Evolving Planet

by Megan

This past weekend I visited the Field Museum in Chicago, and I particularly enjoyed the "Evolving Planet" exhibition, which has been in the museum since 2006. I was amused by the fact that anyone who wanted to see most of the dinosaur skeletons that the museum owns was forced to walk through the first part of the exhibition, in which the origins of life on the planet are explored scientifically and rationally (i.e., not religiously). This meant that creationists who wanted to see dinosaurs were forced to at least walk past signs explaining evolution and evidence for evolution in the form of fossils. I thought that this was brilliant on the part of the museum, and also hilarious to watch. Some parents pushed their children quickly through that part of the exhibition, refusing to let them stop and look at anything. I heard one mother explain this to her confused daughter by saying, "Mommy doesn't like this exhibit." I also heard some poor fool wonder, "If evolution is true, how come our arms aren't as strong as monkeys' arms?" Of course, while the comments and behavior were funny, they were also quite disturbing. It is sad to see what is left of a human mind warped by faith.

One thing that I didn't like about the exhibition, although I wholly expected it, was their choice to end it with a call for species conservation. In total, the exhibition included descriptions of six mass extinctions in earth's history. A mass extinction occurs when a large number of species suddenly become extinct in a relatively small amount of time. Whenever such an extinction occurred, the end of some species meant new opportunity for other species: just as is the case with individual organisms, life and death were closely connected. As I went through the exhibition, I realized that mass extinctions are neither bad nor good; they are simply change. After all, if it were not for the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, mammals that eventually evolved into humans would not have been able to flourish. However, the exhibition ended by stating that we are currently in the midst of mass extinction number six as a result of human activity on the planet, such as deforestation and pollution. Suddenly, 'mass extinction' went from meaning 'something natural that leads to opportunities for some species even as it leads to the extinction of others' to meaning 'something evil that humans do.' It seems strange to me that the same phenomenon would be evil when it results from the actions of one particular species and neutral or perhaps even good when it results from other causes. Of course, it would be one thing to argue that as humans we are threatening our own survival and therefore we must change our behavior in order to continue to survive as a species, but that was not the argument; rather, the claim was that mass extinction itself is suddenly bad because humans are involved.

Another minor problem with the exhibition was the language it used to describe natural selection. Although there was a clear explanation of the workings of natural selection, later in the exhibition natural selection suddenly seemed to become an agent rather than simply a process. For example, natural selection was said to "choose" certain traits, and at one point a species was described as being "engineered for" a certain purpose. It would be much clearer and more accurate to simply say that certain traits increased the chance of survival and reproduction in an organism's environment.

Overall, though, I thought the exhibition was fantastic. It provided fascinating information about the origins and evolution of life on earth even to those who wished to close their own and their children's ears to knowledge. It made me feel incredibly lucky and delighted to be alive, and to be human.