The UCA Biology Department and Pearson Higher Education will host a series of events to celebrate the life and work of Charles Darwin and to promote science literacy.
Darwin Day is a global celebration of science and reason held near the birthday of Charles Darwin, who was born Feb. 12, 1809 in Shrewsbury, England. The goals for this event are to inform the public about the importance of evolution as the unifying theme of modern biology as well as the life and work of Charles Darwin, said Dr. Mark Bland, professor of biology and director of the Arkansas State Science Fair.
This year’s speakers include UCA scholar Dr. Ben Waggoner whose talk will focus on Darwin’s obsessive quest to understand a little-known animal, the barnacle. Also speaking is Dr. Jason Wiles from Syracuse University. Dr. Wiles, an Arkansas native, will give a lecture entitled “Seeing the Light of Evolution: An Arkansan’s Journey Toward Understanding and Acceptance of Biological Change.”
Both will give their lectures on Feb. 10 in Lewis Science Center, Room 102. Dr. Waggoner will speak at 9:25 a.m. and Dr. Wiles at 12:15 p.m. Free birthday cake will be served at 11:15 a.m.
Along with the lectures, the PBS’s seven-part series “Evolution” will be shown in the Lewis Science Center on Feb. 8 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. On Feb. 9, the critically acclaimed documentary “Flock of Dodos” will be shown from 10 a.m. to noon as well as “Inherit the Wind” from noon until 2 p.m.
“Considerable misinformation and misunderstanding exists about Darwin and his work. For example, he was a loyal and devoted husband and father, and one of his original career goals was to enter the clergy,” Bland said. “Darwin’s main contribution to science was not to establish that living things had evolved; this was already known in his time. Rather, Darwin used his penetrating insight to figure out the mechanism by which living things evolve — a principle called natural selection — which has tremendous explanatory power, even today.”
