In October I gave my inaugural address at Middlesex University. It was entitled Calibrating Life, and this was the blurb used to advertise:
Evolution by natural selection does not merely build rigid, inflexible, innate dispositions and traits. Yet all too often a cartoon version of nativism is attributed to evolutionary approaches, and especially so within the behavioural sciences. One response to this has been to emphasize the role of development, broadly conceived. But this is not without problems – is development a part of the evolutionary process, an evolutionary process in its own right, or is it the outcome of various adapted responses? A discussion about this issue has been on going in the literature since before Darwin but with recent developments in epigenetics it has gathered pace.
In this lecture I discuss evolutionary theory, life history theory and its application to human development, focusing upon fertility scheduling and teenage pregnancy and motherhood.
Unfortunately the slides are not included in this film, so you may wish to close your eyes and not look at the be-robed speaker.
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