Genesis Rewritten: A History of the Life Sciences

GENESIS REWRITTEN:
A HISTORY OF THE LIFE SCIENCES
COURSE DESCRIPTION

The issues of the life sciences are at once the most elusive and the most familiar of the mysteries of nature; they may be as mundane as the eating of a meal or as fantastic as the manipulation of a bacteria's genome. This course will trace the attempts to understand and explain the living world over the two thousand years from ancient Greece to twentieth century America. We will examine varied religious, philosophical, and scientific traditions and their attempts to account for the origins, structure, function, and interrelationships of living things. We will study the strategies of matter theory and epistemology, explore the human drive to order the living world, and consider the relationship between systems of political order and systems of natural order. The course will place special emphasis on the notion of divine creation and its influence on the western tradition, as well as the immense influence of Darwinian ideas of random variation and natural selection on the way we view the living world (and ourselves). Finally, we will consider the changing attitudes of humanity towards nature, wilderness and the environment, from the ancient notion of nature as dark and chaotic to the growth of modern notions of ecology. The course is required for students in the second semester Senior Perspectives Program; other students may take it as an elective.

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