Please join us for this semester's faculty research seminar, which is being held on Monday, November 7th from 12:30-2:00 in Dekalb 206. This is a brown bag affair, so bring your lunch. We will provide coffee. Below you will find a description of the seminar. I hope to see you there.
Andrew W. Barnes, Ph.D.
Dean
School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Pratt Institute
200 Willoughby Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205
718.636.3570
Diversity, Culture, Theory, and Data: Science on Human Variety
B. Ricardo Brown and Christopher X J. Jensen
Human
variety plays a pivotal role in history: how we interpret human
diversity dictates what kind of society we construct. Over the last
three hundred years, science has played an increasingly influential role
in explaining and interpreting human variety. How has the rise of
science influenced our conception of human variety? Does science shed
light on the nature of our differences or simply legitimize prevailing
cultural conceptions of difference? Through this talk, we will address
these questions by considering the historical trajectory of how science
conceptualizes human variety. Starting with the battle between the
monogenists and the polygenists of the 18th and 19th centuries, Ric will
describe how the cultural conflict over slavery was reflected in
battles between scientific camps. He will discuss how prevailing culture
influenced the questions scientists asked, the theories they posited,
and the way they used data to validate these theories. Ric will explain
how increasing access to information about the natural world -- paired
with changes in the way science was pursued -- eventually led to the key
insights of Charles Darwin, whose theories in large part displaced
previous conceptions of human variety. Chris will then consider how
post-Darwinian science has conceptualized human variety, beginning with
eugenics and ending with the revolution in genomic technologies. Shifts
in the culture of science and the culture in which science operates, as
well as increased access to genetic data, have all transformed how we
interpret human variety. Nonetheless, echos of past scientific
shortcomings still reverberate through the present-day science of human
genomics. The talk will conclude with the opportunity for the audience
to discuss how present-day science influences our understanding of human
variety.
