Evolution: Education and Outreach

Glenn Geher writes, from the EvoS program:

Graduate Assistantship in Psychology Offered for Student with Interests in Evolutionary Studies at New Paltz

The Psychology Department at SUNY New Paltz is pleased advertise a new graduate assistantship for an incoming student for our MA program in Psychology.
http://www.newpaltz.edu/psychology/graduate/psych.html

In addition to earning an MA in psychology and conducting an empirical thesis, students in this graduate program have multiple opportunities to be part of our campus’ interdisciplinary program in Evolutionary Studies (EvoS): http://www.newpaltz.edu/EvoS

The newly created assistantship will be for a psychology graduate student with interests in EvoS. This student’s main responsibilities will be to oversee and update the website of the international EvoS consortium (www.evostudies.org).

This position requires 20 hours / week during the

…

Most who read any biographical account of Charles Darwin’s life probably know that he was in poor health for most of his life, frequently complaining of an upset stomach. While researching other topics, I came across blog entries, dated 13 Feb 2009 and 19 November 2009, about Darwin’s illness. The author of these posts is none other than Dr. Barry Marshall, who shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 2005 with Dr. J. Robin Warren for his work on peptic ulcers. Marshall and Warren discovered that peptic ulcers are caused by Helicobacter pylori. This was at odds with the received view that no bacteria could exist in the stomach. In the blog …

The EE&O editors are putting together a complete bibliography of the written works of Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education. The Center has been at the forefront of activities to keep science curricula free of non-scientific subject matter, such as creationism and intelligent design, for many years. In doing so, the Center and Scott herself have authored many important books and articles explaining how evolution works and why it’s eminently reasonable to believe that is has occurred and continues to do so. The NCSE also publishes a comprehensive and detailed set of online resources about many issues pertaining to the evolution-creation controversy, available directly from the

…

Technorati Tags: bibliography, Eugenie Scott, NCSE

Check out the Ultimate Holding Company’s Extinked project:

In the year in which the world celebrates Charles Darwin’s bicentennial birthday, Ultimate Holding Company embarks on a once in a lifetime social experiment.

With the expert assistance of several prominent conservation charities and the artistry of tattooists from Ink Vs Steel, Ultimate Holding Company have created ExtInked.

A new exhibition of drawings, individually illustrating one hundred of the most endangered species in the British Isles opened on 12th November and reached its conclusion with the live tattooing of the drawings on one hundred willing volunteers, closing on 29th November 2009.

The result of this unique exhibition is an army of ambassadors for threatened and rare birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, plants and fungi.

Body …

The nexus of meanings by which human ancestors portrayed as monkeys are identified with people with dark skin in images of evolution is disturbing enough when considered as a part of the past. What is even more troubling is that, as discussed in a previous post to this blog, this image continues to be used in representations of evolution by people who would like to support evolution education, some of whom are professional evolutionists. In addition to being racist, many images using the monkey image incorrectly represent evolution. They imply that evolution is progressive, having improved primates from from “lower” monkeys to “higher” bipedal forms, i.e., human beings. Natural selection does not cause one species to improve relative to …

At the Yeshiva University Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, on 15 September 2009, Columbia University Professor of Philosophy Philip Kitcher presented a lecture entitled “The Importance of Darwin for Philosophy,” which focused on religion and ethics. The central points made by Kitcher include the following.

1. Darwin’s significance for philosophy is that Darwin provides a historical method for looking into questions traditionally pursued by philosophers.
2. Methods employed by Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology are not likely result in discoveries about morality, and not likely to serve as sources of evidence for theories about it.
3. Religion is socially useful and important, but it is not a good source of truth. The central problem that faces human

…

by Wycoff, Mick

DOI: 10.1007/s12052-009-0189-1
Online Date: 11/21/2009
View article on SpringerLink

by Eldredge, Niles; Eldredge, Gregory

We propose a human-centered evolutionary curriculum based around the three questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? How do I fit in? We base our curriculum on our experiences as an evolutionary biologist/paleontologist (NE) and as a secondary level special education science teacher (GE)—and not least from our joint experience as co-editors-in-chief of this journal. Our proposed curriculum starts and ends with human biology and evolution, linking these themes with topics as diverse as the “tree of life” (systematics), anthropology, Charles Darwin, cultural evolution, ecology, developmental biology, molecular evolution/genetics, paleontology, and plate tectonics. The curriculum is “universal” as it is designed to be taught at all levels, K–16. The curriculum is …

by Eldredge, Douglas Reed

DOI: 10.1007/s12052-009-0186-4
Online Date: 11/10/2009
View article on SpringerLink