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Sixty undergraduate students at Washington University will have the chance next spring to study evolution from multiple perspectives when they embark on "The Epic of Evolution."
Team-taught by three scientists in different disciplines, the 200-level course is cross-listed under biology, physics and earth and planetary sciences. Professors are Claude W. Bernard, Ph.D., professor of physics; Ursula W. Goodenough, Ph.D., professor of biology; and Michael E. Wysession, Ph.D., associate professor of earth and planetary sciences.
Bernard brings his expertise in physics, Goodenough her insight into cell and molecular biology and Wysession his knowledge of geophysics to the course. The idea is for students to contemplate the wide arch of evolution from the "Big Bang" and the subsequent expansion of the universe to the origins and progression of life on Earth.
Students will take mid-term and final exams and write a paper. The tests will deal strictly with the science; in the paper, each student will bring together an understanding of some aspect of evolution with some aspect of human endeavor -- for example, in religion, art, history, philosophy or culture. There will be three lectures per week, and the students will meet in three different discussion groups once a week, led by Heather Morrison, senior graduate student in philosophy.
Students will be assigned a wide range of cross-disciplinary readings from literature, philosophy and the sciences.
"The course is doing two innovative things," Wysession said. "One, we have three different scientists telling three different views of the evolution of our world - on a universe scale, a planet scale and in terms of basic life on Earth. We are telling the story weaving in all three aspects. This isn't done anywhere else to our knowledge.
"The second innovation is fusing evolution with culture and society. It's rare for scientists to attempt to bridge that gap. Inherently, scientists refrain from speculation or implication beyond their specialty."
The course, however, is predicated upon presenting the science of evolution along with challenging students to interpret the ways evolution has impacted other parts of life. Much of the inspiration of the course is drawn from Goodenough's work linking science with religion and philosophy through numerous publications and organizations of national symposia.
Goodenough's 1998 book, "The Sacred Depths of Nature," a description of molecular biology and evolution that ties in spiritual and religious themes, laid the groundwork for the course. While president of a professional organization called IRAS (The Institute for Religion in an Age of Science), Goodenough organized a summer retreat in 1996 and invited Wysession to attend so that he could discuss his research as a geophysicist and how geophysics can have a bearing on religion and philosophy.
The retreat was an intense week-long discussion of the origins and evolution of just about everything and how they fit within cultural frameworks. For a couple of years after the retreat, Goodenough and Wysession discussed the possibility of offering a semester-long course to undergraduates, but they realized they needed a physicist.
Later, Goodenough began discussions with Bernard, who also has interests in the relationship of his expertise to culture and is active in the Ethical Society of St. Louis. Goodenough gave a series of Ethical Society lectures on science and religion after the publication of her book, and Bernard attended them. Soon, the three scientists were brainstorming.
"We hope that non- science-major undergraduates will come away with the sense that the history of the universe is just that -- a history, with a time scale and a causality component and a narrative and some general principles," Goodenough said.
"Human history has these things as well, with what has gone on before being seminal to what happens next, and with general principles -- for example, greed, lineage, manipulation, deception, idealism -- also pervading the whole. I hope that by reflecting on this other story that we instill not only a life-long interest in following the plot line, but also give our students new kinds of perspectives as they pursue their interests in the human arts and sciences."
Goodenough said the three professors will teach the course in one-week alternating blocks. They will attend each other's lectures and thus use them as springboards for their own lectures as well as learning from each other. The professors also will work with the students in the discussion sections.
"As a physicist, my part of the narrative is the period from the Big Bang to the formation of the solar system, but, of course, physical laws and processes form the underlying structure in the other parts of the epic as well," Bernard said. "For example, the relative abundance of the chemical elements, fixed in the Big Bang and in the interior of stars, determines the raw materials from which the Earth and life on it must be built.
"I think of the course as both a way to teach some fascinating physics and to show how physics fits into an overall scientific world view."
It is expected that most of the students in the class will not be science majors, so students will be encouraged to make connections between their own fields and the "scientific narrative."
"We hope to convey something of the complete narrative, the 'history of everything,' as it is understood today," Bernard added. "Knowing the basics of this big picture is necessary not only for fundamental scientific literacy, but also for understanding, in a more spiritual sense, our place as humans in the cosmos."
