RIT Gannett Lecture Questions the Relationship Between Evolution and Medicine

Evolution and medicine will be the topic of the next talk in Rochester Institute of Technology’s Caroline Werner Gannett Project Speaker Series “Consilience: The Cognitive Revolution.”

Dr. Randolph Nesse, M.D., will present his talk “Why Did Natural Selection Leave Us So Vulnerable to Disease?” at 8 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 24, in Ingle Auditorium, Student Alumni Union on the RIT campus.

Nesse is a professor of psychology and psychiatry, and director of the Evolution and Human Adaptation Program at the University of Michigan. He co-wrote Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine. Nesse’s research focuses on evolutionary psychology and Darwinian medicine, as well as the evolutionary origins of emotions and how natural selection shapes the capacity for mood.

The Gannett Project lecture series encourages conversation about the ways in which natural selection has shaped our bodies and our minds. Talks by biologists, psychologists, doctors, anthropologists and philosophers will explore connections between the social sciences, psychology and science. Topics will be as diverse as family dynamics, the psychological differences between the sexes, the origins of the aesthetic sense and the adaptive functions of jealousy and depression.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit the Gannett website at www.rit.edu/~cwg/ or call 475-2057.