DARWIN'S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION!!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Learn more about Charles Darwin and Evolution:
- "NEXT: Science That Transforms" Lecture Series - UA College of Science
- About Darwin: Dedicated to the life and times of Charles Darwin
- The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online
- Understanding Evolution
- Evolution Resources from the National Academy of Sciences
- Understanding Evolution, for Teachers
- The Tree of Life web project
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 - 7PM, Centennial Hall
Next: Darwin's Strange Inversion of Reasoning
Daniel Dennett, Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University
Until Charles Darwin's Origin of Species it was assumed that life forms were built to a pre-existing plan. When Darwin showed that small inherited modifications – shaped by survival – sufficed to shape life on Earth, he was greeted by criticism for his "strange inversion of reasoning". A century later, Alan Turing added his own strange inversion: "in order to be a perfect and beautiful computer, it is not requisite to know what arithmetic is." Today, we can for the first time observe and understand Darwin's reasoning – as the trillions of tiny robotic agencies called cells, that know nothing of the role they are playing, work together to compose the human minds that are able to discover this very fact. (CLICK HERE for more Dr. Dennett Info)