Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Wilmington, N.C. - Author Michael Ruse will lecture on the creation-evolution debate at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 15 in the University of North Carolina Wilmington Warwick Center Ballroom. He is the featured UNCW Honors Scholars spring speaker.

Ruse, a Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University, is no stranger to the discussion and debate over evolution, creationism, and intelligent design. "I see evolution, Darwinism in particular, as the child of Christianity," Ruse has said. "As always with parent-child relationships, there is a somewhat uneasy love-hate relationship. You think that the child has grown away from the parent, and then in the half light or by a tone of voice, you realize that things are not so very different after all."

Born and educated in England, Ruse was, for many years, a member of the faculty at the University of Guelph in Ontario. Four years ago, he was appointed as the Lucyle T. Werkmeister professor of philosophy at FSU. A prolific scholar with a large body of work, some of Ruse's books include, Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology, Debating Design: Darwin to DNA; Taking Darwin Seriously, Can a Darwinian be a Christian?: The Relationship Between Science and Religion; Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction? and Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose?. His most recent work, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, was published in 2005.

Ruse is also the founding editor of the journal Biology & Philosophy, and editor of a series of books, Philosophy and Biodiversity (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology). Ruse is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has held a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was invited to give the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland in 2001. He was an expert witness in the Arkansas creation science test case in 1981. In recognition of his efforts to clarify important scientific ideas and to make them accessible to a wide range of audiences, the University of Bergen and McMaster University have awarded him honorary degrees.

The lecture is free and open to the public. It is being sponsored by the UNCW Honors Scholars Program in collaboration with the departments of earth sciences, history, philosophy and religion, English and psychology. A reception and book signing will follow.

For more information regarding the event, contact Bo Dean at 910.962.4181.

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