Human Errors: What Our Quirks Tell Us about Our Past
Thursday, October 21st, 2021 5:30pm to 7:00pm
: In person (Museum of Science & Technology) and Online
Online, Info and Registration
“Human Errors: What Our Quirks Tell Us about Our Past”
Thursday, October 21, 2021; 5:30 – 7:00pm
In-person attendees must RSVP by replying, with headcount, to sweet.science@tacny.org.
Online attendees require registration!
Speaker: Nathan H. Lents, PhD; Professor of Biology, John Jay College of The City University of New York
Talk Overview:
Dating back to Darwin himself, the “argument from poor design” holds that examples of suboptimal structure/function demonstrate that nature does not have a designer. Perhaps surprisingly, human beings have more than our share of quirks and glitches. Besides speaking to our shared ancestry, these evolutionary “seams” reveal interesting things about our past. This offers a unique accounting of our evolutionary legacy and sheds new light on how to live in better harmony with our bodies, in all their flawed glory.
Biography:
Nathan H. Lents, Ph.D., is Professor of Biology at John Jay College of The City University of New York, and the author of the popular science books Not So Different and Human Errors. He holds a Ph.D. in human physiology and completed postdoctoral training in genomics and bioinformatics at NYU. In addition to dozens of research articles and book chapters, his writing on human evolution can be seen in the pages of Science, The Wall Street Journal, Skeptic, Skeptical Inquirer, and many others. His laboratory studies the evolution of the human genome and the genetic basis of human uniqueness.