“Evolution as Fact and Theory” by Stephan Jay Gould outlines the constant taxing debate over evolution among creationists and evolutionists. He outlines the major issues that fuel the dispute and provides the logical and scientific approach to evolution for a clear argument against the claims of creationists. He firstly, provides a thorough explanation of the misconceptions of the definitions; “theory” and “Fact’. In the common vernacular a fact may be perceived as undeniable information with absolute certainty. (gould)…
Due to over killing of animals, miss use of natural resources and lack of efficient means of spreading the word on what’s going on, we may be heading to a sixth extinction. After reading the book I took a closer look at the world around me and I did notice that the world is changing right before our eyes. I have never seen a great auk and chances are no one ever will because they are extinct. They did not just die off, they were…
Lamoureaux, who believed that you could be a Christian and still believe in evolutionary theory, wrote the book I love Jesus and Accept Evolution. Evolution is the theory that animals evolved into different species over time. A lot of times people who believe in evolution are not Christians, but there are some Christians who do believe that you can be a Christian and still believe in evolution. This is a controversy because some people believe that if you are a Christian, you cannot believe in evolution. I however am a Christian, and from reading his book and learning more about evolution, I agree with Lamoureaux and believe that you can not only be a Christian, but also be a Christen who accepts the theory of evolution…
The stories of The Lorax, By Dr. Seuss, and Easter’s End, by Jared Diamond, both touch on a very controversial point: The destruction of our natural world bringing extinction of life. Both authors take their own perspectives in going about this topic. Suess, using a fantasy world of the future, speaks about pollution and the destruction of forests, Whereas Diamond gives a brief history of Easter Island and how its biodiversity declined and perished.…
In the introduction of “Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species,” author Michael Ruse discusses how Charles Darwin’s family came to have the wealth and social standings of the upper middle class of the time period. The relevance of the introduction is based on how Darwin could afford to be educated and how his social standing helped to support his farfetched theories of evolution during his lifetime. The introduction begins with Darwin’s full name, Charles Robert Darwin, which gives a visual image of what he might look like as well as identifying the main person that the biography is about. It goes on to give the date of his birth to start the setting. In the next sentence, Ruse links Darwin to Abraham Lincoln, another great innovator and…
Evolutionary Creationism is a belief that God created the universe and all life including our surroundings through evolution. We have an old Earth that is 4.6 billion years old. When God was creating the Earth, the seven days weren't made up of our twenty-four hour days. The time he spent was consisted of what we know now as years. This took up a lot of time as well as the many years in between each event in the Bible.…
I think that Kolbert does ask us to think about the world and how it is changing over the past several thousand years, particularly in the past and future 100 years. While currently I do not think of this book as trying to tell us something about humans place in the natural world, rather I think this book currently is trying to tell us that something right now is happening that is odd and we should be aware of it. These chapters have made me appreciate those species that I have had experience with in the wild from walking in the woods to walking around my hometown. Because, now that this book has shown me several examples of species which have gone extinct or become rare in a short amount of time has made me appreciate species that I may have…
The first of the four forces of evolution is genetic drift. Genetic drift is a random occurrence among species and is a way in which specific individuals' genetics will carry over into the next generation gene pool. This process happens when a species' alleles randomly change frequencies. This happens to the point where a gene is either no longer represented in the gene pool or is the entire representation of the gene pool (more likely with a smaller population). The second of the four forces of evolution is natural selection.…
The idea of evolution was once taboo for its new ideas at the time, it was seen as wrong because it challenged ideas already established about the world, especially how life came to be. Evolution is a relatively new idea discovered by Charles Darwin. This discovery came to be when Darwin was traveling along the Galapagos islands where he studied finches and discovered that these finches had all originated from one species of finch and eventually became differentiated leading the species to split, based on their environment. However evolution doesn’t just occur, it takes centuries or even millennia to take place and it isn’t the species that adapt to the environment, the environment selects those who survive. This means that only species with favored characteristics for that environment would be allowed to survive and produce offspring while those who do not have these favored characteristics would become extinct, dividing these species into more groups.…
Evolution is the theory used to describe exactly why life on earth changes the way it does. It is evident that all things change throughout time, but understanding the reason behind these changes can be infuriating. In Evolution for Everyone, David Sloane Wilson bonds the basic concepts of evolutionary theory with different disciplines such as: art, religion, language, and pro-social behaviors. Wilson establishes a unity between the evolutionary theory and the development of culture, language, art, and other disciplines. Wilson describes the basics of evolutionary theory for the readers who may not be well acquainted with it.…
The book I chose for the APES reflective paper was In Defense of Food An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. When I first saw the list I had spotted three books that I might be interested with they were the Sixth Extinction, The Soil Will Save Us, and In Defense of Food. I had thoughts of reading the Sixth Extinction as I had heard something of the same nature in the summary in eighth-grade science class. I honestly didn 't remember much of it, however, I kinda knew that the sixth extinction was gonna be humans, I felt like the whole suspense of the book had been kind of ruined and thus I turned to the other two books.…
The general idea of this movie is evolution. The apes that appeared in the first act of the movie show this evolution, since the monoliths gave the apes the ability to use bone tools and eat meat. The idea of evolution was also apparent when one of the apes throws a bone into the air. Time flashes forward, and the bone transformed into a spaceship. Evolution was again evident when the team which was dispatched from Clavius touched the monolith, and a radio signal was heard.…
Evolution refers to change that occurs in a population over time. These changes are produced at the genetic level as organisms’ genes mutate in different ways during reproduction. Evolution is a change in the gene pool of a population over time. Populations simply adapt to their surroundings. Lots of things change over time.…
In the essay, “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” Stephen Gould defenses Charles Darwin’s theory of Evolution over the beliefs of creationist on God creating all organisms in the world. To further his support, he states his three arguments which are observational evidence, the imperfection of nature, and transitions found in fossil records to demonstrate that even though evolution is just a theory, there are plentiful evidence of facts that supports it. The essay was not just about justifying the theory of evolution to the creationist but also to reject the ideas of blindfolded views on scientific creationism. Throughout the essay, Gould acknowledges many of the major perspectives of the scientific world to support the theory of evolution that…
Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin were once friends, contemporaries, and rivals. Both scientists proposed the theory of natural selection, the process where organisms develop traits over time that adapt to their surrounding environments and become more common through reproduction. Darwin published his work On the Origin of Species detailing his theory of natural selection in 1859, while Wallace had discussed with Darwin the theory as well. The theory of natural selection led Darwin and Wallace to develop radically different views of evolution that rivaled each other's theories.…