Commentary: Darwin at 200

Abstract

This year marks bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth (February 12) and 150th anniversary (in November) of publication of Darwin's extended abstract On Origin of Species by Natural Selection. Universities, scientific societies, and disciplinary journals anticipated this event by organizing meetings, theme sessions, and special issues to commemorate anniversary. The bicentennial provides an occasion to reflect on impact Darwin's work has for us 200 years after his birth, and it presents an opportunity, especially coming so near start of a new year, to frame resolutions for future. In this commentary I offer a vision for how geoscientists and geoscience educators can respond to this opportunity. Nature magazine (18 November 2008) solicited input from prominent research scientists, educators, and media professionals about their or hopedfor outcomes of a year of Darwin-centered events. Their responses reflected central role that education holds for realizing these outcomes: * Patricia Adair Gowaty, Distinguished professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Institute of Environment, UCLA hopes for enhanced public understanding of Darwin and nature of science resulting in quicker resolution of continuously re-emerging controversies between scientists and creation scientists. * Per-Edvin Persson, Director, Heureka, Finnish Science Centre, Finland, envisions a day in which the majority of world's population understand that evolution is process by which diversity of life is maintained on this planet. The evidence that this day has arrived be a diminished number of attacks on from nonscientific sources. * Michael Lynch, Distinguished professor in Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, would like to see increased understanding that our view of evolution has evolved in 150 years, which will require education of a new generation of scientists in basic principles of evolutionary theory that have emerge since Darwin. Communicating nature of to students and general public is within purview of scientists and educators of all disciplines, but together with our colleagues in biological sciences, geoscientists and geoscience educators bear much of responsibility for increasing public understanding of contributions of Charles Darwin and advances made in evolutionary theory in 150 years since Origin because we are keepers of primary data for evolution. Any failure to realize expressed above reflects on our respective disciplines and on our ability to communicate to our students and general public just exactly what it is that we do. Advances in molecular, cell, and developmental biology yield new understanding of sources of variation and selection that drive evolution but most accessible, hands-on evidence for evolution comes from fossils and rocks - geologic record of life on Earth and physical record of changes in environments over geologic time. Indeed, most students encounter fossils in their classrooms as evidence of change through time (e.g. grade 4 in Michigan benchmarks) before tackling genetics and developmental biology. This is a great opportunity and great responsibility for geoscience educators. We have means for realizing listed above, and action plan for achieving these ideals is within grasp of every educator. What follows is a vision for geoscience education in United States modeled on shared great expectations briefly outlined above: 1. Students live and breathe nature of in every geoscience class and in so doing replace their misconceptions about with new understanding and consequently sharpen their ability to separate from non-science. …