Lee Dugatkin
Professor, Department of Biology
“With natural selection as a theoretical and conceptual platform, so many hitherto unconnected, disparate observations come together in a coherent manner – I see it in the evolution class I teach at UofL. When a student truly "gets" these ideas, things make sense in a way they never did before.”
The liberal arts foster a deep understanding and appreciation of the universe around us. They promote what is arguably humanity's greatest achievement -- Enlightenment thinking. This is surely a grand view of the liberal arts, so let me share an example from my own area of research, evolutionary biology (which, incidentally, my spell checker wanted to change to revolutionary biology, a remarkably astute suggestion) to illustrate.
Darwin's ideas on descent with modification, and the myriad of work that followed it, have forever changed the way we understand the history and diversity of life on our little blue marble. With natural selection as a theoretical and conceptual platform, so many hitherto unconnected, disparate observations come together in a coherent manner. I see it in the evolution class I teach here. When a student truly "gets" these ideas, things make sense in a way they never did before. Once you grasp the fact that we all evolved from a common ancestor billions of years far back in evolutionary time, a deep understanding of how fundamentally we are connected to all other forms of life on earth is sure to follow. With that, science and aesthetics can come together: the science of life hopefully leading to a sense of beauty and awe of the world around us.
