Galileo’s Legacy explores scientific topics of today

By Clay Rains

Three researchers recently visited Missouri Western to share their latest research into evolutionary biology, genetics, psychology and religion as part of the 2009 Galileo’s Legacy Conference. The two-day conference began the afternoon of Nov. 5 in the Kemper Recital Hall with a presentation by Christopher Green entitled “Will the Real Darwin Please Stand Up?”

Green is a psychology professor at York University in Toronto who specializes in the history of psychology. He explained that there’s a misperception about how the theory of evolution and psychology relate to one another. “There’s a view these days that somehow psychology was aversed to evolutionary thought through most of the Twentieth Century,” Green said.

“Mainly, that’s put forward by modern evolutionary psychologists who want to portray themselves as being original and terribly new, and what my talk is about is how evolutionary thought has been used by a whole range of different areas within psychology,” Green said.

Later that evening, Gordon Burghardt delivered his presentation entitled “Darwin, Monkeys, Serpents and the Origins of Religion.” Burghardt is a professor of psychology, ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee whose research has been featured in the Nova television series Lizard Kings.

Burghardt shared his recent research on monkeys aimed at learning more about the fear of snakes in both primates and humans. “We used lifelong captive monkeys never exposed to snakes and tested their innate fear of snakes by offering them food placed in front of a glass cage containing a live snake,” Burghardt said.

“We observed that the monkeys would at first snatch the food from in front of the snake, albeit rather quickly but with little apparent fear,” Burghardt said. “However, after several times grabbing the food, most of the monkeys began to show signs of anxiety or simply began to ignore the food.”

Burghardt went on to explain that this research is ongoing and said that, due to many variables in the studies, he hopes to refine his testing methods and expand on this research in the future before drawing any conclusions.

At noon the following day, the final speaker discussed the area of race and genetics in his presentation called “The Social and Biological Realities of Race” in Room 304 of Popplewell Hall. Jonathan Kaplan, chair of the philosophy department at Oregon State University, explained that race is a very vague concept often mischaracterized throughout history.

“The question of whether races exist and whether or not race is biological is too underdetermined,” Kaplan said. “And you have to be very careful and specify exactly what you mean by the term ‘race’ or ‘biological’ before you can even get a handle on the question.”

“If you look at the varying gene frequencies between populations, then, of course, biological races exist,” Kaplan said. Kaplan explained however that the meaning of race, through genetic research, has been changed greatly from the pre-Darwinian concept that identified races as mostly separate groups of people with mostly distinct traits.

Galileo’s Legacy Conference was first hosted at Missouri Western in 2006 as an opportunity for discussion and learning about various scientific subjects such as neuroscience, climate change and intelligent design.