Handbook

Evolution shaped the living world, from million-strong ant colonies to the COVID-19 virus (and all its variants), and from simple sessile invertebrates to conscious and highly cultural humans. Darwin’s insight that evolution happens by natural selection remains, in the words of philosopher Daniel Dennett, “the most important idea anybody ever had”. Unfortunately, few people ever gain more than a superficial understanding of natural selection and how evolution works. That is a pity, given the important insights that evolution provides into the most difficult and persistent problems that plague 21st Century living, including antibiotic resistance, obesity, overpopulation, income inequality, gender inequity and the ideological warfare that surround sex and family life.

There is no assumed knowledge, and this course makes a great General Education offering. We only expect that students come to class with open curiosity.