BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Darwin and Human Society - Professor Paul Seabright\, University o
 f Toulouse
DTSTART:20090213T173000Z
DTEND:20090213T183000Z
UID:TALK13702@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Janet Gibson
DESCRIPTION:Abstract\n\nCharles Darwin's work had a profound influence on 
 the study of human society\, though in a much slower and more unreliable w
 ay than on non-human biology. His most important ideas about human society
  were not the ones that had the earliest and most visible impact. Rather t
 han retell the familiar story of how ideas about heredity and the centrali
 ty of the competitive struggle came to dominate social science in the late
  19th century\, to be equally vigorously and uncritically repudiated in th
 e 20th\, this lecture will focus on a different lesson from Darwin. Our co
 usinship to other primates\, and especially to great apes\, has yielded re
 al insights into the organization of human societies. We share many featur
 es with other primates\, and we differ from them also in important ways be
 sides the obvious ones. As well as summarizing what we can learn about hum
 an society from modern primate research\, I shall ask how much of this wou
 ld have surprised Darwin himself. The answer\, which draws more on Darwin'
 s later books The Descent of Man and The Expression of the Emotions in Man
  and Animals than on The Origin of Species\, is itself quite surprising. D
 arwin emerges as a man both astonishingly prescient and at times curiously
  in thrall to the preconceptions of his time.\n\nBiography\n\nPaul Seabrig
 ht is Professor of Economics at the University of Toulouse. He was previou
 sly a Fellow of All Souls College\, Oxford and Churchill College Cambridge
 . He is the author of The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Econo
 mic Life (Princeton University Press 2004)\, which was shortlisted for the
  2005 British Academy Book Prize.
LOCATION:LMH\, Lady Mitchell Hall
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR