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'Apes Like us: Confessions of a Primatologist' Prof Volker Sommer

Publication date: Jan 31, 2012 12:08:51 PM

Start: Feb 2, 2012 7:00:00 PM

Location: Anatomy G04 Gavin de Beer LT, GOWER STREET, LONDON, WC1E 6BT

UCL_EVENTS


Professor Volker Sommer will be giving a public lecture for UCLU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society on Thursday evening 2 February. Drink and interesting debate guaranteed!

Current evolutionary thought is not only of scientific importance, but has major philosophical consequences for questions related ...to ethics and "the meaning of life". Studies of great apes in particular challenge our deep-rooted tendency to distinguish "humans" from "animals" - as well as the dualism of "mind" and "body". As a consequence, it is increasingly debated if apes are "persons", if the genus Homo should be enlarged to include chimpanzees (as Homo troglodytes) and bonobos (as Homo paniscus), and if evolutionary theory lends itself to worldviews that embrace materialism and atheism. Volker Sommer illustrates these controversial positions with findings from research on our closest living relatives.

Volker Sommer is Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at UCL. He conducts long-term research into the ecology and behaviour in monkeys and apes in India, Thailand and Nigeria and is an advisor to Giordano-Bruno-Foundation, a German-based think-tank on secular evolutionary humanism.