Word: darwin
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Intellectually speaking, G.B.S. was a great pass receiver. When astrodomed quarterbacks like Ibsen, Nietzsche, Darwin and Marx rifled ideas through the air, Shaw would snatch them and race down the field for dramatic touchdowns, spouting aphorisms and paradoxes as he went...
Devo: Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (Warner Bros.). Rock satire that works. Devo is a band of crafty loonies who play at being harbingers of a bleary future when the human species is sliding back down Darwin's scale. Space Junk and Uncontrollable Urge are among Devo's marching songs for"de-evolution"; they are also a rich source of silly...
When Charles Darwin stepped off the Beagle and landed in the Galapagos in 1835, he found a world in which time had stood still. As Roger Lewin, an editor of Britain's New Scientist, reveals in Darwin's Forgotten World (Reed; $19.95), the clock is still stopped. Iguanas and other lizards, close relatives of the dinosaurs that have been extinct for millenniums, prowl the islands. Giant tortoises, resembling prehistoric tanks, lurch slowly along their beaches. Lewin, aided by Photographer Sally Anne Thompson, does his usual excellent job of showing what Darwin saw when he landed in this natural...
Since the publication more than a century ago of Darwin's The Descent of Man, scientists have become increasingly convinced that man shares a common ancestor with chimpanzees and gorillas. But who, or what, was that kindred beast? And when did the momentous split occur? At what point did primate evolution begin taking one route that led to the great apes of Africa, another to man? Paleontologists generally believe, on the basis of bits and pieces of fossils millions of years old, that the common ancestor may have been the small, long extinct apelike animal named Dryopithecus (from...
Guys and Dolls gently spoofs the pious. Bible-reading has more serious overtones in Inherit the Wind, by Lawrence and Lee. The play is based on the famous John Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, in which a young schoolteacher was tried for teaching his science classes Darwin's theory of evolution--a practice forbidden by statute in his Bible-Belt state. The political orator William Jennings Bryan led the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow defended the teacher. Though the characters in Inherit the Wind are but thinly disguised, the playwrights have turned a sensationalistic trial into a lyrical clash between tradition...