Why Darwin matters: evolution and American society

As a stereotypical political science major, I could tell you very little about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution other than some grouping of court cases and a Wikipedia-like synopsis of natural selection. Even with a year or so of biology in public school and a little bit of reading off to the side, I still find it difficult to comprehend the idea of monkeys transforming slowly, bit by bit, into the human beings seen perusing their iPhones at Starbucks.

The truth is, though, I'm not alone. In fact, compared to the rest of the country, I'm quite the expert on Darwin.

A recent Gallup poll found that 55 percent of Americans could not identify Darwin to his theory of evolution. Only 39 percent embraced the theory itself (which, if you do the math, means that a good chunk of Darwin-groupies don't actually know what evolution is). The numbers are fairly surprising, especially given the fact that Darwin has received something of a post-mortem birthday bash from a whole host of media outlets including the New York Times and ABC News.

Historically, however, 39 percent is pretty impressive. In the century and a half since "On the Origin of Species" was published, Americans have argued, acquiesced, and toiled with the idea of being a chain in the link of natural selection. As one of the most religious nations on earth, it's no wonder that the people in the United States continue to turn toward creationism and intelligent design as explanations for our existence; Darwin's theory does not include, among other things, a supervisory God.

Devout faith in the supernatural isn't the only explanation for our nation's consistent rejection of evolution, though. Dr. Jeffrey Hyson, a history professor here at St. Joe's, believes that the structure of our education system might also have had an influence in how the debate surrounding evolution has been played out through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

"We have a tradition of education being controlled on the state and local level, whereas in other industrial countries it's been historically top down. That's meant a couple things for the United States. It's meant that there have been countless fights over the teaching of evolution over the past century as opposed to one battle at the top, or maybe a series of battles at the top."

The fight against evolution has, in fact, been a grassroots movement to fight for the right of parents to determine what little Johnny or Susie reads in the classroom. According to Hyson, "it's very focused on: 'These are my kids, they're going to be taught what I believe. No outside authority is going to tell me what to do.'"

But perhaps more than anything, Americans' unwillingness to warm up to evolution may stem from the same problem I've had in dealing with the theory: evolution is a pretty difficult thing to grasp.

Partly because of America's culture of faith and partly because of an easy explanation, evolution appears as a strange concept from the get-go. Add to it the moral complications that result from realizing you were, in essence, an accidental product of sex drive, environmental factors, and biological mutations, and you have a theory that will not sit well in the American conscience.

It's true that there is nothing comforting about the theory. Its consequences, for the most part, can be quite disheartening. When you sign on to evolution, it becomes difficult to sign onto the idea that each of us has a purpose, that we are different from our neighbors. In a sense, we become like every other animal on the planet-our biological paths just happened to swerve in a different direction than, let's say, fish or cats.

But like many things in life, the discomforting truths are often the most beneficial. If we want to move forward, as a nation, towards a higher standard of education and science-as President Obama has alluded in several speeches-we are going to have to face the facts, no matter how much of a headache we get while doing it.