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Evolutionary biologist
David Sloan Wilson will address the controversial topics of evolution
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David Sloan Wilson |
and religion when he delivers the spring Charter
Lecture at 4 p.m. March 2 in the Chapel on North Campus.
Wilson will speak on “Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution,
Religion and the Nature of Society,” the title of his latest
book.
A professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University,
Wilson studies humans in addition to other species. He is best known
for his work on multilevel selection, in which the fundamental ingredients
of evolution—variation, heritability and fitness differences—can
exist at all levels of the biological hierarchy, from genes to ecosystems.
Darwin invoked group-level selection to explain the evolution of
human morality and traits in non-human species that benefit the
group at the expense of the individual. Multi-level selection was
largely rejected in the 1960s, but has since been revived, with
implications that extend the length and breadth of the biological
and social sciences.
In Darwin’s Cathedral, Wilson views religion as the
product of group selection at work. He argues that the religious
impulse evolved because it helped make groups of humans comparatively
more cohesive, more cooperative and more fraternal, and thus able
to succeed in direct and indirect competition with other groups.
“I found the book to be personally fascinating,” says
John Avise, Research Professor of Genetics and a member of the Charter
Lecture committee. “David Sloan Wilson is certainly an important
figure in the field of evolutionary biology.”
Wilson lectures widely on a diverse range of topics. He holds a
Ph.D. from Michigan State University, where he taught before joining
the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1988.
The Charter Lecture Series, established in 1988, was named to honor
the high ideals expressed in the 1785 Charter that founded the University
of Georgia as the first chartered state university in the United
States. A committee of senior faculty members selects speakers of
the first rank for the series. |
