"There is grandeur in this view of life...from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
-Charles Darwin, 1859
150 Years After Origin: Biological, Historical, and Philosophical Perspectives
Victoria College, University of Toronto, November 21-24, 2009
Tickets are still available for the Gala Celebratory Dinner
Darwin wrote in his autobiography, “In July [1837] I opened my first notebook for facts in relation to the Origin of Species, about which I had long reflected, and never ceased working for the next twenty years.” In 1842, he wrote a “very brief abstract” of his theory (35 pages), which in the summer of 1844 he expanded to 230 pages. Beginning in September 1858, after receiving an essay from Alfred Russel Wallace, “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,” which outlined the central mechanism of evolution on which Darwin had been working, he began work on completing the manuscript of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. John Murray, the publisher, launched the book on November 24, 1859 by releasing 1,250 copies. The impact of The Origin of Species has equalled the impact of Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. It is the unifying theoretical framework for all modern biology.
November 24, 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin and The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and the Department of Philosophy at University of Toronto are mounting a Gala Celebratory Conference. The conference will culminate in a gala dinner on November 24 at which participants will toast the tremendous achievement of Charles Robert Darwin.
Five multi-disciplinary symposia have been organized. For each symposium, the panel consists of a biologist, a historian of biology and a philosopher of biology.
The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology is located on the elegant, historic Victoria University campus (one of the University of Toronto’s federated universities) and the conference will be held in that location.
SPONSORED BY
The Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology
The Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The Department of Philosophy
Faculty of Arts & Sciences, University of Toronto
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
Situating Science - The Cluster for the Humanistic and Social Studies of Science
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Conference Program
Re:Design play information
REGISTRATION
Deadline: 31 October - Now CLOSED
BOOK OF ABSTRACTS
Now Online
CONTACT US
conference.ihpst@utoronto.ca