Summary Of Jonathan Well's Icons Of Revolution
Sarah Nam
12/12/2014
PHSC 101
Prof Pichaj
Book Report- Icons of Revolution In Jonathan Well’s novel of Icons of Revolution, he describes the idea of evolution which is the theory that all living things are descendants of a common ancestor who has lived in the past. Within this view, he compares the icons of evolution structured around the Darwinian evolution with scientific evidence to show his readers that most of what we are taught about evolution is actually false. In Well’s chapter titled “From Ape to Human: The Ultimate Icon”, he uses Darwin’s theory for human origins to prove that science is actually a myth. According to Darwin’s view, he only had two implications. One being that humans are nothing but animals, and two, they are …show more content…
He states that made is formed with the same model as other mammals. He argues that there is no fundamental difference between man and the mental features of animals and that the “difference is a matter of degree, not of kind” ((212). This claim that humans are animals caused many scientists to have questions concerning his view. In the year of 1953, Joseph Weiner, Kenneth Oakley, and Wilfrid Le Gros Clark proved that the human skull and ape-like lower jaw known as the “Piltdown man” was a fraud and that the jaw had been chemically treated to make it look like a fossil and its teeth had been purposely filed down to make it look like those of a human. “Piltdown shows us how easily susceptible researchers can be manipulated into believing that they have actually found just what it was they had been looking for” …show more content…
A Chief Science Writer for Nature, Henry Gee, stated that “no fossil is buried with its birth certificate” which further showed how unreliable the fossil records actually were back in the day. Another critic of evolution was a Harvard Paleontologist named Stephen Jay Gould who claimed that extinctions were accidents that demonstrated the fundamental contingency of evolution. The problem derived from questioning Gould’s confidence that he was true. A Canadian philosopher of biology argued that Gould was making a religion of evolution and going beyond the strict sciences. Although Gould did have a right as a scientists to express his views, he failed in the aspect of teaching it as though it were actual science which is what Wells is trying to portray through various examples that the views of evolution have been manipulated and destroyed constantly without anyone actually
12/12/2014
PHSC 101
Prof Pichaj
Book Report- Icons of Revolution In Jonathan Well’s novel of Icons of Revolution, he describes the idea of evolution which is the theory that all living things are descendants of a common ancestor who has lived in the past. Within this view, he compares the icons of evolution structured around the Darwinian evolution with scientific evidence to show his readers that most of what we are taught about evolution is actually false. In Well’s chapter titled “From Ape to Human: The Ultimate Icon”, he uses Darwin’s theory for human origins to prove that science is actually a myth. According to Darwin’s view, he only had two implications. One being that humans are nothing but animals, and two, they are …show more content…
He states that made is formed with the same model as other mammals. He argues that there is no fundamental difference between man and the mental features of animals and that the “difference is a matter of degree, not of kind” ((212). This claim that humans are animals caused many scientists to have questions concerning his view. In the year of 1953, Joseph Weiner, Kenneth Oakley, and Wilfrid Le Gros Clark proved that the human skull and ape-like lower jaw known as the “Piltdown man” was a fraud and that the jaw had been chemically treated to make it look like a fossil and its teeth had been purposely filed down to make it look like those of a human. “Piltdown shows us how easily susceptible researchers can be manipulated into believing that they have actually found just what it was they had been looking for” …show more content…
A Chief Science Writer for Nature, Henry Gee, stated that “no fossil is buried with its birth certificate” which further showed how unreliable the fossil records actually were back in the day. Another critic of evolution was a Harvard Paleontologist named Stephen Jay Gould who claimed that extinctions were accidents that demonstrated the fundamental contingency of evolution. The problem derived from questioning Gould’s confidence that he was true. A Canadian philosopher of biology argued that Gould was making a religion of evolution and going beyond the strict sciences. Although Gould did have a right as a scientists to express his views, he failed in the aspect of teaching it as though it were actual science which is what Wells is trying to portray through various examples that the views of evolution have been manipulated and destroyed constantly without anyone actually