Digital Teaching
The texts are made available via Moodle.
Course Contents
In the seminar, historical and systematic topics and concepts of evolutionary theories (before and after Darwin) will be discussed. The aim is to work out how the image of "human" and of "life" changed through new scientific approaches and debates and still determines our view of anthropological self-attributions today.
Literature
Peter J. Bowler Evolution: The History of an Idea. University of California Press, California 2003.
Philipp Sarasin, Marianne Sommer (Hrsg.): Evolution. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, Stuttgart/Weimar 2010.
Manuela Lenzen: Evolutionstheorien in den Natur- und Sozialwissenschaften, Frankfurt a. M., New York 2003.
Marianne Sommer: Evolutionäre Anthropologie zur Einführung, Hamburg 2015.
Official Course Description
The question of what is "life" or what is "human" was and is always also a question of evolution. The theories of evolution of natural life are older, but became more scientific in the 19th century with and through Charles Darwin. In Darwin's argumentation on animal breeding as well as the transfer of this breeding idea to humans, a new (methodical and epistemic) approach to humans was announced around 1860, which wanted to unite evolutionist knowledge (through statistical data, among others in Francis Galton) as well as practice to a special degree. Human being had not only become an animal through the theory of evolution, but also the applications that resulted from it evoked a certain access that aimed at a higher development of human. This connection between knowledge of "life" and access to life characterized different evolutionary theories up to today's (epi-)genetic debates.
In the seminar, the different currents of evolutionary theories before and after Darwin will be explored. The focus will be on the questions of how research grasped concepts such as "life", "human", "animal" but also "culture" and how these concepts were transformed by different conceptions of evolution. For this purpose, primary and secondary sources will be analyzed.
Additional Information
CPs are earned through active participation and the writing of a scientific paper.
- Lehrende: Kevin Liggieri