The Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories: EvoLit

 I've always wanted to read Darwin's On the Origin of Species ever since learning about evolution in biology class.  It only seemed right that I had to read one of the most influential texts that had ever been written or else I felt that I couldn't have truly said I love biology.  However, once we started reading the actual book for class, my sentiments towards Darwin and his book started to change.  What was once admiration and curiosity soon turned to annoyance and impatience.  Every page simply dragged on and on and on and on, I just couldn't help but only give a cursory read over most of the book.  Why did his summarized work seem so much more interesting than what he actually wrote?  

 I think now i'm starting to see it--the moment where our tightly-focused readings is starting to branch out and pollinate other aspects of life. We spoke about what is perfection...we came to a conclusion that perfection on a tropical island will be very different than perfection in the chilly arctic. One environment does not require that its species be more well-equipt..it doesn't require its species to be more resilient, faster-moving, harder working..it only requires its species to be somewhat suited to it. The tango of species to the environment is, in itself a bit of trade off at times. There can be more fluctuation in the environment which creates more fluctuation in the organism. And that is not to say that all organisms work perfectly in their environments.

Everything that we have learned over the past month or so has led me to one conclusion: Darwin has issues. I almost feel really bad for him. His personal life was depressing and his entire life's work is still misunderstood and hated. Plus we just spent the past month tearing many of his ideas apart. Evolution is not progressive or reliant on selection or competition. I really do think that Darwin is among the ranks of the dead who had groundbreaking ideas that have been grossly overshadowed or disproved by developments in modern science. While Darwin is an extremely important historical figure, I can't help but think that in the science community he is just a washed-up old windbag.

 In the book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Dennet brings up an idea that I had pondered in my first web paper. The idea that there are observations, revelations, and discoveries that are out there that may be key to understanding or enhancing a theory, but no one has connected it yet. Dennet talks about Mendel’s pea plants and the idea of heredity, and how his paper had been published without much attention in 1865 and then was found to be a key piece to the theory of evolution in the 1900s (Dennet, 20). 

In our discussion group on Thursday, we were discussing the differences between the differences in teaching.  Whether there is more benefit in a varied education with very little boundaries between the subjects, or in an education system in which students are tracked into a certain field.  I find it very interesting that different countries and cultures choose differently.  I personally believe students should all be exposed to all subjects, but later on be allowed to choose whether or not they would like to specialize or continue to explore.  This would allow for academic expansion and the students would be exposed to different fields and would be able to choose later on what they want to specialize.  After specialization, they would have had the exposure to ot

On Tuesday, Professor Grobstein talked about how evolution doesn’t strive to get to a place, it strives to discover new places. To compare this to creationism, this conjures up analogy for me: creationism is when your honey tells you to get dressed up for Valentine’s Day because he’s taking you somewhere nice. You don’t know the specifics of where you’re going, but you know that your sweetie cares about you is taking you somewhere that you enjoy. Evolution is packing up the family truckster and just getting on the road…no particular place to go. In the truckster, all I would be able to think about is what route to take, and in particular, how do I make my decisions if there’s no goal and therefore no framework on which to base them? Maybe I should just take

 I begun the Dennet reading, which really plays into what we have been discussing in class, basically what is evolution and what does it mean.  He brought up an interesting point in the beginning, that it took Europe a century to accept the idea that the world was not the center of the universe.  Copernicus and Galileo were the Darwins of their time, and their theories definitely rocked the general religious thought of the times.  No one could comprehend, or would comprehend the idea that the Earth was not the center of everything, because if it wasn't, then where is heaven?  Where is everything else in relation to the Earth?  People had to start thinking about their worlds differently, and it was terrifying, rightfully.

Yesterday in Prof. Dalke's discussion section, we talked about whether it was more effective to conceive of our eduction in terms of defined, separate disciplines or in terms of an interdisciplinary approach. We seemed to have a very difficult time coming up with an answer; some people, for instance, thought that we have the responsibility to teach people about "social Darwinism" (and the ways in which Darwin's theories have been co-opted) in a biology class, and others felt that that should be the territory of a history class.

We were talking in class today about how random change is inevitable in a species, and how changes are "selected" by the environment and thus end up being found in future generations. That's well and good, but we have a problem: horseshoe crabs (someone also mentioned alligators in class). Horseshoe crabs have been around for half a billion years, at least, at haven't really changed since them. Why, if random change is inevitable, have certain species (seemed to) have avoided it?