Based in part on Jennifer Michael Hecht's "Doubt: A History"

1. Marie Curie, née Maria Sklodowska, was born
in Warsaw on November 7, 1867, the daughter
of a secondary-school teacher.
Together with her husband, she was awarded
half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903, for
their study into the spontaneous radiation
discovered by Becquerel, who was awarded
the other half of the Prize. In 1911 she
received a second
Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry

2. Lyell advocated what William Whewell later
dubbed a uniformitarian view of geology. This
assumed first of all the constancy of natural
laws (except as regarded the origin of new
species which was left rather vague). The kinds
of causes which affected the earth in the past
must be assumed to have been exactly those
we see in operation today (such as erosion,
sediment deposition, volcanic action,
earthquakes etc.) Furthermore, these causes
must be assumed to have been of the same
intensity in the past as we observe them
today.

3. Lyell was obsessed with the implications of the
evolutionary theory of J.B. Lamarck. In Lyell's
view, if Lamarck was right then religion was a
fable, Man was just a better beast, and the
moral fabric of society would crumble to dust.
A concerted refutation of Lamarck's theories of
progress and evolution became a central part
of the Principles. However, by devoting such
extensive treatment to Lamarck, Lyell
paradoxically made Lamarck's views better
known in the English-speaking world than they
ever had been.

4. Lamarck's scientific theories were largely ignored or attacked during his lifetime
"Do we not therefore perceive that by the
action of the laws of organization . . . nature
has in favorable times, places, and climates
multiplied her first germs of animality, given
place to developments of their
organizations, . . . and increased and
diversified their organs? Then. . . aided by
much time and by a slow but constant diversity
of circumstances, she has gradually brought
about in this respect the state of things which
we now observe. How grand is this
consideration, and especially how remote is it
from all that is generally thought on this
subject!"Text of a lecture given by Lamarck at
the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris,
May 1803

5. “Lamarckianism” says acquired characteristics
can be transmitted from one generation to the
next: a giraffe stretching high for the tall-
hanging fruit, for instance, can pass along a
longer neck.
Lamarck himself had a more subtle view:
a change in the environment causes changes in
the needs of organisms living in that
environment, which in turn causes changes in
their behavior. Altered behavior leads to
greater or lesser use of a given structure or
organ; use would cause the structure to
increase in size over several generations,
whereas disuse would cause it to shrink or
even disappear.

6. Darwin on Lamarck
He was the first man whose conclusions on the
subject excited much attention. This justly
celebrated naturalist first published his views
in 1801. . . he first did the eminent service of
arousing attention to the probability of all
changes in the organic, as well as in the
inorganic world, being the result of law, and
not of miraculous interposition.

7. Some supporters of Darwin's theory of
evolution (like Herbert Spencer and Darwin’s
own cousin Francis Galton) have misapplied
the biological principles of natural selection --
"survival of the fittest" -- to the social, political,
and economic realms.
The idea of "social Darwinism" originated in
the class stratification of England, and has
often been used as a general term for any
evolutionary argument about the biological
basis of human differences. Drawing on social
Darwinism, supporters of the 20th-century
eugenics movement sought to "improve"
human genetic stock, much as farmers do in
agriculture.

8. Spencer emphasized the dog-eat-dog quality
of a world in which struggle and suffering
outpace insight, cooperation, and progress.
What we need is a “doggy-dog world” (if
you’re a fan of Modern Family you might get
that reference) in which both the
strong and the sweet (in Darwin’s own words
“the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy
survive” and flourish.

9. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” and
”light will be shown on the origins of man.”
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and
death,[i] the most exalted object which we are
capable of conceiving, namely, the production
of the higher animals, directly follows. There is
grandeur in this view of life, with its several
powers, having been originally breathed into a
few forms or into one; and that, whilst this
planet has gone cycling on according to the
fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning
endless forms most beautiful and most
wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Dawkins elaborates…

10. The National Center for Science Education (
NCSE) is a not-for-profit, membership
organization providing information and
resources for schools, parents and concerned
citizens working to keep evolution and climate
science in public school science education. We
educate the press and public about the
scientific and educational aspects of
controversies surrounding the teaching of
evolution and climate change, and supply
needed information and advice to defend good
science education at local, state, and national
levels. Our 4500 members are scientists,
teachers, clergy, and citizens with diverse
religious and political affiliations.

11. Governor petitioned to veto "monkey bill“
April 6th, 2012
A petition urging the veto of House Bill 368, signed by
thousands of concerned Tennesseans, was delivered to
Governor Bill Haslam's office on April 5, 2012, MSNBC
reports(April 5, 2012). Nicknamed the "monkey bill," HB
368 would, if enacted, encourage teachers to present the
"scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses" of topics
that arouse "debate and disputation" such as "biological
evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and
human cloning.“ (continues)

12. I claim a small “degrees of separation”
connection to the infamous Tennessee Scopes
“monkey trial” of 1925: I lived under the same
roof, for a short time, with one of Clarence
Darrow’s expert witnesses who was not
allowed to testify in Dayton, Tennessee on
behalf of John Scopes. (210 Westmount)
I remember Winterton Curtis, my first
landlord, as a kindly, charming old man who
mysteriously pulled dollars from my ear. (The
Dayton judge would’ve seen that as proof of
his Satanic nature, no doubt.) He was also very
respectful of the locals H.L. Mencken derided
as “boobs.”

13. A Defense Expert's Impressions of the Scopes Trial - from D-Days at Dayton:
Fundamentalism vs Evolution at Dayton, Tennessee by Winterton C. Curtis (1956)
I was met at the station by one of my fellow scientists and driven through the town
to the house where we were to be quartered… (continues)

14. Damned Yankee
Winterton Curtis, the Scopes expert who
pulled dollars from my ear and provided my
first solid roof, recalled a much
more southern Columbia, Missouri than mine,
in these notes published in the Columbia
Missourianin 1957. (I matriculated in 1975, he
arrived in 1901.)
This reprint, one of the treasures from Dad’s
memory chest, is full of small surprises and
delights. WCC’s old New England mother drew
the line well north of Mason-Dixon. “No. I
cannot give my consent to Winnie’s going to
such a place as Missouri.” continues

18. If you want to learn more about Scopes,
Dayton, and Friendly Atheism, read Matthew
Chapman’sTrials of the Monkey. Chapman,
great-great-great-(great?) grandson of Charles
Darwin himself, went down to Dayton to try
and understand the curious breed of human
known asYoung Earth Creationist [more].

19. He still doesn’t get it (any more than I do), but
he actually confesses to liking many of the
Darwin Deniers he met and spoke with–
including one (Kurt Wise) who studied with
Stephen Jay Gould at Harvard, before being
hired to teach biology (!) to Bryan University
undergraduates.

20. And if you want to see an entertaining dramatic rendition of Scopes, watch
Spencer Tracy and Frederic March in Inherit the Wind.
Scopes trial images Edward Larson’s Summer of the Gods