Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
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t he s ocial m eaning of e volutionaRy s cience
The theory of evolution is not just an inert piece of theoretical science. It is, and
cannot help being, also a powerful folktale about human origins. . . . Facts will
never appear to us as brute and meaningless; they will always organize themselves
into some sort of story, some drama. These dramas can indeed be dangerous. They
can distort our theories, and they have distorted the theory of evolution perhaps
more than any other. The only way in which we can control this kind of distortion
is to bring the dramas themselves out into the open, to give them our full attention,
understand them better and see what part, if any, each of them ought to play both in
theory and in life.
—Mary Midgley
Museum exhibits on human evolution are a familiar sight. They typically
include some version of what Stephen Jay Gould once called the “march of
progress,” hominids in procession leading from the most ancient up to some
representation (usually male and weapon-bearing) of the modern human
form. 1 In the summer of 2006, I ran upon a particularly interesting version
of this in the Musée de l'Homme, the Parisian museum of anthropology
housed within the Palais de Chaillot. The skulls displayed here represent
only the most recent phase of human evolution. They progress from a
Cro-Magnon specimen dating from 100,000 years ago on the far right to
a modern human cranium on the left. This evolutionary snapshot may not
illustrate the sort of striking physical alterations one would see in similar
displays that begin with our most remote bipedal ancestors, but its symbolic
markers are familiar enough to assure visitors that each specimen represents
a distinct stage of biological and cultural history. Laid out on ledges just
below each skull are various artifacts associated with each of these stages of
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