COLL-E 104 Evolution, Religion and Society (Gliboff)(S & H)(3 cr.)

This Topics course will introduce students to the history and philosophy of science in general, and to the complex and changing relationships between religion and modern science in particular. The focus will be on the problem of explaining the origins, forms, adaptations, and distributions of living things, and the controversies surrounding Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. We will begin with the state of the problem in early nineteenth-century Britain, follow Darwin’s own intellectual journey from natural theology to natural selection, then analyze the reception of Darwin's ideas and the development of the evolution-creation debate in the United States, from the 1920s through the 1980s. The course will then conclude with an overview of the intelligent-design controversy and a look at current events and strategies for influencing legal- and public opinion and for asserting control of science curricula. At every stage of the story, we will examine the arguments for and against a variety of theories, and the historical contexts in which people have found these arguments to be convincing and important.