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The discussion we had on Thursday about people trying to turn science from a narrative story into a non-narrative story was constantly on my mind as I was doing the reading in Mayr and as I got further into the book I realized that Mayr was definitely one of those people.  As Mayr was describing the discoveries that people had made that created widespread acceptance for evolution he described them in an odd way. All of these discoveries were described in a way that made them seem as though all of these discoveries and conclusions had just been puzzle pieces that the scientists had found that revealed this pre-existing truth. He writes about the ideas people had before evolution was fully accepted as though they were the opinions of stupid hacks who did not know what they were doing. It is one thing to bee sure in an opinion but quite another to scorn all other opinions. Mayr seems to be so sure in the truth of the evolution story that he holds nothing but disdain for all other stories even if they were formulated before the observations that led scientists to the evolution story.