For almost two centuries, Charles Darwin and his theories have been studied, criticized, and validated by the scientific community and yet, to this day controversy continues to surround his work.
To try and address the continued controversies of Darwin’s work, scholar Robert Dorit re-analyzes the Origin of Species in terms of time and its importance upon man’s evolutionary history:
The Origin remains, even in the 21st century, a radical work, which argues that the fundamental forces driving life on this planet occur on timescales that render the span of a human life insignificant. Furthermore, although the effects of natural selection are there for all to see, its daily operation is almost completely hidden from view. Both our life spans and our five senses are inadequate to the task of comprehension: The most powerful mechanism of organic change lies well beyond our everyday experience. [“Rereading Darwin”, American Scientist]
Although Dorit claims humans cannot comprehend the scope of evolution due to the limit of our senses and our mortality, in CC106 students will attempt to conquer the ideas of not only Darwin but other influential scientists, in their quest at understanding the biodiversity of the earth in which they live. Students in CC106 will be interested to see one of their teachers attempts to do just that as he explores Darwin’s theory of evolution amongst hummingbirds in Ecuador.
