Once We All Had Gills

Rudolf A. Raff

Description

A life in science and what it can teach us

Read an excerpt from the book

In this book, Rudolf A. Raff reaches out to the scientifically queasy, using his life story and his growth as a scientist to illustrate why science matters, especially at a time when many Americans are both suspicious of science and hostile to scientific ways of thinking. Noting that science has too often been the object of controversy in school curriculums and debates on public policy issues ranging from energy and conservation to stem-cell research and climate change, Raff argues that when the public is confused or ill-informed, these issues tend to be decided on religious, economic, and political grounds that disregard the realities of the natural world. Speaking up for science and scientific literacy, Raff tells how and why he became an evolutionary biologist and describes some of the vibrant and living science of evolution. Once We All Had Gills is also the story of evolution writ large: its history, how it is studied, what it means, and why it has become a useful target in a cultural war against rational thought and the idea of a secular, religiously tolerant nation.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I: Becoming a Naturalist
1. Space-Time
2. Layers of the Past
3. An Age of Dinosaurs
4. A School a Minute
5. In the Natural World
6. Transformations
7. Going South
8. Learning to Love the Bomb
9. On the Road to Chiapas
10. The Masked Messenger
Part II: Finding Evolution, Founding Evo-Devo
11. Evolution as Science
12. Dining with Darwin
13. Life with Sea Urchins
14. Embryos Evolving
15. Evolution in the Tasman Sea
16. An Alternate Present
17. Biology Meets Fossils
Part III: Strange New World
18. Darwin's Day in Court
19. Creationist Makeovers
20. Evolution Matters
Selected Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Molecular Biology
• Life Sciences
• Sciences et techniques
• Biology
• Science and technology
• Evolution
• 454 Life Sciences
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 16 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253007179
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

ONCE WE ALL HAD GILLS
ONCE WE ALL HAD GILLS
Growing Up Evolutionist in an Evolving World
RUDOLF A. RAFF
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
2012 by Rudolf A. Raff
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the
United States of America
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Raff, Rudolf A.
Once we all had gills : growing up evolutionist in an evolving world / Rudolf A. Raff.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-00235-8 (cloth : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-00717-9 (ebook) 1. Raff, Rudolf A. 2. Biologists - Biography. 3. Evolution (Biology) I. Title.
QH31.R128A3
2012
570.92 - dc23

[B]
2012005742
1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13 12
TO BETH, AND TO ALL MY FAMILY, NEAR AND FAR
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
PART 1 BECOMING A NATURALIST
1 Space-Time
2 Layers of the Past
3 An Age of Dinosaurs
4 A School a Minute
5 In the Natural World
6 Transformations
7 Going South
8 Learning to Love the Bomb
9 On the Road to Chiapas
10 The Masked Messenger
PART 2 FINDING EVOLUTION, FOUNDING EVO-DEVO
11 Evolution as Science
12 Dining with Darwin
13 Life with Sea Urchins
14 Embryos Evolving
15 Evolution in the Tasman Sea
16 An Alternate Present
17 Biology Meets Fossils
PART 3 STRANGE NEW WORLD
18 Darwin s Day in Court
19 Creationist Makeovers
20 Evolution Matters
Selected Bibliography
Index
Preface
Most Americans you might meet on the street could name at least one living athlete, musician, celebrity, and politician, but far fewer could name any living scientist - or tell you what scientists do. A British poll of teens found that none could name a single living scientist. A poll of Americans found that fewer than 20 percent of respondents could name one. Sadly, despite living in an age defined by science and what it has produced, most Americans are content to enjoy the benefits without much intellectual engagement. Science is deeply integrated into the pillars of our culture, and on the flip side it is also part of political disputes over what is taught in schools and how public decisions are reached about energy policy, conservation, population size, contraception, vaccination, global warming, stem cell research, nuclear weapons, and many other issues that influence our lives and futures. When the public is befuddled, these issues will be decided in ill-informed ways based on religious, economic, and political biases that ignore the realities of the natural world.
What do we do about global warming when the public understands the science only vaguely at best and can t tell the real science from the rosy predictions of cranks or the self-interested lobbying of paid denialists? Worse, many of our fellow citizens don t think it matters anyway. Part of the problem lies with us, the scientists. We are excited about science and we enjoy our work. We discuss it exuberantly with our colleagues, but the voices of scientists talking among themselves don t carry very far. We should reach out and make the effort to talk to more than just our research colleagues, to tell a personal story of where we came from, why we are compelled by science, and what our own work is about. Some scientists have done that with real verve. There are several autobiographical science books that have inspired me over the years, including Charles Darwin s Voyage of the Beagle , L. S. B. Leakey s White African , Marty Crump s Searching for the Golden Frog , Margaret Lowman s Life in the Treetops , and Geerat Vermeij s Privileged Hands . Some scientists see this kind of writing as mere popularizing, but popularizing broadens public understanding and certainly doesn t conflict with doing good science. This book became my own effort to speak up for science, to tell how I became an evolutionary biologist and explain, in part, the vibrant and living science of evolution.
The day I began writing this book, I really hadn t fully thought out that goal. I imagined that I d like to write a short history of my life for family, siblings, cousins, children, and our new grandson, Daniel. I started out wanting to leave a clearer record of memory for my own children than I had gotten from my parents and grandparents. They left behind a sparse and disconnected record, photographs and snippets of conversations that stand like isolated rock pinnacles in the desert. They are dead now, and I can t ask them all the questions I should have asked years ago about their lives and origins. I ve had to reconstruct and try to understand some of their histories as I went along. The scope and scale of the project simply grew as I got engaged. The writing became more complex, and I began to see it as something more than just a personal story for my family; rather, it transformed into a wider statement about how and why I became a scientist, the joys of doing science, and the importance of science for real life.
Evolution provided me with the way to tell the story. Evolution is what I study, and it touches all that is alive. It is the science of origins and transformations in the history of life. This book is in part a story of my own evolution, of how I evolved into a naturalist, a scientist, and, finally, an evolutionary biologist. But more, it is a story of evolution writ large: its history, how it s studied, and what it means. My own life is a kind of thread through that story. The evolution of life has produced us, and all living things. It is hard to imagine a more compelling subject, yet evolution is also endlessly contentious. In America evolution has become an enemy useful to help organize a religious culture war being waged against rational thought, and even against the concept of a secular country tolerant of all religious views - the foundational notion of the separation of church and state. That conflict is also a part of the history of evolution. Its outcome may be decisive in whether our species will successfully cope on a changing planet. Evolution can t be ignored.
The bibliography at the end of the book is a selected one, meant to help any of my readers who might want to look further. I didn t want to create a distracting academic list of citations that would interrupt the flow of the narrative, so I ve limited the bibliography to include two kinds of references. The first are citations of publications where really needed, for example, the source of quotations or crucial factual information used in the text. The second are books or articles that provide important and interesting narratives that make up part of the underpinning of the book.
Acknowledgments
No writing can be done in isolation from the influences and assistance of others. The greatest help I ve had is from my wife and scientific partner Beth Raff. I am deeply grateful for her love and encouragement, for her willingness to read endless manuscript versions, for the clarity of her thinking, and for her wielding of a merciless red pencil. Her comments exposed embarrassingly bad organization and muzzy thinking wherever they hid among the grass of unobjectionable words in the acreage of manuscript pages. My sister, Mimi Jakoi, and my cousins Monique Dufresne and Michelle Ricard shared their memories of our shared childhood and helped me find family histories. I thank Ed Fraser and George Glauber for providing me with information that helped me understand my father s emigration to Canada from Austria in 1938.
Many people appear in this book, including family, friends, students, teachers, and colleagues. I remember them all for enriching my life and intellectual growth, and the science I write about. I owe a great deal to my academic home, Indiana University, which has made it possible for me as a faculty member in biology to work in a rich and intellectually exciting environment among admired colleagues. I also have to acknowledge a parallel universe at the University of Sydney. The School of Biological Sciences at Sydney has generously allowed Beth and me, and our students, to do field work and research in their facilities each year since 1986. The generosity of the school, the heads of school who served during the time we worked in Sydney, and so many colleagues in and out of biology in Sydney has given us the ability to conduct a research program dependant on evolution in the lost continent. This story could not be told without all that our Australian friends and collaborators have done with such grace and zest. I m especially grateful to Don and Jo Anderson, who made it possible for me to start my research in Sydney. Heather Sowden, Craig Sowden, Hamlet Giragossyan, Margaret Gilchrist, Les Edwards, Mark Ahern, Michael Joseph, Basil Panayotakos, Malcolm Ricketts, and many other members of the Sydney faculty and staff have selflessly helped us make our field and lab work possible. Maria Byrne has been a priceless long-term collaborator. I thank Robyn Stuchbury and Noel Tait for all our times spent together in Australia, for teaching us about Australian biology and providing a superb color photograph of a living peripatus. The Women s College at the University of Sydney has provided a welcoming home away from home to Beth and me and our