crates | February 19, 2009
“Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny” a quote ascribed to Ernest Haeckel basically means that Ontogeny, the development of the individual from the fertilized egg to maturity, recapitulates the phylogeny or evolutionary history of the species. The strict interpretation of this statement that embryos go back through every stage of their evolutionary past is rejected today, but [...]
crates | February 17, 2009
I just saw a very instructive two hour program by NOVA. It had to do with the recent events (2004) in a town in Dover, PA where a couple of individuals on the school board pushed through a requirement that Intelligent Design be taught in biology classrooms as a viable alternative to the modern theory of evolution. They also required that [...]
crates | January 31, 2009
Plutarch tells a story, perhaps apocryphal, about Julius Caesar and his party as they passed through a small Alpine village. His friends jokingly asked whether even in such an isolated and poor setting men still strived and scrabbled for power and office. Caesar very seriously declared that he would rather be the foremost man [...]