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Brian Regal, PhD
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| Welcome | Classes and Syllabi | Resources |
| Schedule |
NEWS: Updated November 17, 2009
Dr. Regal has been elected a Fellow of the prestigious Linnean Society of London.
The Linnean Society of London is the world’s oldest active biological society. Founded in 1788, the Society takes its name from the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) whose botanical, zoological and library collections have been in its keeping since 1829.
visit the society's web page http://linnean.org/
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Spring 2010: New course offered - Sign up now!
• HIST 3853
Charles Darwin:
A Life and Times
See 'Schedule' and 'Classes and
Syllabi' links above for details
NEW COURSE IN THE
WORKS:
• HIST 3854 The History of Pseudoscience in America
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Skeptic Magazine
on-line Halloween interview on Darwin and Monsters
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-10-28
Public Lecture:
Grant Museum, University College London, UK
"Where Have all the
Werewolves Gone? Evolution and Monsters"
Thursday July 9th, 2009 6pm Darwin Theater
Read about it in USA TODAY
http://blogs.usatoday.com/sciencefair/2009/06/darwin-did-in-the-werewolf.html
In Science
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/origins/2009/06/darwin-as-slayer-of-werewolves.html
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New Book:
Pseudoscience:
A Critical Encyclopedia
(ABC-CLIO/Greenwood) Available October 2009
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Latest Articles:
•
Entering Dubious
Realms: Grover Krantz, Science and Sasquatch
Annals of Science 66:1
January, 2009.
•
My review of the
anti-evolution board game
Intelligent Design
Vs. Evolution.
Endeavour magazine,
October 2008.
• Discovery Channel (on-line) article on the Georgia Bigfoot, with my comments. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/08/15/bigfoot-sasquatch-hoax.html
•
Listen to my Naked Science
Radio interview.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/967/
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My CV/resume
•
My Publications
•
Kean
History of Science page
http://www.kean.edu/~history/academic%20disciplines%20pages/history%20of%20science%20page.htm
•
Kean History Department Home Page
http://www.kean.edu/~history/
My research:
Also see my profile on the Department of History's faculty page
at
http://www.kean.edu/~history/faculty.html
The broad scope of my research concerns the history of human origins. My focus is less on human evolution itself than on an intellectual historical study of how scientific theories are constructed, and then perceived and used in popular culture, religion, and politics for extra-scientific ends. My first book Henry Fairfield Osborn: Race and the Search for the Origins of Man (2002) is an attempt to unravel the complex and contradictory nature of a theory of human evolution which was simultaneously scientific and religious and which was designed to show more than just where the first humans arose, but how American society should be ordered. Human Evolution: a guide to the debates (2004) takes an interdisciplinary approach by including such topics as popular culture, eugenics and creationism along with traditional aspects of evolution history to show the interconnected aspect of human origin studies and how they go beyond finding fossils, isolating DNA, and dating strata.
As an historian of science I am particularly interested in the relationship between professional scientists and their amateur counterparts. I write about how the fringe and mainstream interact, co-mingle and argue, whether it is over the creation/evolution debate or American national origins theories.
My current writing is an historical analysis of the lives of mainstream scientists--particularly the controversial paleoanthropologist Grover Krantz (1931-2002)--who believed anomalous primates like the Sasquatch and Yeti were real animals, not just relics of folklore or hoaxes. I have been ransacking the archives and libraries of North America and England using long forgotten letters, correspondence, diaries, and notebooks of scientists who researched humanoid monsters.
How I spent my 19th birthday. (On the Iron Curtain border patrol,
West Germany, 1979©).