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SUMMARY:Interpreting Evolution: Darwin\, Nietzsche\, &amp\; Teilhard de Ch
 ardin - Prof James Birx
DTSTART:20161122T130000Z
DTEND:20161122T140000Z
UID:TALK68416@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Julius Weitzdörfer
DESCRIPTION:No interpretation of evolution is free from ideas\, beliefs\, 
 and values. Orientations range from Charles Darwin's materialism\, throu
 gh Friedrich Nietzsche's vitalism\, to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's spir
 itualism. In each case\, a crucial event contributed to his interpreting
  organic history\, e.g.\, reading a specific book or having a unique ex
 perience that significantly altered the thinker's previous worldview. This
  inquiry will analyze such pivotal moments and their far-reaching conseque
 nces for the interpreter's conception of life on earth and our own speci
 es. During his voyage on the HMS Beagle\, the English scientist Darwin
  had been especially influenced by the vast temporal perspective offered b
 y reading the geological writings of Sir Charles Lyell. The German phil
 osopher Nietzsche was greatly inspired by his fortuitous encounter wit
 h an impressive pyramidal rock that suggested to him the eternal recurrenc
 e of the same. And the French Jesuit mystic Teilhard embraced an evoluti
 onary framework only after having read Henri Bergson's Creative Evolut
 ion (1907)\, not the books of Darwin. This lecture will argue that any i
 nterpretation of the scientific fact of organic evolution involves a con
 vergence of ideas\, beliefs\, and values beyond the empirical evidence.
LOCATION:The Richard King Room\, Darwin College
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