Michael Ruse

Michael Ruse

Michael Ruse is Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Program in History and Philosophy of Science at Florida State University. A former Guggenheim Fellow and a Gifford Lecturer, Ruse is an expert on the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology. He appeared as a witness for the ACLU in Arkansas in the successful attack on the teaching of creationism in the state´s public schools. He is the author of many books, including The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw, Monad to Man: the Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology, and Can a Darwinian be a Christian? The Relationship between Science and Religion. In anticipation of the Darwin Year, 2009, he has authored Evolution and Religion: A Dialogue; Was there a Darwinian Paradigm?; and The Evolution Wars (second edition). He has edited or co-edited The Cambridge Companion to the “Origin of Species," Evolution: The First Four Billion Years, The Paleobiological Revolution; Philosophy after Darwin: Historical and Contemporary Readings; But is it Science? The Philosophical Question in the Creation—Evolution Struggle (second edition); The Paleontological Revolution; and Descended from Darwin: Insights into the History of Evolutionary Studies, 1900-1970.

Darwin 2009: Science and society

With respect to the first question, I will argue that the theory today bears the same relation to the theory of the Origin (1859) as the Volkswagen Bug does to the People´s Car of the 1930s. There is not one piece the same but it is clearly the same entity.

With respect to the second question, I will argue that although it is clearly a major cultural entity, in respects it is less successful and more problematic than one might have suspected back in the middle of the nineteenth century or than one might suspect if one knew only of its scientific success.