Seminars and Panels
Public Ethics, Politics and Sociobiology
Professor Myrna Perez Sheldon
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Mar 11 2016
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When E.O. Wilson published Sociobiology: A New Synthesis in 1974, the book set off an academic controversy that crystallized divergent visions of the nature of natural science, and its appropriate role in the American political context. This talk examines the altercations between Wilson and his colleague, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould through their publications and correspondence. Wilson held to a classically liberal vision of science as the necessary foundation for a democratic society. In his view, science ought to be defended from cultural criticism and interference. In contrast, Gould was deeply concerned about the history of scientific racism and sexism in the United States. Influenced by his participation in leftist activist movements, Gould believed that science could best participate in social justice if it opened itself up to the American public. These divergent views of science and public ethics translated into a bitter disagreement between these evolutionary scientists at the height of the sociobiology controversy.
About Professor Myrna Perez Sheldon
Myrna Perez Sheldon is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Rice University. She received her doctorate in the History of Science at Harvard University in 2014. She has held research fellowships at the Darwin Correspondence Project at Cambridge University, the Huntington Library and Harvard Divinity School. Her work concentrates on the relationships between American politics, evolutionary science, religious communities and concepts of race, gender and sexuality. Her first book uses the public career of Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould to examine the impact of American Creationism and the New Christian Right on evolutionary science and the politics of scientific expertise in the 1980s, and is under review at the University of Chicago Press. Ongoing research projects include the role of evolutionary frameworks in shaping contemporary evangelical understandings of gender and the religious politics of American environmentalism. Her second book project investigates the relationship between evolutionary science and Christian theology in American cultural understandings of race and sexuality.
Myrna will be joining the faculty at Ohio University in the Fall of 2016, as an Assistant Professor of Gender and American Religion, jointly appointed in the Department of Classics and World Religions and the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.
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- 2017 - 2018
- 2016 - 2017
- Behavioral Concepts and the Sciences of Human Behavior
H. Longino Apr 21, 2017 - Insane Asylums and Genetics: How Human Heredity Became a Data Science
T. Porter Feb 17, 2017 - The Nature of Pride: The Emotional Origins of Social Rank
J. Tracy Jan 23, 2017
- Behavioral Concepts and the Sciences of Human Behavior
- 2015 - 2016
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Public Ethics, Politics and Sociobiology
M. P. Sheldon Mar 11, 2016 -
Classifying People by Color: How Racial Categories Change Over Time
A. A. Martinez Feb 29, 2016 -
The Origin of Social Impulse: E.O. Wilson's Recent and Controversial Rejection of Kin Selection in Historical Context
A. Gibson Dec 4, 2015
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Public Ethics, Politics and Sociobiology
- 2014 - 2015
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Special Event: Lone Star History of Science Meeting Writing the Origin with Burned Fingers: Darwin's Penance for the "Sin of Speculation"A. Sponsel Apr 3, 2015 - Welfare, Work, and Witness: Why Clinical Research Can Survive the Death of a Healthy Human Subject
L. Stark Apr 3, 2015 - The Distinctive Significance of Systemic Risk
A. James Mar 6, 2015 - The Devil's Heritage: Masuo Kodani, the "Nisei Problem," and Social Stratification at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Japan (1946-1954)
V.B. Smocovitis Jan 28, 2015 - Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact
B. Uzzi Dec 8, 2014 - Psychology of Science and Technology
M. Gorman Nov 17, 2014 - How Economics Shapes Science
P. Stephan Sep 10, 2014
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J. H. Jones Apr 16, 2014 - Ethical Paradoxes of
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J. Wang Feb 17, 2014 - Using Creative Non-Fiction in Teaching Research Ethics
C.M. Klugman Dec 2, 2013 - Does Neuroscience Undermine Responsibility?
W. Sinnott-Armstrong Nov 15, 2013 - Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism
J. Hamblin Oct 18, 2013
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A. Hampapur Sep 21, 2012
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