ELON COLLEGE – Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, one of the nation’s leading scientists, will discuss the significance of the millennium during an April 6 speech at Elon College.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Alumni Memorial Gymnasium in Koury Center. The speech is part of Elon’s annual honors convocation, which celebrates the academic achievement of the college’s top students. The new Dalton L. McMichael Sr. Science Center will be dedicated prior to the convocation.
Gould, an evoluntionary biologist, is a popular interpreter of science and its complex social consequences. In his new book, “Questioning the Millennium,” he answers three major questions that define the approaching calendrical event. First, what exactly is the concept of a millennium and how has its meaning shifted? Second, how did the name for a future thousand-year reign of Christ on earth get transferred to the passage of time of a secular period of a thousand years in current human history? And when does the millennium begin: January 1, 2000 or January 1, 2001?
Gould is president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nation’s largest scientific organization. He is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and a professor of geology at Harvard University. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including the “Mismeasure of Man,” which won the National Book Critic’s Circle award. He is also an essayist for Natural History Magazine.
-30-