The Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories: EvoLit

Last Thursday we were discussing the different stories that Paul had presented in class: The Great Chain of Being, The Tree of Life, and Emergence.  We thought, discussed, went back and forth on how to categorize each story.  Some were timeless others did contain a sense of time, some were foundational others were not.  But what stuck with me the most was this foundational issue.  The problem is that we are all incredibly different individuals with different cultures, life experiences, and hopes.  Therefore, every one of these stories (and many others that were not mentioned in class) could be either foundational or not foundational - it all depends on the reader.  There will never be one story that is foundational to all.  It is very similar

So, in class last Thursday we were discussing two different ways of looking at the progression (or I guess lack there of) of life, foundational and non-foundational, non-narrative and narrative, and came to the conclusion that many of us have a hybridized idea of the world based on both sides.  I still can't quite wrap my head around that.  It's true Darwin may have had a more hybridized idea, but I think that his text suggests that for several other reasons.  First, the times.  We can't forget that for Darwin to be taken seriously at all, he cannot completely discount religion, which had a very strong and historic base in society.

Today in Anne Dalke’s section of discussion, we were talking about religion and how to reconcile foundational, non-narrative stories (like the Book of Genesis) with non-foundational, narrative stories (like perhaps that of evolution). I identify as agnostic and became less and less religious as I grew up, but my mother is a reborn Christian. Whenever anyone in the family was sick or something was wrong, she would tell me to pray before I went to bed. As I got older and questioned God, you would think I would have stopped praying; but I also didn’t want to stop hoping for people’s well-being even though I wasn’t sure there was a god.

 After our consideration of "evolutionary education" in class today, I feel compelled to comment on how static standardization causes education to be. Beginning around second grade, kids are farmed to perform on standardized tests. Sometimes teachers' pay and school funding are intricately tied to how students score on the tests, creating tremendous classroom pressure on teachers to "teach to the test." The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act attempted to "improve" educational standards across the United States by declaring schools as educationally "fit" if their students met a certain tested benchmark.

I guess the idea or rather questions that that have been consistently present in my thoughts after this weeks readings are about human evolution. The idea/questions derive specifically from the fifth chapter, when Darwin states that variations occur due to environmental factors. So in the age of globalization and never ending changes in modernization (technologically, medically, etc.) how is human evolution affected? Humans are constantly moving from one place to another, encountering different geographical locations and facing different technological advances; are these changes allowing for the human body to adapt? Is this constant movement allowing the human species to evolve according to the environmental factors that affect it, or is it limiting the species' ability to evolve?

In part I am still stuck on our conversations from the first week of class involving the inability of science to find the truth.  In our discussion on the scientific method we were told that there is no way of finding the truth using science, but we are able to disprove things.  I would have to agree that when running a chemistry experiment I feel more confident in saying that my product is not something, than confirming its identity.   When I run an IR and find something uncharacteristic of my expected product I can firmly state this is not what I was expe

I was reading Darwin's discussion about how species should really be visualized in a much more fluid way than is typical.  Species are really constantly changing, and at any one time are just in whatever "form" that species inhabits at a particular moment in time (for example, Darwin mentions how sea shells will change color as they move closer to shore or into hotter waters, or how crabs can develop, then lose, then redevelop the use of their eyes depending on whether they live in a cave.  This made me think of our in-class discussion last week when people made claims along the lines of, "humans are de-evolving" or "humans have put an end to natural selection."  While I admit our advancements have changed our process of natural selection (glasses, contacts and lasik eye

Last week's group discussion brought up some interesting ideas that caused me to reflect. One of these was sparked by the question of what we thought about incest and the notion that we make decisions with our gut and spend our lives trying to find evidence for it. I was interested in the way in which these two played alongside one another, especially in the way that we saw this idea of gut decisions in action by being probed with this simple question. My initial reaction to the story of the siblings who had one raunchy night together was that of disgust. It was my guttural reaction associated with my socialization. You just don't do that. But then I took a step back (mentally), and gave it a second thought.

After we spoke in class on Tuesday about evolution/devolution, I started thinking about humankind today is perhaps the biggest force shaping its own evolution. This relationship is incredibly complex, and I'm definitely in no position to accurately predict what the outcomes of these processes will be, but a few human-induced changes to the way we evolve seem inevitable.