This article in Quillette intrigued me with its subtitle, “The questions at the centre of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial are still contested today”? They are? It’s now illegal to ban the teaching of evolution in schools, and, save for religious schools, I can’t think of any schools that would deliberately omit evolution from the school curriculum, much less teaching creationism. So which questions are “still contested today”? You can read about it by clicking the link below, or, if that doesn’t work, try this link or this archived link.
Since this is the 100th anniversary of the Scopes “monkey trial” in Dayton, Tennessee, there’s a spate of articles about the trial. And the author gets those pretty much right, so if you don’t know stuff like the famous outdoor cross-examination by Clarence Darrow that destroyed William Jennings Bryan, or Bryan’s death immediately after the trial, or the fact that the jury’s verdict of guilty was overturned on a technicality (preventing further appeals), or the persistence until 1967 of the Butler Act that Scopes violated—well, you’ll learn about all of these facts, which are well known to evolutionists and science historians.
Since then, the courts have struck down bans on the teaching of evolution, and also prohibited laws mandating the teaching of “scientific creationism” as well as “equal time” laws that mandate teaching creationism when you teach evolution. Evolution, as much as anything, is a scientific fact, and if you don’t know the evidence, well, read the book after which this website is named.
But what was Daseler referring to when he says that the questions of Scopes are still questioned today? It’s a mystery until you get to the last two paragraphs:
But as Bryan himself observed, the Scopes trial wasn’t really about evolution. It was about competing rights—about the rights of the individual versus the rights of the community. It was about free speech—about when and where it can be circumscribed. And it was about epistemology—about who determines what is valid information. Should teachers like John Scopes, who are presumably experts in their fields, decide what is taught in schools? Or should parents, who are presumably experts on their children? These remain disputed subjects to this day. If they’re not being fought over the teaching of evolution, they’re being fought over the teaching of critical race theory, genderqueer theory, or the 1619 Project.
Shortly after the 7 October attack on Israel, a history instructor at Berkeley High School, in California, asked her class to respond to the following prompt: “To what extent should Israel be considered an apartheid state?” Was that a thought-provoking query on current events or an inappropriate attempt to bring her personal politics into the classroom? And who decides? The answer to that last question is one of the unresolvable tensions inherent in a democratic society. William Jennings Bryan didn’t understand evolution, but he understood this fact. “The right of the people speaking through the legislature, to control the schools which they create and support is the real issue as I see it,” he said. “If not the people, who?”
Well, no, the Scopes trial was in part about evolution for sure, because the contested issue was evolution. And it was more about the right of the state (which passed the Butler Act forbidding the teaching of human evolution [not evolution in general]) than about the right of parents to determine curricula, though parental rights were mentioned. Now, except in many fundamentalist religious schools, the question about whether evolution should be taught has been settled, and the answer is “YEP.” That is a resolvable question, and it has been resolved. As the cornerstone of all biology, and the key to understanding how most biological phenomena came to be, the issue of whether parents can prohibit the teaching of evolution is not “unresolvable,” and no, parents, the state, and the school boards, have no right to ban it. If they tried, they’d face a huge lawsuit, like the Dover School District of Pennsuylvania did when it tried to put Intelligent Design into the curriculum.
So when Daseler drags in critical race theory, “genderqueer theory” (what theory is that?), the 1619 Project, and even the Gaza War into his piece, he’s making a false analogy. These issues are still debatable, and they are ideological, not (in general) scientific. Daseler apparently did this to try to slot evolution into the Zeitgeist, but it doesn’t fit. One might as well analogize the laws of thermodynamics with the 1619 Project. Perhaps Daseler felt he needed a different slant on Scopes from merely recounting the facts that everybody else is adducing, but let’s be clear: the controversy about the teaching of evolution is over, and evolution has won. The issue is contested only by religious fundamentalists, who include advocates of intelligent design (the latter pretend they’re not religiously motivated, but they are). The truth has prevailed, and it’s time to move on. Forget CRT and the 1619 project, at least when it comes to science education.
Here I am paying honor to Scopes at his grave in Paducah, Kentucky 12 years ago:
Yup, you win Jerry! Weird coincidence, my cousin is in London right now and just sent me a picture of Darwin’s tomb in Westminster. What are the chances?
I think that by bringing
“critical race theory, “genderqueer theory” (what theory is that?), the 1619 Project, and even the Gaza War into his piece,”
Daseler is trying to give the century old Scopes trial a modern slant. It’s unfortunate that he is trying to analogize dubious and malleable social constructs with the empirical fact of evolution. It just doesn’t wash.
Perhaps the conclusion to be drawn is that for people like Daesler dubious and malleable social constructs are more important (real, virtuous, copacetic) than ‘the science’? So they will be shoehorned into every article or conversation.
Is the fact that we are discussing this not proof that the issue(s) are still contested? Dragging in social issues like “genderqueer theory” may not be relevant to the scientific aspects of the Scopes trial, but they are relevant to the larger issues that still divide us.
Insofar as the trial itself is concerned, everything I know about it I learned from Mencken!
All of these issues and more are discussed in a brilliant book that I recently rescued from the dustbin of history, “In Search of Adam” by Herbert Wendt (translated from German in 1956). Wendt was most prescient for his time, especially in regard to the pernicious effects of leftist thought on science. Though nominally about archeology, it traces the intellectual history of scientific thought as it pertains to evolution, starting with the ancient Greeks. It includes a chapter on the Scopes trial, and another on the inherently “racist” attitudes that underlie evolutionary theory. I consider it the best book on any subject that I have read this year.
… “racist” attitudes that underlie evolutionary theory. ??
Please explain.
There were some racist bits in the early formulations. One that I’d read was that humans were argued to be descended from apes in either Europe or Asia rather than Africa, in part bc the former civilizations were technologically more advanced and therefore were seen to be older.
As you point out, early formulations might have had traces of racism. How does that justify an unqualified claim that racism underlies evolution as a whole and (implicitly) now?
I don’t know the intention of the OP.
I think you may be confusing the ‘polygenesis’ concept (e.g. different races originated from different species of apes) with the notion that different races branched off from the original ‘ape’ at different times with the Africans being the last ones to do so…
I think Bruce Morgan’s quotation marks around the word “racism” indicate that the book addresses claims that racism underlies evolutionary theory.
I have read, but cannot confirm, that there actually was racism in the textbook Scopes used in his classes. This would not be surprising, given the time and place. Of course, racism is not inherent in evolutionary theory (rather the opposite), and such misuse of the theory is no justification for banning its teaching.
The possibility that human lineages separated by distance or geographical or other barriers could evolve to differ genetically and phenotypically is inherent in evolution. For some, even to admit that much is racism. Their ideology is that there may be no biological reality to “race” at all.
Evolution has won. But the Scopes trial was 100 years ago, and then there was not the consensus there is now. Had the case gotten to the Supreme Court THEN would Scopes have prevailed? Maybe not.
So evolution THEN is not that dissimilar to CRT or 1619 today, as totally bogus as they are.
Evolution has won. But the Scopes trial was 100 years ago, and then there was not the consensus there is now. Had the case gotten to the Supreme Court THEN would Scopes have prevailed? Maybe not.
So evolution THEN is not that dissimilar to CRT or 1619 today, as totally bogus as they are.
“So evolution THEN is not that dissimilar to CRT or 1619 today, as totally bogus as they are.”
Critical Race Theory, by a variety of names, has been a powerful and insightful interpretive framework for a variety of historical issues for years. And the 1619 project was intended to restore the of place African-Americans in U.S. history — a perfectly reasonable project.
I sincerely believe that the 1619 project was done with good intentions, and it might have settled in with less controversy were it not for some historical errors that were never corrected. Perhaps chief among these was the claim that a major reason for the American Revolutionary War against the British was bc the colonists wanted to preserve slavery. A line-up of historians tried to correct that, but the corrections were always refused. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248
A number of corrections were indeed made, and as I noted in a comment I made just now, there has never been a published study of American history, slavery, etc, that has not been critiqued. We would never read any history if contested perspectives exempted studies from being adopted. I am not a historian, but as a human rights attorney and law school prof, I find that controversial texts are a great teaching tool — and when it comes to U.S. history, virtually every text is controversial in its own way.
Ms. Piper the 1619 project was a grievance hate project against white people by a (probable, from public impressions) psychopath. An activist cosplaying her racist hatred via larping as a journalist and a historian.
There are many good and accurate ways to incorporate the often terrible history of African-Americans in this country, with context, comparisons and historical placing. The 1619 project is the utter opposite of that.
All this moral panic about white supremacists (have you ever, ever met one? IRL?? Personally I’ve met more cassowaries than white supremacists)…. the real evil is race grifters of all stripes.
respectfully.
D.A.
DavidAnderson_JD_NYC
@DavidandersonJd
I seem to remember from reading Larsen’s book on the trial that one of the broader issues that Bryan was concerned with was the ability of the community to control the curriculum, which does still seem to be an issue. I think that re-casting that as parents vs. teachers is incorrect.
PCC(E)
I always like your hobby of “grave selfies”. If any notable worthies are buried near me I’ll certainly put a selfie with them on my twitter/x. And I’d hope you’d put it at WEIT.
How famous would they have to be for you to post it here?
(I bet you’d let me do John Lennon but afaik he has no gravestone. A Dakota selfie maybe but I couldn’t be arsed going uptown!). 🙂 Tom Lehrer maybe?
keep well,
D.A.
DavidAnderson_JD_NYC
@DavidandersonJd
The article illustrates that the postmoderngenderqueercriticalracetheorists have not budged an inch over the very same talking points that led to Trump 2.0.
Yep. Surprised but not surprised…
“These issues are still debatable, and they are ideological, not (in general) scientific.”
Who decides what is still debatable? What is ideological? What is scientific? Leading historians like Gordon Wood and James McPherson quickly critiqued the 1619 Project; that did not prevent it from being incorporated into the curricula of many schools. And while Scopes had science on his side, today it is the “expert” class, cloaked in a manufactured and illusory “consensus,” that says boys can be girls, men can get pregnant, nobody can tell you what you are. They can point to professional medical and scientific associations, leading scholars, and peer-reviewed literature in support. They claim it is only the religious, the bigoted, the ideologues, and the ignorant who disagree. More than a few judges and school boards have swallowed this whole, believing they were the enlightened ones on the side of the experts.
In the meantime, for years on end, many of the knowledgeable peers of these “experts” remained silent, either oblivious to the force-feeding of dogma in our nation’s schools, hesitant to aid the conservatives who were fighting their peers, or, once awakened to the mess, feeling powerless to do anything about it. Now that more are speaking out, I’ll be interested to see the media and academic reaction to the Krauss book. The smartest thing its opponents could do is let it die without comment.
I agree with the Quillette article’s conclusion as I understand it: evolution might have been the subject at hand, but it wasn’t the most important principle at stake. The battle continues.
“Leading historians like Gordon Wood and James McPherson quickly critiqued the 1619 Project; that did not prevent it from being incorporated into the curricula of many schools.”
The letter written by Wood, McPherson, et al, is very supportive of the basic intention of the 1619 project, and simply raises a few factual issues — the authors incorporated corrections into the final version of the study that was published as a popular book.
Perhaps more important, there has never been a book about U.S. history, slavery, etc, that has not been subject to a variety of critiques by “leading historians.” That’s in the nature of scholarship.
This review article with commentaries from a number of professional historians might be of interest: American Historical Review 127 (2022) issue 4: pp. 1792–1873
Please read the Roolz about frequency of commenting.
The gender nonsense should not be accepted as science and has received a lot of pushback.
But it’s gotten this far because some scientists and medical people are defending it. And while Trump is trying to stop it, it’s going strong elsewhere.
I read a comment on a progressive forum where a parent explained they were leaving the US and moving to Australia so their child could get “gender affirming care.”
Teachers have a hard job. Not only are they expected to program for the average children in their classroom, but also for those with different learning disabilities, reduced IQ, and above-average IQ. If they also had to adjust every lesson for each child’s parents’ preferences, there would be so many alterations as to make the job impossible. As well, I believe that there is a core knowledge that every child should receive. If parents want more or less, that is their responsibility to deal with through the home and church.
That sounds a lot like like “lowest common denominator”¹. Having taught for a while at various levels I am painfully aware that successfully teaching a mixed-ability class is very difficult, so I don’t blame those who fall back on an LCD approach. But really, we are enlightened enough these days to provide enriching activities for zoo animals; why not treat students at least as well?
. . . . .
¹ Pedantic note: From a maths point of view it’s exactly backwards, the LCD being a number greater than (or equal to) each of it’s input numbers.
(More accurate would be the “greatest common divisor”, which is less than each input number; but really, for real-world usage, I could care less….)
Last June’s SCOTUS decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, allowing parents to opt their children out of instruction they find objectionable, potentially chips away at the “win” evolution currently enjoys. Our current SCOTUS is deeply religious and I’m certain the majority doesn’t accept the truth of evolution. We also know the majority doesn’t accept stare decisis. If another case like 1987’s Edwards v. Aguillard ever makes it up to this SCOTUS, I would be very nervous.
Yes but even the current court would be really STUPID to allow the teaching of evolution to be prevented and/or creation allowed. As my father used to say, ” I may be be dumb but I am not stupid.”
Stupid is as stupid does.
Daseler : ” It was about competing rights—about the rights of the individual versus the rights of the community. It was about free speech—about when and where it can be circumscribed. And it was about epistemology—about who determines what is valid information. ”
What a sublated assertion.
Totally abstracted, to then negate the material premise of evolution by natural selection, to make concrete a higher understanding of everything it touches through dialectic.
No – it was about evolution.
Evolution evolution evolution.
I knew some article would do this eventually – a sort of dippy origin of thought itself New Age trip.
Mystic cryptic fibrillations,
And the mind’s true oss’fication.
Aquarius! Aquarius!
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To restate what some others have said,
Evolution is a fact = not debatable
Facts and only facts will be reliably taught in public school science classes = highly debatable, subject to politics and public opinion
IMO it’s worse than that. Yes, evolution has won, for now. But “alternative facts” are thriving in this post-truth era; expertise of all sorts is routinely dismissed as being just bias, conspiracy, or oppression; scientific expertise in particular is a target along with scientific consensus; and religious and ideological delusions are rampant. We are IMO on the road towards Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World (ZY”A); I hope it has an off-ramp.
Interesting to see that Quillette lines up with creationists, who try very hard to deflect attention from the issues in the Scopes Trial:
* They say that the Butler Act didn’t ban the teaching of evolution because it only banned it for one species. (Which one? The Rose-Breasted Grosbeak? Large-mouthed Bass? Oh, I see: humans! And I have never heard anyone say that Tennessee encouraged teaching about the evolution of all other species.)
* They spend a lot of time pointing out how inaccurate the play and film Inherit The Wind was. True enough: it was aimed at McCarthyism. For all the clowning and uproar, the issue in the trial was in fact very serious.
* Lately they have made up an argument that the real issue was eugenics, and The Butler Act was aimed at banning teaching of eugenics. Darrow was against eugenics; Bryan was not. And anyway Tennessee had no eugenics law on the books.
Perhaps Daseler should have spent more than two paragraphs on his “real” thesis, but was afraid to? Schools are now teaching, or at least tolerating the adoption of knowledge that is far removed from scientific truth, and arguably a religion in and of itself: gender ideology (which rests upon queer theory, ergo “genderqueer theory”). If you’ve ever read Judith Butler, you know it’s not science, but it’s awfully popular with some authoritative elites, and they push it down into the schools. Some (courageous) parents are pushing back, and I think that’s the whole point Daseler is trying to make in comparing the current culture war to the era of the Scopes trial. The situation is inverted, indeed “queer” at present, with advocates and even some scientists trying to discourage the teaching of settled science (e.g. that sex is binary and immutable), because it might cause “harm” to queer students. Jerry: you know all this, and have written about it, so I’m surprised at your interpretation of the article.
From my readings of the trial, it was really complex and certainly not black and white.
Heck, both lawyers were great men.
Google KI says: “”Genderqueer theory” refers to academic and theoretical work exploring the experiences and identities of individuals who do not conform to traditional gender norms, often categorized under the umbrella term “genderqueer”. This field draws from queer theory and feminist theory, examining how gender is constructed, performed, and experienced outside of the binary of male and female.”
As I understand it (no expert) Queer appears to be “anything that tries to destroy all the things that work in Western society.” More political than genderwang. It tries to jujitsu the tolerance of the west to destroy it – along the lines of Islam which is why they’re “friends”.
You rarely see older “Queers” – and mostly they’re quite….. eccentric. for the kids it is an engine of rebellion, albeit an embarrassingly stupid one. (can’t they just … smoke a cigarette, wear a leather jacket, sneer, ride a motorcycle, get a tattoo or something?)
Like teens should!
Queer has lodged itself into the culture by hiding under gay and other legitimate causes.
Every time you see “Queer” look very askance at it – it is either destructive, intellectual garbage or a flag for a narcissistic anti-social loon.
D.A.
NYC
Very well said!