[Anthropgrad] 2nd key Thinkers Seminar - Iain McCalman on Darwin - June 2

[Sharon Komidar]

The Research School of Humanities presents,
The 2nd Key Thinkers Seminar for 2009

5 - 6.30 pm, Tuesday 2nd June, Conference Room, Old Canberra House
(Please note that the original advertised venue has changed and the
event will now be held back at Old Canberra House)

Charles Darwin. From Romantic to Ecologist?

Iain McCalman

 

It has often been said the Charles Darwin boarded the HMS Beagle in 1831
for his transformative five-year voyage to the Southern Oceans as a
literary Romantic and completed it as an empirical scientist. While this
transition is broadly true, it underestimates the degree to which
Darwin's Romanticism remained in creative tension with his evolutionary
science.

 

In this paper I want to trace the development of his ideas leading up to
the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, arguing that the
creative tension between Romantic and Malthusian intellectual traditions
were formative both of his great theory of natural selection and of his
broader, life-long fascination with the natural economy, or what we
would call ecology.

 

Iain McCalman was born in Nyasaland, Africa, in 1947, did his schooling
in Zimbabwe, and his BA, MA and PhD in Canberra and Melbourne,
Australia. He is currently Research Professor at the University of
Sydney. He has written numerous articles on modern British, European and
Imperial and Australian cultural history. His most recent book is
Darwin's Armada: How Four Voyagers to Australasia Won the Battle for
Evolution and Changed the World, Penguin, 2009. This is the basis of a
TV Series-in-production (ABC, Canada, NZ) and exhibitions at the
Australian National Maritime Museum and the Macleay Museum, University
of Sydney.

 

Convenor: Ned Curthoys

For general enquiries please contact: 
Phone: 6125 2434
Email: administration.rsh at anu.edu.au 
Web: http://rsh.anu.edu.au/
All Welcome