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Sophiaolender's picture

Biological evolution as a story

The most interesting thing about reading Darwin's The Origin of Species is the fact that it is a narrative. The idea of it being a non-fictional narrative turns into a sort of autobiography, a story on Darwin's life.. on his discoveries. This class baffled me at first because I did not understand that we were reading it as a non-fiction. I thought we were being asked to read Darwin as a story - more as a fictional encounter. This proved impossible for me, because as much as I tried to tell myself that Darwin's ideas could be wrong, and that this could just be a hypothetical history of the world, I couldn't make myself believe it. Although Darwin's ideas are complex, and the idea of evolution is extremely difficult and almost impossible to believe that such amazing things could happen through such tiny and slow changes, it still makes sense. I consistently wonder how come the majority of our world believes in evolution. It must just be the fact that we are taught it an early age. I guess that makes sense -- the things we learn when we are young are the things that stick. Like language. Maybe evolution is the language we are taught an early age. What if evolution is proven incorrect? Dennet states that Darwin's ideas, even if proven false, will have been worth it, because they will have annihilated a former set of ideas. In my opinion, if proven false, maybe we would have no idea how to view the world, how to proceed in the way we do currently. Maybe we hold onto this idea because  without it, we would be lost. Like if all of a sudden, we abolished the English language. How would we carry on? This is not me lashing back at the idea of evolution - I am not saying I doubt biological evolution - this was just an idea.

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