Trust in the New Sciences: Remaking the Human, Part Five

King's Event

Trust in the New Sciences: Remaking the Human, Part Five

March 30, 2010

The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affairs (CCEPA) and the Situating Science Knowledge Cluster are pleased to present the fifth lecture in the five-part series Trust in the New Sciences: Remaking the Human on Tuesday March 30 at 7:00 p.m. in Alumni Hall at the University of King's College (6350 Coburg Road.) This event is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.

Trust in the New Sciences is a  national lecture series exploring the ethical, philosophical and social implications of the new sciences of genomics, neuropsychology and nanotechnology.

Part Five's lecture, "Genes, Genomics and Human Nature" will be presented by Evelyn Fox Keller, who is widely considered one of the world's leading philosophers of science and a pioneer in feminist theory. She is professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, and is the author of Reflections on Gender and Science, Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death, and The Century of the Gene.

Discussion of the role of genes has been plagued by linguistic uncertainty since their origin. At first the word 'gene' was little more than a place marker, a name for the presumed unit of inheritance. What is a gene? A gene is a difference maker. Yet geneticists also assumed that genes are trait makers. To this day, conflation between genes and mutations, between trait makers and difference makers, remains endemic. The meaning of the term has transformed and proliferated over the course of the century The status of genes as trait makers has come under severe challenge, as has the status of genes as difference makers. It is that very confusion between the two, and the place of that confusion in our understanding of human nature, of what is natural and what is unnatural, that will be explored in this talk.

This event is part of a national lecture series on the New Sciences and the Making of the Human, presented by the SSHRC Situating Science Knowledge Cluster and the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affairs, and co-sponsored by the University of King's College, the Evolution Study Group, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, St. Mary's University, and Genome Atlantic.

For more information, please contact:

Situation Science: Knowledge Cluster for the Humanities and Social Studies of Science (902) 422-1271, ex. 200 or email situsci@dal.ca.

Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affiars (CCEPA):(902) 428-4731 or email info@ccepa.ca.