— Word limit: 1000 +/- 100 words –
– Question what are Darwin’s legacies? And while approaching/ framing this through darwin, implicitly also asking what the impact of evolution as an idea has has been on society? — Almost necessary to have a slight normative approach here, but it’s a good idea to approach this from a complex angle (it wouldn’t be easy to successfully argue that Darwin’s legacy is entirely good or entirely bad) — To some degree asking you to explain how Darwin’s framework of ideas have been applied (or misapplied) for social/technical/ biological problems and to demonstrate some understanding as to what rationalities in his ideas gave rise to the approach — It would be better to try to focus on more than just one thing (eg. don’t focus on just eugenics in different countries or just the capacity to screen for diseases for the full paper), but also keep in mind space constraints and balance breadth and depth of discussed topics —
Don’t get too bogged down in examples, while it’s good to reference the course material, you don’t need to spend 400 words on a single example. — Be sure to state your argument in the first paragraph. If it’s possible for you to map your argument (a little bit) in the introduction, that can be helpful. Don’t forget to re-emphasize argument in conclusion. — have an opinion, imagine yourself as a scholar of darwinian thought and legacies of darwinian thought, think about the pieces of Darwin’s legacies that are most important to you –
– Open-ended question so maybe a little scary at first. Ultimately, part of the challenge of this assignment, like many of the others this semester, is delivering and supporting a sophisticated and nuanced argument within permitted word count. We focused on the following topics in class so incorporate the following: — eugenics — epigenetics — Lysenko — how DNA and natural selection impact/dominate culture and behavior — natural selection –sexual selection
