Prospectus for Essay, due March 19



Major Term Paper / Project

A major requirement in this course is a term paper or major project. Feel free to discuss your project with you individually as you are developing it. You need to submit a prospectus for your project at the beginning of class, March 18. Your prospectus will include:

1. A tentative statement of your central thesis in one clear sentence followed by an explanatory paragraph.

2. A paragraph explaining why the thesis is controversial and what opposing views there are to your position. (This might be combined with #1.)

3. An annotated bibliography including scholarly sources both supporting your position and opposing it. In an annotated bibliography, you include a short paragraph after each source explaining what the source contributes to your essay. (It may, of course, argue against your own position as well as for it.)

Although the paper is a philosophical essay, not primarily an empirical study, I anticipate that many or most of the topics will also involve some further investigation of Darwinism itself, and your sources will reflect this. So this will be an opportunity to probe deeper into one aspect of Darwinism and to relate it to an important philosophical issue. All papers should include some scholarly philosophical sources.

How to find a topic?

Some good places to start would be

1. Look at the “Resources” section on Ctools. Many of the articles have been required readings for the course, but many are not and may give you ideas of areas to pursue. Expand each section to see the works in that section, including the “Other Materials” which even includes a free evolution game.

2. Look on the Darwinism web sites that are links from Ctools, especially “Biology and Darwin,” which includes many links to other sites.

3. Look through the Appleman anthology which includes many more articles than we will cover in class. Also see Appleman’s “Selected Readings,” pp. 683-687.

4. Consider some of the recent books on Darwinism by big-name Darwinists like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Pinker as well as other authors.

5. Use scholarly sources like JSTOR and Proquest to find sources.

Class Presentations

Indicate on your prospectus when you would like to present your research to the class. You can do this more than once; e.g., an initial report on your early research where you are also seeking help and advice from others.

An Extra Credit Option

You can earn up to 3 bonus points if you submit two possible paper topics by Monday, February 23, topics that do not just duplicate those below. I may use (maybe revise) these as a basis to distribute to class. Each topic should be a short explanation of about one paragraph, indicating what the topic area would explore and, if possible, a clearly framed question that is controversial.

Everything turned in should always be “typed” (computer-printed). If your printer is failing, email to me.

A Few Interesting Areas to Consider

Here are a few things that occur to me that I think would be interesting to explore in major projects. These are just suggested areas; in most cases you would need to formulate a more precise topic.

• Evolution and the human brain. Some empirical research on this and debate about the philosophical implications.

• Evolution and literature. (See the Dutton review on Ctools under “aesthetics,” which we will discuss in class, but it can give you ideas to go further.)

• Evolution and aesthetics. I hope/expect we will do some of this in class, but you might take this further, exploring a particular area such as landscape, urban design, art, music, etc. (How does one explain why we evolved to enjoy music?)

• Historical or cross-cultural reactions to Darwinism. (E.g., the Scopes trial, recent controversial court cases and debates, comparisons between the way the United States and other countries or other religious traditions have dealt with controversies between Darwinism and religion.) It’s hard to see how this alone would be a philosophical paper, but it might be a class presentation and be part of the research leading to a philosophical paper, such as one in the next entry.

• Darwinism and religion in American schools and in American life. To what extent is it appropriate for schools or the government to accept Darwinism as “the truth” and teach it as such? To what extent is it appropriate for schools or the National Park Service to present anti-Darwinian views (e.g., Biblical) that are rejected by almost all major scientists but fervently held by many citizens? This may involve advocating a particular theory on the appropriate role of religion (and science) in public life.

• Teleology. Is there any appropriate role for teleology in the study of science after Darwin? Not everyone agrees that all teleology is dead after Darwin and some propose other ways of thinking about goal-directed processes; e.g., Ernst Mayr, “The Multiple Meanings of Teleological” in Towards a Philosophy of Biology (Harvard University Press, 1988). A good topic for a philosophy major with some interest or background in philosophy of science.

• Somewhat related to above: Is philosophy of biology an area distinct from philosophy of the physical sciences? In same Mayr anthology indicated above is an essay “Is Biology an Autonomous Science?” Many articles like this can be found by searching in our library’s database for articles by Ernst Mayr.

• To what extent is Darwinism compatible or incompatible with “religion”? Specifically, what forms of belief in a “god” are compatible or incompatible with Darwinism?

• Does Darwinism imply metaphysical materialism and therefore the absence of a soul? Does it necessarily reduce consciousness to brain states?

• Darwinism and feminism. Does Darwinism have any implications for feminism? There are many strands of the feminist movement; does Darwinism tend to support some over others?

• Larger issue out of previous that we will be discussing but still leaving open more particular areas to explore: what ethical implications, if any, does Darwinism have? Does the naturalistic fallacy imply that it would be wrong to try to derive any ethical claims from the purely empirical results of Darwinism? James claims that all religious experiences refer in some way to the “good” of being in harmony with the natural order. Does Darwinism, in a different way, suggest a “natural order” with which we should be in harmony? We will discuss this in class, but you might want to choose some particular ethical area of study; e.g., environmental ethics, our treatment of animals (discussed by Rachels), genetic modification.

• Social Darwinism, one specific attempt to derive an ethical-political view from Darwinism.

• To what extent does Darwinism imply a lack of meaning and purpose for human life? (There is a fair amount of recent philosophical literature analyzing questions about the “meaning of life.”) To what extent does Darwinism kill “soul 2” in Dawkins’ sense?

• Edwin O. Wilson, a famous biologist and Darwinist, writes on the concept of biphilia. Why do humans have a tie to and preference for natural environments and what are some of the implications of this?

From Wikipedia:

Wilson…suggests that biophilia describes "the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.” He proposed the possibility that the deep affiliations humans have with nature are rooted in our biology… The hypothesis has since been developed as part of theories of evolutionary psychology, in particular by Stephen R. Kellert in his book The Biophilia Hypothesis[3] and by Lynn Margulis. Kellert's work seeks to determine common human responses to perceptions of, and ideas about, plants and animals, and to explain them in terms of the conditions of human evolution.

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