Constitutional Law

Darwin's Enduring Contribution and Debate

In an editorial observance for The New York Times of the societal impact of Charles Darwin, Verlyn Klinkenborg writes that, his central theme of evolution by natural selection has weathered time well. “I doubt that much in the subsequent history of Darwin’s idea would have surprised him,” Klinkenborg writes. “The most important discoveries – Mendel’s genetics and the structure of DNA – would almost certainly have gratified him because they reveal the physical basis for the variation underlying evolution. It would have gratified him to see his ideas so thoroughly tested and to see so many of them confirmed. He could hardly have expected to right so often.”

Two hundred years after his birth, Darwin’s work on evolution continues to fuel legal fracases nationwide between science and religion. Since the 1920s, religious groups have sought to undermine the teaching of evolution in the nation’s public schools. Some groups have spent decades and lots of money fighting to ensure that religion is taught alongside evolution in science courses, others have pushed so-called “intelligent design” as science also to be taught in the nation’s high school biology courses. In 2005, a federal judge in a precedent-setting First Amendment decision ruled that intelligent design is religion and therefore cannot be taught in public high school science courses. There are still efforts by special interest groups like the Seattle-based Discovery Institute to push intelligent design on public schools.

“In a way,” Klinkenborg writes, “our peculiarly American failure to come terms with Darwin’s theory and what it’s become since 1859 is a sign of something broader: our failure to come to terms with science and the teaching of science.”

Full post as published by ACS Blog on February 12, 2009 (boomark / email).