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Past Speakers

 

2007, Sean Carroll, Howard Hughes Professor, University of Wisconsin
   
The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has emerged as a key model system for elucidating the genetics and molecular biology of animal development. Advances in our knowledge of how this complex animal develops have made possible comparative studies to identify common features of animal design and to determine how morphological diversity evolves. Our laboratory has worked toward a detailed mechanistic understanding of some of the major features of Drosophila development. This has provided the foundation for the study of the genetic and developmental basis of animal diversity, as well as new insights into animal origins and relationships. This approach has resulted in a deeper understanding of how developmental genes and patterning mechanisms evolve and has uncovered some of the first direct evidence for the central role of changes in the regulation of genes in the diversification of body plans and body parts and in the origin of new structures and pattern elements.
   
   
2006, Eugenie Scott, Director, National Center for Science Education
   
Dr. Scott, a former university professor, is the Executive Director of NCSE. She has been both a researcher and an activist in the creationism/evolution controversy for over twenty-five years, and can address many components of this controversy, including educational, legal, scientific, religious, and social issues. She has received national recognition for her NCSE activities, including awards from the National Science Board, the American Society for Cell Biology, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Geological Society of America, and the American Humanist Association. A dynamic speaker, she offers stimulating and thought-provoking as well as entertaining lectures and workshops. Scott is the author of Evolution vs Creationism and co-editor, with Glenn Branch, of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools.
   
   
2005, Daniel Dennett, Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University
 

Daniel C. Dennett, the author of Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Freedom Evolves (Viking Penguin, 2003) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Simon &Schuster, 1995), is University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He lives with his wife in North Andover, Massachusetts, and has a daughter, a son, and a grandson. He was born in Boston in 1942, the son of a historian by the same name, and received his B.A. in philosophy from Harvard in 1963. He then went to Oxford to work with Gilbert Ryle, under whose supervision he completed the D.Phil. in philosophy in 1965. He taught at U.C. Irvine from 1965 to 1971, when he moved to Tufts, where he has taught ever since, aside from periods visiting at Harvard, Pittsburgh, Oxford, and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

His first book, Content and Consciousness, appeared in 1969, followed by Brainstorms (1978), Elbow Room (1984), The Intentional Stance (1987), Consciousness Explained (1991), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995), Kinds of Minds (1996), and Brainchildren: A Collection of Essays 1984-1996 (MIT Press and Penguin, 1998). Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness, was published in 2005 by MIT Press. He co-edited The Mind's I with Douglas Hofstadter in 1981. He is the author of over three hundred scholarly articles on various aspects on the mind, published in journals ranging from Artificial Intelligence and Behavioral and Brain Sciences to Poetics Today and the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
   

 

 

 

 
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