Amateur Biology
This class is making me feel more like a science-teacher than a philosopher. Luckily I'm pretty au fait with the mechanism of evolution but I'm not a biologist by trade so I can't think of that many examples when trying to explain something to the class.
Last Friday's class was pretty technical, going over the definition of neotenic traits, the difference between vestigial traits and evolutionary side-effects, etc. And now, before their test, my students are emailing me to ask scientific questions like "What is the difference between an ancestral and derived characteristic?" and "What is allometric growth?"
I never thought I'd say this but I'm really looking forward to teaching creationism next week!
posted by Nick @ 4:52 pm
3 comments
3 Comments:
Let me guess... Creationism will be easier to teach because it's not scientific?
There's a guy I know through CASE who seems to seriously believe that Intelligent Design is the best Christian apologetic development since... well, I can't remember what. I was rather scared by that.
Anyway, do you think this is a general difficulty with creation and evolution? Most people don't know enough of the details to make an informed decision on their own. They have to choose an authority to trust, whether it's a minister, theologian, writer or 'science'.
I keep forgetting about this blog. I'll have to list it on mine.
Not easier because it's not scientific. It's just that teaching evolution is starting to get boring for me as a philosopher of science because it's all so true and well founded. None of my students have tried to dispute it yet, even though I know that 30% (of the whole lecture group) are creationists and another 25% lean that way.
Creationism will be more interesting to teach because we will have to show why a shred of truth does not make the whole argument true. The best bit is that they will have already learnt enough evolution (at least they will know "what evolutionists believe") so that they won't be fooled when the creationists (and even ID folks like Phillip Johnson, who should know better) claim that random chance alone is the supposeed cause of evolution. Hopefully my students will remember that it is the non-random natural selection that makes evolution a constructive process, that adaptation gives the appearance of design.
The Sinister Sceptic is slacking off. I need some controversy!!!
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