay will then contribute half of the final module mark. Students eligible for this
option must discuss their particulars with me prior to Reading Week, Term 1.
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Schedule
UCL Wk
Date
optional
06/10
Film Night:
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
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09/10
Darwin: Getting started
BBC (2009)
Darwin’s Ideas
Darwin (1859: 60-130)
Jones (1999: 1-22)
Deep Time
Desmond (1979)
Transcendental Anatomy
Rehbock (1990)
Man’s Place in Nature: Body
Ellegard (1958: 293-331)
Man’s Place in Nature: Mind
BBC (2013)
Ekman and Friesen (2003: 133)
Anthropology
Nott and Gliddon (1854: 180210);
Gould (1978)
Degeneration and Declinism
Galton (1869: 336-362)
Military Selection
Kellogg (1913)
Darwin’s entourage
Moore (1982)
Reading Week
Grant Lecture (18:30)
Fossils, Climate Change…
no lectures this week
Laws of Nature or Society
Moore (1985)
Carnegie (1889a, 1889b)
Cooperation
Todes (1987)
Scopes Monkey Trial
Bryan (1925)
Cain (2001)
Lysenko
Lysenko (1949)
AtomicScientists (1949)
Fit and Reasonable-ness
Dawkins (1976: 1-11, 88-108.)
Roughgarden (2009: 1-22)
New Catastrophism
Gould (1989: 23-52; 1997)
Jablonski (1986)
New Biology of Race
UNESCO (1950a; 1950b);
Anderson (2012)
Sapiens
Diamond (2005: 79-119)
Harari (2014)
Nicholls (2015: chapter 9)
Origin of Life
Miller and Urey (1959)
Lane (2013)
Strick (2004)
De-Extinction and Resurrection
biology
Pellegrino (1985)
Monbiot (2013)
Fletcher (2010)
Essay Due
upload to Moodle before 24:00
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8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
16/10
23/10
30/10
06/11
09/11
12/11
20/11
27/11
04/12
11/12
18/12
16/12
Topic
Required readings
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2015-16 syllabus
Reading list
This is a complete list of essential readings. All these readings and module lectures are fair game
for examination. Substitutions may be made during term. All readings are linked on Moodle. Some
volumes also are available in the DMS Watson short loan collection.
Anderson, Warwick. 2012. “Hybridity, Race, and Science: The Voyage of the Zaca, 1934–1935.” Isis
103:229-253.
AtomicScientists. 1949. “Scientific Truth and Freedom in Our Time: The Russian Purge of Genetics
[articles by Sewall Wright, L.C. Dunn, Karl Sax, Theodosius Dobzhansky, M.B. Crane, and Richard
Goldschmidt].” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 5 (May):130-156.
BBC. 2009. “In Our Time: Darwin (4 episodes).”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_darwin.shtml.
BBC. 2013. “NightWaves: ZSL London episode 3 (BBC Radio3, 10 October 2013).”. BBC.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio3/r3arts/r3arts_20131011-1029a.mp3.
Bryan, William Jennings. 1925. “[Speech Delivered at Scopes Trial].” In The World's Most Famous Court
Trial: Tennessee Evolution Case, edited by ScopesTrial, 170-182. Dayton, TN: Rhea County
Historical Society.
Cain, Joe. 2001. “Scopes Trial and Fundamentalism in the United States.” Nature Publishing Group.
www.els.net.
Carnegie, Andrew. 1889a. “Wealth.” North American Review and Miscellaneous Journal 148:653-664.
Carnegie, Andrew. 1889b. “The Best Fields for Philanthropy.” North American Review and Miscellaneous
Journal 149 (397):682-698.
Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of
Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray.
Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Desmond, Adrian. 1979. “Designing the Dinosaur: Richard Owen's Response to Robert Edmond Grant.”
Isis 70 (2):224-234.
Diamond, Jared. 2005. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. New York: Penguin.
Ekman, Paul, and Wallace Friesen. 2003. Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions from
Facial Clues. Cambridge, MA: Malor Books.
Ellegard, Alvar. [1958] 1990. Darwin and the General Reader: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of
Evolution in the British Periodical Press, 1859-1872. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Fletcher, Amy. 2010. “Genuine fakes: Cloning extinct species as science and spectacle.” Politics and the
Life Sciences 29 (1):48-60.
Galton, Francis. 1869. Hereditary Genius. London.
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1978. “Morton's Ranking of Races by Cranial Capacity.” Science 200 (4341):503509. doi: DOI: 10.2307/1746562.
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1989. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. New York: W.
W. Norton.
Gould, Stephen Jay 1997. “Darwinian Fundamentalism.” New York Review of Books 12 June 1997:3437.
Harari, Yuval Noah. 2014. “Bananas in heaven [TedEx talk based on Sapiens: A Brief History of
Humankind].” Harvill Secker. http://youtu.be/YZa4sdIwV04.
Jablonski, David. 1986. “Background and Mass Extinctions: The Alternation of Macroevolutionary
Regimes.” Science 231 (4734):129-133. doi: 10.1126/science.231.4734.129.
Jones, Steve. 1999. Almost like a whale: the Origin of Species updated. London: Doubleday.
Kellogg, Vernon. 1913. “Eugenics and Militarism.” Atlantic Mon 112:99-108.
Lane, Nick. 2013. “Bioenergetic constraints on the evolution of complex life.” In 2013, edited by P. J.
Keeling and E. V. Koonin. New York: Cold Spring Harbor.
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2015-16 syllabus
Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich. 1949. “On the Situation in Biological Science.” In The Situation in Biological
Science: Proceedings of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the U.S.S.R, Session July
31 - August 7, 1948 Verbatim Report, edited by LeninAcademyofAgriculturalScience, 11-50.
Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.
Miller, Stanley L., and Harold C. Urey. 1959. “Organic Compound Synthesis on the Primitive Earth.”
Science 130 (3370):245-251. doi: 10.1126/science.130.3370.245.
Monbiot, George. 2013. “A Manifesto for Rewilding the World.” Accessed 30 September.
http://www.monbiot.com/2013/05/27/a-manifesto-for-rewilding-the-world/.
Moore, James. 1982. “Charles Darwin Lies in Westminster Abbey.” Biological Journal of the Linnean
Society 17 (1):97-113. doi: 10.1111/j.1095-8312.1982.tb02016.x.
Moore, James. 1985. “Herbert Spencer's Henchmen: The Evolution of Protestant Liberals in Late
Nineteenth-Century America.” In Darwinism and Divinity: Essays on Evolution and Religious Belief,
edited by John Durant, 76-100. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Nicholls, Henry. 2015. The Galapagos: A Natural History. London: Profile Books.
Nott, Josiah Clark, and George Robins Gliddon. 1854. Types of Mankind: or, Ethnological Researches,
Based Upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and Upon Their
Natural, Geographical, Philological, and Biblical History: Illustrated by Selections from the Inedited
Papers of Samuel George Morton, MD... Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo and Co.
Pellegrino, Charles. 1985. “Dinosaur Capsule.” Omni 7 (4):38-40, 114-115.
Rehbock, Philip F. 1990. “Transcendental Anatomy.” In Romanticism and the Sciences, edited by Andrew
Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine, 144-160. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Roughgarden, Joan. 2009. The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Strick, James. 2004. “Creating a Cosmic Discipline: The Crystallization and Consolidation of Exobiology,
1957–1973.” Journal of the History of Biology 37:131-180.
Sullivan, Charles, and Cameron Mcpherson Smith. 2005. “Getting the Monkey off Darwin’s Back: Four
Common Myths About Evolution.” Skeptical Inquirer 29
(3):http://www.csicop.org/si/show/getting_the_monkey_off_darwins_back/.
Todes, Daniel. 1987. “Darwin's Malthusian Metaphor and Russian Evolutionary Thought, 1859-1917.”
Isis 78 (4):537-551.
UNESCO. 1950a. “The Race Question.” In UNESCO and its Programmes, volume 3, edited by UNESCO,
1-11. Paris: UNESCO.
UNESCO. 1950b. “Statement by Experts on Race Problems.” unpublished document dated 20 July
1950, UNESCO/SS/1 Paris.
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Assessment
summary
Description
Word limit
CW
Coursework
2,500 words
EX
Exam
3 hours
coursework
For the coursework, you have several options. Select one. Essays must be submitted via Moodle. In
extremis, e-mail your essay to Prof Cain <[email protected]> by the deadline.
Option 1: Darwin’s own writing
Darwin wrote many books. How do they fit together? Do they assemble as pieces in a coherent
research programme?
In this essay, you must read Darwin in the original. You certainly do not need to read all his work,
but you should provide evidence of having read those associated with the research programme you
are discussing. You may include his books, short papers, and correspondence. All his works are
available online
<http://darwin-online.org.uk>.
Option 2: Darwin’s many bulldogs
Darwin had defenders. They played an essential role in building his reputation and defining
“Darwinism” for later generations. Write an essay in which you analyze the work of one of these
defenders in terms of what they did for Darwin and Darwinism. Do not write a biography of the
person; instead, analyze their work as an advocacy project. What are they defending? How do they
deploy Darwin in this defense?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Dawkins, Richard
Gould, Stephen Jay
Hooker, Joseph
Huxley, Julian
Jones, Steve
Lubbock, John
Morgan, Elaine
Pitt-Rivers, Augustus
Ruse, Michael
Tyndale, John
Option 3: specific titles
1.
2.
3.
4.
Peter Bowler has written extensively on the Darwinian revolution. Assess his views.
Investigate how WRF Weldon provided the first convincing evidence of natural selection.
Wallace and Darwin were not rivals, intellectually or socially. Or, were they?
The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) promoted evolution long before
Darwin’s Origin of Species.
5. Reviews of Darwin’s main works (The Origin and Descent of Man) were devastating in the
first decade after their publication.
6. Lynn Margulis re-wrote the way we understand the history of life. Investigate her ideas and
impact.
7. Nick Lane is working to set new priorities in the study of origins of life. Summarize his position
and place it in historical context, including its reception.
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8. Jared Diamond has written extensively on humans from the position of an evolutionary
(cultural) anthropologist. Summarize his main ideas and summarize their reception.
supporting information
I encourage you to discuss your essay with me well in advance of the due date. Best to e-mail and
make an appointment. Your research should begin with readings for this module, but must include
more sources than this. Include primary sources. Citations should follow my guidance, both for
printed and Web sources. Links to both are on the module Web site.
The type of assessment sheet I use while marking essays is available via the module Web site, for
guidance purposes. Marks generally follow the departmental criteria for assessment. In sum, essays
will be assessed on the following terms:
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the depth of scholarship and use of resources beyond those in lecture and required
reading
the ability to identify both major and subtle points of the subject
the extent of your critical assessment
the evidence you provide for having reflected on and extended module content and
themes
the general scholarly presentation of the work performed
My most common criticisms on student essays relate to:
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too much description/summary of readings and not enough analysis
not developing your own argument
no evidence of independent research
terrible organisation and poor referencing techniques
use of only one source or poor choice of sources (such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica
or Wikipedia)
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