The History of Life: Looking @ the Patterns, the Variations, and the Motivations for Change

Towards Day 6 of Evolving Systems course

I. coursekeeping
continuing to name one another....
conversation about writing that second paper:
what was it like?
coupla' examples of making the transition:
what different strategies are in play?

We're going to do this again next Wednesday: I'll return your papers this weekend, and ask you once more to reconsider and reconceive your thinking about creation, in light of the discussions we're about to have about biological evolution (as well as our recent discussions about the creation of the universe). Ask yourselves: why are things they way they are? How can you tell that tale effectively? (in fictional form? a critical essay? by writing with sources? what sources?)

As a warm-up for that paper, and to keep feeding our shared discussion, remember to post in week 4 (!) of our course forum, by Monday evening, your reactions to the stories of biological evolution: What relevance might they have to other kinds of change, including cultural and individual?  (review of how to activate links and add images...)

II. So: let's spend some time w/ these stories:

• Evolution 101 (sections 1-3)
• Darwin's Living Legacy
• Scientists Cite Fastest Case of Human Evolution
  
  

what did you notice?
what's new here for you?
what do you think is significant?
how do these three sources align?
where do they disagree (w/ one another,
w/ your own presumptions?)
how do they expand on or challenge the story you wrote yesterday?


Why does change occur over time?
What motivates it? (Do we presume that there must have been an initial motivation?
A beginning? An objective? Time? Could there be another kind of story?)

One way to answer this question:
we'll go next door @ 12:35 for a demonstration of
Evolution as Reproduction with Variability