Evolution and Human Affairs

BIOL 350/3.0

Overview

An exploration of how evolutionary thinking can affect our understanding of our lives, our species, and our ability to share the planet with other species. LEARNING HOURS 120 (36L;24O;60P)

Learning Outcomes

After completing BIOL350, students will be better equipped to:

  1. identify and define the urgent challenges facing human civilization today, and why many authorities warn that 鈥榖usiness as usual鈥 cannot be sustained;
  2. describe how and why the effects of Darwinian evolution have brought us to this critical stage in the history of humanity;
  3. explain how an understanding of this 鈥榟uman journey鈥 helps to account for a wide range of contemporary human affairs and cultural norms; 
  4. evaluate why philosopher, Blaise Pascal considered that, 鈥All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone鈥 (Pens茅es, 1670) 鈥 and why poet, T.S. Eliot mused, 鈥溾humankind cannot bear very much reality鈥 (No. 1 of Four Quartets, 1943);
  5. predict how the genetic legacies inherited from our ancestors, and how our continuing evolution as a species 鈥 informed by both natural selection and cultural selection 鈥 are likely to affect our human natures, our social lives, and our cultures in future generations;
  6. participate in prescribing a way forward for the design of a new, more sustainable, and more humanistic model of civilization for our descendants.