Everything that we have learned over the past month or so has led me to one conclusion: Darwin has issues. I almost feel really bad for him. His personal life was depressing and his entire life's work is still misunderstood and hated. Plus we just spent the past month tearing many of his ideas apart. Evolution is not progressive or reliant on selection or competition. I really do think that Darwin is among the ranks of the dead who had groundbreaking ideas that have been grossly overshadowed or disproved by developments in modern science. While Darwin is an extremely important historical figure, I can't help but think that in the science community he is just a washed-up old windbag.

I’ve nearly finished the reading assigned for this week of class; I found myself, only a few pages into Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, so interested in the author’s argument that I didn’t want to put the book down. (Alas, other classes demand my time as well.) I’m not sure, in retrospect, that Dennett has told me anything that I didn’t already suspect – nothing groundbreaking, at least – but the way in which he presents his conclusions fascinates me, and I find myself agreeing more often than not. (I particularly enjoy the analogies that he employs, even if I do suspect that they are included in a sort of fan-boyish emulation of On the Origin of Species.)

 In the book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Dennet brings up an idea that I had pondered in my first web paper. The idea that there are observations, revelations, and discoveries that are out there that may be key to understanding or enhancing a theory, but no one has connected it yet. Dennet talks about Mendel’s pea plants and the idea of heredity, and how his paper had been published without much attention in 1865 and then was found to be a key piece to the theory of evolution in the 1900s (Dennet, 20). 

In class on Tuesday, we discussed evolution as a process that strives to get to newer places, exploring new possibilities rather than having a goal or aim. Life forms become progressively more complex over time and instead of this progression reaching perfection, it is simply moving forward with a single goal/aim in mind. When Professor Grobstein mentioned evolution as part chance and part causal relations, I think of entropy. Entropy is a measure of disorder and is also nature's way of creating the most probable outcome in a given environment or situation.

In our discussion group on Thursday, we were discussing the differences between the differences in teaching.  Whether there is more benefit in a varied education with very little boundaries between the subjects, or in an education system in which students are tracked into a certain field.  I find it very interesting that different countries and cultures choose differently.  I personally believe students should all be exposed to all subjects, but later on be allowed to choose whether or not they would like to specialize or continue to explore.  This would allow for academic expansion and the students would be exposed to different fields and would be able to choose later on what they want to specialize.  After specialization, they would have had the exposure to ot

In the discussion with Professor Dalke on Thursday, we discussed whether or not evolution and social Darwinism should be taught in the same class in high school. We also talked about how a student may be a “science person”, “history person”, “literary person”, etc. Coming into this class as a “science person”, I initially thought that these two topics should absolutely be taught in different classes. Evolution is more objective, whereas social Darwinism and other topics are more subjective and could be allowed for interpretation. However, as our discussion progressed, my mind was changed and I think these two subjects would work well in a class for high school students.

On Tuesday, Professor Grobstein talked about how evolution doesn’t strive to get to a place, it strives to discover new places. To compare this to creationism, this conjures up analogy for me: creationism is when your honey tells you to get dressed up for Valentine’s Day because he’s taking you somewhere nice. You don’t know the specifics of where you’re going, but you know that your sweetie cares about you is taking you somewhere that you enjoy. Evolution is packing up the family truckster and just getting on the road…no particular place to go. In the truckster, all I would be able to think about is what route to take, and in particular, how do I make my decisions if there’s no goal and therefore no framework on which to base them? Maybe I should just take