Details

ONSITE | Friday, July 21, 6 - 7:30 p.m.

Instructor: James Costa

FREE ($10 Suggested Donation)

Registration Required

Course Capacity: 50

Biologist and author James T. Costa paints a revelatory portrait of a revolutionary thinker driven by a singular passion for science, a commitment to social justice, and a lifelong sense of wonder. Radical by Nature is an epic account of the life of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), one of the most famed naturalists of the Victorian age, whose expeditions to remote Amazonia and southeast Asia were the stuff of legend. A collector of thousands of species new to science, Wallace shared in the discovery of natural selection and founded the discipline of evolutionary biogeography. Costa drew on letters, notebooks, and journals to produce this biography of Wallace at work, in his family life and in his complex relationships with Charles Darwin and other leading scientific lights of the day in Britain. Join us for this Golden Hour Library talk at the Arboretum with Jim Costa and learn about how the self-taught Wallace, rising from humble origins, doggedly pursued bold, even radical ideas that caused a seismic shift in the natural sciences and courted controversy while changing our understanding of our own origin as a species. Copies of Radical by Nature will be available for purchase that evening through Malaprop's Bookstore for the author to sign, then take advantage of ArborEvening in the gardens until 8 p.m.

James T. Costa is professor of biology and executive director of Western Carolina University's Highlands Biological Station. His books include Darwin’s Backyard: How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory; Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species; The Annotated Origin; and most recently Radical by Nature: The Revolutionary Life of Alfred Russel Wallace. He is the recipient of the Alfred Russel Wallace Medal of the Wallace Memorial Fund and the 2023 Stephen Jay Gould Prize of the Society for the Study of Evolution.

Registration and Participation in In-Person Classes through the Arboretum:

• Registration for this class will close two days before the class start date.
• Make sure you enter your email address correctly when registering.
• Registrants will be sent a reminder email the day prior to class with the meeting location, current Safety Guidelines, and additional details.
• Access to more information will be available upon registration via your account's Supplemental Content section (if applicable to your class). To learn how to view this information, please use this helpful guide.

*Please add adulteducation@ncarboretum.org to your contacts to ensure our emails do not end up in your spam folder.