We were talking in class today about how random change is inevitable in a species, and how changes are "selected" by the environment and thus end up being found in future generations. That's well and good, but we have a problem: horseshoe crabs (someone also mentioned alligators in class). Horseshoe crabs have been around for half a billion years, at least, at haven't really changed since them. Why, if random change is inevitable, have certain species (seemed to) have avoided it? 

 Lately, as a class, we've been discussing the idea of randomness, and how it and it alone guides what happens in life. There is no divine order; there is no "goal" of progress. Everything happens by chance, including the events of our genetic variance.

These may or may not be easy to follow, but this is what I took from it.

“In the spirit of disclosure”

(Not So) Karyotypical

How can we use the story of intersex to improve care of patients and parents?

Intersection of science, medicine, and lived experience?

Why do we use the language we use?

Why is it important for medicine to know why and if there are differences between male and female?

-          Afraid that if you told intersex people that they were intersex, they’d turn suicidal and/or lesbians – pretty much the same thing back then

Throughout class on Tuesday, pieces of the thesis on undergraduate science education that I wrote last semester kept creeping into my head. While my thesis steered clear of the sticky topic of evolution in the college classroom, I still found that people were asking similar questions that I asked myself last semester. One student even made a suggestion that I had offered in my thesis concerning how science should be taught. I am a strong advocate for utilizing the history of science as a tool for teaching science as it allows students to discover the creativity associated with the scientific process.

GIST Class Notes from Wednesday, February 9, 2011 by Hillary Godwin: Self-Shaping Technologies
We began by acknowledging that Monday would end the first section of our class, “The Science and Technology of Gender: Making and Re-making Ourselves.” Most of the class was centered on asking provocative questions, rather than necessarily finding definitive answers.

We then began discussing categories:

-       Many students in class agreed that we as human beings are biologically inclined to make and use categories as a way to make sense of the world.