Is An Undersatnding Of Evolution Essential To An Understanding Of Biology?

Great Debates
41

Well, that depends on what you mean by “basic biology”. If that moniker encompasses only the collection of factoids and diagrams that describe biological systems, then you don’t have to have any knowledge of evolution, or indeed, the underlying physical mechanisms of biology. But that would be akin to a literature class in which students memorize stanzas and passages without discussing the content and theme of poetry and prose.

It is impossible, for instance, to speak authoritatively about taxanomy without explaining that species derive from one another. Linnean taxonomy intrinsically assumes evolutionary connections between species. Nor can one discuss genetics without acknowledging that combinations and mutations lead to new and differing phenotypes. Excising evolution from the discussion means that virtually any question of “Why?” hits a dead end that can only be answered by opening the door to evolution (or Intelligent Design/Creationism/Flying Spaghetti Monsters if that’s your thing). Try this one; why do all vertebrates have two eyes? Mechanics alone can’t explain that question, and yet it is one that literally defines your everyday perception of the world.

This isn’t to say that you can’t run biological experiements or classify organisms without constant reference to evolution. Similarly, people experiemented with compounds and minerals for millenia without the slightest clue that substances were comprised of discrete atoms each of which has unique and well-defined properties with respect to each other. They were able to establish what happens when one reacts Acid A with Mineral B, and categorize them accordingly, and this body of knowledge eventually led to the discovery of the atomic composition of matter. But we call these people “alchemists” and chuckle if but softly at their ignorance. One wouldn’t even consider attempting to teach chemistry in a modern classroom without first discussing atoms, electron bonds, and the periodic table.

Evolution is “basic biology”; indeed, the basic fact of biology is that “living things evolve”. Without this knowledge, all information about biology is just a random collection of arcana, clustered together by the chemical commonality of carbon and water. With it, all of biology is united and described as multitudinous variations on a single, comprehensive theme.

Stranger

42

No, I gave you an answer to your question, and you simply ignored it. “Where do living things come from,” is as basic as any question of biology. You can easily create a Scotsman fallacy where anything I suggest is foundational to biology will be discarded as “nonessential – I said it had to be essential.”

“What is biological history”? You ask. It’s a history of life. Excuse me while I mock-drool and make a “d’uh” noise.

Photosynthesis? Photosynthesis originated in bacteria. It’s a product of evolution.

Cell division? If cells come from other cells, where did the first cell come from? Chemical evolution.

If you teach these things without saying where they came from, fine. You could also teach Hamlet without teaching students the existence of Shakespear. They could understand the play on some level without knowing where it came from, but I think they’d gain more understanding from knowing its context and the story of its origins.

43

Our basic health depends on knowing evolution – knowing why virus become resistent to antibiotics. Farming depends on evolution – knowing why insects become resistent to pesticides. Are those “need to know” issues? For that matter, why does anyone “need to know” how plants turn light into sugar? I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now. I’ve gotten along OK. Evolution has come up more often in my life than photosynthesis.

44

Is this taught as a non-elective in public schools? Are there not many things taught in public schools that are arbitrary?

I am not sure that it is an either/or situation. It certainly is not necessary to invoke God in the absence of evolution. If someone in a math class were to ask a question that is outside the purview of the class is it really necessary to lie?

I don’t know how to explain that. My question is whether such things are taught in non-elective courses, and whether teaching the theory of evolution is required at that level.

As I have said before, I am long removed from the classroom. If those kinds of questions are coming up often than of course they must be answered.

I am really sorry that God keeps coming up here. I have no idea what God has to do with it. I am not advocating a ban on teaching evolution. I am on record twice in this thread as advocating teaching evolution. I do not believe in God. I am asking whether instruction in evolution is crucial to a basic understanding of grade school level biology. Why can’t you simply answer such questions by saying “Those questions are covered in the course on evolution,” rather than trotting out the whole theory?

See my response above. Thanks for the time spent on your answer.

45

I agree it can be. Just as one can teach English without ever acknowledging etymology, or teaching mathematics by rote without every exploring number lines and numeric relationships, or teaching history as a series of disconnected facts without ever attempting any linkage. And so one and so forth.

There is no doubt that the brain of a child can be easily crammed with isolated facts, even to the extent that they can arrive at the correct answer to similar problems. The question is whether doing so is an effective way of teaching and whether it is even accurate.

The problem with ignoring evolution is the same as ignoring etymology. Children are good at finding patterns, they even enjoy it. As a result you can teach a child that words with the ‘tele’ in them for example refer to distance, and the child will be able to name half a dozen words with the root in them and make an educated guess about the construction. Moreover when they encounter new word containing that root they can then often deconstruct it. Alternatively you can teach a child every English word with containing the root ‘tele’ individually and pretend they have no commonality, but it’s inefficient and it stunts understanding.

In biology the same is true of evolution. There’s no doubt you can teach a child that species A lives in location X for every species on the planet. However you could also teach that island mammals generally evolve to become smaller. Based on that a child could then hazard a guess that a 4 foot high elephant was more likely to be found on the island of Timor than on the island of Borneo.

You could try to teach that island animals simply ‘are’ smaller without invoking evolution, but then how well would the child do in figuring out whether the elephant is more likely to have lived on Timor or Tasmania? This is where the coherence that evolution provides becomes important even for a fairly young child. It provides a fairly simple framework that allows overall patterns to emerge that the child can build on by itself. Rather than memorising facts in isolation they can memorise facts that are intimately connected and use that connection to extrapolate.

And the same goes for most other fields of elementary biology. It’s not a case of whether isolated facts can be taught to children without invoking evolution, it’s a case of whether children can be taught effectively and honestly while ignoring the cohesion that evolution provides.

46

I brought this into GD in an attempt to elevate the tone of the debate.

Is understanding the theory of evolution** essential ** to the understanding of how photosynthesis works? In other words, is it possible to understand how photosynthesis works without a knowledge of evolution.

Will you please define “chemical evolution”? A cite would help. Thanks

47

Yes.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C004535/on_the_origin_of_cells.html

48

Your view of the analogy is flawed. I can include intimate details of source code as part of the curriculum, if such is desired - still omitting the waterfall process by which the software was assembled piece by piece. Teaching them the design methodology would add nothing to their ability to use or understand the software. It would answer the question of ‘why’ it is the way it is, which might be considered another LEVEL of understanding, but it is entirely impractical to any who aren’t going on to careers in computer fields.

49

I did boot the analogy trying to make it work for my purpose. In that regard, it’s just not a workable analogy because you’re teaching skills – biology teachers teach (presumably) for understanding, and a broad understanding. It’s certainly possible to teach facts without teaching the whys and wherefors, but I don’t know how it’s worthwhile. I can think of more benefits, both practical and personal, to know about evolution than there are to learning cell mitosis. Evolution answers the most fundamental question of who we are and why we are here, but also has bearing on agriculture and public health, as I discussed earlier.

50

Specifically, what part of how photosynthesis works is incomprehensible without an understanding of the theory of evolution?

I see no mention of chemical evolution. Perhaps you are thinking of abiogenesis? Is that part of the theory of evolution?

Your cite seems to offer a theory in the sense of hypotheseis rather than working model. Did you mean to equate it with the theory of evolution?

51

That begins to get at the meat of my question. Do biology teachers at the public school level teach for a broad understanding? I am not asking if they should, but if they do.

52

No, and especially not if they’re on the Bush plan.

I recently read a report that showed evolution was treated very scantly in high school and college texts. The author concluded – amazingly – that evolution must not be important (!), rather than drawing the obvious conclusion that there is pressure on publishers to omit or downplay its significance.

53

Give me one, concrete practical benefit for a non-biologist’s evolution knowledge. Be specific. It needs to be something that, if they didn’t have that knowledge, they would be at a noticeable disadvantage to those who did.

54

How about to prevent the teaching of creationism and intelligent design as fact in schools.

55

This response seems to beg the question. Let me see if I can ask it another way. What level of knowledge of biology should be expected to be attained by a public school student in non-elective classes?

56

Once again the flaw of the excluded middle. What does creationism have to do with whether evolution is essential to an understanding of public school biology? Does creationism just flow in to fill any void in knowledge?

57

I think biology without evolution is essentially nothing more than a collection of a lot of facts about things we decide to say are alive because they metabolize on their own and reproduce. We’d note living things share a number of common features, but with no real idea why, or where these commonalities came from. We would lack any real unifying principle to guide the process of comparing or contrasting species, and hence all study of life’s qualities would lack any sound justification for the extrapolation of phenomena observed in one organism to the next. We’d be baffled by the fact all living creatures carry genes coded in DNA, and we’d be equally confounded by the fact that despite this unifying characteristic, different species can vary immensely in their size, shape, diet, means of reproduction, etc. Quite frankly, I don’t think biology became a real science until it had evolution, and would be little more conceptually sound than “stamp collecting” as Rutherford might have put it, if it lacked it.

58

Contrapuntal,

Yes, those things are taught in public schools. You simply would never find a public school biology class that didn’t discuss “what is an animal” in the youngest grades and “what is a reptile” in the upper grades. That is cladistics, the classification of organisms into groups. Similarly by around 6th grade the course will be teaching that amoeba are small and elephants are big.

Those areas are going to need to either invoke evolution, teach the facts as isolated and lie if anyone says they think they see a pattern or invoke gods. There is no other choice. Either you teach that birds share scales with reptiles because they are closely related, or you lie and say they don’t share features for any reason or you say that God wanted them to share features. There’s no 4th choice.

That’s why gods keeps coming up. If we assume that teachers are going to be honest and teach the facts as the believe them to be then gods are the only alternative. They can’t simply lie and say that there is no reason and that patterns don’t exist because al teachers know that there are patters. They know that birds do have scales, they know that marsupials are largely restricted to Australia, they know that all large animals today are mammals. So how do they teach about these recurring patterns? The only alternative to evolution would seem to be to invoke god. Simply refuse to answer is not teaching biology at all and so doesn’t enter into a discussion on how to teach biology.

This is simply to ignoring the question it and refusing to answer even though the teacher knows the answer. The ‘teacher’ isn’t teaching biology at all. When teaching “what is a reptile” the question “why isn’t a platypus a reptile” is not outside the purview of the class is it? And if that question is pertinent then why should the question “why do birds and reptiles and platypus share so many features” be considered outside the purview of the class? This appears to be a clear case of arbitrarily deciding that evolution is outside the purview of the class simply because we don’t like evolution.

All that you have done here is redefined the teaching of taxonomy or biology generally in such a way that it excludes evolution. Of course you can do that, but it’s intellectually dishonest. It would be akin to saying that we can teach English literature without every mentioning Shakespeare by simply defining English literature as all significant English writing except for those works penned by people with the initials WS.

All you are attempting to do here is define the problem away with irrational and arbitrary lines. English literature does encompass Shakespeare and Shakespeare is so essential to it that any such class would be seriously compromised by his exclusion. And in exactly the same way taxonomy does entail evolution and it can’t be simply arbitrarily defined as ‘not including evolution’. That is simply an attempt at solving the problem by defining it away. You can teach anything without referring to anything in that way. You can teach maths without referring to the number “4” for example by using exactly the same trick.

But I thought we were being intellectually honest in this debate. In honesty we can not teach maths if we do so by saying that any answer that includes the number 4 are outside the purview of maths class.

The most obvious problem is that you can’t explain where the course on evolution is going to be located. You’ve conceded that such a course is offered to these biology students.

Now if the evolution course if part of the biology curriculum then you haven’t addressed the issue. We both agree that the biology curriculum needs to have an evolution course to be complete so the issue seems to be resolved.

If the evolution course if part of the biology curriculum then aren’t; we being horribly dishonest? What is evolution if not biological science? Where do you propose to slot in the course on evolution? Philosophy? Physics? Shop? Evolution is part of biological science, shouldn’t it be taught as part of biological science, especially since it is needed to answer key questions in the biology class?

The next problem if the practicality of this artificial separation of evolution and other intimately associated strands of biology. Would you propose doing this for any other subject? If someone in a history class asked why Civil War soldiers didn’t use machine guns would you suggest the teacher answer such questions by saying “Those questions are covered in the course on firearms”? If a students in maths asked why 3 x 4 is the same as 4 + 4 + 4 would you suggest they answer such questions by saying “Those questions are covered in the course on recursion"? and so forth?

This really isn’t a practical way to teach is it? When a question has a known simple answer that provides an clear overview of multiple patterns that will make learning this subject more effective why should it be hidden in another course somewhere?

Remember nobody is saying you can’t do this. The question is how much damage you are doing with this. Doubtless you could teach maths without reference to the number ‘4’ as well, but is that really a good thing?

I have a question for you now. If you believe that the number ‘4’ is crucial to understanding mathematics then why don’t you believe that evolution is crucial to biology? Why wouldn’t you endorse a separate number 4 course for example. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I would genuinely like to know if you have an answer that can’t be equally applied to evolution and biology.

59

As has already been pointed out, most public school students will not go onto careers in science. A specific, detailed understanding of, say, photosynthesis is entirely incidental to their daily life. It’s nice to know about such details, but it won’t affect your ability to assess developments in science or a debate on the ethics of medicine. But a broad understanding of science–that is, understanding some basic principles, like Newton’s laws of motion, or how chemical reactions work–and some general notion of application of these principles is utterly critical to being able to understand the world around you and make a critical assessment of claims and observations. This is the general literacy that you are supposed to get from basic eduation, upon which you build the specific bodies of knowledge that you use in career, investment, voter franchise, interpretation of news, and indeed, basic survival.

The idea, the concept, that organisms undergo evolution via external pressure–is more general than any list of anatomic components, and will long outlive in the minds of most students any details about the Krebs cycle, or nucleosynthesis, or the number of bones in the human hand. And the concept is invaluable to any assessment of “Why?”

The proliferation of pseudoscientific medical quackery and empty-headed bioethics debates today illustrates the lack of–and demands greater emphasis upon–general scientific literacy.

Stranger

60

Any breeder of animals or plants will need a knowledge of evolution to do her job. And no, most breeders are not biologists.

If you want a specific, very concrete real world example I will reference Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser who (if you believe him) was found to have committed multiple patent infringements on Monsanto’s GM canola patent. Mr. Schmeiser noticed that a large number of canola plants from seeds saved from the field survived his normal spraying with Roundup for weed control along road allowances. He tested a section of the field by spraying it with Roundup, and 60% of the plants survived. Seed from that crop was used to plant all of his fields in 1998. He was found guilty of breach of patent because he should have known that he was selecting for the genetically modified strain. Had he had a basic understanding of evolution and what produces resistant strains he would have known that and saved himself tens of thousands of dollars.

http://reports.fja.gc.ca/fc/2003/pub/v2/2003fc31227.html

Is that a concrete enough example for you? Individual, date, location, court verdict and exact monetary cost of his ignorance of the theory of evolution?