Student Papers
As described in the Course Description, students registered for “Evolution and Design” have an opportunity to present their original research paper(s) to the class and to the general public via publication on the course weblog and via The Evolution List.
The final research papers provided here were submitted by students enrolled in the “Evolution and Design” seminar this summer at Cornell. All of these papers were reviewed and evaluated for final grades in the course, and most of them were presented in either draft or final form to the course as a whole prior to its conclusion. In this sense, therefore, these papers can truly be said to have been “peer reviewed,” as all of the participants in the seminar reviewed the concepts presented therein, and in many cases reviewed and commented extensively on the entire content of the papers.
Clicking on the links below will download each of the final research papers selected for publication at this website, in either of two formats. Links ending in (.pdf version) will download a version of the paper readable using Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Reader. Links ending in (.doc version) will download a version of the paper readable using MicroSoft Word.
In the spirit of our seminar, we would like anyone reading these papers to consider them to be parts of a larger “work in progress.” The arguments and evidence presented in these papers were developed by participants in the seminar in the light of, and in reaction to, the arguments and ideas presented and critically analyzed in the seminar and this website. Two criteria were used to determine which papers to make available here:
(1) the author requested that the paper be posted to this website, and
(2) the author requested that the arguments and evidence presented in the papers be available for critical analysis and evaluation. Therefore, in the spirit of our seminar, we invite anyone reading these papers to attack, critically evaluate, defend, and/or expand upon the arguments and evidence presented therein. As we all agreed at the conclusion of the course, it is only through such rigorous critical analysis that we can come to clarity on the difficult and fascinating issues involved with the concepts of design and purpose in nature.