Too many creationists (I could have ended right there, eh?) seem to think that 1859, the publication of The Origin of Species, marks this definitive barrier between light and dark. Before Darwin’s opus hit the stands everyone knew the earth was six thousand years old and all the animals were descended from the handful on Noah’s big boat. But after that evil screed appeared Satan took a firm hold and it’s been hell on earth ever since.
Well-informed people know the story is much more gradual, and far, far more interesting. Today we benefit from the accumulated hard work (often very dangerous work!) of thousands and thousands of individual scientists, each building upon previous work and contributing their own to a body of knowledge that now explains the natural world better than anything in the past. Each month journals are published with new research in a continual, global enterprise putting pieces into an ever expanding jigsaw puzzle. It’s damn fun stuff!
I never thought I was interested in the history of science, much, until I started reading David Young’s The Discovery of Evolution. Now I’m not even sure where I go this book, but it had been on my shelf a while before I picked it up and took it some place to read over lunch one day. I hope I didn’t steal it, but if I did I’d like whoever I took it from to know I really, really enjoyed reading it. (Just kidding. I didn’t steal it.)
The takeaway message for me, one I may have known on some superficial level, but one I came to appreciate once I knew more of the details, is what a complex and fascinating interlocking web of knowledge the whole of the natural sciences comprise. The Discovery of Evolution details a journey through time taken by the individuals who not just contributed knowledge, but helped construct the scientific enterprise itself.
Early in the book we learn that the very nature of knowledge itself has changed, especially when applied to science. In the first chapter is a drawing of what I thought was a man wearing a fish costume. “The need for firsthand observation in the natural sciences is shown by this illustration of a fish,” reads the caption. It concludes, “which was said to have the form of a monk. It comes from a book published by Pierre Belon in 1553.” Wow.
Young also cited an “English Bestiary from the mid-thirteenth century” that gives a couple of pages to the hyaena. “There is an animal called a hyaena, which lives in the graves of dead men and feeds on their bodies.” It then discusses its “symbolic significance, with a string of quotations from the Bible.” Sounds like a post on the Answers in Genesis web site, doesn’t it? At least now we know the historical context in which their “research” fits, don’t we?
In the same chapter we’re introduced to men like Edward Topsell, John Ray, and Francis Willughby, who endeavored to create “a soundly based classification of both plants and animals.” Science was now underway!
Young also gives informative accounts of the beginnings of modern geology, biology, paleontology, and reading this rich history you quickly come to understand how these disciplines all contributed and even came to make more sense as they constructed an evolutionary history of life on earth.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who doesn’t consider themselves very knowledgeable on the history of science, especially as it regards to evolution. I’m certainly not, and this book more than any other I’ve read before made me want to learn more and more about how we came to know what we know today, who the players were and what their experiences were like. When you begin to understand the path science has taken to reach where we are now I believe you gain a deeper appreciation for those practicing the art today.
(I’m actually going to go ahead and start this book again.)
The astonishing thing about religious opponents of evolution is how completely *deliberately* ignorant they are of the history or the base premises. I could probably come up with the basic timeline of the history of the Hebrews presented in the Old Testament and give a good rough sketch of Jesus’ life, and most likely knock off a good number of the 10 commandments while I was at it. However, the shoe does not go on the other foot.
Most religious people who do not believe evolution is reality can’t tell you one thing beyond “Charles Darwin.” They can’t name even one of Darwin’s base premises–that more organisms are born than could ever survive, that some traits are more advantageous than others in the environment they happen to be in, that some of the traits are heritable, and that therefore those traits that are more advantageous will tend to become more common as the offspring with the advantage are more successful at reproducing themselves.
They also act as if educating themselves is some crime against nature–pardon me, against godd. I’ve researched the bible as well as just plain read it, but heaven forbid learning take time and effort. It took *me* (BS in Biology) all the way through to my 3rd year in college to learn some of the really cool details about evolutionary mechanisms–and that’s not even the latest and greatest, that’s just a solid foundation. Ask someone of the religious-fanatic nature to read up on evolution with an open mind and you’ve committed a sin–literally.
The same religious people who don’t believe in evolution will take their kid in to the doctor to get an X-ray for a broken arm. They’ll climb in their car or use an iPhone without expecting to know how those things operate; they accept that all the scientific principles that are required for it to operate do, in fact, form the basis of reality. But turn around and talk about applying the same technology that spawned the X-ray, the same SCIENCE that led to the existence of their iPhone, and you’re being just plain hateful.
Weird.
K Wolf…I’d say you’re an exception when you say you’ve read and researched the bible. Good on you! When reading books by well-known people you’d expect to have done some research on what they’re talking about, I find they’re as ignorant of what the bible actually says as creationists are of evolution. Both find it much easier to just quote-mine the other writings and set up a strawman.
I’m very appreciative of people who have taken the time to learn (e.g. Dr. D. Prothero who learned Koine Greek, Hebrew, and studied theology and conversed with knowledgeable people), and then write really good books (e.g. Dr. Prothero’s book on Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters). And over at Panda’s Thumb I’ve noticed a few of the contributors also have taken an effort to learn theology and history.
Unfortunately, commenters often miss the lessons from the people who have studied this, and just reiterate the same misunderstandings they’ve probably had for years. It isn’t just creationists who seem incapable of learning something that contradicts what they think is true.
Not that everyone should (or has the time to) learn theology, history, other languages. I just wish those that haven’t had the time keep quiet and stick to what they do know (e.g. the science, rather than their half-baked juvenile versions of theology) because creationists pick up there misunderstandings and display them to others saying, “This is how ignorant these people are…if they have this simple thing wrong, how can we trust them to understand the more complicated items?”. Some very prominent bloggers/writers do more damage every time they veer off their area of expertise, thereby demonstrating a PhD does not make one immune to the Dunning-Kruger syndrome.
But they will say they have read up on it. When you ask them what they’ve read though, it’ll all be creationist websites or an old Gish or Morris book. I can’t even get my own brother to read a high school level introductory biology book to see where his basic misunderstandings lie. sigh.
Wish I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, “I’ve been researching this, and XYZ”, where XYZ = being wrong at the most basic level.