Nature and Culture

During the academic year of 2009-2010, the Institute will present a thirty-week course, "Nature and Culture," taught by William H. Fredlund, Ph.D., and Bruce Thompson, Ph.D., on Thursday nights. For five thousand years, the poets and philosophers of Western Civilization have asked profound questions about our human existence and its relation to the natural world that surrounds us. Are we human beings separate from nature? Can we change the natural world or does nature control us? Is there such a thing as "natural law?" Who made nature? How old is the natural world? Is nature "beautiful" or are we imposing human values upon a world that does not know beauty? These are just some of the hundreds of issues we will examine this year on Thursday nights.