Thursday, February 19, 2009

Constantly Evolving

The other day, February 12th to be exact, my good friend Natalie commented on the blog that I had overlooked the bicentennial of another world-famous thinker (the same day I trumpeted the birth of Abraham Lincoln) from the same day, a not-exactly-obscure Charles Darwin.

Thank you Natalie—I hadn’t forgotten exactly, and for a moment or two actually I had mused about writing about both men born on that day, but you know, they each deserve some special praise on their own.

While I may have chosen the route of humanities over science (do you know me at all??) for the celebration of the Lincoln-Darwin bicentennial, there is another major event to celebrate, and today we will do just that.

This month marks the sesquicentennial anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. As a bit of an aside, I know the word sesquicentennial—150 years—because of my mother. When I was about 11 our family’s church denomination, American Baptist, celebrated its sesquicentennial, and my mother traveled around our state American Baptist churches making speeches about the work and ministries of the American Baptists (now that I think about it, it might have been the sesquicentennial of the Ohio Baptist Convention—I was 11, and all I really know is that there was a sesquicentennial and it involved Baptists). I tagged along with my mother for many of those speeches—I just loved to watch her engage in public speaking, and I loved the sonority of how she pronounced the word, ‘sesquicentennial.’ It just sounded so monumental…

So back to the sesquicentennial of Darwin’s book—this is the book in which Darwin presented his 20+ years of research and evolutionary theory that rests on two pillars: the ideas of descent with modification, and the idea of natural selection.

Darwin believed that present-day organisms are descendants of much simpler ancestors: they are the products of unbroken lines of heredity that stretch back to the origin of life. Today, we have a mass of evidence, ranging from a study of ancient fossils to the latest discoveries of molecular biology, supporting this theory.

But, as we all know, the waters are hardly calm over this 150 year old theory! This morning as I scanned the complimentary copy of USA Today at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston (I am here for the Harvard Model Congress—more about that in another entry) the letters to the editor still railed on this subject.

I don’t plan to add much to that firestorm, but Darwin’s notion of “evolution” is a topic dear to the heart of any teacher or parent. Watching children evolve is certainly the most exciting thing about working with youth. There are hundreds of reasons not to work with youth (please, do we need to go over the lack of societal respect or fiduciary remuneration stuff??) but watching this evolution is thrilling. It seems magical, but if you know how to wire their brains, spark their imagination, stoke their curiosity and engage their interest, it is not magic at all, just hard work, and a thing of wondrous beauty.

Maxine Greene, one of the most wondrous people I know, is an educational philosopher who espouses the claim that, “I am what I am—not yet.” I first encountered Maxine when she had just turned 80, and still teaching full-time. I marveled at this dictum that we are not really ever finished, but always a fascinating, evolving work in progress.

Even Darwin’s theory, as monumental as it was in 1859, and still today, was not brand new even then. Darwin did not “invent” the idea of descent with modification. Fifty years earlier, scientist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had suggested that living things are products of a long historical process of transformation. Turns out that those ideas found little to no favor in the intellectual world 200 years ago…

As any of you who know me slightly, realize—I am not a scientist, but this concept of “evolving” just fascinates me, and this idea that natural selection in a particular direction, say, moving efficiently through the air, can give rise to complicated structures like wings and the coordinated processes of flying is breathtakingly exciting.

I have seen practically the same selection and transformation in students. We know that certain environmental stresses and insults can affect generations in flora and fauna, and it works that way in people too.

As I was thinking about Darwin, and the twin pillars of Darwinism, my brain whizzed back to Maxine Greene. I thought about the first paper I wrote for Maxine back in the fall of 1994, when I was in the Klingenstein Fellowship at Columbia. We had been reading about the philosophers of Romanticism, and how they felt compelled to embrace the concept of transformation. I wrote about the twin pillars of “hope and despair,” and how those dialectical forces transform us as educators. We are biological organisms, of course, and just as stresses and insults shape and affect adaptation, it is those forces of hope and despair that mold us and cause us to evolve.

Wow—the pillars of Darwinism and Maxine and education and pillars of hope and despair, all careening through my brain. And of course it is easy to cruise through the annals of the students I have known and marvel at the evolution of these exceptional young people to come my way.

Two weeks ago, during that speedy trip to New York (the trip of Job Fairs and Theater Mania) I had lunch with two extraordinary former students, Kate and Fareeda. We have been getting together every time now I come to New York, and each time I come away breathless in my admiration for them. They are both in the financial world and of course are witnessing what some may see as the apocalypse of New York finance. I taught them as seniors in high school, and while I certainly enjoyed them in my classroom, it is with such respect and joy that I greet them now as adults confronting the hope and despair of the real world. And I must say, they are adapting and evolving with such intelligence and elegance.

Indeed there is nothing better than seeing former students evolving into magnificent adults. Today I visited with Nicki, another Hackley superstar who is winding up a stellar career at Harvard. Nicki is like a Vermeer painting, an exquisite jewel that gets better with each visit. She is an art historian, specializing in American art, and she has evolved from a sensational high school student to a fascinating adult. Her interests, her boyfriend, her classes—everything is exciting in talking to her.

Nicki took me to a special club, the Signet Club, at Harvard, today for lunch. This is a club that meets on Thursdays and allows only arts-interested members. T.S. Eliot, Theodore Roosevelt, Tommy Lee Jones, Frank Rich, and e.e. cummings have all been members at one time or another. You meet and have lunch, preferably with members with whom you are not familiar, and discuss.

We sat with an octogenarian who was lively and peppered us with questions—a man who is very interested in “how people age and transform,” he said. Little did he know he would fit perfectly with my theme of evolution today! He was interested to hear about my experiences in Jordan, and commented, “You know you could have gone over there and fallen flat on your face. I like how you did it anyway.”

I don’t know if my endurance in Jordan is a sign of natural selection, but I certainly like that Darwinian challenge of adapting and finding new ways to succeed and thrive in this world.

This evening I will visit with Noah, another of the superstars from Hackley who have made their way to Harvard. This is a young man who always inspires awe and interest. Since I last saw him last year I am sure he has read something, changed something, imagined something that will make our world more provocative, more compelling.
Like Kate and Fareeda and Nicki, Noah is constantly evolving, constantly surprising, constantly gratifying to know.

I know that when Charles Darwin began studying those Galapagos turtles and those barnacles on those ships 170-some years ago, he had no idea the beauty he would unleash as we behold the evolution of those we love.

It’s time to go meet Noah—I wonder how our conversation tonight will evolve.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I am bursting with pride at my superb shout-out! Can't wait until April!

Dianne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dianne said...

Hi John,

I just read about a new book out on Darwin called "Darwin's Sacred Cause" by Adrain Desmond & James Moore. The book re-examines Darwin's journey on the Beagle & subsequent publishings, positing they were motivated by his abolitionist family up-bringing and personal core philosophy against slavery. Those unconvinced of Darwin's Theory of Evolution may see this as proof that the scientist went on his journey looking for proof of man's common heritage, and made his observations fit into his theory. Others might think him lucky to have found what he was looking for, in a way.

But as a mathematician at heart, I see more parallels between Darwin's insights and motivations to that of the Greeks. How often were the Greeks right, even without empirical evidence? Sure, they were wrong fairly often too: fire ain't no element, to be sure. But their ideas about emotions being seated in the heart, thoughts being seated in the head, matter having a universal particle called an atom...All these came to them intuitively, without benefit of microscope, hormone analysis, or particle colliders.

So maybe Darwin found what he was looking for as an abolitionist in the fauna of the Galapagos because the injustice of slavery was just too obvious to ignore but society needed a philosophy to help give words to what many already felt...

So, we can add this to the Darwin & Lincoln connections that your long-time friend Christy started cataloging.

I've been enjoying reading your blog, John. Hope HMC is going well. In my day, the trip turned into more of a sociological and biological escapade, if you know what I mean. But these days, we are all summoning our better angels :)

Wishing you safe travels back to Jordan. All the best, Dianne