Evolution: Education and Outreach

Penny Gilmer, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Florida State University, passes along some information about how to access video of talks by the E. O. Wilson, among others, who spoke at a Florida State Darwin Year conference.

At FSU we had an Origins ‘09 event, with a series of speakers on evolution, all in remembrance of Darwin. See this link for the main page: http://origins.fsu.edu/. Then look at the schedule link from that page. Also from the main page you can see a retrospective video of all the events.

GEOSET has the full talks of three of the speakers: E. O. Wilson, Sean Carroll, and Don Johanson, in two screen set-up so you can see the Powerpoints and the speaker on different screens, and the audio is excellent. Go to this link: http://www.geoset.info/. Then go to the presenters’ list, and find the name, then click on Find Lectures, and then select the talk you want to hear. You need Silverlight to see the presentations (but the program is free). All three talks are excellent.

As well, Gilmer recommends visiting the Wilson Biophilia Center, near Niceville, FL, online, at http://www.eowilsoncenter.org/welcome.html, which she reports just opened in September, and presents interesting research on gophers, among other things. The Center describes itself as follows.

The E.O. Wilson Biophilia Center is an environmental education facility, serving students, teachers and professional audiences. Its mission is to educate visitors on the importance of biodiversity, to promote sustainable balanced ecosystems, and to encourage conservation, preservation and restoration.

Developed by Walton County Conservationist and Resident, M.C. Davis, on his 48,000-acre conservation land named Nokuse Plantation, The E.O. Wilson Biophilia Center is named after world renowned scientist Dr. Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology at Harvard University, for his life-long contributions to public education about the importance of conserving the world’s biodiversity. This two-time Pulitzer prize winner spent his formative years and performed his earliest scientific investigations in NW Florida and SW Alabama, and developed “biophilia—the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.”

Visitors at the E.O. Wilson Biophilia Center will have an opportunity to learn about
the natural environment through interpretive exhibits as well as an extensive trail
system through natural areas undergoing ecological restoration on the nature preserve. In addition, this facility will be promoted as a gathering place for local and regional scientists to conduct ecological research and participate in symposia that disseminate this research to the public. By offering weeklong curriculum that coincides with the Florida Sunshine State Standards, our young citizens will have a better understanding and knowledge for science portions of the FCAT, while promoting
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematic (STEM) subjects, and providing opportunities for inquiry, investigation and innovation so that in long-term we all may become better stewards during our journey on this planet.

Even if you can’t make it to the Denver conference of the National Association of Biology Teachers, you can still take part by way of the WWW. Jory Weintraub, EE&O editorial board member and Science Education and Outreach Program Manager at NESCent, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, reports the following.

Are you interested in evolution, but unable to attend this year’s National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) conference in Denver? Would you and your students like to learn more about how life evolves, adapts and flourishes in some of the most extreme environments on Earth, such as high altitude, in the deep-sea, or in caves? If so, you will be excited to learn that for the first time, the annual NABT Evolution Symposium will be accessible via live webcast on Friday, Nov. 13th from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm, MST. Teachers and students are encouraged to tune in to all or part of the webcast for an opportunity to hear internationally renowned researchers discuss their fascinating, cutting-edge work in “extreme” evolutionary biology. Classrooms all over the world will even be able to submit their questions online and have the speakers respond in real time!

For more information, including speaker names, talk titles and times, and the link to view the live webcast, please see http://www.nescent.org/NABT09Webcast.php or contact eog@nescent.org for more information.

The EEO Blogger now tweets as @eeoblogger. So, if you are on twitter, sign up to follow the blog! Tweets will include evolution news, links to web pages about events, people, institutions, places, educational resources and other material of interest to those curious and excited about evolution.

Blog posts have been slow in coming lately—there’s one coming up about Philip Kitcher’s recent talk at Yeshiva University about the evolution of ethics.

A familiar image is often used to represent human evolution. At the far left of the image, there is a small monkey-like creature, usually depicted walking on hands and knees. To the right of this creature, there is another, standing more upright, shorter than the next creature, to its right. At the far right of the picture, there is a human being, standing upright, with a familiar profile. Images of this kind have been copied into this posting. Note that the second comes from the Scientificblogging.com web site, where it is a permanent banner display marking out the section of the Life Sciences page about evolution.

It’s clear what this image is supposed to represent: the progressive evolution of the human species, starting with the monkey-like creature at the left, and ending on the right with the figure recognizable as a modern human being.

The problem with this image is that it doesn’t reflect current—and correct—thinking about how evolution works. The “ascending monkey” image suggests that the monkey is at the base of a linear progression from less advanced to more advanced. This seems to be the sense that the Smith-Cotton Marching Band wants to convey, as does the creator of the Burning Man festival poster. Evolution does not have a general direction and cannot properly be said to progress. Species or local populations adapt to the conditions of their environment. They become optimal with respect to their environment only insofar as they do the best that they can given chance events, the nature of their particular genetic endowment, and the constraints of their development. Long-term progress does not occur, even if one species evolved from another because of the former’s better adaptation to a shared environment. Should the environment change, the new species might find itself faced with extinction.

Besides being incorrect as a representation of biological evolution, this image is pernicious because it has racist undertones. Some Internet research reveals that slurs and jokes aimed at humiliating people with black skin frequently make reference to the notion that they are monkeys, for the reason that a monkey is “more primitive.” Many of these jokes and slurs clearly explicitly draw on the themes of having black skin, being primitive, and being a monkey.

Consider the following racist jokes from http://www.racist-jokes.com/ (pages 5, 6, 1 and 1, respectively):

What’s the difference between a naked white woman and a naked black woman? One’s on the cover of Playboy and the other’s on the cover of National Geographic.

What do you call a white man in a group of twenty black men? Tarzan of the apes.

What does NAACP stand for? Now Apes Are Called People.

What do you call the million man march in the rain? “Gorillas in the mist.”

While these jokes are repugnant in the extreme, it is important to point out that they exist, and that the connection between race, primitiveness, and monkeys has real social currency and is rooted deeply in the cultural context of the US.

A recent controversy over an 18 February 2009 cartoon depicting President Barack Obama as a monkey illustrates that this racist subtext need only be barely concealed. Of central importance is the outrage expressed by many upon seeing the cartoon. The cartoon, which first appeared in the New York Post, shows two police officers just having shot a chimpanzee, which is on its back, dead, on the sidewalk. One of the police officers says “They’ll have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill.” On the one hand, the cartoon is meant to reflect a news item current at the time it appeared—police shot a chimpanzee which was threatening a woman in Connecticut. On the other hand, it’s hard to see what the connection between a chimpanzee and the stimulus bill might be. Someone might point out that the stimulus bill was in fact introduced in in the US Congress, and so President Obama should not be identified with the chimpanzee in the cartoon. Though this is correct, most people probably associate the stimulus bill most closely with Obama himself. The identification of a black man and a monkey is what is intended to stimulate whatever humor there is supposed to be in this cartoon, and there is a clearly racist interpretation of the cartoon. Again, the point is that the connection between race, primitiveness, and monkeys is a meaningful one.

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Hi all

Many people have had a difficult time commenting on posts at this blog. In order to make it easier, I will append a footer (see below) to all postings I create. This footer offers instructions on how to comment.

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If you do not have a Wordpress login, you can
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If you do not have a Wordpress login and do not want one
or cannot obtain one, visit the “About” page for this blog
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Hi all

For a few days, this blog was not working. Now it does.

I will have to put up some new posts soon, I mean, some substantial ones, not just about the blog working or not working.

Look for a posting about a misleading pictorial representation of evolution, and one about the importance of studying human evolution, generated from some reflections on recent articles in EE&O.

Rose Chang writes the following:

Hi everyone:

Issue 1 has its newest piece:

Fisher, M., Goetz, A., Hill, S., Kruger, D., Michalski, R., Osipowicz,
K., Platek, S. M., & Salmon, C. (2009). Voices from the field: Current
trends and experiences in Evolutionary Psychology. EvoS Journal: The
Journal of the Evolutionary Studies Consortium, 1(1), 11-33.

While you are checking it out at (http:evostudies.org/vol1.html)
please also sign up for the RSS feed for EvoS Journal. Then you will
be first to learn of new articles!

Thanks,

Rose Chang
Editor, EvoS Journal: The Journal of the Evolutionary Studies
Consortium

This is sure to be interesting and controversial, since it’s on the topic of Evolutionary Psychology, which is often divisive—some people think its main ideas are virtually self-evident as an approach to human thought and behavior, while others think it’s an example of science run amok.

Regardless, take a look, so that when the EvoS journal is publishing its 101st article, you can say, “I remember when they published their 1st. . . . “

In a new posting to her Wild Side blog, Olivia Judson shares her reflection on the Oxford Museum of Natural History.

Last week, I visited the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Stepping inside is, in some ways, like entering a time warp. The vaulted, iron-and-glass ceilings are reminiscent of a 19th century railway station; the ornate carvings and ironwork decorations conjure a time of Imperial splendor and grand ambition. Statues of Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and other men of science, stand on pedestals around the ground floor. Many of the skeletons and skins on display were collected by the explorers and administrators of Empire. And if you get bored with the dodos and dinosaurs, you can visit the Pitt Rivers Museum — the entrance is behind the skeleton of the giraffe — a fascinating repository of human objects and artifacts that includes totem poles and shrunken heads.

She takes up the theme of the museum’s pivotal position at the crossroads of history: though the specimens collected in the pre-Darwinian era were not intended to be subjects in the study of evolution, present-day DNA extraction techniques offer a way for the scientists of today to use them as just that.

If you can’t make to it Oxford, or even if you can, a visit to Judson’s blog is strongly recommended.

Are you interested in the importance of evolution for public policy? EE&O editorial board member and Evolutionary Studies Consortium director at Binghamton David Sloane Wilson has announced the launch of an evolution think tank, The Evolution Institute, of which he and Jerry Lieberman are directors.

The Evolution Institute describes its mission:

The mission of the Evolution Institute is to use evolutionary science to solve real-world problems. Currently, there is no mechanism for applying current theory and research to public policy formulation. We aim to provide the mechanism. Working with our distinguished advisory board, we can:

Identify and assemble the evolutionary expertise for virtually any topic relevant to human welfare.
Organize workshops, coordinate the writing of position papers, and provide advisors.
Assist in the implementation of the policies that we formulate.

The Institute describes the need for an evolution think tank:

When Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, it was obvious to everyone that it would revolutionize our understanding of humanity. Yet, by the early 20th century, evolutionary theory was largely restricted to the biological sciences and avoided for most human-related subjects. Ian Lustick, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, offered this assessment in 2005:

Of course social scientists have no objection to applying evolutionary theory in the life sciences—biology, zoology, botany, etc. Nevertheless, the idea of applying evolutionary thinking to social science problems commonly evokes strong negative reactions. In effect, social scientists treat the life sciences as enclosed within a kind of impermeable wall. Inside the wall, evolutionary thinking is deemed capable of producing powerful and astonishing truths. Outside the wall, in the realm of human behavior, applications of evolutionary thinking are typically treated as irrelevant at best; usually as pernicious, wrong, and downright dangerous.

The Institute is currently at work on childhood education, risky adolescent behavior, the nature of regulation, The Binghamton Neighborhood Project, which “uses the city of Binghamton, New York, as a “field site” for basic and applied research from an evolutionary perspective,” evolutionary religious studies, and The EVoS Consortium.

Hello All—Glenn Geher, whose blog is among the EVoS (Evolutionary Consortium) blogs, has just put up a new post about a new organization, The Feminist Evolutionary Psychology Society. To introduce Glen, consider what he says about himself on his “about” page:

Glenn Geher is professor and chair (starting mid-August, 2009) of psychology at the State University of New York at New Paltz. In addition to teaching courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and conducting research in various areas related to evolutionary psychology, Glenn directs the campus’ EvoS program, one of the most successful, noteworthy, and vibrant features of a campus that prides itself (rightfully) on academic vibrance. In Building Darwin’s Bridges, Glenn addresses the details of New Paltz’s EvoS program as well as issues tied to the future of evolutionary studies in the rocky and often unpredictable landscape of higher education.

To lead off the post, Glen proposes the following.

Kramare and Treichler (1996): “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”

Geher (2009): “Evolutionary psychology is the radical notion that human behavior is part of the natural world.”

There is no reason on earth to believe that these two “radical” notions are irreconcilable.

He adds that “I am glad to say that an important and growing intellectual movement is in the works.”

Take a look at the Feminist Evolutionary Psychology Society’s facebook group, too.