Reply to comment

In class on Thursday we discussed whether or not Mayr could have written this book from an observational viewpoint instead of setting evolution in stone as fact. In class, I thought, sure he could have done that, no problem, but when reading the this weeks reading it occurred to me that he wouldn’t have been able to write the same book at all. In order for Mayr to do that he would have to be a skeptic of his own writing, constantly second guessing himself, and saying a whole bunch of “could bes” and “maybes.” And in order to be “correct” that book would have to be filled with only what we know is wrong for sure. People don’t want to read about what is wrong, they want to read about what is right. Unfortunately for science, it is impossible for us to determine what is right, so textbooks are constantly going to be tripping over themselves.