Public Lecture: Darwin’s Ape and the Progress Trap

6pm 22nd March, 2009

State Library of Victoria

The bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth finds the human race at a critical juncture in its evolution. The formidable problems of the 21st century, climate change, overpopulation, environmental degradation and severe economic and political crises prompt us to ask whether Nature made a mistake when she enlarged the brains of apes. Has mankind reached its evolutionary ceiling? A stage at which it is clever enough to get into big trouble or not, perhaps, clever enough to get out? Ronald Wright first raised these questions in his 2004 Massey Lectures and international bestseller, A short history of progress.

Darwin’s ape and the progress trap focuses on reading the human record from the Old Stone Age, through the early civilizations, to the industrial civilization of today. Wright’s lecture takes a hard look at where we have been and what that can tell us about where we may be going.