Teaching Evolution: New Text versus Old
by JoyPart I
Today I'm going to contrast my grandson's new high school biology textbook with my son's college freshman level anthropology textbook. See what there is to see about how the presentation of evolutionary theory has changed over the past 15 years or so.
My son's textbook is "Understanding Physical Anthropology and Archaeology," Fourth Edition, copyright 1990. It was written by Robert Jurmain, Harry Nelson and William A. Turnbaugh. It is my understanding that later editions of this textbook did not contain the amount of anti-theological argumentation this one did, but the fourth edition is a real classic for comparison purposes in how evolution was presented all those years ago.
In the Turnbaugh text "Darwin and the Principles of Evolution" is the title of Chapter 2. This chapter contains the most offensive anti-theological arguments. Chapter 3 introduces cells and the genetic code, while chapter 4 introduces Mendel and the modern synthesis (Neodarwinism). The book then goes forward into human diversity, the fossil and archaeological records, and the evolutionary history of life and social evolution in hominids/humans as is pertinent to the subject of anthropology. It's the introduction to Darwin and Darwinism that is pertinent.
Chapter 2 begins with a 3-page spread on the Scopes Trial with update and a promo blurb for the ACLU. In paragraph 1 of the chapter introduction (following the spread), the authors write:
Evolution - in the sense of the origin of plant and animal species through a process of development from earlier forms - was not a view seriously considered by medieval philosophers. Scholarly interpretations of the Bible, especially Genesis, had given European philosophers a [world view] in which change had no place. Evolution, therefore, is an idea that would not only have been considered heretical, but "common sense" of the era would have labeled it ridiculous.
This of course sets the tone for the argumentation in the rest of the chapter, about the personalities involved in developing the theory of origins Darwin formalized. In my last blog, I made mention of the fact that human beings have been practicing selective breeding of livestock ever since animals were domesticated, which occurred sometime before recorded history began. Selective breeding makes use of natural variation in species, and by breeding preferred traits (deliberate selection), those species were improved for their desired purposes to the humans who bred them. Thus neither variation in species nor selection as a significant factor in future generations were unknown to humans since before recorded history, thus these mechanisms of change over time could not have been as "controversial" as modern scientists (and textbook authors) have tried to make them out to be.
The first paragraph of the introduction to the second chapter of my son's college level textbook tells a blatant and ideologically biased lie. "Change" was not only well known and purposefully used by human beings for at least 6-7,000 years, it was well known and purposefully used by human beings in medieval times (when the Catholic Church held sway). I have never seen any historian claim that people were ever tried or executed for heresy for breeding sheep, goats, horses, chickens, pigs, or any other animal - including themselves. In fact, the monarchial governments of the times and the whole feudal system was predicated upon aristocracy and the selective breeding of aristocrat to aristocrat. Out-of-class mating was not just frowned upon, but punishable by death in many places - the REAL "heresy" that the textbook authors felt they needed to lie to college students about.
The anti-theological argumentation throughout the chapter doesn't need to be repeated here. It was offensive (and false) enough to have required a total re-write of the material in the very next edition of the textbook. My point being that as of 1990, science students were being introduced to evolution by means of specifically anti-religious arguments, made by scientists, as if such arguments established the veracity of evolution. Completely fallacious.
I'll highlight the improvements in my grandson's biology textbook in the next post. While I realize I am comparing a college level anthropology text with a high school biology text, they both introduce the subject of evolution as if the students were to that point unfamiliar with it in a scientific vein. Thus are, for that purpose, fairly equivalent.
January 29th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Part II
My grandson's new textbook is entitled Biology, the Dynamics of Life. It is a Glencoe Science/McGraw-Hill textbook with National Geographic features, and includes the NC-specific materials to be found at nc.bdol.glencoe.com website. It has seven authors and a copyright of 2005. While genetics is introduced in unit 4 right after a unit on cells, evolution isn't introduced until unit 5 (starting on page 366 and comprising 100 pages).
Unit 5, chapter 14 - "Change Through Time" - begins with an early geological and geophysical history of the earth and moves right into fossils. Section 14.2 - "The Origin of Life" - presents both ancient and modern ideas about where life came from (including spontaneous generation and abiogenesis. None of the current hypotheses presented for abiogenesis is given particular credence, and none are presented as fact. Just prior to the chapter 14 assessment there's a page labeled "Biology and Society" where the 4 hypotheses are given a paragraph each before finishing up with a two-sentence statement about "Forming Your Opinion."
The 4 origin hypotheses (in order of presentation): 1. Divine origins. 2. Meteorites. 3. Primordial Soup. 4. RNA world. the Divine origins blurb is the only one with two paragraphs. These read -
"Common to human cultures throughout history is the belief that life on Earth did not arise spontaneously. Many of the world's major religions teach that life was created on Earth by a supreme being. The followers of these religions believe that life could only have arisen through the direct action of a divine force."
"A variation of this belief is that organisms are too complex to have developed only by evolution. Instead, some people believe that the complex structures and processes of life could not have formed without some guiding intelligence."
That's it. No anti-theological argumentation, no historical lies, no position taken. Just short paragraphs describing the Creationist and ID positions, without even using the terms "Creationism" or "Intelligent Design." Whoa!!!!
After the blurbs for the rest of the hypotheses, "Forming Your Opinion" states quite simply:
"Review, analyze, and critique the different ideas about the origin of life presented here. Consider strengths and weaknesses during your review."
How refreshing! I am so glad to see that what my grandson is going to be learning this semester isn't propaganda, isn't lies, isn't biased anti-religious garbage… it's just facts and science, along with a lovely encouragement toward critical thinking! I won't have to waste any time at all trying to counter bigoted horsehockey coming from the erstwhile authority of the local school system, and he'll still learn the most valuable science he needs to learn to pursue his dream of being a paleontologist!
I'll add that in section 15 Darwin and natural selection are introduced, but I have no problems with the way these and other topics of the subject are treated either. I wish every high schooler in the country could be introduced to evolution this way. It's very encouraging to me that science (or at least the textbook writers, editors and publishers) are now paying attention to fact-based material and losing the ugly bias. I'm sure some parents around here may object to the subject on general principles, in which case they have the option of having their child not take biology at all. But far fewer will have such objections to this material than would have if the text were something as nasty as the one my son had to buy.
I wonder what the die-hard ID-critics of the Great Internet Wars would say about this. Would they be tempted to launch an ACLU lawsuit against McGraw-Hill, National Geographic and every school system in the country using this text, because it doesn't berate creationist or ID views? What about the exercise of thinking critically about the origin of life hypotheses, and open discussion in the classroom, which is not just suggested but required as "lab" in this textbook?
It looks to me like the "controversy" has engendered some rather significant changes in the way evolution and its sidelong fields are presented to the public. Such a change didn't come about because Neodarwinists and religion-haters such as Dawkins and Wilson [et. al.] have won or are winning the debates. Rather, it looks to me like evolutionary biology just might be about ripe for new ways of approaching open questions. As I have long predicted would happen. This makes me happy. How does it make our staunch critics feel?
Comment by Joy — January 29, 2006 @ 4:24 pm
January 29th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Hi Joy,
Many of our readers follow our blog through the RSS feeds we send out. But we only publish the posts as feeds, not the comments. So to ensure that everyone sees it, you should post continuations as new posts, not as comments to the first post.
Comment by Krauze — January 29, 2006 @ 4:41 pm
January 29th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
Thanks, Krauze! I didn't know that. I've got RSS capability, but don't use it much outside actual newsfeeds. I started to do it that way, then felt guilty for hogging titles… I'll change my ways!
Comment by Joy — January 29, 2006 @ 4:55 pm
January 29th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Joy,
My college level zoology book (© 2003) pitted Darwinian evolution against Christianity. It droned on about Ussher's genealogies and why Darwin proved him wrong [sic]. It neglected to mention:
-Bible scholars reject Ussher's claim (after contextual studies of the original Hebrew)
-Darwin was a Lamarckist
-there is a controversy over the mechanism of evolution
…
So, while I'm happy to hear about your son's (revised) book it still is not typical for biology-related texts.
Comment by Qualiatative — January 29, 2006 @ 5:05 pm
January 29th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
So, while I'm happy to hear about your grandson's (revised) book it still is not typical for biology-related texts.
Comment by Qualiatative — January 29, 2006 @ 5:05 pm
January 29th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Hi, Qualiatative. Yep, it's a generational thing (though this grandson doesn't belong to that son). Once the boy was in college I didn't interfere in anything he was learning, because that's what college is supposed to be - a challenge to your comfortable ideas. But in Jr. High and high school, I can sure as heck raise a stink, and have been known to do so when they teach idiocy or outright lies.
Ussher's timeline did quite a bit of damage, but it was never an "important" theological issue in any denomination of Christianity that didn't consider Genesis to be literal science. Again, this is the obvious mistake of anti-religionists who want so badly to believe that all of religion (we must suppose this includes Buddhists, Jains, Taoists, etc.) amounts to literal Genesis. Dumb and dumber, from people who pride themselves so highly on their intellectual superiority to us peons. Go figure…
Comment by Joy — January 29, 2006 @ 5:27 pm
January 29th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
You can rest assured that the scientific establishment will make it very clear to him in places other than his textbook that anyone questioning RMNS blind evolution is a religious nut job with absolutely no scientific credibility whatsoever. Faith in RMNS works the same way as any other deeply entrenched social belief system.
Comment by MatthewCromer — January 29, 2006 @ 5:35 pm
January 29th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Things are changing out there in the field, Matthew. Have been changing quite dramatically ever since the latest technologies for observation and measurement have been deployed. Which is at least 20 years, with some changes in research conclusions predating that by a decade or more. This is why I have been saying for a long time that science education is too far behind science, and wondering why that is so.
My Dad was a scientist and engineer who spent half his lifetime in Naval Intelligence. One of the only things he ever told me about what he was doing was that if anybody ever found out about it, it would be a decade or two, and not to believe it when they say it's "Brand New!"
Then he went through the "revolving door" and got to formulate ceramics for heat shielding on the Apollo missions as well as work with TI on nifty compu-gadgets for that goal. He used to bring home the most outrageous toys, including the first LCD watches I'd ever seen (I was a sophomore then), wanted me to wear one to school and tell all my friends they'd be able to buy 'em in another 5 or 10 years too! Boy, did I ever feel like a total dork! Who tells time that way?…
But the simple fact of the matter (per census data on science/technology/engineering) is that less than 1% of high school students will go on to major in some field of biology, and from there go on to careers. This means that the average high school teacher will have maybe 1 student each year (out of a hundred) who will take the knowledge forward.
So you've really got to wonder why it is that 100% of high school students are required by law to be indoctrinated into Neodarwinism, when it doesn't mean anything to them or what they'll end up doing with the entire rest of their lives. Moreover, why some small modicum of respect for the traditional religious beliefs of about 85% of them must be sleighted so confrontationally by anti-theological arguments disguised as science.
So yes, I am glad and relieved that it's changing for the public, at least around here. I don't doubt grandson will get confronted here and there with antiquated Neodarwinian ideas, but I know him pretty well. He's got nothing to prove to those folks other than that he's capable, then he'll go where he'll go with the knowledge. May even contribute a lot. Besides, this is just his passion. Paleontology doesn't pay well at all, and he knows that too. He has other ways of making a living…
Comment by Joy — January 29, 2006 @ 6:10 pm
January 29th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
Joy, how do you explain William Paley's arguments in Natural Theology, if variation was readily accepted? Paley argued that species are fixed, with little variation. What's up with that?
Comment by edarrell — January 29, 2006 @ 7:46 pm
January 29th, 2006 at 8:02 pm
Hi Ed,
"Paley argued that species are fixed, with little variation."
Really? Where did he argue this?
Comment by Krauze — January 29, 2006 @ 8:02 pm
January 29th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Don't know, edarrell. Maybe Paley wasn't a stock breeder, and didn't get out enough to meet many humans, dogs or other critters. However, since stock breeding and aristocratic geneologies have never managed to produce any new species, what reason was there for him to think variation and selection could manage such a feat?
Are you denying that humans knew about variation and selection before Darwin came along?
Comment by Joy — January 29, 2006 @ 8:04 pm
January 30th, 2006 at 1:40 am
Paley argued for fixed species in Natural Theology.
Stock breeding and agricultural breeding have produced several new species, at an increasing rate since 1859. Modern beef clearly are not the ancient aurochs from which they descend. Neither radishes nor broccoli are the mustards from which they descended. Any stroll down an American supermarket produce aisle will show many new species just in the last 145 years.
Darwin used the domestic breeding examples precisely because they were common knowledge and, when looked at without bias, they provided the refutation of the idea that species are fixed. As Darwin noted in those chapters, the variation already present in many species is quite sufficient to produce new daughter species, without any new mutations being added. One of the great reasons Darwin's ideas won quick adherence was his use of common examples, and his note that the evidence had been before everyone all the time (Huxley noted that Darwin's book was likely to produce dope slaps among the educated for having not thought of it first).
Knowing about variation and selection, and realizing that these simple processes were responsible for more than just fancy pigeons, fatter pigs and new species of vegetable, was a large part of Darwin's genius. As Romans 1:20 notes, the evidence is always there, right before our eyes. Sometimes it takes a Darwin to explain it to us. Once so explained, we cannot see the world in quite the same way again, the conclusions that simple processes produce diversity in life won't leave our minds, nor should they.
Darwin's argument, by the way, is a better argument for design than anything Dembski has ever offered, if one were looking for theology. Good design is marked by simplicity, and bad design by complexity. The algorithms that select for traits naturally are easily replicated by a breeder. It is the overall set of "rules" that govern speciation that are simple, not the species themselves, necessarily.
Comment by edarrell — January 30, 2006 @ 1:40 am
January 30th, 2006 at 10:18 am
Hi Ed,
"Paley argued for fixed species in Natural Theology."
Paley's Natural Theology is available online here. Where does he argue for fixed species?
Comment by Krauze — January 30, 2006 @ 10:18 am
January 30th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
edarrell: The only species-specific thing I could find in Paley's arguments (thanks for the link, Krauze!) was in Chapter V, section IV. He notes that we do not see the infinite variety of life forms one would expect of disorderly (i.e., 'random') evolution. Even though we can imagine any variety of chimeras or viable anomalies (i.e., one-eyed humans without fingernails, etc.). Nor does the fossil record establish that all possible viable life forms have already been tried.
This is an argument for the reliability of inheritance far as I can tell, which allows for the observable orderliness of classes, genera and species with no evident chimeras. Nowhere in Paley's work can I find an indication that he considered in-species variation the least bit controversial.
Moreover, because the term "species" is quite fuzzy, it is questionable that a Black Angus is a different species of critter than a Longhorn. Or that a Great Dane is a different species of critter than a Pekinese.
Recall that Paley published "Natural Theology" in 1802. Not only are his arguments directed against an evolutionary view, that evolutionary view obviously considered variation to be both 'random' and the source of observed biodiversity on planet earth. Charles Darwin wasn't born until 1809, and didn't publish "Origins…" until 1859, when he was 50 years old. He quite obviously didn't invent evolutionary thought, or either of the mechanisms attributed to "Neo-Darwinism" - RM or NS.
From Paley:
Comment by Joy — January 30, 2006 @ 1:52 pm
January 30th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Hi Joy,
Don't bother dissecting Ed's claims. His hit-and-run posts are practically legendary, and one of the easiest ways to make him leave a thread is to ask him to back up a claim.
Comment by Krauze — January 30, 2006 @ 2:16 pm
January 31st, 2006 at 3:25 am
Krauze,
Paley makes the argument in several different places, as I recall. In Natural Theology he states the argument in Chapter 5, at about page 65 of the text you cite, where he argues against variation:
There are other places that he makes the argument more directly, perhaps even in that book. I was unaware that the fact of Paley's claim would be controversial — are you challenging it?
Comment by edarrell — January 31, 2006 @ 3:25 am
January 31st, 2006 at 3:27 am
Krauze, unless you plan to keep banning me to your own Telic Thought Gulag, why do you continue to claim I'm a "hit and run" poster?
Triumph of hope over experience?
Comment by edarrell — January 31, 2006 @ 3:27 am
January 31st, 2006 at 3:28 am
Joy, yes, you've hit on one place where Paley argues against wide variation.
Comment by edarrell — January 31, 2006 @ 3:28 am
January 31st, 2006 at 11:08 am
So… are you now claiming that there is no discernible classification of plants and animals to be seen in nature? Where are the chimeras whose absence Paley cited? The mermaids and centaurs? The oaken 'Green Men'? The flower fairies, rock trolls, fire demons, halflings and water sprites? The lion-men, winged horses, and flying, fire-breathing dragons?
We can imagine all sorts of life forms that could live and be 'fit' to existence on planet earth if life were as randomly chaotic and unbounded in kind/form as simple variation-selection would have it. We do not see them. Nor do we see any evidence (beyond humanity's mythological storytelling) that such beings have ever existed on this planet. THAT is what Paley was arguing.
I do not read Paley's argument as being against variation, but as acknowledging the limitations of variation in kind. An appeal to reliable means of inheritance, something 'science' didn't figure was pertinent to their silly evolutionary model until the 1930s (when they could no longer dismiss objections like Paley's from people who had eyes to see). And Paley was arguing against a naturalistic 'hypothesis' of evolution which was obviously prominent in his lifetime at least as early as the American Revolution, the Reign of Terror and other such notable events of the late eighteenth century's erstwhile "Age of Reason."
Thus your assertion that Paley argued against the [obvious to anyone with eyes] existence of variation is erroneous. Any argument that Charles Darwin invented variation and selection as mechanisms of evolution - out of his 'genius' and of whole cloth - in the mid-nineteenth century would be equally erroneous. And anyone who claims that ID type objections to the 'hypothesis' that selection acting upon natural variation is solely responsible for the biodiversity we see were invented in the early 1980s doesn't know enough about history or science to be taken seriously.
I am not saying you make all these mistakes, ed. I'm saying I've seen 'em all, more than once.
Comment by Joy — January 31, 2006 @ 11:08 am
February 3rd, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Joy said:
Yes, that's what I said. Paley argued that there was not much variation away from species "type," something that he assumed. This is not demonstrated anywhere in nature. In fact, as Darwin noted, variation is so broad that in some places it is difficult to discern where one species ends and another begins — and today we have dozens of examples of ring species, where this issue is extremely well documented. Paley's claims of limitations on variation simply do not stand scrutiny, based on observations of living things, corroborated by fossils.
Can we make classifications? Sure. But can we really classify the herring gull as distinct from the lesser black-backed gull? On what basis? If not, how can we say there are any limits to variation in a species, if the variation includes speciation to the point of not breeding together?
Chimeras? That's Paley being even farther off base. Do you really expect to see them? Evolution predicts they won't exist in nature.
You ascribe to me and my argument more strawmen claims than I care to count, and completely miss the point of Paley's errors, and the points of Darwin's observations. It's enough to drive one to hit-and-run posting.
Comment by edarrell — February 3, 2006 @ 6:42 pm
February 3rd, 2006 at 6:43 pm
What text was that, Qualiatative?
Comment by edarrell — February 3, 2006 @ 6:43 pm