Every year, the department puts on the annual Gavan Lecture, bringing in a renowned researcher and honoring Robert Gavan who helped found the department.

Our speaker this semester is Dr. Daniel Nettle, a research at the Ecole Normale Superieure-PSL in Paris, and Professor of Behavioral Science at Newcastle University. The title of his talk is:

 The Biological vs. Social Divide in Anthropology: Why we should give it up, and why it’s the hardest thing to do

Anthropology, along with other human sciences, often finds itself polarized between approaches that are primarily ‘social’ or ‘cultural’, and those that are primarily ‘biological’ or ‘evolutionary’. These approaches, in careless talk and in practice, are seen as mutually incompatible and opposed. I will argue that the distinction should be given up: all social approaches are also biological, and biological approaches can also be social. There are not, in effect, two kinds of explanation for human life, but one kind with diverse details according to the case under consideration. Many people have made this point, going back many decades, but somehow it never quite gets a purchase. I will therefore spend the bulk of my lecture talking about why some kind of distinction between ‘biological’ and ‘social’ explanations manages to persist despite such good arguments for abandoning it. I will argue that the distinction is intuitive, based on patterns in human psychology, and therefore becomes an attractor. I will spend some time discussing what we might do to help ourselves give it up.