1:09 p.m., Nov. 30, 2009----Rutgers philosophy professor Jerry Fodor will present “What Darwin Got Wrong,” the final lecture in the University of Delaware's Year of Darwin Celebration, on Monday, Dec. 7, from 3:30-4:30 p.m. in Room 120 of Smith Hall.

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Fodor, the State of New Jersey Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, has been a principal figure in cognitive science since its inception. Previously on the faculty at MIT, he has written such landmark works as Psychological Explanation, which helped invent the now dominant view of functionalism in the philosophy of mind. Functionalism, which says that mental states are constituted by their causal relations to one another and to sensory inputs and behavioral outputs, is a major theoretical development of the 20th century.

In his forthcoming book with co-author Massimo Piattelli-Palmarinin, What Darwin Got Wrong (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, February 2010), Fodor argues that the Darwinian account of evolution is committed to a fallacious inference from “creatures with such and such a trait are selected,” to “creatures are selected for having such and such a trait.” He argues that this fallacy is fatal and suggests new ways of thinking about evolution.

When Fodor first presented his critique on Darwinism in the London Review of Books, it “generated heated discussion on both sides of the Atlantic. What Darwin Got Wrong is certain to be as controversial as it is precisely argued,” Amazon.com notes.

The lecture is co-sponsored by the Center for International Studies, the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, and the Department of Anthropology, with additional support from the Provost's Office, the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Science, Ethics and Public Policy Program, and the following departments: Biological Sciences, English, Geography, Geological Sciences, and Philosophy.

UD's Year of Darwin Celebration launched last May in honor of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his landmark work On the Origin of Species. The series was organized by Karen Rosenberg, professor and chairperson of the Department of Anthropology.