Ronald L. Numbers has long been at war with the war metaphor. For more than two decades, Numbers has argued that conceptualizing the relationship between religion and science as a battle between powerful opposing forces is “neither useful nor tenable.” In Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (2009, Harvard University Press), Numbers continues his mission. For this book, Numbers presents 25 essays by noted historians debunking common “religion vs. science” myths. (Audio interview)
It is hard to deny that Haeckel’s embryos are an “icon of evolution,” true even if “icon” now evokes Jonathan Wells’ “travesty” of a book (see Matzke). The embryos were reproduced in a majority of high school and college biology textbooks from the mid-1930s through at least the 1960s (See table). Generations of students took away the incorrect but easy to accept and generally cool idea that we pass through a fish-like stage, complete with gill slits, on our way to becoming human.
Creationists, forever seeking advantage, took a 1997 journal article challenging the residual utility of Ernst Haeckel’s iconic embryos (Richardson et al.) and fashioned it into a pointy stick to poke their favorite straw man, the “scientific elite” (Pennisi, 1997; Behe, 1998; Wells, 1999; Freeman, 2001a,b; Ojala, 2004). With fresh charges of “fraud” and “fake,” these anti-evolutionists pricked a few scientists and historians. But the “prickees” fought back, and with context and nuance on their side, made quick work of the critics (Hopwood, 2006; Blackwell, 2007; Richards, 2009). Charges of fraud against Haeckel are as old as the drawings themselves, the defenders noted, just another out of date argument in the creationists’ pitiful quiver of half-truths and rhetorical manipulations.
Thrust. Parry.
But we must be careful: creationist attacks tend to generate simplified and emotional responses that can constrain critical thinking.
Haeckel’s “icon” was and remains a potent and problematic image (see Ken Miller and Joe Levine’s note). Though it is true that Haeckel’s “schematic” illustrations gave way to better representations starting in the late 1940s, biology textbooks continued to present embryos, always vertebrates, side-by-side or in a comparative grid. It’s an arrangement that was designed to communicate Haeckel’s belief that embryonic development and evolutionary history were linked and that evolution was progressive. It is easy to argue that it still does, despite the disclaimers authors usually offer.
What is most curious is that the rise in popularity of Haeckel’s embryos happened just as biologists were distancing themselves from the kind of broad morphologically-based conjecture the “icon” was designed to support. Less than 20% of early American biology textbooks (1907-1932) included all or part of Haeckel’s original grid. But by the 1940s and into the 1950s, upwards of 60% of high school textbooks featured copies or close variations the 1874 original.
This table includes data on the inclusion (or not) of variations of Ernst Haeckel’s grid of vertebrate embryos in 91 American high school and college biology textbooks published between 1907 and 1969.
Historians, bloggers and critics can “reuse” bits of culture under “fair use.” But creative artists must secure the rights to any work they “sample.” Why is that?
This is a question not so easily answered.
The documentary linked above features Nina Paley, writer, animator and director of the movie Sita Sings the Blues. Paley has adopted a novel approach to distribution of her film, in part to challenge current copyright practices. The story generated a bit of “comment controversy” on Cartoon Brew. Paley offered this interesting link. My two cents as posted on CB below.
A database of 78 American high school biology textbooks, from Elements of Biology (1907) through Modern Biology (1969).
Each entry includes a brief observational note and a 0-5 ranking based on a qualitative assessment of the presentation of the topic of evolution. The table also includes title, copyright date, author(s) and category: P for phylogenetic, E for economic, U for unity of life, and N for normative. I will be writing more on this categorization scheme shortly.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Moon, Mann and Otto’s Modern Biology was the most popular high school biology textbook in the country, commanding upwards of 50% of the market. It was also among the most retrograde and out of date.
Scholars have criticized the book for its weak presentation of the topic of evolution. The 1956 edition is the focus of particular scorn. In that edition all references to human evolution were deleted. The publisher of the second most popular textbook, Exploring Biology, followed suit a few years later.
Had the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) not stepped in to stem the slide by developing new textbooks in early 1960s, would evolution have disappeared from American classrooms altogether?
A new analysis of high school biology textbooks shows that emphasis on the topic of evolution decreased sharply in the decade after the Scopes trial. However, contrary to the conventional scholarly view [1], relative priority of the topic retuned to pre-Scopes levels by 1940, and did not decrease significantly in the decades that followed.
The graph below is based on direct review and analysis (see table) of 78 American high school biology textbooks published between 1907 and 1969.
RELATIVE PRIORITY OF THE
TOPIC OF EVOLUTION IN BIOLOGY TEXTBOOKS
1907-1969
This graph was generated by plotting the data gathered through direct examination of 78 high school textbooks published between 1907 and 1969. It shows a clear decline in the priority of the topic of evolution in the years ahead of, and the decade following, the Scopes trial in 1925, and a secondary decline ahead of the publication of the BSCS texts in 1963.
As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, I thought I’d take the opportunity to note that though the image of Darwin we share today, that tired but steadfast symbol of rationality and science, dates dates back to the 1880s (see Janet Browne’s article in Isis), for the 30 years ahead of run-up to Origin’s centenary, Darwin, to borrow Peter Bowler’s term, was in eclipse.
This neat bit of ephemera was among the first attempts to restore some of Darwin’s lost luster. Published in 1956, The Darwin Reader was a “best of” (and somewhat sanitized) collection of the writings of Charles Darwin edited by two professors at the University of Michigan, Philip S. Humphrey and Marston Bates. The editors noted that hardly anybody in mid-50s was reading Darwin, professionals included. They thought a good digest would help.
I know nothing of Humphrey. But I know Bates was an amazing man. A contemporary of Rachel Carson, Bates helped popularize ecology, was a fantastic natural historian and popular author and was the person most responsible for that radically influential 1960s biology textbook, the BSCS “green version.”
If you don’t know Marston Bates, go online right now, find a used copy of The Forest and the Sea, and buy it!
For over half a century this image was reproduced in textbooks from the American Book Company, The Macmillan Company, Henry Holt and Company, Harcourt, Brace and Company, and Allyn and Bacon. Where did it come from? What made it so compelling? Part I | Part II
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Ronald L. Numbers has long been at war with the war metaphor. For more than two decades, Numbers has argued that conceptualizing the relationship between religion and science as a battle between powerful opposing forces is “neither useful nor tenable.” In Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (2009, Harvard University Press), Numbers continues his mission. For this book, Numbers presents 25 essays by noted historians debunking common “religion vs. science” myths. (Audio interview)
[Revised 2009.12.30]
Each entry includes a brief observational note and a 0-5 ranking based on a qualitative assessment of the presentation of the topic of evolution. The table also includes title, copyright date, author(s) and category: P for phylogenetic, E for economic, U for unity of life, and N for normative. I will be writing more on this categorization scheme shortly. 
Scholars have criticized the book for its weak presentation of the topic of evolution. The 1956 edition is the focus of particular scorn. In that edition all references to human evolution were deleted. The publisher of the second most popular textbook, Exploring Biology, followed suit a few years later. 
This neat bit of ephemera was among the first attempts to restore some of Darwin’s lost luster. Published in 1956, The Darwin Reader was a “best of” (and somewhat sanitized) collection of the writings of Charles Darwin edited by two professors at the University of Michigan, Philip S. Humphrey and Marston Bates. The editors noted that hardly anybody in mid-50s was reading Darwin, professionals included. They thought a good digest would help.
