ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Alan

Interesting review 'Animated Evolution' at
http://www.stcsig.org/sc/newsletter/html/2005-4.htm

Bets regards
Glen

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan J. Friedman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 2:31 AM
Subject: Re: Kentucky Creation Museum


> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
institutions.
>
****************************************************************************
*
>
> I think Nina Simon is exactly right (ISEN-ASTC-L #2007-83) in that story
> telling is a powerful way to communicate, especially for complex issues,
> which is too often neglected in informal science learning.  I just heard
> Martin Weiss describe how the NY Hall of Science project on precursor
> concepts for understanding scientific theories, including evolution, is
> turning to story telling as a strategy.
>
> We should have a list of narrative versions of evolution and other key
> theories in various media, for research, evaluation, emulation, and
> inspiration.  Perhaps somebody already has such a list, but I'll start off
> with some of my favorite narratives about evolution:
>
> *  "Evolution," a 1971 animated film from the National Film Board of
Canada.
> Nominated for an Academy Award, and with no spoken words, this is
> astonishing, delightful, and shocking, all in 10 minutes and 21 seconds of
> inspired story-telling.
>
> *  "Victory," a 1915 novel by Joseph Conrad, is among many other things a
> response to Darwin's evolution.  Watch for characters representing various
> stages in the evolution of homo sapiens.  There is a huge list of
literature
> and critical essays, on novelists' and artists' responses to evolution.  I
> happened to take an eye-opening course from the late Michael Gregory, a
> Conrad scholar, who introduced me to this means of storytelling about
> evolution.
>
> *  "Surface Tension," a short story by James Blish, is just one of his
many
> short and long fictions about evolution and genetic engineering, collected
> in a 1957 volume "The Seedling Stars."  Science fiction throughout the
20th
> century was filled with expositions, explorations, and extrapolations of
> Darwinian evolution, often written by scientists.  Blish is delightfully
> readable by all ages; for a rather less accessible but breathtakingly
> sweeping treatment, see "First and Last Men" by Olaf Stapleton (1930).
>
> *  "Man and Superman," a play by George Bernard Shaw, is about Don Juan,
> philosophy, manners, and evolution.  The third act, "Don Juan in Hell," is
> often performed on its own, and is a dazzling exposition of how Darwinian
> ideas could be applied or misapplied to shorter term cultural development.
> I had a tape at one time of a version with George C. Scott playing the
Devil
> in such a charming manner that I was on his side instantly (and I expect
> Shaw was too, at least emotionally).
>
> *  "The Immense Journey" (1957) and "Darwin's Century" (1958) by Loren
> Eisely are examples of good science exposition so movingly and beautifully
> written that they read more like stories.  Here's my favorite sentence
from
> the latter title:  "Only James Hutton brooding over a little Scottish
brook
> that carried sediment down to the sea felt the weight of the solid
continent
> slide uneasily beneath his feet and cities and empires flow away as
> insubstantially as a summer cloud."  This may sound more like poetry than
> science explication.  It is in fact a concise summary at the end of a
> chapter describing the key geological concept which gave Darwin the eons
of
> time he needed for biological evolution to be plausible.
>
> Surely someone has collected an annotated list of evolution narratives
like
> these.  I hope a reader of the listserv will locate the best theses,
books,
> or teachers' guides to evolution narratives and let us all know.  Then our
> job will be to figure out how to incorporate narratives in our own media,
> such as exhibitions.  On the off-chance that no such lists exist, who has
a
> graduate student in need of a project?  Or perhaps a small NSF grant could
> launch this as an on-line community wiki-endeavor?
>
> Cheers,
> Alan
>
> ****************************************************
> Alan J. Friedman, Ph.D.
> Consultant
> Museum Development and Science Communication
> 29 West 10th Street
> New York, New York 10011 USA
> T  +1 917 882-6671
> F  +1 212 673-2279
> E  [log in to unmask]
>
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For information about the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Informal Science Education Network please visit www.astc.org.

Check out the latest case studies and reviews on ExhibitFiles at www.exhibitfiles.org.

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