News Release

The Philosophy Department of The Johns Hopkins University will present a series of talks by philosopher Philip Kitcher, this year's Thalheimer Lectures guest speaker. The series, titled "Evolution, Altruism and Morality," features three lectures by Kitcher, a professor at Columbia University and one of the country's most distinguished philosophers of science. The first lecture, "The Springs of Sympathy," will take place on Wednesday, Feb. 28; the second, "Possibilities of Altruism," on Thursday, March 1; and the third, "Genealogy of Morals" will occur on Friday, March 2. Each lecture begins at 4:30 p.m. in the Garrett Room of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library and is free and open to the public.

Philip Kitcher was born in London in 1947 and spent his early life in Eastbourne, Sussex, on the south coast of England. He studied mathematics at Christ's College, Cambridge, and earned his doctorate at Princeton University. After working on the philosophy of mathematics early in his career, he began to write about issues in the philosophy of biology and in general philosophy of science. He is currently examining the ethical and political constraints on scientific research, the evolution of altruism and morality and the apparent conflict between science and religion. His books include Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism; Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest For Human Nature; and The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities.

The Thalheimer Lectures was established in 1967 through a gift from the Alvin and Fanny Blaustein Thalheimer Foundation to Hopkins' Department of Philosophy to fund a lecture series approximately every second year that addresses philosophy or the relation of philosophy and other disciplines and issues.