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The New England Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary
Psychology sponsors an annual William D. Hamilton Memorial Lecture on
some aspect of the interface between evolutionary biology and human
nature. Since its inception in 2002, Hamilton lectures have been
delivered by Robert Trivers (2002), Steven Pinker (2003), Richard
Alexander (2004) and Daniel Dennett (2005), and have attracted an
audience of scientists, academics and the general public from all over
New England.<br>
<br>
NEI's 2006 William D. Hamilton Memorial Lecture
will be delivered by Dr. David Haig, who will be speaking on 'The
Divided Self: Brains, Brawn and the Superego'. The lecture will be
held on April 28, 2006 at 7PM, at the Portland Campus of the University
of New England in Portland, Maine. Further details of this and other
NEI events open to the public will be posted, in due course, on our
website at <a href="http://www.une.edu/nei">http://www.une.edu/nei</a><br>
<br>
David Livingstone Smith<br>
Director, NEI<br>
<br>
<b>The Divided Self: Brains, Brawn and the Superego</b><br>
<br>
Biologists
have traditionally viewed animals as machines and their brains as
fitness-maximizing computers, and have emphasized the competitive
struggle <i class="moz-txt-slash"><span class="moz-txt-tag">/</span>between<span
class="moz-txt-tag">/</span></i>
organisms. By contrast, psychologists and novelists have often
portrayed minds as subject to internal division, and have often
highlighted the conflicts that occur <i class="moz-txt-slash"><span
class="moz-txt-tag">/</span>within<span class="moz-txt-tag">/</span></i>
individuals. Now biologists have begun to recognize conflicts between
genes within a single individual, an organism at odds with itself. I
will illustrate this with the example of conflicts between maternally
and paternally imprinted genes: genes that are expressed only when
inherited from one's mother and those expressed only when inherited
from one's father. <br>
<br>
<b>David Haig, Ph.D.</b> is Professor of
Biology in Harvard University's Department of Organismic and
Evolutionary Biology. He is an evolutionary geneticistwith a
particular interest in genomic imprinting and relations between parents
and offspring. He was born in Canberra, Australia, and did graduate
research the evolution of plant cycles at Macquarie University in
Sydney. After completing his PhD, Dr. Haig went to Oxford where he
further developed his ideas on genomic imprinting and developed an
interest in the conflicts between mother and fetus during human
pregnancy. He then moved to Harvard, where he was nominated for the
Harvard Society of Fellows, and where he continues his interest in
conflicts within the genome. He is the author of <i>Genomic Imprinting
and Kinship</i> ( Rutgers, 2002) as well as numerous scientific papers,
many of which are available on his web page at <a
href="http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/faculty/haig/HaigHome.htm">http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/faculty/haig/HaigHome.htm</a>
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