Science Is Constantly Evolving
Discover the latest in climate change and evolution education news.
The National Center for Science Education was recently invited to endorse Innovation: An American Imperative (PDF)—a “call to action by American industry, higher education, science, and engineering leaders urging Congress to enact policies and make investments that ensure the United…
The encyclical Laudato si’ lays out what I called Pope Francis’s land ethic, back in part 1. I use that term because, from its earliest pages, I felt strong parallels between the environmental ethic advanced on behalf of the Catholic Church and the writings of pioneering American…
NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of Niles Eldredge's Eternal Ephemera: Adaptation and the Origin of Species from the Nineteenth Century Through Punctuated Equilibria and Beyond (Columbia University Press, 2015). The preview consists of the introduction, in which Eldredge…
Last week we looked at a fossil that seemed to be swimming through rock. This week we see it from a different perspective: As you might have guessed, this organism is small: maybe six centimeters on a good day. I liked the lines of this specimen; they seemed to hold so much…
Theological and philosophical reflections on the situation of humanity and the world can sound tiresome and abstract, unless they are grounded in a fresh analysis of our present situation, which is in many ways unprecedented in the history of humanity. So, before considering how faith brings new…
Last week I offered a long introduction to evolutionary trees—so long that we didn’t get to the misconceptions! But as you realized, some common vocabulary is required if we’re going to make sense of evolutionary trees. I felt that it was worth the time to get it all straight—even if we don’t 100…
Almost every day, I take time out to think about both Miley Cyrus and Ken Ham, usually in the same context. So imagine the joy that swelled in my heart upon seeing that Ham, who runs the Creation “Museum” in Kentucky and is trying to build a Noah’s Ark theme park there too, recently criticized…
This Fossil Friday specimen should be a little more challenging to identify than our previous trio of organisms. This creature was related to modern starfish, but it certainly doesn’t resemble them. The fossil dates from the Mississippian period, and was collected in Anna, Illinois. Identify it in…
In a recent post, I wrote about how listening to my students inspired my research into the language of science. In my early research, I found that some science vocabulary hinders students when they learn new science concepts. I wanted to find out what other elements of language have critical…