Science and the world of ideas: All I really need to know I learned at Bennington
Invited speaker: David Houle, PhD., Bennington College Alum '77
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Woodworth Lecture in the Sciences
Join us for this year's Woodworth lecture with Biology Professor David Houle of Florida State University. The lecture is aimed at a general audience, so no prior knowledge is needed or assumed.
Houle is an evolutionary geneticist who investigates the connections between genomic, developmental and phenotypic variation.
About the talk: Many people see the acquisition of data as the primary driver of scientific progress. Instead, I will make the case that the working concepts we apply to that data are the primary driver of scientific advances. I have made my career in evolutionary biology by searching for ways to connect ideas and the data we are capable of gathering right now.
Doing this is something most scientists are not very good at. Instead, they let others, the leaders of their field, define what is interesting to work on. However, in some fields, like evolutionary biology, the leaders that do the defining are sometimes not very good at it either. This has many symptoms, such as failure to consider alternative hypotheses, confusing correlates and causes, and pursuing questions long after theoretical work has shown the futility of doing so. I argue that everyone would be better at doing this if they had learned the things that Bennington teaches: talk to your leaders, but don't always believe them. You are in charge of your own path. Your viewpoint empowers you. No, I really did not learn all I need to know at Bennington, but I learned things that are critical to science, and that you don't readily learn elsewhere.
Details at:
https://www.bennington.edu/events/2023-04-06/woodworth-lecture-sciences-science-and-world-of[...]w-i