Lecture Synopses: Joseph Travis

Lecture One: Scientific Skepticism About Natural Selection

Although the Darwinian paradigm, evolution through natural selection, prevails throughout science, the power and prevalence of natural selection as “the” agent of evolution has been challenged in scientific circles since Darwin first proposed it. Unlike the religious or political challenges to the Darwinian paradigm that aver that evolution has not occurred, the scientific challenges address the limits of natural selection and carry profound implications for our understanding of evolution. We will look at three of the most important challenges, one that emerged in Darwin’s time and two that appeared since the 1960’s, discussing their roots in scientific observation and how the scientific arguments have been exploited outside of science to discredit the entire concept of evolution.
Photo: Snakes have sophisticated patterns of body musculature and blood circulation and a complicated action of the skull for catching and swallowing prey. Complex, integrated features like these, in which each component must be present for the entire system to work, have long posed an important challenge for Darwinian evolution and are central to the arguments for invoking an intelligent designer to explain the characteristics of the living world. For many of these systems, modern scientific research has been able to retrace their evolutionary pathways and identify the steps through which they were shaped by Darwinian evolution.

Lecture Two: An Intelligent Look At Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design has emerged as a popular challenge to the Darwinian paradigm, a challenge rooted in theology and not in science. We will discuss the basic tenet of Intelligent Design, its important theological foundation, and where its adherents misinterpret the Darwinian paradigm. More importantly, we will discuss the evolution of complex features, the issue that has been one of evolutionary science’s biggest puzzles ever since Darwin and that remains the key challenge raised by adherents of Intelligent Design.
Photo: Carnivorous plants like this sundew represent a dramatic change in lifestyle from the typical vascular plant. Darwin would have explained this change by describing a long series of small changes; his earliest scientific critics would have argued that selection, while obviously possible in limited circumstances, would be incapable of driving such a dramatic transformation and they would have based their arguments on good empirical knowledge. This controversy, and others like it, illustrate how Darwin’s basic ideas have been refined over the last 150 years to produce our current understanding of evolution and the power of natural selection to drive evolutionary pathways as seemingly unlikely as this one.

Lecture Three: Humans As Agents of Selection

Some of the best evidence for evolution through natural selection has arisen from the changes in microbes, plants, and animals in response to human activities. But beyond offering textbook examples for evolution classes, the evolutionary changes in the living world that have been instigated by human activity raise broad questions about our role in nature and the religious and ethical arguments about that role and the responsibilities that may come with it. We will look at the broad array of evolutionary changes produced by human activities, from those with immediate consequences for human health to those with profound implications for the health of ecosystems.
Photo: Salmon, striped bass, and sturgeon (top to bottom) are among the many species that are evolving dramatically in response to human activity. While antibiotic and insecticide resistance attract much attention as evolutionary responses to human activity, humans are acting as agents of selection on a host of microbes, plants, and animals and driving striking changes in the natural world.

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