Disney and Darwin Final

Derek Bok was recently President of Harvard for 20 years

accurate

A major "discovery of psychologists...is that people are often surprisingly good judges of what will make them happy"

inaccurate

Prosperity is the extraordinarily important goal that the US Dec of Indep. and the French Constitution of 1793 have in common

inaccurate

"Jeremy Bentham gained enduring fame through his pronouncement that the overriding aim of government should be to secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people"

accurate

"All in all, therefore, happiness seems to represent a most appropriate goal for government to pursue, just as Bentham maintained more than two centuries ago"

accurate

GNP is just as - or more- important than GNH

inaccurate

Schools, colleges, and the government should work much harder to increase happiness

accurate

Daniel Gilbert is a (or "the") leading professor of psychology at Harvard

accurate

There are more important things than feelings

inaccurate

"Feelings don't just matter - they are what mattering means"

accurate

"Moral philosophers tried for centuries to find some other way to define good and bad, none have ever convinced the rest (or me). We cannot say that something is good unless we can say what is is good FOR, and if we examine all the many objects and experiences that our species calls good and ask what they are good FOR, the answer is clear: by and large, they are good for making us feel happy"

accurate

Ability to be tested is the characteristic that makes something a potential object of scientific inquiry?

inaccurate (it's measured)

"It is relatively easy to measure an individuals's happiness and feel completely confident in the validity and reliability of that measurement"

inaccurate

"There will never be a happyometer - a perfectly reliable instrument that allows an observer to measure with complete accuracy the characteristics of another person's subjective experience so that the measurement can be taken, recorded, or compared with another"

accurate (never)

Gilbert's two main points are that happiness is not so important and that happiness can be accurately measure

inaccurate

According to Jack Lindquist, Walt Disney used "focus groups" to help determine what experiences and objects could be created by Walt to facilitate public happiness

inaccurate (he did NOT use focus groups)

What did Lindquist consider to be his most significant moment in his 38 years employed at Disney?

first Christmas encounter

According to Lindquist, "Disneyland was totally Walt's creation, dream, vision, and biggest gamble."

accurate

According to Shermer's Why Darwin Matters: Darwin's changing positions from species immutability to mutability was - in Darwin's written words - "like confessing a murder"

accurate

According to Shermer's Why Darwin Matters: Darwin departed the Galapagos an evolutionist

inaccurate

According to Shermer's Why Darwin Matters: "It doesn't take a rocket scientist - or an English naturalist - to understand why the theory of origin of species by natural selection would be controversial: If new species are created naturally, what place, then for God?

accurate

How many years did Darwin wait before publishing his most important theory?

20

From the time of Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece to the time of Darwin, nearly everyone believed that species remained fixed (i.e., one species could not change into another new species).

accurate

Although the scientific community is now united in agreement that evolution happened, a century and a half later the cultural world is still divided

accurate

"Truth in science is not determined by the vox populi. It does not matter whether 99 percent or just 1 percent of the public (or politicians) accept a scientific theory— the theory stands or falls on the evidence, and there are few theories in science that are more robust than the theory of evolution."

accurate

"In science, the solutions to problems are based on established parameters to determine whether a hypothesis is probably right or definitely wrong. Statistics allow researchers to identify an event as likely to happen 99.9% of the time or as insignificant."

accurate

"The preponderance of evidence from numerous converging lines of scientific inquiry— geology, paleontology, zoology, botany, comparative, anatomy, molecular biology, population genetics, biogeography, embryology, and others— all independently converged to the same conclusion: Evolution happened."

accurate

Darwin matters... because his theory changed the world and reconfigured our position in nature."

accurate

"Of the three intellectual giants of the epoch— Darwin, Marx, and Freud— only Darwin is still relevant for the simple reason that his theory was right."

accurate

Who wrote this: "Just because something is the way it should be and people feel comfortable, happy, and safe, why can't it be the real world? What's wrong with the idea that if the real world is so bad you have to go to a place that is built to enjoy it?"

Jack Lindquist

Basically, epistemology is about how you know what you know

accurate

Everyone in this class (including the professor) tells you that you have never been to this class because the course was cancelled; thus, there never was a class meting. The reason you know you have attended this class is due to your senses.

accurate

Two extreme views are that (1) science and religion battle to the death, with one victorious and the other defeated, and (2) that science and religion must represent the same quest and can therefore be fully and smoothly integrated into one grand synthesis.

accurate

Regarding the previous question, Gould contends _____ most specifically grands dignity and distinction to each subject. (Regarding the two previous questions, Gould contends ? grants dignity and distinction to each subject)

a Golden Mean

NOMA is non-overlapping magisteria

accurate

In NOMA Defined & Defended, Gould posits that religion is essentially about "ought" and science is about "is"

accurate

Concerning the two domains of science and religion NOMA holds, in part (1) equal worth and necessary status for any complete human life, and (2) that science and religion remain logically distinct and fully separate styles of inquiry

accurate

Whether good or bad, which phrase seems to carry more weight as a knowledge claim in our current western society:

"It's scientific fact that..."

How old were both Charles Darwin and Walt Disney when they took their traveling leaps into the unknown?

22

For Charles Darwin's funeral in Westminster Abby, the song composed was taken from "the Bible's" book of Proverbs: "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding"

accurate

It is possible, that the above Bible verse illustrates that even the Judeo-Christian God states that a benefit for acquiring wisdom and understanding is happiness.

accurate

Due to general-public deniers of biological evolution, Walt Disney gave up the idea of human evolution in his film __________.

Fantasia

Floyd Norman told us that the Walt Disney he knew, and worked with, was NOT a racist.

accurate

Floyd Norman and Micael Broggie told us that having failures early in careers are normal, and that Walt had big failures early in his career but that Walt never gave up

accurate

Walt told Michael Broggie how to achieve by having curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy.

accurate

Progressive juvenilization as an evolutionary phenomenon is called neoteny.

accurate

"Children, compared with adults, have larger heads and eyes, smaller jaws, a more prominent, bulging cranium, and smaller pudgier legs and feet. Adult heads are altogether more apish." Mickey, however, has traveled this ontogenetic pathway in reverse during his [90+] years among us"

accurate

Gould claims that "babyish features tend to elicit strong feelings of affection in adult humans, whether the biological basis be direct programming or the capacity to learn and fixed upon signals"

accurate

Gould submits "that Mickey Mouse's evolutionary road down the course of his own growth in reverse reflects the unconscious discovery of the biological principle by Disney and his artists. In fact, emotional status of most Disney characters rests on the same set of distinctions. To this extent, the magic kingdom trades on a biological illusion - our ability to abstract and our propensity to transfer inappropriately to other animals the fitting responses we make to changing form in the growth of our own bodies."

accurate

"Donald Duck also adopts more juvenile features through time. His elongated beak recedes and his eyes enlarge; he converges on Huey, Louie, and Dewey as surely as Mickey Mouse approaches Morty. But Donald, having inherited the mantle of Mickey's original misbehavior, remains more adult in form with his projecting beak and more sloping forehead."

accurate

"Mouse villains or sharpies, contrasted with Mickey, are always more adult in appearance, although they often share Mickey's chronological age"

accurate (more adult in appearance)

"And as the second, serious biological comment on Mickey's Odyssey in form, I [Gould] note that his path to eternal youth repeats, in epitome, our own evolutionary story. For humans are neotenic. We have evolved by retaining to adulthood the originally juvenile features of our ancestors. Our australopithecine forbearers, like Mickey in Steamboat Willie, have projecting jaws and low vaulted craniums"

accurate

The two major factors in Gould's argument are "babyish features" and "affection in adult humans"

accurate

It's a scientific fact that “It’s a Small World” attraction facilitates happiness in people.

inaccurate

As “X” increases so does happiness. What can you say:

X is correlated with happiness

With regard to the previous item, how would you design an experiment to show causation?

E. all of the previous

(A- randomly assign ~2,000 people into two groups;

B- have a control and treatment group;

C- create a treatment;

D- after the treatment X, determine if there is a statistically significant difference between a treatment and control groups)

Correlation….

all A, B, & C

(A-is not necessarily causation, B- allows prediction, C- is a relationship)

In Disneyland, as ice cream sales increase, so do short tempers. Thus,

B- there is a third factor, C- heat is the causal factor

The 2008 National Medal of Arts was awarded to the Sherman Brothers for creating music that "has helped bring joy to millions.” This is not a scientific statement.

accurate

According to Jeff Kurtti, why did the world cry when Walt Disney died?

Walt’s creations touched to hearts of the world’s people

How can evolution be simultaneously a “fact” and “theory”?

Theory because evolution is a scientific explanation that is accepted as factual in the scientific community

Biologists' confidence in the fact of evolution rests upon copious data that fall roughly into what great classes?

D: A, B, and C

a ~ direct small-scale changes in controlled laboratory experiments or observed in nature or produced during a few thousand years of human breeding and agriculture

b ~ Direct large-scale changes, based upon sequences in the fossil record

c ~ we have the signs of history preserved within every organism, every ecosystem, and every pattern of biogeographic distribution, by those pervasive quirks, oddities, and imperfections that record pathways of historical descent

Is direct vision the only, or even the usual, method of inference in science?

no

According to Gould, the common goal of science and religion is....

Wisdom

Stephen Jay Gould spent most of his distinguished career as a Professor at...

Harvard

The last Disneyland attraction that Walt Disney spent considerable time working on before he died was _____

Pirates of the Caribbean

Statements that are not logically accurate can be scientifically accurate

inaccurate

Dr. Scott would disagree with this statement: Ashley Montagu summarized science when he wrote "the scientist believes in proof without certainty, the bigot in certainty without proof"

inaccurate

Scientists don't usually talk about proving themselves right, because proof suggest certainty

accurate

According to Dr. Scott, "science is quintessentially an open-ended procedure in which ideas are constantly tested and rejected or modified"

accurate

According to Dr. Scott, "Dogma - an idea held by belief or faith - is anathema to science

accurate

Theories are the most important in order to how scientists would rank the following: laws, facts, theories, hypothesis

accurate

In science, facts are confirmed observations

accurate

The following is a confirmed fact in science: Living things are composed of cells

accurate

A theory can be scientific even if its phenomena are not directly observable

accurate

Evolution IS scientifically testable

accurate

Creationism is NOT scientifically testable

accurate

Creationism is scientifically testable

inaccurate

According to Dr. Scott, "science is an especially good way of knowing about the natural world. It involves testing explanations against the natural world, discarding the ones that don't work, and provisionally accepting the ones that do"?

accurate

According to Dr. Scott, theory building is the goal of science

accurate

The science of life- biology - lies ruined, prostituted, turned into a Creationist citadel by the clergy

accurate

Darwin was Cambridge University trained

accurate

Darwin was "an ambitious 30 year old who opened a secret notebook and, with a devil-may-care-sweet, suggested that headless hermaphroditic mollusks were the ancestors of mankind"

accurate

Darwin "embraced a terrifying materialism. Only months before he had concluded in his covert notebooks that the human mind, morality, and even belief in God were artifacts of the brain

accurate

Working through the implications gave Darwin migraines, left him writhing on his sick bed, gearing persecution. Wasn't it treachery? Didn't it threaten the last scientific safeguards of the old social order? Weren't these incendiary beliefs perfect weapons for the loutish hordes, already at teh gates He peered into the future. The 'whole fabric totters and falls' he prophesied of the unreformed creationist cosmos

accurate

Darwin sat on his theory of evolution for 2 years, scarcely mooting his innermost thoughts about monkey-men and apes evolving morality, castigating himself as a Devil's Chaplain

inaccurate (it's 20 years)

When Darwin did come out of his closet and bare his soul to a friend, he used a telling expression. He said it was like "confessing a murder"

accurate

Anglicans damned it as false, foul, French, atheistic, materialistic, and immoral. It was dangerous knowledge, and tempting. Darwin had known this for years, hence his ruminations were confined secret notebooks. He cut himself off, ducked parties and declined engagements

accurate

Darwin is arguably the best-known scientist in history. More than any modern thinker - even Freud or Marx.

accurate

Darwin has transformed the way we see ourselves on the planet

accurate

Can't students attain a well-rounded background in science without learning this controversial topic evolution? The overwhelming consensus of biologists in the scientific community is...

no

A simple answer to why should students learn about evolution is that evolution is the basic context of all the biological sciences

accurate

Put another way, evolution is the explanatory framework, the unifying theory. It is indispensable to the study of biology, just as atomic theory is indispensable to the study of chemistry

accurate

Biology can be understood full without an evolutionary context

inaccurate (it can’t)

Without an understanding of evolution, students cannot understand processes based on this science, such as insect resistance to pesticides and microbial resisstance to antibiotics. Students will not come to understand evolutionary connections to other sceintific fields, nor will they fully understand the world of which we are a part. Evolution is, in fact, one of the most important concepts in attaining scientific literacy

accurate

The study of evolutionary origins of music has a distinguished history, dating back to Darwin himself, who believed that it developed through natural selection as part of human or paleohuman mating rituals

accurate

Levitin agrees "that the scientific evidence supports this idea [#1 above] as well

accurate

"Once in a while, we find a behavior or attribute in an organism that lacks any clear evolutionary basis; this occurs when evolutionary forces propagate an adaptation for a particular reason, and something else comes along for the ride, what Stephen Jay Gould called a spandrel...Birds evolved feathers to keep warm, but they coopted the feathers for another purpose - flying. This is a spandrel"

accurate

Stephen Pinker argued that "language is an adaptation and music is its spandrel"

accurate

"two things lead to genes being successful 1. the organism is able to successfully mate, passing its genes on and 2. its offspring are able to survive in order to do the same"

accurate