You understand not only what is, but why. With evolution, a great light breaks through into the deepest recesses, into every corner, of the science of life.
Will just be facts, with no binding thread to hold them together, nothing to make them memorable or coherent. Evolution is the greatest single unifying principle in all biology (Prosser 1959, p. 539).ĭawkins opines that, without Darwinism, “biology is a collection of miscellaneous facts.” He adds before children “learn to think in an evolutionary way” the material that students learn It was not only a great biological treatise, closely reasoned and revolutionary, but it carried significant implications for philosophy, religion, sociology, and history. This claim is made because Darwin’s Origin of Species has had more influence on Western culture than any other book of modern times.
In the words of the National Academy of Science, evolution is “ the most important concept in modern biology, a concept essential to understanding key aspects of living things” (emphasis mine) (National Academy of Science 1998, p. viii). As a result of this oft-repeated assertion, many argue that evolution must be a central part of all public school and college life science classes. A recent internet search revealed over 50,000 hits for Dobzhansky’s quote. Orthodox Darwinism is defined as the evolution of all complex life forms on earth from a single common ancestor as a result of natural selection acting on random mutations in the genome over vast periods of time through strictly naturalistic processes. His statement that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” has been repeated in thousands of articles to argue that Darwinism must have a central place in all areas of life-science education, including biology, anatomy, medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology (for example, see Antolin and Herbers 2001, p. 2379). Almost a half-century later, the eminent American evolutionist, Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900–1975), claimed that “evolution” is the cornerstone of biology and is central to understanding both living and extinct organisms (Dobzhansky 1973, p. 125). Truman Moon, entitled Biology for Beginners, stated that the theory of evolution is “the cornerstone of all recent science and the foundation of all modern thought” (quoted in Armstrong 1929, p. 133). The most popular biology book in the 1920s by Dr. The article claimed that “The theory of evolution is altogether essential to the teaching of biology and its kindred sciences” (Armstrong 1929, p. 135). In 1929, an article in Popular Science was written to encourage the teaching of the theory of evolution in spite of the laws that were passed by several states to curb the teaching of Darwinism.
Keywords: Teaching of evolution, the application of evolution, creationism, college text books Introduction
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