dfishervan's blog

For my final paper, I collaborated with themword to create a dialogue in which we explored our understanding of the social and natural sciences. As a natural science major, I first a wrote about my opinions and current understanding of the social sciences which is included below. themword wrote to the same prompt only she substituted natural for social. We then exchanged papers and videotaped the conversation on social and natural sciences that followed. Please check out themword's 4th webpaper and visit the link to our video to learn more about the discoveries we made in the course of this final web "event."

Storytelling has played an integral role in human life and for centuries, the printed book served as the primary means for capturing and transmitting these stories. The quest for technological advances also suffuses society and has expanded the number of mediums available for delivering a story. My “Stories of Evolution” course has been examining the evolution of literature and more recently, has focused on the effects of communicating a written story via film. Our class has neglected to discuss the impact of literary technologies such as audio books and ereaders, that preserve all of the word choices of the author in the storytelling experience.

            In “Darwin’s Dangerous Ideas,” Daniel Dennett equates the theory of evolution with a universal acid that cannot be contained and “eats through virtually every traditional concept” (Dennett 1995). As a premedical student aspiring to become a future physician, I was eager to discover the erosive effects of this universal acid on the medical field.