Tim Hardy

Galileo is a one-man play celebrating the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s discoveries and exploring the tensions between science and religion through one man’s struggle for intellectual and spiritual salvation. (In honor of Galileo’s 400th anniversary, 2009 has been named the International Year of Astronomy: http://www.astronomy2009.org/…

Peter Godfrey-Smith Department of Philosophy, Harvard University

I look at how 'Darwinian' ideas might be applied to cultural change at several different scales. These scales are related to the distinction between 'micro' and 'macro' evolution in biology. Three case studies are described: models of the evolution of cooperation through imitation, work on the accumulation of knowledge and skills through social learning, and investigation of tree-structures present in the evolution of certain languages. The talk is non-technical.…