Being in this course has changed my view of the biological world greatly. Throughout the four books and various papers that we have read I have learned to think more critically, learned more about learned more about what scientists go through, and even noticed more similarities between humans and fish. The papers helped me understand hard topics, but the discussions with my classmates has helped me better understand how people can build upton others’ ideas or have differing views on a subject, but still have a discussion about it. The first book Guns, Germs, and Steel explained human’s early history and progression to where we are now in a very eye-opening way. Going along in my daily life, I never fully understood how proximity to resources, …show more content…
As a student majoring in science, I knew that evolution was an important, but seemingly complicated process to understand. I liked that Coyne was able to break down evolution into manageable parts that could be more easily understood. I also loved learning the answers to some questions I had such as why all different vertebrates all begin development looking like a fish embryo. Learning that each vertebrate undergoes development in a series of stages, and the sequence of the stages follows the evolutionary sequences of its ancestors was a great thing to learn. The thing I most took away from this book though, was how Coyne tackles the subject of people thinking evolution is “just a theory”. Coyne tries to prove that evolution is solidly established as any scientific fact and scientists need no more convincing about it. He also explains why creationists are wrong, and what seems to be totally delusional. He says by looking at the facts, people shouldn’t be discouraged or think life has no meaning, but they should know that evolution is true and creationism is not. His obvious opinion about creationists taught me that everyone, even scientists have some opinion and bias on a subject. Reading books and papers like this has taught me to be better at thinking critically, and not focus so not much on someone's opinion, but the evidence that they actually …show more content…
As a student going into the medical field, obviously the body interests me. The book gave me a whole new set of insights to why the human body is set up the way it is. It’s amazing just how many modern body systems are really just modifications of old ones. From our ear bones, to our skeleton, to our genes, we can look to the species that came before us. To look as the history of history of limb patterns, we look at fish and their skeletons, and to look at how the proportions of our bodies are established we look at that versions of the Hox genes appear in every animal with a body. These lessons in the book really lead me to look at the animals around us differently than I did before. In everyday life I can look around and see the similarities that Shubin talked about. I think this knowledge about body systems will definitely help me in my future to understand why we are set up this way and why our bodies have these sets of limitations or unexpected
Jared Diamond, author of the Pulitzer Prize Winning, National Best Selling book Guns, Germs and Steel, summarizes his book by saying the following: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Guns, Germs and Steel is historical literature that documents Jared Diamond's views on how the world as we know it developed. However, is his thesis that environmental factors contribute so greatly to the development of society and culture valid? Traditions & Encounters: A Brief Global History is the textbook used for this class and it poses several different accounts of how society and culture developed that differ from Diamond's claims. However, neither Diamond nor Traditions are incorrect. Each poses varying, yet true, accounts of the same historical events. Each text chose to analyze history in a different manner. Not without flaws, Jared Diamond makes many claims throughout his work, and provides numerous examples and evidence to support his theories. In this essay, I will summarize Jared Diamond's accounts of world history and evolution of culture, and compare and contrast it with what I have learned using the textbook for this class.
However, this goal was not as easy I thought it would be. The first couple of seminars made me feel out of place. Fellow classmates seemed like they knew what was happening in the seminar; this made me question my ability to complete the course because I could barely understand what was happening. By not really understanding what was going on in class, it made me think that the easiest solution would be simply to drop Biology completely. Of course, dropping it would be the easiest solution, but would I actually gained anything if I did
Evolution is the reason for many different species and their existence. Evolution proves that there is much more to the world than the human can see. Charles Darwin had looked into the eye of the storm, and found something revolutionary. His research has changed and reshaped science in it’s own very existence; changing how scientists see their works. Charles created a new way of thinking, and proven that there is always an alternate reason why something is the way it is, and how it became that way, not to mention he constructed against religion that proves itself to be wrong. Everything has a reason, and evolution has made that reason clear to us, through Darwin’s works.”Charles Darwin is best known for his work as a naturalist, developing a theory of evolution to explain biological change.”
In the book, Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin he presents the notion of evolution and how we can trace parts that make up the human body back to jellyfish, worms, and even fish. The book not only discusses how we arose to be what we are today, but also the implications our ancestors had on our current body plan. In this essay, I will demonstrate that I have digested the entirety of Shubin’s book by convincing you (dear reader) that everything in our bodies is based on simple changes to already existing systems. To make this case, I will use the evidence of limb development in a vast array of organisms, the four arches found in the embryological stage of development, the structures inside our noses, and how our ears have come about all due to modifications.
The book is very educational. I learned about the homeobox genes, which guide the development of the entire human body from a single cell.
As I planed to take this class, I thought this course would be like all other general education courses. I believed that it would be of little use to me. However, after attending the first class, my view has changed completely. I applied each and every theory to my life.
In the book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies the author Jared Diamond covers a vast array of historical and geographic events. Diamond compares and describes many developments that are occurring in different geographic areas around the world. What was his purpose for writing and comparing this vast amount of information? What did he want the reader to get out of it? His purpose for writing this text is to explain why certain cultures developed faster and what circumstances left the others at a disadvantage. The overall goal of the book is to explain how certain cultures became dominate and succeeded and how others didn’t develop as much. Diamonds summarization of the book gives you an insight to the meaning the book has.
The Greatest Show on Earth, by Richard Dawkins, is a persuasive book written to convince readers that evolution is scientific fact. It lays out the facts quite nicely, balancing data with ideas expertly. However, the argument part of this book is lost in Dawkins' arrogance and pomposity. The constant stream of insults directed at Creationists will never convince anyone to change their views, nor does it make the book pleasant to read. If the reader can look past the constant jibes, this book does an excellent job of proving evolution to be scientific theory.
This course and as in Honors Biology, we were taught in a more oneself teaching rather than a lecture. I like the idea of not having a lecture, but when the teacher took a day to do a quick overview of each chapter, I learned the material and understood the material the best. I wish that we had that in each unit because I truly do like biology and when I understand a new concept fully it made me feel 10 times more comfortable on the test and the
The entirety of “Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction” by Eugenie C. Scott masterfully covers the ongoing controversy surrounding religion and the theory of evolution. It is written in such a way to where any person, no matter how familiar they are with the subject matter, can understand the content offered. Evolution has always been a sensitive topic in the realm of education but has only been made worse due to the involvement of individuals who lack a background in science and misinterpret the vocabulary surrounding it. The novel would have been a good read prior to taking the exam for the sole fact that it would have given me a better understanding of evolution as a whole, as well as have some insight into the history.
Charles Darwin has had the greatest influence on the world by proving the evolution of living things. Charles Darwin had first noticed the similarities of plants and animals when he took a five-year cruise on the H.M.S. Beagle, which was available to him through a friend from school. During the cruise Charles Darwin started becoming interested with the similarities between the plants and animals that were similar on different islands with similar climates, so he decided to study them more closely.
At that time I had barely been a week into the Advanced Biology class I was taking and even though my friends were with me, I remember that I hated it because I thought it was boring. This changed after our teacher showed us a documentary on the theory of evolution, where I was introduced to Charles Darwin. I was instantly hooked and immediately began to look for more information on the subject. This had opened my eyes to a whole world that I had no idea even existed up until that point. For a long while this was the one thing that defined me, my knowledge of evolution and biology. As time went by my intense appreciation for Charles Darwin and his theories waned and while it never really went away I did start to invest my time in other
Over the course of this class I have pieced together many things about my own life that before went unnoticed. I am now able to see things in a bit of a different light. Now that I have been introduced to the realm of psychology I understand some of the reasons for behavior around me. I have learned that there is a reason for most everything and a lot of our behaviors and mental processes can be explained through psychology. Studies have been conducted for many years to try and pinpoint the source of our behavior and it is not something that most people think about every day. Having a better understanding of why we operate the way we do will help me to better understand myself and the others around me.
There was a significant amount of knowledge given in this course, involving concepts that in our teaching career will be extremely important. From this course I have gained a significant amount of learning experiences. I had the pleasure learning about how the educational system has come to be what it is today and who were the important people in the creation of the public education, like Horace Mann. Watching the videos and reading the chapters required has opened my eyes more of how a teacher should respond to different situations involving a student, For example when we read the chapter on the laws that revolve around the educators and the students. I had absolutely no clue that students had rights while in school property. Another learning
Without evolution, and the constant ever changing environment, the complexity of living organisms would not be as it is. Evolution is defined as a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations (8).Scientists believe in the theory of evolution. This belief is based on scientific evidence that corroborates the theory of evolution. In Figure 1 the pictures of the skulls depict the sequence of the evolution of Homo-sapiens. As the figure shows, man has evolved from our common ancestor that is shared by homo-sapiens. The change of diet of homo-sapiens over time has thought to contribute to the change in jaw structure and overall skull shape.