Evolution - Social and Cultural Responses | Social Cultural Responses

Social and Cultural Responses

Further information: Social effect of evolutionary theory and Objections to evolution

In the 19th century, particularly after the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859, the idea that life had evolved was an active source of academic debate centred on the philosophical, social and religious implications of evolution. Today, the modern evolutionary synthesis is accepted by a vast majority of scientists. However, evolution remains a contentious concept for some theists.

While various religions and denominations have reconciled their beliefs with evolution through concepts such as theistic evolution, there are creationists who believe that evolution is contradicted by the creation myths found in their religions and who raise various objections to evolution. As had been demonstrated by responses to the publication of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in 1844, the most controversial aspect of evolutionary biology is the implication of human evolution that humans share common ancestry with apes and that the mental and moral faculties of humanity have the same types of natural causes as other inherited traits in animals. In some countries, notably the United States, these tensions between science and religion have fuelled the current creation-evolution controversy, a religious conflict focusing on politics and public education. While other scientific fields such as cosmology and Earth science also conflict with literal interpretations of many religious texts, evolutionary biology experiences significantly more opposition from religious literalists.

The teaching of evolution in American secondary school biology classes was uncommon in most of the first half of the 20th century. The Scopes Trial decision of 1925 caused the subject to become very rare in American secondary biology textbooks for a generation, but it was gradually re-introduced about a generation later and legally protected with the 1968 Epperson v. Arkansas decision. Since then, the competing religious belief of creationism was legally disallowed in secondary school curricula in various decisions in the 1970s and 1980s, but it returned in pseudoscientific form as intelligent design, to be excluded once again in the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case.

Famous quotes containing the words social, cultural and/or responses:

“The negative cautions of science are never popular. If the experimentalist would not commit himself, the social philosopher, the preacher, and the pedagogue tried the harder to give a short- cut answer.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)

“If in the earlier part of the century, middle-class children suffered from overattentive mothers, from being “mother’s only accomplishment,” today’s children may suffer from an underestimation of their needs. Our idea of what a child needs in each case reflects what parents need. The child’s needs are thus a cultural football in an economic and marital game.”
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“Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with. The cure for apathy is comprehension.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)