Tag: textbooks
Can Biology Textbooks Recover from Over-Praising Darwin?
They say that admitting a problem is the first step on the road to recovery. I’ll admit that I’m something of a bookaholic: I’m constantly picking up books, especially books on evolution. It’s been fascinating to read how Darwin is praised not only as the patron saint of “Western thought,” but sometimes as if he invented sliced bread and cupholders in cars. For example, Douglas Futuyma’s textbook Evolutionary Biology stated that “it was Darwin’s theory of evolution … that provided a crucial plank to the platform of mechanism and materialism–in short, to much of science–that has since been the stage of most Western thought.” John Dupré rejoices that “Darwin’s theory provides the last major piece in the articulation of a Read More ›
The Textbooks Don’t Lie: Haeckel’s Faked Drawings Have Been Used to Promote Evolution: Raven & Johnson (2002) (Part 2)
Links of Interest: Hoax of Dodos, a response to inaccuracies in Flock of Dodos Haeckel’s Bogus Embryo Drawings (Clip on YouTube) As noted recently, we are presently highlighting some textbooks that use Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings to promote evolution. These textbooks use Haeckel’s drawings to assert that they represent factual evidence for evolution in the present-day. “Flock of Dodos” film producer Randy Olson has claimed that either (A) the fraudulent drawings haven’t been used in any modern textbooks, or alternatively, if that argument fails, then (B) when they are used, it isn’t to promote evolution, but simply to demonstrate some kind of historical perspective on the development of evolutionary thought. This post will discuss one recently-published textbook, Peter H Raven Read More ›
The Textbooks Don’t Lie: Haeckel’s Faked Drawings Have Been Used to Promote Evolution: Miller & Levine (1994) (Part I)
Links of Interest: Hoax of Dodos, a response to inaccuracies in Flock of Dodos Haeckel’s Bogus Embryo Drawings (Clip on YouTube) Since Randy Olson’s film “Flock of Dodos” was shown on Showtime this week, we thought it worth re-highlighting material discussing Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings. “Flock of Dodos” and Randy Olson’s statements have tried to rewrite history by claiming that Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings have never been used in modern textbooks to promote evolution in the present day. His argument is that either (1) the drawings were never in textbooks, or, when that argument doesn’t work, he falls back on his old claim that (2) the drawings were in textbooks, but they were used only to provide a historical context Read More ›