Events

March 19, 2010

Erika Lorraine Milam, University of Maryland

From Fish to Man: Negotiating Human Nature with MACOS

Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science, Regional Colloquium

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Join scholars from the area at the Regional Colloquium in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine for a discussion of efforts in the 1960's and 1970's to teach the science of human nature. Commentary by Henrika Kuklick.

Please download and read the paper in advance.

Abstract: “What is human about human beings? How did they get that way? How can they be made more so?” These three questions formed the basis of a post-Sputnik social studies curriculum project in the 1960s called Man: A Course of Study, or MACOS. Using MACOS as her central case study, Milam investigates how and why Americans came to believe that we could learn as much about human nature by studying primates and other animals as we could by studying ourselves.