What's your overall reaction to the article? (respond via blog by Friday Sept 17)
Check your email accounts for a download of specific questions. Answer them as you read along. Typed responses (via e-mail) are due on Friday Sept 17.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Was Darwin Wrong?
Read the National Geographic article "Was Darwin Wrong?"
What's your overall reaction to the article? (respond via blog by Friday Sept 17)
Check your email accounts for a download of specific questions. Answer them as you read along. Typed responses (via e-mail) are due on Friday Sept 17.
What's your overall reaction to the article? (respond via blog by Friday Sept 17)
Check your email accounts for a download of specific questions. Answer them as you read along. Typed responses (via e-mail) are due on Friday Sept 17.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This article was pretty interesting. It didn't change my views on evolution in the slightest. I definitely learned a lot from reading it. Before reading this article I just knew the stuff that we learned in class. A lot of the stuff from this article connects back to the video we are watching. I didn't dislike the article. I thought it was quite interesting and that the people that made the discoveries are probably like really pleased with themselves. My thoughts on the theory of evolution haven't changed. I still believe in it. I don't think that this article really had a bias because it definitely mentioned multiple times how people struggled with the connection between Genesis and evolution. I think that I was given enough evidence, but I can see why Christian (or other religious) people have their doubts. It is all pretty vague. overall I would give it a thumbs up.
ReplyDeleteI think that this article was very similar to the other articles and movies we've read and watched already. It had a lot of the same arguments and facts that we already heard before. That made the reading a little repetitive to me. But other than that, I think evolution is a very plausible theory because it does have a TON of evidence, like the bacteria, fossils, etc.
ReplyDeleteI found the article interesting, but I had already heard about much of the evidence that was stated. My opinion on evolution didn't change after reading the article; I still believe in evolution, and this article just reinforced my beliefs with the large amount of evidence it offered. The evidence that I found the most convincing was the section talking about the staph virus, and its rapid evolution into drug resistant strains.
ReplyDeleteFirst, overwhelming reaction was that it was very long.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't change my opinion about evolution at all, aside from basically reaffirming what I already thought about it. The way I read it was not as an article trying to persuade me to believe in evolution, probably because I am already persuaded, but an article trying to inform me about it. Most of the basic facts it laid out were not new to me, but I found the parts about the evolution of bacteria and the ankle bone as the missing link in the sequence of forms of whales to be fairly interesting. I also found the writing style in general to be somewhat engaging, which is always welcome in a scientific article.
After reading the article, I feel like I have been flooded with information that confirms Darwin’s idea of evolution by natural selection. The article went into detail explaining how on four levels of thought – biogeography, paleontology, embryology and morphology – Darwin’s idea is further substantiated. The article also gives a lot of good examples backing up the theory. However, On the idea of speciation and the changing of populations, if species evolve through the process of natural selection favoring certain characteristics that resulted from random mutations in DNA, its hard to grasp that one random change in one animal is enough for it to produce offspring and eventually change an entire population. I understand that animals need to adapt in order to survive specific environments, but the concept of how these variations occur seems too small to change a whole population.
ReplyDeleteMy opinion of evolution has not change by reading this article, it simply deepened my understanding of the theory. I never knew that a sea creature could be so closely related to a highly adapted land animal... I thought that the tension of religion and science was a very interesting view and it really surprises me that so much of the world is ignorant to the blatant, hard and cold evidence that scientists have published over the past 100 years or so. I enjoyed reading the article because it was not purely facts but also included a perspective and a literary edge.
ReplyDeleteI thought that most of the article was really interesting. It essentially confirmed what I already had learned about evolution, but there were new details, such as the story of how scientists figured out that whales are related to an ancestor of antelopes, that really fascinated me. I also thought it was really surprising that the percentage of Americans who don't believe in evolution was never recorded as below 44 percent, and how only about 13 percent or so believed that evolution alone was responsible for making living things the way they are.
ReplyDeleteI thought the article was very detailed and gave a thorough explanation of the theory of evolution. It didn’t change my thoughts regarding evolution, except to strengthen my belief in this theory and supply me with more evidence. I found it very surprising that since the poll in 1982, people who believe only in God’s creation of earth and all living creatures never came under 44%. I would have guessed that as time went on, all the modern evidence would convince more and more people of evolution. Personally, I believe there is more than enough evidence to accept the idea of evolution through natural selection. I found the paragraphs on viruses the most compelling, interesting, and persuasive.
ReplyDeleteTo reject the theory of evolution after the pile of evidence supported in this reading would be downright daft. This article seems more than fit to be read by reluctant first-year biology students and the 45% of Americans that still hold the creationist conviction. What some “laymen of science” don’t always quite grasp is the idea that genetic change is random, spurred on by the mutations that disrupt and alter the sequences of nucleotides. The few changes that benefit the organism stick; most don’t. In response to Brittany’s last few sentences: It is true that it is extremely unlikely that a small genetic change in an organism can be enough to change (and sometimes create an entirely new) species, but it mustn’t be forgotten that evolution takes place over millions of years. Every environmental condition has to be perfect for a genetically mutated organism to survive, reproduce, and perpetuate its kind until it is no longer considered a mutant of one species, but a regular organism of another. It’s hard to believe that change of such magnitude can develop in this fashion, but given the length of time that life has existed on earth (3.45-3.85 billion years, a period of time so incomprehensibly long, the number itself almost meaningless to us), it seems plausible and logical. Why do so many Americans still oppose the theory of evolution? As proposed by the article, it seems to be a combination of sheer ignorance, lack of education, and misrepresentation by the media.
ReplyDeleteI thought that this article was very interesting. My reasons for thinking this are a little different than others. I think that it is really interesting because this article opened my eyes to the opposition's thinking about evolution. there are literally millions of people that have reasons for not believing in Darwin's theory. This alone makes me want to examine exactly what they feel and how this compares with Darwin's theory. the article mentions that not all of these people are conservative creationists, a fair number of them have their own reasons. This all is interesting to me because I have grown up believing in a sort of "infallibility" in Darwin's theory. I have been taught over and over again that it is the only truth (I still believe that the theory is correct, but I am now aware of different ways of thinking).
ReplyDeleteAfter having read this article, it didn't change my views of evolution; i still believe in it! I had already heard of all the main evidence included in this article from previous homework readings, class discussions, and the movie we have been watching. However in this article, all the evidence was explained in even deeper detail, which only helped strengthen my belief of evolution. Hearing about all the old discoveries of the finches or fossil discoveries, for example, was all very interesting and definitely did provide good proof for evolution in my mind, however hearing about more modern evidence was even more interesting to me because it made everything seem a lot more real in my mind. Sure I believe in natural selection and all the evidence Darwin found in the past, and find it fascinating, but hearing about common day viruses and diseases such as AIDS and how they keep evolving into drug-resistant strains was really interesting to me and seemed much more believable, intensifying my faith in evolution.
ReplyDeleteReading this article didn't particularly change my views on the theory of evolution. It did deepen my understanding of it, though. The article went more in depth into specific details that I hadn't really heard of before. Getting to know more details was very helpful for strengthening my belief in evolution, since there were some parts that weren't very clear in my mind. Overall the article was very interesting.
ReplyDeleteThis article I thought mainly confirmed what I already believed (perhaps without evidence) of evolution. It admittedly explained more to me about the way scientists would discover/ investigate a creature's ancestors, but I did not generate a new view on evolution itself. I wish that I could have had more of the primary source (darwin).
ReplyDeletePat.