To the credit of some Rutgers professors, I have been hearing a lot about evolution at the beginning of this semester. Although I did not do so intentionally, I wound up with three behavior courses (Animal Behavior, Social Evolution, and Socioecology of Primates), all of which introduce introductory material about Chuckie D and evolution. The problem is that not all of the professors present the material well.
I really don't want to be a pain in the ass know-it-all, but some teachers just don't make it easy. This afternoon, for instance, in a quick review of evolutionary thought the professor outlined natural selection and inferred that Darwin's evolutionary idea was heavily influenced by Lamarck. Darwin was familiar with Lamarck's evolutionary idea, primarily as was espoused by his University College London teacher Robert Grant, but the inference put before the class this afternoon was that Darwin had essentially picked up where Lamarck had left off.
Indeed, in many classes I have taken there is a kind of fixation on Darwin that is difficult to modify. It is as if Darwin were suddenly struck by the idea of evolution by natural selection without giving it any prior thought. A mention of Wallace or the consideration of other naturalists that there might be "secondary laws" to govern the origin of species is likewise too much to ask for. When a slide featuring the portraits of T.H. Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce appeared I was afraid I was going to be smacked by an unfortunately resilient bit of textbook cardboard, but in this case the teach merely said that both were involved in debates about evolution and moved on.
I was tempted to raise my hand to voice my objections during class, but I thought better of it. I couldn't see the benefit. I would spend more time talking about the more complex history of ideas than the professor did, and being that this was only a historical prelude it was of little importance to the course as a whole.
Then again, perhaps I should have said something. When understood properly, the history of science does not present us with a series of "Eureka!" moments experienced by a select few divines. It is much more complex and controversial, and perhaps professors are giving their students the wrong impression when they only mention landmark works but provide no explanation as to how the researchers came to those conclusions (or who else was working on those problems).
Education & Careers
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As I'm sure you know, On the Origin isn't so much a tome outlining Darwin's intependant research as him taking bits and pieces from dozens of other scientists and then leading into the natural conclusion. His later works would further cement his own observations and scientific endeavors, but Darwin's most famous work is, when you really read it, a big long review of the literature.
But nobody likes to hear that. Especially professors who've been giving the same lecture without question for 20 years. I've only had two professors my entire college experience who were thankful when I presented "updated" ideas. The others were kind of miffed, almost as though I was forcing them to change their lecture and now they were gonna have to go and READ something (Science forbid).
It's really not a good feeling when the student knows more than the professor. What, exactly, is the student paying for?
Posted by: Zach Miller | September 4, 2008 3:32 PM
Are you really criticizing OtOoS for not being peer-reviewd primary research? It's "one long argument" thoroughly documenting the "best idea anyone ever had" (former quote is Darwin, latter Dennett).
There's nothing, of course, wrong with accurate historical context, but the reason that textbooks (and, therefore, lecturers) begin pretty much any presentation of biological evolution with the Darwin story is because that really was the beginning of modern biology.
The idea of biological evolution, as we know, was already well known in the early 1800s; Darwin made it scientific by providing a plausible mechanism and then documenting the hell out of it with his "review of the literature." That was not a trivial contribution.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 4, 2008 3:48 PM
None of this makes any difference. You are not taking a class on Darwin, but rather, on current research in each of the areas you mention. Darwin is very unlikely to be mentioned again.
As a person who studies human evolution and who knows (because I study it, not because of my multiple ivy league PhD.s etc. :) I am constantly running into the annoying "overview" of human evolution and/or prehistory that is at least as stupid as any view of Darwin tucked in the first week of a class that addresses evolution.
In fact there is probably not a good way to present Darwin in two or three lectures that both gives a good overview and that would not be objectionable in some way to someone as expert as yourself. Better to jut grin and bear it and hope you will do a better job when you need to do this.
Posted by: Greg Laden | September 4, 2008 4:21 PM
Brian, I think this would fit really well in your book, actually! It seems like a good topic to cover early on. But you're probably way ahead of me on that already ;)
Posted by: Melanie | September 4, 2008 4:28 PM
scientists are often bad historians of science. they're focused on pushing the branches of the tree of knowledge out, not sketching out the whole edifice in an articulate manner.
Posted by: razib | September 4, 2008 5:31 PM
Sven, I didn't mean to criticize Darwin at all! He presented the ideas of the time in a new and comprehensive way, and by doing so, figured out how it all connected! Rather, I only meant that Darwin's theory was not at all a "Eureka!" moment, as Brian's professor seemed to think, but rather the result of years and years of research by many many people. It's not like the man was sitting in the bathtub and suddenly figured out the Theory of Natural Selection.
Posted by: Zach Miller | September 4, 2008 5:43 PM
Back in the stone age, my professor of historical geology spent some time talking about education in geology. He maintained that the undergraduate experience consisted of an initial year of being lied to and then three years of professors attempting to convince students they had been lied to. There is some truth to this. Simplifying concepts so that they can be understood by the clueless inevitably leads to misrepresentation. Minimizing the misrepresentation while making concepts available is the real challenge in teaching the introductory course.
One of the things I always did was point out errors in the text, and document why they were wrong. In many cases it is simply that the latest thing out is in opposition to what is said in a three or four old text.
On the other hand, I used to argue with my molecular colleagues that we should not include any idea in an introductory course which had not survived for at least five years.
Posted by: JimThomerson | September 4, 2008 6:08 PM
In physics, it's often impossible to give students an accurate and worthwhile history lesson in their introductory classes. Suppose I want to teach a classful of college sophomores the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. There's a standard "physicist's history" which goes along with this, which touches on a familiar litany of famous names: Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Werner Heisenberg, Ernst Schrödinger. The problem is that all of these men were highly trained, professional physicists who were thoroughly conversant with the knowledge of their time — well, naturally! But this means that any one of them knew more classical physics than a modern college sophomore. They would have known Hamiltonian and Lagrangian mechanics, for example, in addition to techniques of statistical physics (calculating entropy and such). Unless you know what they knew, you can't really follow their thought processes, and we don't teach big chunks of what they knew until after we've tried to teach what they figured out! Consequently, any "historical" treatment at the introductory level will probably end up "conventionalized". One has either to step extremely carefully or to throw out the whole benighted historical approach, saving the history for a time when it can actually be appreciated.
I don't know how much this is the case with other fields.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | September 4, 2008 6:38 PM
Sorry, Zach. I've been misinterpreting people all over the damn 'gosphere today, and I'm sure it's related to my generally foul mood. I should know better.
It's weird that anyone would present the Darwin story as a "Eureka!" moment...when I have told it I always emphasized the years of Beagling and the many many more years of barnacling and cogitating he went through before deciding to share.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 4, 2008 7:39 PM
primarily as was espoused by his University College London teacher Robert Grant,
An historical correction ...
Darwin was exposed to Lamarck while in Edinburgh with Grant. After Darwin left for Cambridge, Grant eventually ended up at UCL and Darwin while in London (& Down) avoided meeting his old mentor, either because of Grant's political radicalism or the fact that he effectively took credit for a discovery made by Darwin.
Posted by: John Lynch | September 4, 2008 7:49 PM
You'd really appreciate our first few days of 102; we just did history of evolutionary theory today. I always get annoyed when Lamarck is glossed over, because his ideas while dead wrong, were still good. He got a lot right: inherited change in lifeforms, influence of environment. Of course, if I lose my arm, my kids will still be born with two arms (this is the example I always give my 102 students to explain the fallacy in his theory).
Posted by: Lisa D | September 4, 2008 7:59 PM
When I've felt that an instructor's information was insufficient but didn't want to interrupt the class by speaking up, I often incorporated the important points into papers or essays for the class. That way, I didn't risk embarrassing my professor or incurring resentment which could affect my grade. And when I needed professors' recommendations for grad school, some of them remembered that I did that and said that it had caused them to refine their lessons and to learn more themselves. Most all of us, after all, have areas of specialization that cause other areas to be neglected.
Posted by: deang | September 4, 2008 8:04 PM
He maintained that the undergraduate experience consisted of an initial year of being lied to and then three years of professors attempting to convince students they had been lied to.
Yea, but when did he say that? In the first year or the third year???
Blake: Unless you know what they knew, you can't really follow their thought processes, and we don't teach big chunks of what they knew until after we've tried to teach what they figured out! Consequently, any "historical" treatment at the introductory level will probably end up "conventionalized"
That is a very good point. I think this point applies to Darwin, as I'm sure Darwin and his contemporaries knew a LOT more than the average College sophomore/junior (I'm sure Laelaps is not taking 100/1000 levels here, but maybe.) But, I wonder about the difference between physics and biology/life science at these junctures. Pre-Quantum physics was probably a lot more complex and a lot farther along in applied areas in 1900 - 1920 than biology was between 1840 and 1860. Or at least, the relationships between what was known and what was being added/discovered/deduced was different. I've read all the classic papers of the first years of physics (though I am not trained in this area at all, so my impressions are .... impressionistic) and I get the impression that there was a regular building on of one concept to another. With The Origin, there is more of a paradigm shift in some areas. Also, for the latter, Darwin in the 1850s was making a set of points that was much more complex and diverse (in the classic pre Gouldian sense of diverse). Almost like if everyone was in a fog and then Plank comes along and says "OK, first, you have these atoms that are made of smaller and smaller particles, energy and matter come in units of specified minimal size, these things interact in a certain way, therefore we have the photoelectric effect, the Zeeman effect, the Pauli principle, oh and here's some formulas you can use to work it all out" except without the math.
This is not to say that Darwin was as brilliant as Planck plus Bohr plus Heisenberg etc, but rather, that the nature of the particular natural phenomena lent to accretive, mathematically guided hard to figure step after step for physics, wheresa a holistic approach with broad evidence based thinking and so on worked with biology.
Also, while I would love to have had Brian (or Deang, I'm sure) in one of my intro biology classes, it is the case that over 25 years of teaching hardly ever has the 'know it all' student who speaks up to correct me in class ever been even close. One of the things one learns in teaching is how to deal with the student who 'corrects' the teacher but is utterly, often embarrassingly wrong. Very little time needs to be spent on dealing with the student who speaks up to correct the instructor when the instructor is wrong: You just thank them if you know they are right, or verify then thank them later.
It is true, however, that it is a LOT nicer and more effective to get a comment, if it is somewhat complex, by email or in an office visit, so you can go back and forth about it, verify, get is straight. Do realize, please, that if an instructor is 'corrected' by a student, and the instructor really was wrong, it may not be possible for the instructor to know on the spot that the student is correct. As I said above, that is very rare. So, how does one handle that exactly???
Posted by: Greg Laden | September 5, 2008 7:48 AM
"Huh. Interesting point. I'll have to look into that and get back to you."
Then, be sure to do so, and get back to them publicly at the very beginning of the next class. There's no shame in not knowing Everything, even if you're an Associate Professor of Science.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 5, 2008 11:03 AM
John Lynch wrote
Or perhaps, as Janet Browne very delicately hints, Darwin brushed off a subtle pass Grant made at him. See page 75 and particularly page 87 of her Voyaging.Posted by: RBH | September 5, 2008 11:48 PM