Darwin's essay

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Tveyl20

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The first writing assignment is the 2004 National Geographic article "Was Darwin Wrong?" by David Quammen. Please read the article and write a 3-4 page paper (double-spaced, 10-12 pt font, 1000-1500 words) for submission. Each paper should consist primarily of a review of the article (tell me what the article was about), with a short discussion at the end (1/2 page or 2-3 paragraphs)

Do not cut-n-paste from the text or other sources, and do not include quotations from the article. For the discussion section, pick out and discuss some aspect of the article that you found to be the most interesting, surprising, and/or problematic. Please discuss why this topic was noteworthy to you. Feel free to express your personal opinions, including agreement or disagreement with Quammen's arguments (and your reasoning behind these stances).

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Article 2 Was Darwin Wrong? DAVID QuAMMEN E volution by natural :.election, lhe ccnlral concept or the life's work of Ch:ule> Darwin, is :o theory. It's a theory about the origin of adaptation. complexity. and diversity among Eanh's living creatures. If you arc skeptical by nature. unfamiliar will> the terminology of :,cience. and unaware of 1hc overwhelming evidence, you might even he tempted to tistical breakdown basn't changed much in two decades. Gallup interviewet·s posed exactly the same choices in 1982. 1993, 1997, and 1999. The creutionisr conviction-that God alone.. :.nd not an explanatory swtement that fits the evidence. They embrace such an explanalion coniidcntly but it as 1heir best available view of reality, ar least umil M>Llle severely conflicting do1a "'some bener explanation mizht come alonr,. Tbe rest of us gener.1lly agree. We plug our television, IntO little wall sockets, measure a by the lenj!th of Earth's orbit. und in many Olher ways Jiveou1'lives based on tJlc trusted rculily of those theories. Evolu!ionary lheory, tllough. is a bil fSperies wa.' published. Owen made a major mntribution. though, by advancing tbeconcept ofbomnloguc,,_ thai ;,, ;uperficially dill'erent but fundamentally similar ,..,rsions of a ;ingle organ or t.mit. shared by dissimilar species. Fnr the fi\•e·digil skeletal lUre of the vertebnuc hand appears nol just in humans and :.1pc.\ :md raccoon!) and l>et1N but a lso. variow:.ly modified. in curs and bats and poi\Cs and lizards and tunics.. The paired "")ncs of our lower kg, the tibia and the: libula. arc also rcp...,.,nted by bomologou.s in other mammoh and in reptiles. anc.l in the longoxtin(t hirrl-o·eptilc Arf'lweopreryx. What's the reason behind such V(lried rccun·cnce of a le w basic designs? Darwin. with a uod to Owen's "mosr interesting work," supplied the answer: common de.o;cent, shaped by natural selection, modifying the inhity of Michigan. is a long narrow room in the naturul ;cicnc:e,o, building, well stocked with and ho"-'. including volumes about the conllicl between creationevolution. I arrived CaJT);ng a well-thumbed copy vr his own book un that Mlbject. Scie11ct 011 Trio/: Tire Cau for Killing time in the rdcd n speciation event, or very nearly so, in their cx1cndcd cxperimem on f111i1 flies. Frorn u small stock or ma1ed female.' thcy eventually produced IWO di\linct fly populalion> ad;tpted 10 different hnbit01 condilioot: a willingnes.' to when he's wrong. Since the late 1970, Gingerich collecled fossil >pccirncns of early whnlcs f1·on1remote digs in l}gypt and PakisU.u1. WOI';king Wilh Pakisutni he discovered Pukicrtus. u continuum of life. all shaped ;ond diversified by evolutionary fOI'CCS. Even belong 10 that continuun1. Some viruses cvoJve quickly. some Amo1lg 1he fa."ttcst HIV. its method or replicating itself involves a high rate of mutation. and !hose murarions allow the viru.> 10 assume new fomt>. Aflcr just a few years of infeclion and drug trca11nem, each HJV a unique vel':-o ion of Lhe vinas. lsololiOn within one infected person. plus differing conditions and the struggle to survive. forc;e, each version or HIY to evolve independently. It's nOibing but a speeded up and microscopic ""'"' of wbat Darwin saw in the Galapagos-except that each human body is m1 island. and the newly evolved l'onns aren '1so channing as tlocbes or mockingbirds. Umle.rstanding bow quickly lilY acquires resist anile to antivita) drugs, such as AZT. bas been crucial 10 improving trcalmcnl by way of multiple drug cocktails. approach has reduced deoth.< due 10 IUY by severalfold since 1996." ing to Palurnbi. •·and jt has grcmly slowed Lhc cvolutioo of chis disease within p:.lticnts." Insects and weeds acquire rcsislance to our insecticides and herbicides through the same process. As we human.< try lo poison them. C\'Oiution by Mtur.tl selection transfonns the population of a mosqujto or thisrlc into :• new son of creature. le-.s ''tolnerablc to thai particular poison. So we invent tutother poison, then nnother. lt's a futileefl'o1. Even DDT, wi1 h it> ferocious and lcmg-lasling effects ecosystems. produced nics within a decade of its discO\·cry iu 1939. mammal duting rrom 50 million years ago. who:-.ccar By 1990 more than 500 species (includmg 114 kinds of mosquitoes) bad to nt least one pesticide. Based on these undesired resuhs, Stephen Pnlumbi has comrnenled gl umly, ''humans 111ay be lhe wol'ld 's Uomina•lf evolutionary force.'• bones rcOect its membership in the whllle lineage bul whose skull looks almost doglike. A former student of Gingerich's, Hans Thcwissen. fuund a slightly more recent form with webbed feet. legs suitabl&: for either or swinuning, and a tOOthy snout. ·n,cwissen called it Ambulocews 1w twa.\, re.._ist;rnt Among mosl of living ur the ''walking·tuld-swimming whulc.'' Qjn_gerich and his tcum rumed up sever.:tl more. induding Rodhoa:ws bn/(}(-hwhich was fully :a se-a creature. its legs more like evolution proc.ccd.s ;.lowly-100 slowly to be observed by a single scientist within a research tifetimc. But science functions by inference. not just by direct observntion, and the inferenlial w ns of evidence such as paleontology ;mel hiogcogl'aphy arc no less cogent sionply because 1hcy'rc indirect. Still , skeptic.< of evolmionary lhcory :lJ;k: Can evolution in acrion1 Can it be observed io the wild? Can it be measured in the labor.ttory? 111¢ answer i' yes. Peter nnd Ro.emary Gr.tnt. two Britishhom researchers who have spent where Charle.\ Darwin spent weeks, htovc CUI>tured a glimpse of evolution with their long-tenn studies of bc:lk size among Galapagos finches. William R. Rice and George W. Suit achieved something similar in their lab. thn>ugh an experiment io,•olving 35 generations of lhc fruit fly Drosophila mrltmoflu>ler. Richard E. l.cn,ki and his colleagues at Michigan Stale Urtiversity have done it too, tracking 20.000 generation' of evolution in the bac1crium Oippc". ib nostrils shined backward on the snout, h:llfway to the blowhole position on a modern whale. The sc. belonging to >ingle. unsplit lineage. \\r,th patience il can be seen, like thc nw,-ement of n minute band on a clock. Speciation, when a lineage splitS into IWO specie>. i> the other major phase of evolutionary change, mak.inA possible the another new species or whale. 9 ANNUAL EDITIONS A Pakistani colleague found the fragment's other half. When Gingerich filled the two pieces together, he had a moment of humbling recognition: The molecular biologistS were right. Here and was uot taughl
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Anonymous
Awesome! Perfect study aid.

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