1. The world of science recognizes the important role of Charles Darwin on modern thought. As a great intellectual revolutionary, he inaugurated a new era in cultural history that puts him in the same class as Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. He established the theory of evolution, emphasizing the role of natural selection. He highlights modification and coadaptation, two principles  that spur the appearance of disappearance of new and prone to better survival species. If some of his assumptions have proven wrong (such as the role of women) or just pure speculations (on the transmission of traits), other claims such as the issue of ethics and the course of nature are still relevant.

 In Kenzaburo Oe's novel, A Personal Matter, we see an individual torn by the tragic occurrence in his Bird's family with the birth of a brain-damaged infant that contradicts common belief of  procreation as a source of satisfaction and temporary victory over death. Bird is laden with guilt and attempts to escape into the primeval state and nature of man. Given his own experience of man's destructive capability (World War and Japan), to what extent is he naturally justified to wish for perfection in his offspring and spare it embarrassment?

2. Adrienne Rich's claims and actions are inscribed in a wide climate of protest and claims grounded in the principle of equality for all human beings on both the individual and collective levels. Specific cases were lived on local, national, generational (student protests) or international (decolonization) scenes.  In a sense, social practice as it went against equality was often dismissed and essentialist traditional explanations rejected. She refers to these traditions as myths. On the other hand, there is a claim that stability of human societies depends on the smooth fulfillment of specialized functions by men and women, and that evolution (improvement) of society is closely linked to competition, therefore to natural selection. Taking this reality into account, how do you think social Darwinists could answer Adrienne Rich's main battle theme? Or how do you think social Adrienne Rich would respond to social Darwinists' insistence on the laws of Nature as seen on the financial world?

3. Morality is a very important component of stability in human communities. We often believe that accepted and adhered to morals have intrinsic and absolute values in themselves. But, history shows that if some elements in human morality remain constant, many others have changed or are construed differently depending on periods, societies, or even social climate. Would you admit with Nietzsche and Darwin that human morality rose as necessity and evolved along centuries, thus denying any intrinsic absolute value wrongly attributed to it? Which of the two explanations would you go along with and why?