Evolutionary ch-ch-ch-changes

April 16, 2012 • 10:38 am

Matthew Cobb sent this Bowie-esque video with an explanation:

This is from a kids’ show called Horrible Histories which is one of the best things on tv. (My kids love it)

Now this BBC video may be a bit too twee (or elementary) for the science readers here, but can you imagine this—with its explicit denial of creationism and statements about religious objections to evolution—being shown on a kids’ show in the U.S.?

(Matthew also recommends the show’s portrayal of Greek philosophers as The Monkees.)

29 thoughts on “Evolutionary ch-ch-ch-changes”

  1. Ouch! It starts off with a whopper! Charles Darwin was NOT the first to put forward “the” theory of evolution, whatever that may be, although he and Wallace were the first to put forward one particular theory of evolution, which stands to this day; that natural selection is the great driver.

    Much better, even for kids, to show that it’s an idea with much deeper roots than mid-Victorian England. After all, that’s what Darwin did.

    1. Seriously, a whopper? Darwin was the first to put forward a scientific theory. That’s a pretty good simplification. If you want to go deeper into details you can trace the earlier evolutionary thoughts. But until Darwin, there was no real scientific theory of evolution.

      1. Let me refer you to Darwin’s own “Historical Sketch”. Darwin’s precursors had various theories of what was driving change. Their thinking lacked this vital insight, but that does not make it unscientific, or unworthy of respect in its historical context. After all, Darwin himself had no idea of how new variations were generated, or of why their effects were not simply diluted by breeding, but that does not lessen our admiration for him.

        My own view is that the extent that we encourage the myth that evolutionary thought sprung into being from nothing in the middle of the 19th century, we are trivialising the concept, and giving hostages to our enemies.

        1. Before Darwin and Wallace, evolutionary ideas were somewhat vague speculations. It is appropriate to credit Darwin and Wallace with making evolution a full-fledged theory. And we shouldn’t deny them this credit just because it might give fodder to the morons (and I don’t see that it really does give them fodder anyway) .

        2. Of course you are right: evolution did not suddenly spring from nowhere. Lamarckism, as you must be well aware, although discredited now, was at least a serious attempt to explain the natural world without the use of a deity came many years before Origin. Also the influence of Malthus should not be ignored. However, it is curious that the two people who had by far the greatest influence on early-modern evolutionary thinking came from a remarkably small cross-section of a specific culture at a specific time: Victorian England. (I am well aware that Wallace’s origins were more humble than Darwin’s but the point still stands)

        3. It sounds like the pre-Darwinian history of evolutionary thought is a particularly interesting issue to you.

          Others feel similarly strongly about other issues: the precise distinction between evolution and natural selection, the fact that evolution primarily occurs at the gene level (i.e., horizontal gene transfer), the role of genetic drift, the distinction between “I believe in evolution” and “I accept evolution as a scientific theory”, and so on.

          It then becomes just about impossible to say something about evolution in simple terms without someone feeling that you made a whopper.

          1. These points, especially Igoro’s, are well taken. On the other hand, I don’t want kids getting the idea that the science of evolution was itself the product of an act of special creation. It’s worth looking for a suitable straightforward form of words, such as “our modern understanding of the process of evolution” (maybe an accomplished wordsmith like JC can improve on this?), which has the added advantage of distinguishing between the process (the facts of evolution), and our theoretical understanding of it.

            So the challenge is to be as informative as possible, without being either confusing, or boring. I am aware that I have not totally succeeded in this.

          2. And indeed, there is explicit mention by Darwin very early on in the piece that others before him had observed the giveaway anatomical similarities, which largely meets my concerns.

  4. Quite interesting that it explicitly links accepting evolution with questioning Christianity. I wonder what Biologos will have to say about this!

  5. Beautiful. And I’d like to see it attempted on a children’s show in the U.S., just to see what happens.

  6. Now this BBC video may be a bit too twee…

    My wife has banned me from using the word “twee” in her presence. She says it sounds too twee.

    1. Your wife is right.
      What was the question?
      (You’ve not been doing this for very long, have you?

  7. My below average ability 11 year-old loves HH and is addicted to it, so that’s fine by me.

    Let’s not get too po-faced about this; if you’re that worried about a pre-Darwinian history of evolutionary thought for kids, why not write one? To the metre of what? ‘God only knows’?

    Good on ya, Matthew Cobb; I saw this live and was thinking exactly the same as you and JAC about how it would run on U.S. T.V.

  9. Great video! And a welcome return of Phil Collins in his gorilla suit ~ he’s soooo much better when he doesn’t sing…

    2. And when he doesn’t drum. Cf. the self-indulgent, auto-parodic and self-consciously iconoclastic roll within In the air tonight. Hopeless.

      1. … so true

        So I’m going to nominate THIS GUY [the hairier one of the two drummers on display in the clip]

        Compared to the gorilla he’s got more heart, he’s technically superior, better looking AND he’s got charisma

  10. I saw Harry Kroto give a talk once in which he discussed Albert Einstein and he had Einstein’s picture on the screen and he said (I’m taking liberties), “This is not the guy who explained the photoelectric effect, he’s not the guy who discussed electromagnetism in laying foundation of special relativity, he’s not the guy who explained Brownian motion, …”. Then he put up a picture of 26-year-old Albert Einstein and said, “Now, this is the guy who did those things.” Watching old Darwin boogieing on the Beagle, I couldn’t help but think of that.

    1. I have often thought the same thing, Darwin was quite a nice looking young man, although he looks more like god as an old one. 😉

    2. Speaking of early onset genius, a phrase that comes to mind often for me is: “By the time Schubert was my age, he’d been dead for 2 years.”

      I’m 33.

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