The “Angry Cat Man” talks to high-school biology students

March 3, 2016 • 1:09 pm

I spent an hour this morning talking about Why Evolution is True with two classes of advanced biology students from the University of Chicago’s Lab School. It was a great pleasure to interact with such a bright and interested group of kids, and they had lots of good questions. I won’t go into details, but two things stood out.

The first was that most of the student questions dealt with the relationship between evolution and religion. I had told them that there was a lot of religious resistance to evolution in the U.S., and to my book as well, but I expected the discussion would be largely about biology. Contrary to my expectation, the students wanted to know things like how we could overcome religious opposition to evolution, why so many religious people took exception to my lectures on evolution (I told them how students at Murray State had defaced the posters advertising my talk), what was it about evolution that produced such opposition to the scientific facts, and so on. I answered them as honestly as I could.

It was clear to me that they had already absorbed most of the biology in WEIT, and wanted to talk more about the social and philosophical implications of evolution. That was fine with me. But this isn’t unique to the Lab School: it happens most of the time when I make myself available to answer questions about the book. (I doubt that the students even know about my more recent book.) This tells me that people are deeply interested in the conflict between evolution and religion. In fact, most of the students, who I suspect are largely from well educated and fairly affluent families, seemed puzzled about why there was a conflict. I only wish some of them could spend a few weeks in a biology class in Mississippi.

Finally, one of the biology teachers told me that he occasionally sends his students items from this website. I was vastly amused to hear that at least one student reacted this way: “Oh no, not another thing from the Angry Cat Man!”

47 thoughts on “The “Angry Cat Man” talks to high-school biology students”

  1. Cat Man I get but Angry??? Perhaps it is a generational thing, interpreting passion with anger?

    2. Yeah, me too. You could associate JAC’s posts with lots of non-biology things (nature pics, cats, food, boots, travel, determinism, liberal politics, etc.), but I’ve never really thought of them as angry.

      Though I note with some amusement that an ‘Angry Cat man’ who also posts about his cowboy boot love is steering pretty close to the nickname Puss in Boots. 🙂

      1. In a room with cats …. what could possibly happen to someone wearing a cape?

    2. There actually is a superhero called Catman (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catman_%28comics%29). He wore a cape and was sometimes angry, since he started out as a Batman villain. Now he has graduated to antihero status.

  8. Surely not Angry Cat Man! You don’t strike as angry very often at all — and then only with good reason!

    Silly chilluns!

    Sounds like it was fun though! (And your flight obviously made it despite the weather!)

  9. Interesting, but does “angry” modify “cat” or “man”? In other words, are you a man who is fond of angry cats, or an angry man who is also a cat fancier?

    1. I am an angry man who loves cats. I’m now informed that that name was given to me by one of the TEACHERS who sent students my articles, usually about arthropods.

      1. Or under the middle of the bed where you can’t easily reach ( or in front of cat-hating guests).

        1. You’ve never lived with warm – air heating and an offended cat.

  11. It is nice to hear that there are young people who accept the matter-of-factness of evolution.

    2. Indeed. I am a little puzzled over their puzzlement though, as to why there’s a conflict. Don’t they know creationism is a thing?

      1. If they’ve never been exposed to it, why would they?
        When I first discovered “online” with a 300bps modem, Compuserve, and a 2p/minute (slightly under 2 beer/hour) phone charge for local calls, I stumbled across a discussion group labelled “Gun Control”. Thought it was a bit odd that such existed, but since it wasn’t that long after Hungerford or Dunblane (I forget which) … well, I dropped in.
        Boy, was that an education.

      2. They know about creationism, but it is hard for them to understand the mindset of people who would reject science. They come from very liberal and well-educated families; most of their parents are affiliated with the University of Chicago. It was very useful for them to hear the stories Jerry told them. It made it more real for them to imagine the discussions in context.
        And for the record, I wasn’t the one who called Jerry “angry cat man,” (although it was meant fondly). I think he is cuddly and adorable. Like a cat.

        1. I’d suggest you not introduce papers by telling the students they’re from the Cuddly Cat Man, though…

  13. I guess that’s better than being called a Crazy Cat Man (CCM)!

    Signed,
    a dedicated Crazy Cat Lady!

  14. Sigh…I wish all students shared these kids’ curiosity and enthusiasm. Unfortunately, many are ingrained to let others think for them. Sad, especially when it happens to kids you know. Some of my nieces and nephews are in a hole so deep it will probably take decades to climb out of – if ever they do.

    2. Awareness of there being a hole – or even that there are other levels of the landscape than the one you live in – is the first step to climbing. Or for that matter, to caving.
      I used to think that central England, with hills up to 60 or 70 m above the valleys was the world. Then I discovered the thousand m mountains of Scotland, and thought England was flat and boring. Then I discovered Holland and new levels of flatness and boring Ness. THEN I worked on the Caspian coast and realised that Holland at least has trees and dykes.
      Simply by existing and being different (e.g., send New Year cards/presents around the winter solstice) you mark that there may be other levels to the universe. We’re back to Yggdrasil and the World Cat Tree again, aren’t we?

  18. Perhaps it a Facial Expression that lends itself to the “angry” description My own facial expression in repose has a Grumpy mein, so much so I’m Grumpy Grandad to my Grandchildren , thats my excuse anyway.

    1. If so, then, from the pics and vids of PCC that I usually see, I should think he’d be the Smiley Cat Man.

      (‘T would be even better if Smiley Cat Man studied Smilodon!) Meta meaning!

  20. I would SO love to have those students come down here to Mississippi and sit in my UNIVERSITY Evolutionary Biology course, a course required for the biology major. I don’t get any overt hostility in the course of teaching it – it all comes out in the evaluations at the end of the course. I even had someone tell me that my jokes were terrible (again on an evaluation). These are the same jokes I use in my General Biology classes where the reaction is overwhelmingly positive (and in which the evolution unit is only about 25% of the course). I suspect student rage about the course gets projected onto me. I used to think I could ‘fix’ this but have since concluded that there is no ‘fix’ for this. Not that I can effect in 15 weeks, anyway. It is quite the remarkable sensation to teach a topic I find so fascinating, one that I have devoted 25 years of my life to, to students who think it’s not even science – all based on fantasy and covert agenda (no matter how many data slides I show them…).

    I do love showing them things like photos of snake limb bud tissue grafted opposite the chick ZPA expressing Shh and growing into differentiated digits, though. Is that so wrong?

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