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I believe Darwin is most definitely an empiricist. The ideas he writes about all come from his own experiences and knowledge at the time, the experiments he conducted, and what he observed. As a storyteller, however, I do not believe he is as agreeable. I think his overall story is good, but the way in which he tells his story is confusing at times, especially because he explains everything in great detail. Therefore, I sometimes cannot figure out or I forget the point he is trying to make. Professor Grobstein did say in class the reason for his dry writing is because he is an empiricist.

I do not think one can actually say that Darwin’s book is fiction or non-fiction. He was writing a story about what he believed in, but he did not have any tangible proof about whether what he was saying was actually true. Although the examples he provided are real, the idea he conveyed is not necessarily a fact, or at least not yet. I feel that people who like or do believe in Darwin’s story would call this book non-fiction and those who think otherwise may say it is fiction. I think the same concept holds true for the bible to smaller extent.

I also want to point out the branching diagram that was presented in class on Tuesday. I thought it was interesting how there were two branches within the squares (a green one and a blue one). We did not get into it in class very much, but I thought it was interesting because the idea thatmost people have about evolution today is that everything came from a single organism and evolved into everything that exists today. I thought then that the branching diagram should have only had one branch and not two. If so, would those two branches have met up further down the page? It amazes me that the possibility of having two or a few organisms to evolve from did not occur to me. It shows how much I am influenced by what I learn in school.