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SUMMARY:Creatures of Cain: the hunt for human nature in Cold War America -
  Erika Milam (Princeton University)
DTSTART:20180510T143000Z
DTEND:20180510T160000Z
UID:TALK99250@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Agnes Bolinska
DESCRIPTION:After the Second World War\, the question of how to define a u
 niversal human nature took on new urgency. This talk charts the rise and p
 recipitous fall of a theory that attributed man's evolutionary success to 
 his unique capacity for murder amid the tense social climate of Cold War A
 merica. The scientists who advanced this 'killer ape' vision of humanity c
 apitalized on an expanding postwar market in intellectual paperbacks and w
 idespread faith in the power of science to solve humanity's problems\, eve
 n answer fundamental questions of human identity. The killer ape theory sp
 read quickly from colloquial science publications to late-night television
 \, classrooms\, political debates\, and Hollywood films. Behind the scenes
 \, however\, scientists were sharply divided. Then\, in the 1970s\, the th
 eory unravelled altogether when primatologists discovered that chimpanzees
  also kill members of their own species. This discovery brought an end to 
 definitions of human exceptionalism marked by violence. Some evolutionists
  reacted by arguing for a shared chimpanzee-human history of aggression ev
 en as other scientists discredited all such theories as sloppy popularizat
 ions. The legacy of the killer ape persists today in Americans' conviction
  that fundamental questions of human nature are resolvable through science
 .
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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