Jill Lepore, staff writer for The New Yorker, presents the 2010 Baskes Lecture in History. “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” is a question first asked by Aristotle. “A bird comes from an egg,” he answered. But it wasn’t until the 17th century that William Harvey, physician to the King of England, proved that mammals come from eggs. Harvey went further—ex ovus omnia—all the world comes from an egg. Even people, he believed but could not prove, came from eggs. In this lecture, Lepore asks, what happened when scientists discovered a whole New World, a life before birth? Lepore is a professor of American history at Harvard and studies the history of colonial, Revolutionary, and antebellum America.
This annual lecture recognizes a generous multiyear contribution to the Chicago Humanities Festival by Julie and Roger Baskes.
Read the CHF blog post about this program.
