One foot, other foot,
One foot, other foot,
Now you can do
Whatever you want,
Whatever you want to do.
Here you are in a wonderful world,
Especially made for you . . .
Oscar Hammerstein II, Allegro
On Monday, March 24 at 5 pm Eastern Time, Dartmouth Professor Jeremy DeSilva will be our guest for a Casual Conversation about his work on bipedalism, the history and consequences of humans walking on two feet on the ground. Professor DeSilva is Chair of the Anthropology Department at Dartmouth, and his College information site can be found here, which has links to both his cv and his personal website:https://anthropology.dartmouth.edu/people/jeremy-desilva .
Professor DeSilva is our second Dartmouth Chair to join us, the first being the then-Chair of the History Department, Professor Cecilia Gaposchkin, a medievalist. Later in the year, we will host a third department chair for a Casual Conversation, Physics Professor Ryan Hickox, whose subject is supermassive black holes and the origins of the universe. That is quite a range of disciplines. Cf., Stanley Kubrick, below.
Professor DeSilva has written a superb book about human walking on two legs: First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human (HarperCollins 2021; Harper Paperbacks 2022). He states that, when he stood on a stage with a paleoanthropologist in 2002, he “wanted to learn how scientists squeeze information out of these ancient bones. I wanted to tell evidence-based stories about our ancestors. I wanted to be a paleoanthropologist.” Professor DeSilva achieved all of those goals, and in telling evidence-based stories in his book, he gives us a deeper understanding than we would otherwise have by reading the newspapers or even the science press, of the course of the human development of locomotion and what it means to humankind.
Along the way, he punctures some myths, such as the one promulgated by Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. No, it wasn’t weapon-holding that caused bipedalism. Importantly, he explains how science works by describing theories offered and evidence causing those theories to be reformulated or discarded. Always learning, always searching for more information, always challenging yourself and others, not accepting the “truth” of received wisdom; discovering along the way misinterpretations, misunderstandings, unexplained gaps. In reading First Steps Professor DeSilva gives you a course not only in bipedalism but also in the scientific process.
Essential to understanding the scientific process is appreciating the human role in its advancement, and in this Professor DeSilva excels. He provides short, informative sketches of many of the figures in the development of our understanding of bipedalism, from fossil hunters in Kenya to a physical therapist in the United States. Along the way, he discusses how babies take their first steps (and the genetic prefiguring of walking that is apparent even before birth), and why we, in our eighth decade (and for many even before), face costs of bipedalism in our knees and spine, among many body parts.
Professor DeSilva ends on an optimistic note:
I would argue that the human experience would not have been possible unless we descended from social apes capable of empathy—that bipedalism could have evolved only from a lineage that had developed the capacity for tolerance, cooperation, and caring for one another.
Find out how and why Professor DeSilva came to this belief and to the many other conclusions described in his book. Join us on Monday, March 24 at 5 pm Eastern Time, and let me know if you intend to be part of this conversation by Saturday, March 22, by emailing me at
arthur.fergenson@ansalaw.com .
Arthur Fergenson
There's a kind o' walk you walk
When somebody loves you,
That's very much like walking on a cloud.
Good fortune found you, chappie,
And your lives are happy, Valentine.
When you're walking happy
Don't the blooming world seem fine.
Sammy Cahn, Walking Happy