Keeping at it

Olivia Judson has a short column in the opinion section of the New York Times about the importance of teaching evolution in public schools. Like Judson, I am frustrated that evolution is often taught as a distinct biological phenomena at the end of the year, hardly presented as the concept that makes sense of the rest of biology (as Theodosius Dobzhansky once said). Rather than being a powerful idea that connects what is being taught it is often treated as little more than a footnote, if it is mentioned at all. Just because a school isn't mired in a creationist controversy doesn't mean that evolution is being taught there, and I have to wonder how many schools simply avoid the topic because they feel it to be too controversial.

These concerns are not new, of course. Year after year scientists and non-professionals well versed in scientific concepts have to keep pushing, keep writing, to make sure students are not intellectually shortchanged. The 1920's, the time period that is the subject of Constance Clark's new book God - or Gorilla, evolution was a hot topic and many were concerned with whether or not it should be taught in school. In the days before the Modern Synthesis, when orthogenesis and Neo-Lamarckism were big contenders for primary factors of evolution, many scientists were dismayed with the treatment of evolution (and even the treatment of science in general) in public schools.

During the 1920's evolution faced some formidable opposition in the U.S. William Jennings Bryan, the famed orator and politician, had thought evolution was harmless (even though he didn't accept it for humans) until he read how German soldiers had used it as a way to rationalize their country's actions in WWI. John Roach Straton, a famed New York pastor, railed against the American Museum of Natural History and associated evolution with the godless equivalent of heavy metal of the time, jazz. While books about evolution made the best-seller lists and museum attendance was high, the public seemed to be stuck in the middle, interested in the arguments but ready to accept or reject whatever they didn't particularly like from either side.

Simply teaching students "the facts of evolution" was not enough, however. While there was some physics envy ("Oh, if only it was the law of evolution!"), popular science writer Benjamin Gruenberg lamented the way in which students were taught about science in general. Writing in School and Society, Gruenberg explained that science was "an instrument for restating truth, for changing opinions, for breaking up prejudices, for challenging convictions." (Quoted in Clark, 2008) Science was not a set of facts to be mastered but a way of understanding nature, a way of knowing that acknowledged uncertainty but still allowed the workings of nature to be known and comprehended. Terms like "theory" and "hypothesis" were misunderstood, however, and the anti-evolutionists of the 1920's declared evolution "only a theory" as they still do today.

History teaches us some harsh lessons about the "long argument" over evolution. Evolutionary science has flourished but the hydra of creationist doctrine continues to sprout new heads. Even though we daily gain more understanding of the "tempo and mode" of the history of life on earth, anti-evolutionist pundits keep thumping their podiums and pointing to Genesis. I can't imagine an end to this state of affairs. This is not reason to lose heart, however. The desire to help the public understand evolution is a positive one, and while we may have to combat creationism the veracity and accuracy of our arguments does not rely on the defeat of their ideological edifice.

I am certainly glad that there are so many concerned with crushing creationism but this cannot be the whole of our efforts; if we let it become so we have let our opponents turn the debate from one over the workings of nature to the fabled war between science and theology. If we rely on the "warfare" model we will only be tearing down a belief system in the hope that our view will be accepted, victims of the false dichotomy our rhetoric constructed. None of us will ever see a "Victory" for evolution in our lifetimes (whatever that might look like), but such is the nature of this debate. We have to keep working, keep reaching out to the public, and we have never been in a better position to do so than now.