Evolution
Readings in Intersections. Raise questions about evolution and what knowledge of evolution has meant and may mean.
Belsie, 10
>> What are the surprising findings in human genetics, according to Belsie?
- #8, domains;
- #10 bacterial origin of 200 genes (does this challenge standard evolution?);
- #12 African gene pool more diverse;
- #17 genetic testing by employers already happening:
#16. Genetic discrimination Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (google.com):
April 10, 2001: Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF) agreed to settle a union lawsuit against secret genetic testing: http://ehstoday.com/news/ehs_imp_34278/
May 8 2002 Company news release. Company has agreed to stop, pay $2.2 million in settelement of claim by workers; was in violation of Americans with Disabilities Act.
May 9 2002. Duke Law & Technology Review. The employers' dilemma in USA: "A toss of the coin": http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2002dltr0015.html
-- see suggestion For Writing, 1. further instances? Discuss >>
#9. chimpanzee genome:
August 31 2005. NewScientist.com. "looking for signs of rapid evolution" to discriminate human from chimp evolution.
April 5 2004. BBC News. "The human and chimpanzee genomes differ by just 1.2% between the coding genes." In humans, language gene selected 200,000 years ago. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3594937.stm
>> why does this matter? (human distinctiveness; illuminates course of evolution). Discuss >>
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Darwin, 20
Not the first to propose an evolution theory:
Evolution proposals: Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802); Lamarck (1744-1829); Robert Chambers (1802-1871); Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913); Charles Darwin (1809-1892). Origin published 1859. And see Hardison, p. 58
- #1. Geographical dispersion over time; separate forms evolve from single species;
- #2. ocean islands few species, those that can travel; no creationism here (unless God trying to test us! Cf. Philip Henry Gosse, Omphalos (1857). Problem also of age of the earth)
- #3. similarities in species in a given region traced to presence of parent ancestors; similarities between island species and nearest mainland.
- #4. classification of species into families, etc.; what characteristics facilitate this.
- #5. Similarities in organs of different species, notably so in embryos
- #6. Disuse of an organ leaves rudimentary traces in young, e.g., teeth in calf.
>> What is "literary" here? Effect on readers? Discuss >>
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Hardison, 57
O. B. Hardison, Jr., from Preface to Disappearing (1989):
Disappearing Through the Skylight is about change in modern culture. It examines five basic and interrelated areas -- nature, history, language, art, and human evolution -- reviewing the ways in which central concepts in each area have changed since the beginning of the present century [i.e., since 1900]. Because the changes have been fundamental, the concepts -- and even the vocabularies and images in which the concepts tend to be framed -- no longer seem to objectify a real world. It is as though progress were making the real world invisible. (xi)
Interrelation of the five areas:
Darwin explains the theory of natural selection in a prose that is laden with aesthetic and ethical values and is frequently poetic. A few years later, Ferdinand Brunetière, a critic, writes a history of literature entitled The Evolution of Literary Genres. (xiii) [cf. Colin Martindale, The Clockwork Muse (1990)]
- #9. Literary qualities of Darwin.
- #10. Audubon's Birds of America
- #16. Darwin's poetic language. -- Harmony and beauty in nature emerge out of struggle.
- #18. unites scientific and literary in his prose
- #21. Darwin's elegy for extinct species
- #23. Spencer, "survival of the fittest," and other spin-offs
- #25. attacks on Darwin's ideas: materialist, against Bible, that man an animal
Two cultures issue (C. P. Snow), again (cf. Ozick, 147-8)
>> role of imagination: see #28. Discuss >>
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>> Respond to one or more of the three essays on the topic of evolution. Frame your discussion in the context of one of these statements:
- Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance (Confucius)
- For knowledge itself is power (Bacon)
- He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow (Ecclesiastes i. 18.)
- The Faustian contract (in exchange for a few years of power, Faust signs his soul to the devil for eternity)
- When a man's knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has, the greater will be his confusion (Spencer)
- We want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know . . . our calculations have outrun conception; we have eaten more than we can digest (Shelley)
- Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people (John Adams)
- You can do anything you think you can. This knowledge is literally the gift of the gods, for through it you can solve every human problem. (Robert Collier)
Document created November 27th 2006 / updated November 24th 2008