Two down, one to go. Sort of. Even though it took longer than I thought, I am setting aside the dinosaurs and birds chapter for a bit to work on the section on human evolution. To get myself in the spirit of things I picked up Bones of Contention yesterday, although I also have a stack of academic resources to go through to try and make sure what I write is up to date.
When I first started seriously writing this book, I thought it was going to be a relatively easy project. I was at least somewhat familiar with each of the subjects I wanted to tackle, and I knew I could do a better job than some other authors I had read. The more I dug, though, the more difficult telling a coherent "story" became. As much as we have learned, as many discoveries as we have made, there are still some hotly debated issues. I do not hold back from appraising competing ideas where there is conflict (i.e. the ground-up vs. trees-down hypotheses about the origin of avian flight), but I am not compelled to hold one notion up as a clear victor over another if many unanswered questions remain.
Space severely limits what I can cover, and I'm sure that some scientists are going to feel that I have left out or overlooked certain things in each chapter. As much as I would like to have academics approve of the finished product, though, I am not writing this book to impress them. I am writing for anyone who is fascinated by evolution but may not know much about it, or has always "believed" in evolution but knows little of the fantastic discoveries made over the last two centuries. I am striving to be as accurate and responsible as I can, but I know that even my best effort will not please everyone.
Here is the Wordle for the near-complete version of the birds & dinosaurs chapter;
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For previous posts dealing with this project, see the "Books" and "Great Book Project" archives.
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