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Robert Klose is an emeritus professor of biological sciences at the University of Maine at Augusta. His latest book is “Trigger Warning.”
One hundred years ago, in July of 1925, the so-called ” Monkey Trial” took place in Dayton, Tennessee. It was, I think, supposed to have been the final catharsis, the last gasp of religious fundamentalism guiding science instruction as evolution made its inexorable way into the educational curriculum. But a century since, we seem to have stalled in our progress.
I spent many decades teaching college-level biology. But evolution, even in this, the modern age, was the bugaboo. One day, for example, I visited the restroom to find a bold graffito scrawled inside one of the stalls, to wit, “DARWIN WAS WRONG!”
It’s at this juncture that I’d like to address a question of language. ” Theory of Evolution” is incorrect. Evolution is a fact. The physical world changes, and life must change along with it or else it will go extinct.
Think about this. If Florida were to begin to become a steadily colder place (over hundreds or thousands of years), does anyone truly believe that palm trees would persist in their present form? At first, the hardiest, most cold-resistant palm trees would survive, and their even hardier offspring would also sort themselves out. In time, the palm tree would have changed so much to cope with the new environment that it would have become a totally new species.
What I have described is the theoretical part of the fact of evolution. In other words, Charles Darwin’s theory of how evolution works. It’s called natural selection. The evidence for this process is overwhelming (think antibiotic resistance). But apparently not for one of my students, who, when I related that the Earth was something over 4 billion years old, yelled out, “Six thousand!”
Where did he get this number? It came from a 17th century Irish bishop, the Rev. James Ussher, who, through creative calculations based on the ages of the prophets in Genesis, determined that the Creation occurred in 4004 B.C.
The irony is that my objecting student was a member of one of Maine’s Wabanaki tribes. I gently pointed out to him that his own people had been in Maine for some 12,000 years; but he wasn’t having it. He stormed out of the classroom (perhaps making a pit stop in the men’s room?)
Which brings me to the Scopes Trial. To recap: a 24-year-old schoolteacher, John T. Scopes, was brought to trial in a test of a Tennessee state law that prohibited the teaching of any theory that contradicted the biblical account of Creation. Scopes was bookended by two titanic personalities — three-time presidential candidate and populist fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution, and Clarence Darrow, the most renowned defense lawyer of his day.
The trial got off to a terrible start for the poor, retiring Scopes, as the prosecution had successfully blocked any expert testimony from scientists conversant in the language of biology and evolution. And then, the masterstroke: Darrow put Bryan on the stand to expose his woeful ignorance to the world. He tripped Bryan up on a question about the age of the Earth; specifically, how could the first day of Creation have been a 24-hour day if the sun wasn’t created until day four? Bryan’s response: “My impression is that [the days] were periods.”
That was it, then. By extrapolation, Darrow suggested that the first “day” of creation could have been millions of years in duration. Bryan was done, but Scopes was still found guilty and fined a nominal $100, later overturned on appeal.
As I said at the outset, one would like to think that science had triumphed and fundamentalism had ebbed. But what America wound up with was a compromise. As of last year, 17 states taught evolution only alongside creationism.
To me, the great irony is that, in opposing such a bedrock scientific principle, the fundamentalists are strengthening the case for natural selection by driving thinking, inquisitive people from their midst and leaving the willfully ignorant behind. Which is why, 100 years post-Scopes, anti-evolution sentiment still lives and breathes in the United States.
Which brings me back to that student who stormed out of my lecture. After the last class of the semester, he approached me in a more subdued manner and said, with respect to natural selection, “Well, I’m willing to think about it.”
Which is, of course, a lovely example of evolution.
