The Great Controversy

McGill public lecture series begins with "The Great Controversy"

P CLASS="subhead">October 6 is first in "Ape or Angel" three-part Millennium series

The Montreal public will have a chance next week to learn firsthand about recent attempts to ban the teaching of evolution in North American schools, when Dr Eugenie Scott speaks at McGill (October 6, Stephen Leacock Building, Fieldhouse Auditorium). "The Great Controversy" is the title of her talk, the first in a three-part Millennium lecture series, Ape or Angel, on successive Wednesdays in October, with support from three distinguished University lectureships and the Redpath Museum. The lectures start at 8:00 pm. No tickets required.

As Redpath Museum director Graham Bell has said, "although the fact of evolution was established over a century ago, it is still scarcely taught anywhere except at university. We need to understand why time is so much more difficult to grasp than space and to link evolutionary theory with our approach to teaching science more generally. Eugenie Scott will set us on the road to understanding these issues in the context of current public debate."

Biographical sketch of Eugenie C. Scott, Ph.D.

Eugenie C. Scott has been since 1987 the Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, a pro-evolution nonprofit science education organization with members in every American state. A human biologist, she has focused her research on medical anthropology and skeletal biology. Former chair of the Ethics Committee of the American Anthropological Association, she has gained international recognition as a proponent of church/state separation. A member of the Board of Directors of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, she has worked extensively to communicate the scientific method to the general public and to improve how science as a way of knowing is taught in school. Frequently called upon by the print, radio, and television media as a spokesperson for "the scientific view" when conflicts arise between scientific and pseudoscientific explanations, she has appeared on Donahue, Geraldo, Crossfire, Firing Line, Ancient Mysteries, CNN, Morning Edition, The Pat Buchanan Show, Science Friday, and All Things Considered. In 1998, she received the Isaac Asimov Science Award from the American Humanist Association, and this year won the Skeptics Society James Randi Award.

MARK THESE DATES

October 6 (see above)
October 13: The Darwinism of Disease: Dr Paul Ewald, evolutionary biologist, Amherst College, Massachusetts, on how evolutionary theory will change our understanding of human disease and provide a new basis for therapy) *
October 20: Becoming Human: the Evolution of Mind and Language: Dr Steven Mithen, archeologist, University of Reading (U.K.), on the evolution of the human mind itself).

All lectures are free and begin at 8:00 pm in the Fieldhouse Auditorium of the Stephen Leacock Building on the McGill downtown campus.