I am reading The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution written by
Richard Dawkins. This is a book about science, which is why I chose it. I am
more partial to science than any other subject, so reading it is easiest and
most enjoyable for me. It is a different type of thinking involved than when
reading literature. The arguments are more straightforward and I understand
them in much less time than in literature. This book goes back to one of the
most basic ideas in biology in order to prove its validity, which is necessary
since this idea, the theory of evolution, is under much scrutiny, in America
more than other places.
Dawkins begins by saying that there
is a lot of evidence for evolution, and yet many people deny it. He goes on in
the first chapter, ridiculing people who deny evolution as ignorant and blind
to the evidence he is about to present. I’m not sure why he would say this, but
then Dawkins dives into the science. He presents examples of evolution that
have occurred before our eyes, one being the case of dogs. Dogs started out as Canis lupus, better known as wolves, and
then through breeding and domestication evolved into “the two hundred or so
breeds of dogs” (Dawkins 15). The diversity of these breeds after just a few
thousand years exemplifies the drastic changes that evolution can effect on a
species. Similar scientific arguments are made throughout the book to prove
different aspects of evidence for evolution, such as proving the age of the
Earth, how small evolutionary changes add up to become big changes over time,
how missing links are nonexistent, and how the change in complexity from a
single cell to a human being is possible (“you did it yourself in nine months”)
(Dawkins 100). Dawkins is thorough and convincing, but many times I wanted to
put the book down because his arguments became repetitive and were not
organized in any clear way. He would pick apart an issue and then say “so this
means evolution is true,” and even if that is the logical conclusion of each
argument, nobody wants to hear that phrase a thousand times. If it wasn’t
convincing the first 999 times, the thousandth is superfluous.
After reading this book, I felt
convinced, but I just did not care anymore. Evolution seemed boring and not
like an important issue. So, needless to say, it isn’t something I would like
to further investigate. However, there are many other ideas presented in this
book that sparked my interest, such as the conflict between science and
religion in our world, and the way that people are affected by the disbelief in
science that is prevalent in America. In the first chapter, Dawkins says that
most powerful religious people do believe in evolution, and that it is the
uninformed people who do not believe it. This means that there is an issue of
education, and I might want to look into this general topic area more.
I really like your topic and your choice for reading. I think it’s a good change from the books that other people chose, as your choice is more factual based and centered within our own world. I think it’s interesting how you have discovered the differences between scientific writing and the fictional, artistic literature that we have been reading all year. It’s interesting how the straightforward, and confrontational approach to making and argument doesn’t seem to work and like you said, It just gets repetitive and boring as they keep refuting objections. For me, this seems to make literary works seem more purposeful because they seemed more effective in convincing the reader and capturing his attention.
ReplyDeleteYou said your book was about evolution, I don’t know if you’ve seen Cosmos, but it talks about different scientific aspects in the world. There was an episode that I saw that talked about evolution and it mentioned the way dogs evolved from wolves to what we have now because of our continuous selection of the cuter ones and the ones that fit our needs. I thought this was really cool because I had wondered why dogs are so diverse but I never though their appearance changed because of humans.
You said you were thinking of doing education, or lack there of, for your research because that seems to be a problem with the controversy. I think it might also be interesting to look into the people who actively reject the idea of evolution. I know there are a good amount of fundamentalist groups trying to fight evolution and get creationism put in schools and scientific, factual shows like Cosmos have heated the argument lately. It could help to research why these groups reject evolution so much.