Alcuin 2014. Biology curriculum First quarter: Introduce the historical/philosophical thread Human body.

Natural History: Narrative approach to Darwin and his critics

Alcuin 2014

Biology curriculumFirst quarter:

Introduce the historical/philosophical thread Human body

Biology curriculumFirst quarter:

Introduce the historical/philosophical thread Human body

Second quarter:Greeks, Romans, and MA, and the development

of Linnaeus’ taxonomy.Animals and plants

Taxonomy and life processes

Biology curriculumThird quarter:

Diversity of microscopic lifeScientific revolution to 1859Darwin and evolutionEcology in the Everglades

Biology curriculumThird quarter:

Diversity of microscopic lifeScientific revolution to 1859Darwin and evolutionEcology in the Everglades

Fourth QuarterCell processesGenetics, central dogma of biologyEvaluation of evolutionary history of life19th century historical narrative

Catastrophist-uniformitarianDebate-19th centuryProgression in the fossil record

Fish

Reptile

Amphibian

Bird Mammal

Catastrophist-uniformitarianDebate-19th centuryTheories of the earth:NeptunismVulcanism

Catastrophist-uniformitarianDebate-19th century

Charles Lyell (1797-1875)

1.Uniformitarian.2.Deist with high

view of man3.Principles of

Geology (1830)—synthesized vulcanism and neptunism

Darwin’s detractor--New catastrophismGeorge McCready Price (1870-1963)

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)“I was born a naturalist”

“No pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles.”

Darwin to today

Neo-Darwinian synthesis1930s-1940s

Gregor Mendel

DNA to ENCODE Project

Asa Gray

Darwin’s detractorsArchdeacon William Paley (1743-1805)

Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature, (1802)

Darwin’s detractorsLouis Agassiz (1807-1873)

You come upon two people having an argument occurring as follows: Matt Erlist: Christians don’t understand that evolution accounts for everything in biology. Science and faith cannot coexist. Because Christians don’t understand evolution they do not care about the environment. Pat Ann Soir: Evolution does not make any sense. There is no evidence for it. Christianity has always opposed evolution. Contribute your thoughts to this debate in terms of history, philosophy, cell processes, ecology, and the history of life. Each of these topics is worth a total of 20 points. The more detailed information you include for each topic, the better your grade.

So what are the benefits?Moving from concrete to abstract

So what are the benefits?Moving from concrete to abstractNatural historical progression to material

allowing ease of integrating history and philosophy

So what are the benefits?Moving from concrete to abstractNatural historical progression to material

allowing ease of integrating history and philosophy

There is more going on here . . .

Natural science tradition

“Science is a demonstrable knowledge of causes.” —Aristotle

“Science is organized knowledge…Science is, or aspires to be, deductively ordered.”

—Sir Peter Medawar

Natural history tradition“”The method then that we must adopt is to attempt to recognize the natural groups [forms], following the indications afforded by the instincts of mankind, which led them to form the class of Birds and the class of Fishes, each of which groups combines a multitude of differentiae, and is not defined by a single one as in dichotomy.”

—Aristotle, Parts of Animals 

Natural history tradition

“The best course appears to be that we should follow the method already mentioned, and begin with the phenomena presented by each group of animals, and, when this is done, proceed afterwards to state the causes of those phenomena, and to deal with their evolution.” On the parts of Animals 1.14-15

Natural philosophy

“Since ‘nature’ has two senses, the form and the matter, we must investigate its objects as we would the essence of snubnose-ness. That is, such things are neither independent of matter nor can be defined in terms of matter only…Since there are two natures, with which is the natural [philosopher] concerned? Or should he investigate a combination of the two?”

—Aristotle Physics

SummaryThe Method of Natural History is then to accumulate the phenomena and classify them according to their like kinds (forms).—Careful observation, Cladistics, and Nomenclature

The Method of Natural Science is to reason from the phenomena to the causes of the phenomena [hypotheses], and set them in a syllogistic causal system.

Natural Philosophy synthesizes these two into a composite whole and asks questions of invention, interpretation, purpose, and insight

Caldecott

“All things are therefore intrinsically “knowable.” At the same time, they are unfathomable because they are rooted in God: Their full truth is their nature as creatively known, not by us, but by God“

C.S. Lewis

“We do not look at trees either as Dryads or as beautiful objects while we cut them into beams: the first man who did so may have felt the price keenly, and the bleeding trees in Virgil and Spenser may be far-off echoes of that primeval sense of impiety.”