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September 10, 2001
Nature and Environment Lecture
Series
Announced for 2001-2002
Six eminent scholars and scientists will discuss environmental issues
affecting the future of the planet during this year's Edwin Way
Teale Lecture Series on Nature and the Environment. The series, now
in its fifth year, brings experts from a range of disciplines to
speak at UConn, to increase public awareness and promote
understanding of problems and possible solutions.
"The series promotes interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary
thinking, teaching and research," says Gregory Anderson,
professor and head of the ecology and evolutionary biology department
and co-chair of the committee that selects the speakers.
"Environmental issues are complex and multifaceted and cannot be
solved by a single disciplinary approach."
The lectures, which take place at 4 p.m. in the Thomas J. Dodd
Research Center, are:
- Sept. 21, "The Concept of the Intrinsic Value: Theoretical
and Pragmatic Considerations," by J. Baird Callicott, professor
of philosophy and religious studies, University of North Texas, a
past president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics.
Callicott pioneered the teaching of philosophy courses in
environmental ethics in the early 1970s. He helped create The Earth
Charter proposed for adoption by the United Nations in 2002, which
endorses the concept that nature has intrinsic value. He was recently
named one of 50 key thinkers on the environment, and is author of the
books: In Defense of the Land Ethic, Beyond the Land Ethic, and
Earth's Insights.
- Oct. 10, "Snowball Earth: Testing the Limits of Global
Change," by Paul Hoffman, Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology at
Harvard University, a geologist who studies violent changes in
earth's climate over the past 800 million years and has made
major discoveries about earth's history, including billion-year
old mountain ranges and continental margins. His research findings
challenge long-held assumptions about the limits of global change and
have implications for biological evolution.
- Nov. 15, "The Value of Nature and Human Physical and Mental
Well Being," by Stephen Kellert, a professor of social ecology
at Yale University. Kellert is a leading authority on human
relationships to animals. His books include Kinship to Mastery:
Biophilia in Human Evolution and Development and The Value
of Life: Biological Diversity and Human Society. He also
co-edited with E.O. Wilson The Biophilia Hypothesis.
- Feb. 18, "The Plaza or the Pendulum: Two Concepts of the
Ecosystem," by Mark Sagoff, senior research scholar in the
School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland. Sagoff is
president of the International Society of Environmental Ethics. A
specialist in environmental ethics, law, economics, and policy, he
has received major grants from the National Science Foundation and
Pew Charitable Trusts, and is author of The Economy of the Earth:
Philosophy, Law, and the Environment.
- March 7, "Humanist Environmentalism," by William
Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography, and
Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin. Cronon is a
past president of the American Society for Environmental History, and
has been a Rhodes Scholar, Danforth Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, and
MacArthur Fellow. His books include Changes in the Land: Indians,
Colonists and the Ecology of New England, and Nature's
Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. He also is editor of
Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature.
- April 17, "Forecasting the Future of Biodiversity in a
Human-Dominate d World," by Gretchen Daily, Bing
Interdisciplinary Scientist and director of tropical research, Center
for Conservation Biology, Stanford University. Daily is developing a
scientific basis, along with political and institutional support, for
managing the earth's life support systems. She has been honored
as Pew Fellow in Conservation and the Environment, and 21st Century
Scientist, and serves as a presidential advisor on science and
technology. Daily is editor of the books Nature's Services:
Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems, and The Stork
and the Plow: The Equity Solution to the Human Dilemma.
Carol Davidge
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