About Charles

Charles Foster (born 1962) is an English writer, traveller, veterinarian, taxidermist, barrister and philosopher. He is known for his books and articles on Natural History, travel (particularly in Africa and the Middle East), theology, law and medical ethics. He is a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He says of his own books: 'Ultimately they are all presumptuous and unsuccessful attempts to answer the questions 'who or what are we?', and 'what on earth are we doing here'?

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The Edges of the World

Nothing significant has ever happened or could in principle happen at the centre of anywhere. All innovation, in every domain (including evolution, the arts, politics and religion) occurs at the edges. Evolutionary innovation, for instance, cannot occur at the centre of a population - at the center of genetic orthodoxy -  for such centres are stable. Humans have evolved at and for the edges: we are quintessentially edgy people, and our thriving consists in acknowledging this fact and living in its light. This talk looks at this idea from a number of different viewpoints, and tries to construct a less unsatisfactory anthropology than that dictated by the ruling, self-serving, centrist view of history, and so to ask: How, being edge-animals, do we live best in a cosmos best described as a meshwork of edges?