Imagining the Darwinian Revolution:
The Place of History in Science
5 – 7 June 2019, The University of Queensland, Australia
Speakers: Alison Bashford (UNSW), Gowan Dawson (Leicester), Piers Hale (Oklahoma), Emily Herring (Leeds), Erika Lorraine Milam (Princeton), Evelleen Richards (Sydney), Kim Sterelny (ANU)
This international workshop at the University of Queensland, to be held in conjunction with the 2019 meeting of the International Society for Intellectual History (ISIH), is part of a project that seeks to consider the relationship between the development of evolution and its historical representations by focussing on the historiographical notion of the Darwinian Revolution. The very idea of the Darwinian Revolution is a historical construct devised to help explain the changing scientific and cultural landscape that was ushered in by Darwin’s singular contribution to natural science. But even while its general meaning has long been contested, the nature of that contestation has been minimized by both scientists and historians who are understandably committed to promoting their own interpretations of its significance, interpretations that are themselves shaped by contemporary social, political, and cultural circumstances. But what if these interpretations play a role in shaping the development of evolutionary science itself? Imagining the Darwinian Revolution: The Place of History in Science seeks to explore how history has been interpreted, deployed, and exploited to fashion the science behind our changing understandings of evolution over the past century.
