Welcome ...

I found that the first four chapters of “What Evolution Is” by Ernst Mayr tied at least partly back to the themes that we have been discussing in class.  First, with regard to the “seriously loopy science” process, Mayr states, “What made Darwin such a great scientist and intellectual innovator?  He was a superb observer, endowed with an insatiable curiosity.  He never took anything for granted but always asked why and how”(11).  Darwin’s ability to observe, be curious, and learn from observations allowed him to form new observations.  I also appreciated how Mayr examined each of Darwin’s crucial observations in order to explain how he had pieced each of them together to come up with the theory of Evolution… the common ancestor, gradual descent, fossil records, and much more. The pictures and examples of the homologies between different organisms such as the human, cat, whale, and bat were also really interesting.  Last semester in Biology 101 we watched the stages of a developing chicken embryo.  In that movie clip, and in reference to the diagram on page 28, the comparable similarities between a chicken and human are incredible-especially in stages one and two!  I also felt that, in response to some of the other comments, while I agree that Mayr pretty much implied that he knew the “truth” of Evolution and focused way too much on “being correct”, at least he followed the process of proving other theories false in order to prove his theory “less wrong”.  Basically, chapters one through four laid the basic framework for what we should know about evolution as a story and as a process and I am looking forward to what deeper ideas the rest of the book will bring.

When I first began to read What Evolution Is, I was surprised to find that Ernst Mayr was telling the exact same story I had just explored in Evolution 229, last semester. But then I noticed that his way of presenting Evolution differed greatly. He claimed to be professing "facts," things that could "challenge those who are still not yet convinced of the occurence of evolution" (page 12), while expressing his argument in a manner similar to that of a story teller. I did not feel like I was reading a text book of facts, trying to tatoo different statistics on my mind, but, instead, enjoyed his leisurely and informative progression through history.

This, of course, is probably why we are reading this book, though Mayr's constant argument in favor of evolutionary truths seem to counter our recent class discussion about science's ability to only "get it less wrong." Perhaps he intended to write in this manner so as to appeal to those that are not in college, frantically studying the dates of the mass extinctions, ect. In this way, Mayr seems to be both preaching science while dumbing it down to make it more interesting, and less like a lecture. While I agree with this approach, I find it difficult not to analyze it, as he tends to leave out some important facts that were stressed in Bio 229 (perhaps they will show themselves later in the book?) For example, Erasmus Darwin was the first to hint to the perpetual transformation  of all animals and their progression towards higher levels of organization. Mayr does touch on, but hardly gives enough credit to, the other "fathers of Evolution, " especially Wallace, who drafted a similar paper to The Origin and actually initiated Darwin's decision to publish. Before Wallace, it was sitting in a closet in Down House!

In any case, I found the first four chapters rather entertaining, and I look forward to Mayr's development of the story of evolution.

-Tamarinda Figueroa

After reading the first four-ish chapters, I'm looking for a way to see how by discovering and believing in evolution, we are getting it less wrong, as opposed to the more widely accepted concept of finding the perfectly correct answer.  Through the first three chapters, I was having a hard time finding support fot the "less wrong" concept.  There were allusions to the concept such as on page 13, "such inferences subsequently must be tested again and again against new observations, and the original inference is either falsified or considerably strengthened when confirmed by all of these tests."  Most references to the scientific method, skirted on the line between the loopy and the linear that we discussed in class.  I was expecting to find in the reading one or the other, but wasn't able to. 

However, when I reached chapter four, I began to cosider the beliefs that came before Darwin and his revolutionary theories.  Here was Darwin, a brilliant scientist who found a summary of observations that proved the old summary incorrect.  Meanwhile, the creationist believers refused to accept this new, maybe not correct, but certainly less wrong, conclusions.  After the lectures on Tuesday and Thursday, I found myself looking at them, not as crazed religious believers, but rather as bad scientists.  Whether or not this is a worse label, I have no idea.  These anti-Darwinians refuse to accept this less wrong conclusion.  Perhaps the reason for this, in part, is due to the fear of being wrong.  As Prof. Grobstein said in class, good scientists want to prove the existing theories wrong, not defend them.  In the story of Darwin, I feel that we can find the two polar examples of the intro lecture from class.

The idea of evolution in the way of storytelling is interesting... it's interesting to think about how many of us have different beliefs about how we came to be, but yet here we all are, at more or less, the same place. We have scientific data- fossils, and a story, that can keep changing to work, to account for evolution, as opposed to the story of creationism, where a higher being is assumed.  It's interesting to think about why some of us think one way, others another, and some in a way completely different.. it was a very rare chance we came to be as we are- a very improbable assembly, and searching for where we came from- our origins- seems to be the natural thing to do.  It's interesting to think about what we've (possibly) evolved from.. from the tiniest of particles falling together by chance.  It's a tiny chance that we were going to come to be how we are now, and so, in that, I could see where there could be such an awe-inspiring reaction to this improbability, but at the same time, I think a lot in our world- a lot in our universe- happens by chance, because of the constant state of flux and change.. so the most improbable assemblies do occur, because, so many things are happening all the time that don't produce much (at least that we can see), and so the chance of some- of very few- highly improbable assemblies happening, wasn't all that improbable..(with the assumption that, if reactions are constantly taking place, sometimes they will produce something more complicated).. the whole idea of evolution- how we came to be, where we're going, and where we're from- will probably always be changing, but.. the more we're learning, the less wrong we're getting it, the closer we get to understanding ourselves.. and as it seems..we've got a long way to go.

Something that captured my interest in Thursday’s lecture was the brief discussion that we had about punning.  Although I do not personally share the linguist’s anxiety towards punning, I enjoy puns for the same reason a linguist fears them, the subversion of the integrity of language.  As I understand it, linguists think of language as a code, an arrangement of words and letters in infinite combinations, each permutation either yielding one definite meaning or no meaning at all.  It’s the same kind of approach that we are taught in elementary school through the scientific method –there is only one goal, the right answer/meaning.  And anything that isn’t the right answer (down to however many significant digits after the decimal point) is wrong.  Punning messes with the system: taking a different connotation of a word, which is always a possibility due to the fluidity of language, yields a different combination, and therefore a different meaning.  For example, if I say, “He ran for the party,” I could mean “he jogged to get to the soiree” or “he put himself forth as a candidate for the political organization.”  Same code, different meanings.  I love this aspect of punning.  It forces me to be more flexible, to be open to multiple meanings/answers at once.  It adds layers and possibilities rather than suggesting that our language is inevitably going to collapse around us like a house of cards.  In the spirit of the class, then, I’d like to put forth a potential analogy.  Language is not unlike DNA, the code for biological proteins.  Proteins are like sentences in which the “words” are single amino acids.  Each amino acid “word” is coded for by a trio of bases, or “letters,” and these “letters” are coded for by DNA.   If the DNA is changed in some way, thereby changing the basses coding for amino acids, then the protein will be changed.  Some times this is a bad thing – many genetic diseases come from mutations in DNA that result in a shortened or non-functional protein, a nonsensical sentence.  But sometimes it’s a good thing – it might enhance the function of the protein, like a more specific or better sentence.  So in this sense, punning is not unlike genetic mutation – it can enhance or compromise the meaning of a sentence just like a mutation can alter a protein’s structure and function.  Perhaps this thought is overly tendentious, but I found it intriguing and would be interested to know what others think about it.
Katie Baratz

In grade school and high school I have been taught that story telling is, generally, a practice of improvisation and creativity, making things up as one goes along, and that science is a definate practice that is set by evidence and documentation. It wasn't until class with Professor Grobstein that I learned that story telling and science are not only related but work hand in hand. From the prospective I have now it is clear that Darwin's work was full of improvisation and "looking outside the box"of other theories that were popular in his tim. Whether he was aware of it or not, Darwin was using scientific observation to eliminate the deffinately wrong observations in his attempt at "getting it less wrong." 
Like Darwin, authors use a system of "getting it less wrong" as well. They referr to that as revision. Anyone who writes knows that revising and editing is an arduous and tedious necessity, and it is the writer's way of getting rid of the "deffinately wrong observations" that they may have made in their piece. In this sense, a hypothesis or a system of observations is similar to the gathering of ideas for a story, a first draft is similar to the implications made as those ideas and observations are brought together, and the revision process, like I said, is similar to the collecting of new observations and making corrections to the original observations or ideas.

On Thursday when we were discussing the poem “On Beauty” in class, we briefly talked about how some kind of fear or insecurity kept many of us away from posing interpretations of the poem. It was an insecurity rooted in not feeling equipped with the proper skills for interpretation, which prevented us from getting to the “true” meaning of the poem. Immediately I thought about the nature of truth, and if it could even be applied to poetry, or if like in science it is not a process of learning the truth but of getting progressively less wrong. As reader-response theory would have it, the “truth” of a poem doesn't even exist until some individual reads it.

I think its interesting that we still feel that there has to be some kind of truth to literature, and that the way to get at that truth is by endlessly analyzing and picking apart passages, and that the people best equipped do do this are literary critics, or English professors or what have you. This feeling is so strong that those without a background in literary analysis feel anxious about suggesting possible interpretations. In this sense, a sort of scala naturae of the literate world is created; a hierarchy of more perfect and complex organisms, with only those at the top being totally equipped to appreciate literature. I can't help but feeling, however, that close analysis and interpretation is but one way to experience a poem. It is any less real or “true” to read a poem and appreciate its beauty? To allow it to simply make you feel?

Should children not read poetry because they can't get to the “truth” of it?

In class on Thursday we examined the poem “On Beauty” by Zadie Smith. The sentences and the structure of the poem were so confusing that no one was able to come up with any form of conclusion. However we read the poem and appreciated its complexity, trying to find a “truth’. The same dedication has been seen over many years, in the work of scientists to find a conclusion or “truth” in the theory of evolution. The more one analyzes a story/poem, the more one finds elements they did not see the first time they read it. A similar theory applies to the observation of evolution, at a glance it seems simple but the more you analyze, the more you find, however there is no universal truth.