According to statistics taken in 2006, Forty percent of the population believes in evolution. In 1999, the majority of surveyed Stanford students could not give an accurate definition of evolution.
The Ninth Annual George and Mary Foster Distinguished Lecture in Cultural Anthropology was hosted William Durham, professor of Anthropology and Bing Professor in Human Biology from Stanford University, as part of “Darwin’s Evolving Legacy,” SMU’s yearlong celebration of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday on Monday.
Durham connected the themes of anthropology and evolution in his lecture, “What Darwin Found Convincing: A New Look at His Human and Non-Human Data.”
This topic was chosen Durham said, to “solve the problem of evolution literacy.”
To solve this problem among the population, Durham and a group of 90 followers retraced Darwin’s voyage on the “The Beagle.” Durham hopes to educate people by finding and sharing what convinced Darwin of evolution.
Two major points of Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” include the idea that species have not been separately created and the theory that natural selection is the chief source of change. On Durham’s trip they personally tested the three theories Darwin used: The “Galapagos Theory,” the “Fossil Theory” and the “Anti-Slavery Theory.”
While Darwin was on the Galapagos Islands, he began to observe different species. Though he eventually discovered 13 species of finches, “all new,” the mockingbird first made him question the idea of special selection. In his ornithological notes he carefully documented the locations and physical characteristics of each bird, commenting that these birds “would undermine the stability of species.”
However, when he at last discovered the importance of the finches he looked back on his notes to find that he had not taken very close observation of these birds. After gathering the missing information, in 1837 he postulated, “there might be one species modified for different ends. Thus genera would be formed, bearing relation.” Along with this statement, Darwin drew his first tree of life diagram.
Moving on to Montevideo, Charles Darwin examined fossils at the bottom of a cliff to study the origins of certain species. Seventy-four percent of the mollusk fossils he found could be compared to living mollusks, but one mollusk fossil did not match any living creature in the water; it matched the shell of the modern armadillo living on higher ground.
This gave rise to Darwin’s theory that some animals did not persist in the same manner, but could have been replaced. As the surface rose, the animals either altered or persisted.
Charles Lyell, author of the “Uniformity of Change,” insisted, “no facts of transmutation have been authenticated,” provoking Darwin to reveal his own discoveries.
Last, Darwin was convinced by the primal Fuegians of the underlying “animality of humans” and that all humans have a common origin in the “tree of life.”
Durham finished with his analysis of what most convinced Darwin: all three theories supporting the same point. Darwin teaches us that “you don’t have to be exceptional,” Professor Durham said, “just persistent. Keep discovering!”
