From Darwin to Derrida: The Evolution of Meaning and Purpose

Harvard FAS

The seminar will read my recent book (of the same name as the course) intended for a general educated readership. The seminar would be suitable both for science students and for non-science students who wish to learn some evolutionary biology. Natural selection is a purposeless process that has evolved purposive creatures. The key innovation in the evolution of life was the origin of a textual record of past choices of natural selection contained within genetic sequences. The information in…