How has the concept of the species changed over scientific history, and how does that matter for theology? Species Question (reading): Frank B. Livingston, 'On the non-existence of human races', pp. 346-8 (entry 56) in The Oxford Reader on Evolution, ed. Mark Ridley (Oxford: OUP, 1997) [available online] The tasks here: looking at ways of defining species (for instance, from lecture 4 or from items in the reading list), what notions are being used in parallel here to talk about a 'race'? Why does the author deny that the notion of distinct 'races' makes biological sense? How should the theologian receive or respond to this? Books on Speciation [relevant particularly to the question on this] Godfrey-Smith, Peter. Philosophy of Biology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014 [chapter on speciation] The seventh chapter, Species and the "Tree of Life"9, discusses issues related to "species"10 and other biological categories. The problem related to the attempt to answer the question of what species are, was, according to the author, one of the keys in the history of biology. Are species real units, objective aspects of the structure of the natural world, and perhaps the "essence"11 that separates one kind of organism from another? The author devotes this chapter to detailed answers to these questions. Basic notes taken James Mallet, 'Darwin and Species' in Michael Ruse (ed.), Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Important- overview/ summary. Need to take notes.
Richard A. Richards, The Species Problem: A Philosophical Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) [useful monograph directly on the nature of speciation] (new book) Summary notes. Richard A. Richards, Biological Classification: A Philosophical Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) [substantially similar to his Species Problem] Summary notes. Samir Okasha, Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 103-112, a few pages on the concept of the species. Basic notes taken. John S. Wilkins, Species: A History of the Idea (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011) Found a useful book review John S. Wilkins, Defining Species: A Sourcebook from Antiquity to Today (New York: Peter Lang, 2009) [a valuable anthology with introductions] (new book) physiological basis - Huxley Today we have something like a return to the 'morphological' account, but looking 'inside' not 'outside', with genetic sequencing. See James Mallet, 'Darwin and Species' in Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought (2013). Creation- On this, see my paper in Nova et Vetera (November 2018),
Relation of Creation to God / Divine Action- Returning us to more constructive accounts of the dignity of creaturely agency in the unfolding of creation. See, for instance, my paper "He Fathers-Forth Whose Beauty Is Past Change', but 'Who Knows How?': Evolution and Divine Exemplarity". Nova et Vetera 16, no. 4 (November 2018) and (for a parallel study with cosmology) 'Scientific Cosmology as Creation Ex Nihilo Considered "from the Inside". In Creatio Ex Nihilo: Origins and Contemporary Significance, edited by Markus Bockmuehl and Gary Anderson (Notre Dame, IN: University of