We took a tour of the American Museum of Natural History today with Dr. Rob Desalle, curator of the Hall of Human Origins. We hope that this was an enriching field trip, giving you a view of the museum you would not normally have. Hopefully you can now appreciate many of the exhibits in the museum much more, through the lens of Big History. For one example of a tree of life Dr. Desalle mentioned, you can see this high resolution graphic of taxonomy.
Your annotated bibliographies for the Little Big History project are due on Wednesday, July 31st.
In anticipation of seminar tomorrow, please prepare the following questions:
- How have astronomical, geological, and biological factors impacted the evolution of species from Australopithicus to homo sapiens? To what extent has one of these categories been more important than the others?
- “Altruism and kindness run counter to Darwin’s theory of evolution.” To what extent do you believe this statement to be true?
We have four texts for this seminar"
- Stokes-Brown, Big History, Chapter 2 (p. 16-37)
- Stokes-Brown, Big History, Chapter 3 (p. 38-56)
- Listen and take notes on WNYC's RadioLab, "The Good Show" (about 65 minutes). In the third segment, they talk about the Cuban missile crisis and a type of decision making situation - called a "game" in economics. For a brief overview of what's called the prisoner's dilemma, you can watch this supplementary video that explains the process in a bit more clarity.
- Listen and take notes on WNYC's RadioLab, "Blood Buddies" (about 15 minutes). Make sure you listen to "The Good Show" first.
Lastly, here are Little Big History documents: