Shulman Lecture series will explore ‘the question of evidence’

Award-winning scholar Peter Dear will deliver the opening lecture in the spring 2014 series of Shulman Lectures in the Science and the Humanities.

Titled “Darwin’s Sleepwalkers: Taxonomic Evidence in the Presentation of Darwin’s Species Theory,” Dear’s talk will take place on Tuesday, Feb. 11 at 5 p.m. in Rm. 208 of the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall St. The event is free and open to the public.

The spring series will examine “The Question of Evidence.” Other speakers in the series will include Ben Kafka, who will talk about Freud and the experience of evidence; Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht, who will discuss the topic of latency; and Peter Galison, who will speak on nuclear lands.

Dear is a professor of the history of science and of science and technology studies at Cornell University. The recipient of Guggenheim, National Science Foundation, and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, he is the author of “Mersenne and the Learning of the Schools,” “Discipline and Experience: The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution,” “The Intelligibility of Nature: How Science Makes Sense of the World,” and “Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500-1700.”

The lecture series is organized in conjunction with a Yale College seminar taught by Rüdiger Campe, chair and professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures.

The Shulman Lectures are presented under the auspices of the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities, which is made possible by the generosity of Richard and Barbara Franke. The series is named after Robert Shulman, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, and senior research scientist in diagnostic radiology, in recognition of his roles as a founding fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center and as a strong supporter of the integration of science and the humanities.