The Voltaire Lecture 2009
| Venue | Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL | Starting at / on | 23rd April 2009 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start time | 18:30 |
"The Guilt of Science? Race, Science and Darwin"
A lecture by Kenan Malik
Chaired by Polly Toynbee
Exploitation, oppression, war and genocide – ‘scientific racism’ helped justify all this and more. And no scientific theory provided more ammunition for racial scientists than Darwinism.
So does science bear the guilt of ‘racial science’? How responsible was Darwinism for the outrages committed in its name? Was Enlightenment philosophy the ‘foundation of racism', as the historian George Mosse suggests, because of its ‘preoccupation with a rational universe, nature and aesthetics’? And did the scientific methodology help articulate, as the philosopher Emmanuel Chuckwude Eze believes, ‘Europe’s sense of not only its cultural but also racial superiority’?
In the year that we celebrate the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth, Kenan Malik’s lecture explores the relationship between science, race and Darwinism and challenges conventional views about the origins and nature of racial thinking.
This event is organised jointly with the South Place Ethical Society.
Cost is £5 for members of the British Humanist Association or South Place Ethical Society; £7 for non-members. Tickets can be bought online through the shop at www.humanism.org.uk/shop/tickets for those wishing to pay by debit or credit card.
Alternatively you can send a cheque made payable to "British Humanist Association" and clearly marked "FOR VOLTAIRE LECTURE" with your name and a return address, to 1 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6HD.
