DomKen
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ORIGINAL: Aylee
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ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda
Ken already did a better job of answering this than I could have, and his answer covers everything I would have wanted to express.
Which is a good thing, because I guess I'm not really sure how to reply anyway. I'm not sure where you're coming from on this. By your standard, we wouldn't teach anything in science class at all. For instance, we don't understand how gravity works, but we still teach kids that there is something called gravity, and they need to be aware of it when they're climbing on the roof. I just don't know what you're suggesting here.
Panda,
I suppose I am coming at this from the standpoint that sure, if you want to say that evolution is change over time, which it is, I am fine with that. A fifty minute class period is plenty to explain this and some of the terminology.
However, if you are wanting to teach about the change over time and how it happened, a fifty minute class period is just not enough. Paleobiogeography is a complex subject with a lot of theories out there. To add to this a lot of what is taught about it is the Victorian ideas and theories. Gradualism does not stand up to the fossil record. 100 million fossils and 250,000 species. It is a pretty good record.
Gradualism does stand up to the fossil record. The problem with most vertabrate sequences is they are far too incomplete to show it. However there are numerous very detailed marine invertabrate sequences that show gradual change over geologic time scales.
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The "evolution of man" poster than many of us saw displayed in science classes and museums, is incorrect and racist. I do understand that have re-done it to take the racism out, however they still show Neanderthals being one of modern man's ancestors. And they weren't. They did briefly live at the same time and were competitors. Modern man can speak, and they couldn't.
No one is absolutely positive that Neandertals did not contribute to modern humans genetics. There is some evidence to suggest that they did and some evidence suggests otherwise.
Also there is no reason what so ever to believe that Neandertals did not speak. They lived in communal groups and passed along tool making skills that strongly suggest the ability to communicate abstract ideas.
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Then we have things like the peppered moths. They are supposed to be evolution in action. But both the light and the dark moths were always around. Plus in some places the change in the moths population preceded the change in the tree trunks. So perhaps it was a chemical change in the air that effected both the trees and moths? The worst thing about the moths as a learning tool is that the pictures were faked. They glued the moths to the tree. The moths don't tend to sit on trees in the daylight.
Peppered moths are evolution in action, so are all other organisms but the moths are a very visual example. No actual biologist has ever claimed the dark or light morphs appeared when industrial pollution started. What changed was natural selection drove a change in the frequency of the two morphs. When the trees were darkened by soot the dark moths became more common and when the trees lightened up when pollution was controlled the light moths again became predominate.
As to glueing moths to tree trunks, how else do you propose to take good clear pictures of an organism that is very easily disturbed? And yes the moths do rest on trees in daylight they are nocturnal feeders.
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So, what is my issue with Darwinism? Well, he did not know about DNA. Phenotype and genotype are different things. Nature can effect phenotype but that does not mean evolution has occurred. Evolution must, must happen at the genetic level. It is interesting, they took these finches (all looking alike - same phenotype and genotype) from one place to another and set them free. 20 years later, they had all sorts of different looking finches. (Sounds a lot like what Darwin found in the Galapagos, doesn't it.) What had happened is that these birds all had to eat in different ways and do different things to survive. Nature had changed them. But, nature had only changed their phenotype. Their genotype was the same. This was not evolution.
I have no idea what you are abbling about here. Darwin's finches are excellent examples of evoution in both the short term, changes in beak size and shape depending on weather conditions, and long term, the finches only live on the Galapogas Islands and their nearest relatives elsewhere are quite different genetically and morphologically.
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As a crazy example in the evolution of man using phenotype, we could say that panda bears are ancestors of modern man. They have opposable thumbs just like we do.
No biologist would ever make that claim. First off Pandas are only very distantly related to humans as is indicted by genetics, morphology and biochemistry. Also Pandas do not have an opposable thumb. The Panda's "thumb" that it uses to strip leaves off bamboo is part of the radial sesamoid bone of the animals wrist, it does not bend at all.
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I also remarked about which theories are they going to go with. Let's take dinosaurs to modern day birds. Of course this only works if you are going to go with one of the theories that says that dinosaurs were warm-blooded. And there is differing opinions about that. Which dinosaurs are the ancestors of today's birds? The bird-hipped dinosaurs or the non-bird-hipped dinosaurs? Because even though we have kicked out the cold-blooded dinosaur theories, there is still more disagreement. Last time I checked it was the warm-blooded, non-bird-hipped dinosaurs being favored as the ancestors of modern day birds. However, 25 years ago it was being taught that all dinosaurs were cold-blooded.
Science is not static. We've learned a great deal about dinosaurs and ancient birds in those 25 years. There is really no serious doubt that dinosaurs, theropod dinosaurs to be specific, are ancestral to birds.
BTW the lizard hipped and bird hipped division of dinosaurs was always a pretty poor way of describing the difference between the two major groups. Fundamentally all the dinosaurs had hips strongly resembling bird hips.
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This post has become excessively long. But I have only begun to scratch the surface of evolution and its theories.
But I do believe it demonstrates why paleobiogeography (macro-evolution) is too complex of a subject for 1 fifty minute class.
**The article commented that the 13% of teachers teaching creationism or intelligent design in a positive light, spent one hour on it. When you deduct the time for class change, I got the total of 50 minutes. Which is what my high school classes ran before block scheduling. So, that is where I am getting 1 fifty-minute class session from ~ giving equal time to each side.
paleobiogeography is the study of where fossil animals were distributed. The data it provides is strong evidence of evolution, the question why are most marsupials found in Australia is answered by the study of paleobiogeography.
Evolution should not be the subject of one class in biology it should be part of virtually all biology classes. It is not too complicated for high schoolers specially when it is not being taught by a creationist or using claims made by creationists.
< Message edited by DomKen -- 1/31/2011 1:42:00 PM >
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