Fellow Canuck and former student Jean-Marc from the real True North Strong and Free asked about a good introduction to evolution for first-year students. Two suggestions were the on-line sources Wikipedia and the TalkOrigins website.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that both have too many trees and not enough forest. If that analogy's too obscure, what I mean is that they both do nicely on the fine points of evolution without giving students the big picture. The underlying idea of evolution is blindingly simple, logical, and powerful. It goes something like this, although I'm sure it could be expressed with greater elegance: 1) Organisms produce offspring in large numbers over time 2) The offspring vary in many ways, including (of particular relevance to psychology), behaviour 3) There is competition within and across species for survival in a particular evironment 4) Certain of the variations increase the effectiveness of reproduction in that environment 5) those which do are therefore able to pass their genes down to the next generation. Or, in Darwin's famous phrase, 'One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die" (although I'd caution that "strongest" and "weakest" mean in terms of reproductive success in a particular environment, not in terms of strength. Those who produce the most babies win). I would think that most introductory biology texts would have a section on evolution which would provide that information and elaborate on it, something which appears to be lacking in both Wikipedia and TalkOrigins. I'd browse a few of those texts to find the best. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Dept web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at http://faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
