Course Goals:

The goal of this course is to acquaint students with evolution and its many implications.  Evolution is one of the central ideas of our age, with far-reaching implications for medicine, psychology, sociology, economics, biology, geology, and other disciplines.  In lectures, directed readings, and focused discussions, students will be introduced to evidence for evolution, major patterns of processes of evolution, outstanding questions, and the impact of evolutionary thought on other disciplines and on our place in the world.

The course will be taught in such a way that students with a reasonable high school background in biology should be able to grasp the material.  Whenever necessary, relevant background in geological and biological topics will be incorporated into the lectures and discussion. 

Topical Outline:

1. Introduction and goals of the course:  definition of evolution, importance as an organizing principle in biology and geology.
2. Major lines of evidence for evolution:  fossils, biogeography, comparative biology.
3. Reconstructing the course of evolution:  an introduction to phylogenetic methods; questions that can be answered by means of these methods.
4. Mechanisms and units of evolution:  evolutionary units, natural selection and adaptation; the role of chance and randomness; economic perspective on evolution.
5. The products of evolution:  key evolutionary innovations and their consequences; complexity, evolutionary emergence of adapted systems.
6. Patterns of evolution:  evolutionary trends and their recognition, coevolution and escalation, punctuated equilibria, the role of extinction in evolution, evolution and the tectonic and climatic history of the earth, expansion of the biosphere.
7. Unsolved problems and outstanding questions.
8. Evolution and its impact on other fields:  the general nature of adaptation; the history of nations interpreted in evolutionary terms; implications for medicine; evolution and religion.

Grading and Course Requirements:

Grades will be based on biweekly short essays and one somewhat longer final essay.  Reports on essays will be given during discussion sections.

Reading:

• Required: R. M. Nesse and George C. Williams. 1996.
  Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine.  (Knopf) Random House.
• Recommended: G.J. Vermeij.  2004.
  Nature:  An Economic History. Princeton University Press.