Why Study Darwin? The purpose of the Darwin course is to introduce non-scientists to the content and practice of science by examining the life and chief work of a major figure in the history of science. Charles Darwin is especially suitable because his work has had major impact not only on biology and geology, but also on other disciplines such as the social sciences, philosophy, and religion. Moreover, the real (not the apocryphal) Charles Darwin has particular appeal for college-age students (and the young in heart) because he dropped out of the University of Edinburgh, transferred to Cambridge University where he was an indifferent student, was an enigma to his family, and was uncertain about his future career.
The course has three equal parts. The first focuses on who Darwin was, what he did, and the state of natural history up to the publication of the Origin of Species . We begin by reading Darwin's short autobiography to learn something of the environment in which Darwin was raised, get a sense of the kind of person he was, and what he thought he accomplished in life.
I then explain the events leading up to the five-year voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, the nature and purpose of the voyage itself, and outline contemporary views of the immutability of species, the age of the earth, what fossils were thought to signify, and the problem of extinction. Students thus get a broad overview of the context out of which the Origin arose and see the sorts of problems that Darwin was to address.
The middle portion of the course is devoted to a close reading of the Origin in facsimile edition, with an explication of the work, chapter-by-chapter. Here I want the students to read a primary source and be clear about exactly what Darwin said&emdash;and didn't say. Also I want them to see the real (non-idealized) way that scientific discoveries are made and used for theory-building. For example, they learn that on some key issues (e.g., the reality and importance of inherited variation) Darwin got it right, while on others (e.g., the source of such variation) he was confused or wrong. I make the point that much of science is a kind of back-and-forth questioning and reasoning, and that the so-called scientific method as usually presented is not so neat and tidy in real life.
I also emphasize how Darwin was quite aware that he was constructing an argument, a kind of lawyer's brief, in the way he composed the Origin . Thus, the first four chapters present the basic theory of "descent with modification" by means of "natural selection." The middle four chapters rebut what Darwin anticipates will be objections to his argument, and in the final five chapters Darwin applies his argument to a wide range of phenomena (e.g., fossils, embryology, biogeography) to show how these are more readily explained by his theory than by other contending theories. Students also see that Darwin's Origin did two things. First, it convinced the scientific world that "descent with modification" (evolution) explained the origin and diversity of organic nature in terms of common ancestry rather than by instantaneous creation. Second, Darwin hypothesized a process, "natural selection," as the cause of "descent with modification." However, Darwin was by no means as successful in convincing his audience about the process of natural selection as he was about the fact of descent with modification. I show how it wasn't until the mid-1930s that natural selection was finally accepted as the cause of biologic evolution, overcoming competing theories of neo-Lamarkianism, vitalism, and mutationism.
I end this middle part of the course with a lecture on the "contexts of discovery and of justification," which makes the distinction between the discovery of new evidence and the way in which a new interpretation is justified by that evidence. For example, the discoveries that Darwin made on the Beagle voyage were certainly important to his subsequent theory, but equally crucial was how argued his case based upon those discoveries. Darwin was fully cognizant that to convince his colleagues of the correctness of his theory he had to follow certain established canons of proper theory-building. In fact, Darwin's obvious attention to creating a sound context of justification within the Origin indicates that he was far more than a "lucky collector" who stumbled onto his "descent with modification."
The last third of the course looks at post-Origin issues, such as Mendel's key contribution to Darwin's evolutionary theory, especially why Mendel's work wasn't appreciated for more than three decades. This provides an excellent example of how a scientist's "answers" are not recognized as such if the answers are to questions no one else is currently asking. (Mendel addressed the causes of discontinuous variation in peas. His contemporaries, on the other hand, were only interested in the sources of continuous variation. It wasn't until the early 20th century that geneticists realized that the source of both kinds of variation is the same.) I then describe our present-day view of evolution, a kind of Darwinian update, and indicate where the hot topics now lie (e.g., extinction, rate of speciation, human origins). We then discuss how evolutionists and creationists debate their positions on different wave-lengths, or more properly speaking have different epistemologies, and therefore cannot for that very reason be reconciled to each other's viewpoint. In the concluding lecture I also explain what if anything evolution might say about "an ethics of nature," pointing out the fallacy of "is-equals-ought."
An optional activity for the course is the viewing of seven one-hour videos entitled, "the Voyage of Charles Darwin," made by the BBC for public television. Darwin's voyage is recreated in a replica of H.M.S. Beagle, all the sights and sounds are shown, and the actors convincingly portray the main characters. Much of the dialogue is taken verbatim from the great volume of contemporary letters and other writings of Darwin, which further lends verisimilitude.
Of what do I want to persuade the students? That science involves real people doing real work in a real world; that the history of science is often sanitized and idealized so that it seems lifeless and cold, and that only geniuses (or nerds) need apply; that as new answers emerge, new questions then become possible and therefore the quest is unending; that science often touches our lives in other, non-scientific realms as well, and consequently it is important to know something about the scientific enterprise; that even they can understand a scientific argument and that perhaps after this course science may be more appealing than before.
Because my own research has moved into the history of science, I also use this class to show how the discipline is properly pursued: by reading primary sources; by showing that what is done in science at a given moment is contingent upon the contemporary state of knowledge, technology, and methodology available, and therefore one gauges success/failure in the context of that time, not from our own later perspective; and thus that the history of science as presented in science textbooks is usually oversimplified, idealized, and misleading as to how it really happened.
Given the diversity of interests of the students in this course, there is always something for everyone. I've had literature majors comment on how they have come to see how Darwin influenced authors like Thomas Hardy and Jack London; history majors recognizing that the history of science has similar methods as does the history of, say, political institutions; and social scientists learn that much of what is attributed to "Darwinism" never came from Darwin. And, of course, students of biology and geology are delighted to see Darwin-the-biologist and Darwin-the-geologist at work, especially as a young man.
I want to get the students engaged with the personality of Darwin who, as noted above, is someone with whom they can identify. Then once hooked, I can pursue the goals of the course. My metaphor for the course has been the "journey," as represented by the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. Students thus repeat, vicariously, Darwin's physical and intellectual journey, not only of the Beagle itself, but of his intellectual life.
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