Innovations in Education Series

Vol. 41, No. 4, October 2012
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Series Editor, Jim Evans, University of Puget Sound

We are happy to announce, with this issue of the HSS Newsletter, the revival of the column "Innovations in Education." A column of this title was edited for a number of years by Paul Farber, but it stopped appearing in 2005. Readers may wish to revisit some of the old columns—still interesting and useful—that are available on the HSS web site at http://www.hssonline.org/publications/archive_newsletter.html (scroll down).

In this feature, readers will have a chance to hear about new approaches to teaching the history of science. In this inaugural offering of the new series, Kristin Johnson, a historian of biology, and Ariela Tubert, a philosopher specializing in ethics, report on their new team-taught course on Evolution and Ethics. The editor of the column actively solicits and will be delighted to receive suggestions for future pieces: please contact Jim Evans (jcevans@pugetsound.edu).

Adventures in Co-Teaching History and Philosophy: Evolution and Ethics

Kristin Johnson (University of Puget Sound) and Ariela Tubert (University of Puget Sound)

Amid the hectic days of one's first years teaching an intensive load at a liberal arts college, meeting a similarly stressed colleague in the hallway between classes can make the difference between becoming overwhelmed by the minutiae of day-to-day teaching, and feeling part of something larger than the detailed success or failures of a particular lecture. One day a few years ago, we met each other between classes and, upon interrogating each other as to our mental states the first week of term, happened upon the fact that we had just given diametrically opposed lectures to our students. One of us (the historian, of course) had been lecturing her Science and Religion class on the fact that their task would be to emphasize descriptive analyses of ideas and their contexts, rather than making normative evaluations of arguments. The other (the philosopher, of course), had been lecturing her class on Moral Philosophy that their task would be to emphasize normative arguments rather than descriptive analysis. "We should teach a Connections class!" we concluded, in one of those moments that reinvigorate the big ideas of what a liberal arts education is all about.

The Connections courses at Puget Sound are a central part of the college's core curriculum, designed as a capstone experience that brings students from various majors together for an interdisciplinary experience. Often co-taught, they are also widely seen as one of the most challenging courses to teach. Students must take a Connections class to graduate, and, since the topics often relate only tangentially to the courses in which they have been immersed as majors for at least two years, one can easily be faced with a classroom of 22 students (44 if it is co-taught) wondering why they have to take this course. It is also a place where identities come under threat, as a cadre of well-indoctrinated science majors comes face to face with a dozen humanities students, and vice versa. These identities, formed through the disciplinary work in their majors, mean a lot to many students, and Connections classes are designed to break those identities down and return students to the complex nature of the real world by encouraging them to move beyond disciplinary boundaries.

Ideas inspired in such hallway meetings tend, of course, to be forgotten by the end of a busy day. But something kept the idea going, perhaps because we also hit upon a fun course idea about which we could both become excited, namely, the topic of evolution and ethics. We also received support from the powers-that-be, in the form of a curriculum grant that permitted us to spend a summer planning readings, discussions, and lectures together. We read with specific goals in mind, namely to pin point the key "big ideas" and "central questions" we would like to focus on, both for the course as a whole and the specific units within the course, and to make sure we canvassed a wide number of disciplinary approaches to the topic. This administrative support for our endeavor to create a new, interdisciplinary course was absolutely crucial. In our discussions we were able to experience (and practice) in microcosm what we hoped to bring to the course as a whole, namely how scholars trained in two different disciplines often bring quite different questions and responses to particular readings and topics. We got to experience how controversial much of this material is, and practiced crossing our disciplinary boundaries through careful listening and attentive conversation. We were able to see how differently we read texts, and discuss how our disciplinary training has influenced such differences. This also helped us think about what assumptions we might bring to both the reading and the course that may need to be made clear to students so that they can better navigate the interdisciplinary nature of the course, this university, and indeed, the world.

In the end, the course description read as follows: "This course provides students with an interdisciplinary framework from which to understand and study debates about the ethical implications of evolutionary theory. Drawing on historical and philosophical approaches, the course examines the effects of the theory of evolution on ethical theories. We explore a mix of descriptive and normative questions, alternating throughout the course between historical and modern case studies such as theories about the evolution of race and sex differences, group selection, altruism, and aggressive behavior. Students are asked both to examine the historical context of previous responses to these issues, and to think about the normative implications that may or may not result from different interpretations of the conclusions of evolutionary biology."

We framed the course based on the conversation that had originally inspired the idea of our doing a course together: the course would use a mix of descriptive and normative questions. In practice, this created a natural division of labor that, we hope, helped students navigate what they were expected to think about when the historian was in charge, and how they were expected to approach the topics when the philosopher was in charge. The historical side of the course asked students to develop an understanding of how questions regarding evolution and ethics have been addressed in the past, asking questions like: Within what historical contexts have people looked to evolution as a source of ethical norms? Who began the search for an evolutionary basis for ethics and why? What was Charles Darwin's response to the problem of the evolution of ethics in The Descent of Man, and how did his approach compare to others who endeavored to determine the implications of evolution theory for ethics? What methodological debates have taken place amid attempts to use evolutionary theory as a basis for understanding both the source of ethical norms and as a normative guide? And finally, what social interests have motivated attempts to develop evolutionary theories of ethics, from disciplinary competition to political stances?

The examination of the normative implications of evolutionary accounts of morality used a selection of the following questions in order to help students analyze evidence for and implications of evolutionary explanations of moral practices: If morality is selected for, does this vindicate morality? Or does it undermine morality's role? Is it possible to derive any normative conclusions from evolutionary claims? What sorts of observations of behavior in animals have been made that might be precursors to morality? Could we explain the development of reciprocal altruism by evolutionary models of repeated Prisoner's Dilemmas? Are there evolutionary explanations of commitment? How might evolution have shaped a "sense of fairness"? What role do norms play in the development of morality? What is punishment and what role does it play in supporting moral behavior? What role has group behavior played in evolutionary processes? Can evolutionary theory explain the existence of psychopathic individuals—individuals who violate the rights of others without guilt or remorse?

In an effort to pepper this challenging material with animated discussion and ensure the relevance of the material to students who may not have come with an intrinsic interest in the topic, we decided early on to include discussions of theories regarding the evolution of race and sex differences, and debates over group selection, altruism, and aggressive behavior as central case studies that could be examined from both historical and philosophical perspectives.

Upon moving from the planning stage to the classroom (we have taught the course twice now), we were ultimately not able to avoid the problem of students' disciplinary commitments. These are strong even at a liberal arts campus where one would expect them the least. Our efforts to model mutual respect and take each others' approach seriously, even when we disagreed, did not always transfer into the minds and mannerisms of the students. Our course description, proposal, and syllabus were all, of course, composed at our desks without three dozen students sitting before us. Translating the course description and its aims, including the aims of the Connections Rubric, has been challenging, frustrating, entertaining, and edifying—we have learned a great deal from our interactions with each other, with the students, and with the material. But frankly, after all the cerebral choice of texts, our work often seemed overshadowed by the constant challenge of first, going beyond their commitment to a particular disciplinary approach, and second, getting the students to do the reading (an informal survey of the last run—and a large dose of honesty on the students' part—revealed that they averaged less than 50% of the reading. Insert expletive of choice here).

The readings for the course were drawn from a variety of texts, both historical and contemporary. The first part of the course included excerpts from primary sources like Darwin's Origin of Species and The Descent of Man; selections from Hobbes' and Hume's writings on self-love and the moral sentiments which served as precursors to the discussions of evolutionary ethics developed in the nineteenth-century; selections from Herbert Spencer, Thomas Henry Huxley, Francis Power Cobbe providing support or opposition to the idea of an evolutionary ethics; and selections from work by Nietzsche and G.E. Moore exemplifying further reactions to and critiques of the work by Darwin and Spencer. In addition, we read large selections from two secondary texts: Bradie's The Secret Chain and Farber's The Temptations of Evolutionary Ethics. These texts helped us connect the primary sources to each other, and highlight some themes – like the notion of human nature – that come up repeatedly in the texts mentioned above. The second part of the course included readings from Wilson's On Human Nature, Singer's The Expanding Circle, de Waal's Primates and Philosophers, and Dennett's Freedom Evolves as well as shorter pieces providing historical background or philosophical critiques and defenses of these works.

Our treatment of Wilson's On Human Nature, for example, started with historical background to Wilson's Sociobiology: what may explain the strong reactions to the text and the motivations Wilson may have had for writing the book. In addition to trying to understand the historical circumstances that surround Wilson's work, we proceeded to examine his arguments with care and to look at the consequences his claims may have. We ended by considering critiques of Wilson's work including that developed by Peter Singer in The Expanding Circle—encouraging students to form their own opinions about Wilson's work and to defend those opinions with strong arguments. The different approaches that philosophers and historians bring to the table were explicit as we worked through this text, allowing students to gain a more thorough picture of the work than they could have if only one of us had been teaching the course.

The material for the course was extremely interesting and the discussions that resulted were fascinating both to us and the students. Nonetheless, putting this course together and teaching it was very time consuming and challenging as we inevitably had to delve into literature and issues that we were only partially familiar with before. We also found that some of the most fascinating issues required some complex philosophical concepts or historical background that most students in the class—who had little or no background in philosophy or history—were lacking. We often found ourselves coming to class thinking that we would be able to jump right into a discussion of a certain issue but realizing that there were a lot of background knowledge and assumptions that the students did not have so we had to slow down and take a number of small steps to reach the discussion that we were hoping to focus on. We now have a better sense of where students are starting at and we look forward to adjusting the course material and assignments accordingly next time we teach the course. This reaction from a student in a course evaluation exemplifies the spark that some of our best discussions were able to achieve "I found myself having many debates with my friends outside of class on the subject, and I expect them to continue."

History of Science Society