Disney and Darwinism Final

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Why is this sentence so important?

It's why the country was founded

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What potential ramifications do Darwin's ideas in the 1800s have on this sentence?

Brings into question the Creator

The president of Harvard University, Derek Bok, reported in 2010 the research of ways happiness is facilitated in humans. They include social relationships, economics, health, acts of charity, community service, religion, quality of government, learning, pharmaceuticals, and inherited temperament.

Accurate

Another way happiness is facilitated among humans is through enjoying novel object and experience creations, such as art, music, story, architecture, and the like

Accurate

Who is one person who possibly facilitated more of this kind of happiness among humans than any person in world history?

Walt Disney

In Charle's Darwin's world-changing book, On the Origin of Species, he writes in his last paragraph, "There is grandeur in this life, with its several powers, have been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Accurate

How is the game of science played?

Novel/new idea - research - peer review/publication - consensus - science/taught in classrooms

In Dr. Gilbert's recent 300-page treatise analyzing the latest scientific research on cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, he reveals "there is no simple formula for finding happiness."

Accurate

Both Walt Disney and Charles Darwin were in their 20s when they both took a leap into the unknown--important long trips that changed their lives.

Accurate

Ten similarities and/or differences between Walt Disney and Charles Darwin are (1) one came from a financially wealthy family and another a financially poor family, (2) neither were outstanding school students, (3) both had stern fathers, (4) both touched by the military, (5) both went on important voyages long way from home in their 20s, (6) both were insatiably curious, (7) one cared about discovering nature while the other cared about fantasy and re-creating nature, (8) one cared about what is, and the other cared about what ought to be, (9) one liked learning what wasn't known, and the other liked doing what hadn't been done to make others happy, and (10) both have profoundly affected the planet

Accurate

Which of the following universities awarded Walt Disney an honorary degree: Harvard, Yale, USC, none of these, or all of these?

All of these

Walt Disney "has the originality characteristics of genius, creating the demand as well as supply. He achieved the impossible...and has charmed millions of people in every part of the earth. No other artist in history has ever drawn so many spectators at any one time...his work has the elements of great romantic art; the beautiful, the fantastic, the grotesque all combining in irresistible and ineffable charm." "Creator of a new language of art, who has brought the joy of deep laughter to millions and, by touching the heart of humanity without distinction of race, has served as ambassador of international goodwill." Where was this publicly read to a large, important, and influential audience?

Harvard/Yale

"A magician who has created a modern dwelling for the Muses [the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts, and considered the source of knowledge]." Where was this publicly read to a large, important, and influential audience?

Harvard/Yale

How is one epistemologically challenged at Disneyland and how could this possibly matter to "important" discussions of epistemology?

A theme park can mess with your senses and fool them. (epistemology=how you know what you know)

How do you know that you are not a brain in a vat?

You don't

Ironically, Charles Darwin's dedicated funeral anthem was taken from a verse in the Bible--"Happy is the man that find wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding" Proverbs 3:13

Accurate

What extremely famous film attempted to show what "is" (evolution) in science through art?

Fantasia

Explain the difference between correlation and causation

Correlation is not necessarily causation.

On Walt Disney's death, the New York Times reported the following: "in return for the happiness he supplied, the world lavished wealth and tributes upon him. He was probably the only man in Hollywood to have been praised by both the American Legion and the Soviet Union"

Accurate

On Walt Disney's Death, the New York Times reported the following: "By the end of his career, Walt Disney amassed over 700 awards and honors from many nations, including over 30 Oscars, four Emmys, and the United States Presidential Freedom Medal"

Accurate

Important British philosopher John Stuart Mill, who lived during Charles Darwin's time, wrote about ethics the following: "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness" (1863). Remember Jeremy Bentham?

Accurate

When did Charles Darwin publish On the Origin of Species?

1859

What's the perspective of happiness from the supernatural and the natural? (Hint of the supernatural perspectives from the Judeo-Christian Scriptures: God/Creator, Scriptures, "Happy" occurs 28 times in 25 verses in the King James Version, and it's considered a good thing. Hint of the natural perspective: nature, writings, Jefferson, Lucretius, and it's considered a good thing)

Being happy is a good thing

Rank the following terms from (least important to most important) in order to how scientists would rank them: laws, facts, theories, hypotheses

Facts - hypotheses - laws - theories

George Washington in his January 8, 1790 address to Congress stated that "There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness"

Accurate

Advances in science (e.g. medicine and agriculture) have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history

Accurate

Life expectancy has gone from: 20-30 years (hunter-gatherer, pre-agricultural times) - 40 years (1870) - 50 years (1915) - 60 years (1930) - 70 years (1955) - 78 years (2017). This expansion of life expectancy is due in large part to germ theory of disease, public health measures, medicines, and medical technology.

Accurate

Carl Sagan wrote in his book titled "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" that "Longevity is perhaps the best single measure of the physical quality of life. (If you're dead, there's little you can do to be happy). This is a precious offering from science to humanity--nothing less than the gift of life"

Accurate

Albert Einstein wrote that "All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike--and yet it is the most precious thing we have"

Accurate

Science considered--at least by Sagan--a candle in the dark because science knows very little about the natural world, and this is like a candle in a large dark room--lighting up just a little knowledge in a vast darkness of unknown

Accurate

According to evolutionary psychologist, Nancy Etcoff, "We didn't evolve for happiness, but rather for survival and reproduction"

Accurate

According to Daniel Gilbert, "We're not supposed to be happy all the time. We want that, but nature designed us to have emotions for a reason. Emotions are a primitive signaling system. They're how your brain tells if you're doing things that enhance--or diminish--your survival chances"

Accurate

Thus, Gilbert says that "If someone offers you a pill that makes you happy 100% of the time, run fast in the opposite direction. Happiness is a place to visit, not a place to live"

Accurate

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 Declaration of Independence 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 for the greatest number of people

Accurate

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

Accurate

GNP is just as--or more--important than GNH

Inaccurate

Colleges and the government should work much harder to increase happiness

Accurate

Daniel Gilbert is a 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 convinces the rest (of me). We cannot say that something is good unless we can say what it 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 is relatively easy to measure an individual'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, and compared with another

Accurate

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

Inaccurate

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

Accurate

Darwin departed the Galapagos an evolutionist

Inaccurate

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

Accurate

Approximately 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 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 is science is not determined by vox populi. It does not matter whether 99% or just 1% of the public (or politicians) accepts 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 99.99% 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 that epoch--Darwin, Marx, and Freud--only Darwin is still relevant for the simple reason that his theory was right

Accurate

Who wrote the following: "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

According to Jack Lindquist, Walt Disney didn't use "focus groups" to help determine what experiences and objects could be created by Walt to facilitate public happiness

Accurate

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

first Christmas encounter

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

Accurate

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 meeting. The reason you know you had attended this class is due to your senses

Accurate

One extreme view is that science and religion must battle to the death, with one victorious and the other defeated

Accurate

Another extreme view is that science and religion must represent the same quest an can therefore be fully and smoothly integrated into one grand synthesis

Accurate

Gould contends __________ most specifically grants dignity and distinction to each subject

A Golden Mean

In NOMA Defined and Defended, Gould posits that religion is essentially about "ought," and science 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 distant and fully separate in 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 a scientific fact that..."

NOMA is "non-overlapping magisteria"

Accurate

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

22

Is it possible, that Proverbs 3:3 helps illustrate that even the Judeo-Christian God states that a benefit for acquiring wisdom and understanding is happiness?

Accurate

Floyd Norman told us that the Walt Disney he knew and worked with was a racist.

Inaccurate

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

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 80+ 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 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 response we make 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 conveys 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 villans or sharpies, contrasted with Mickey, are always less adult in appearance, although they often share Mickey's chronological age.

Inaccurate

And as a 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

It's a scientific fact that the LA County Natural History Museum facilitates happiness in people

Inaccurate

As "X" increases so does happiness. What can you say?

X is correlated with happiness

How would you design an experiment to show causation?

Randomly assign ~2000 people into two groups, have a control and treatment group, create a treatment, after the treatment (X) determine if there is a statistically significant difference between a treatment and control groups

Correlation...

Is not necessarily causation, allows prediction, and is a relationship

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

There is a third factor or 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 a scientific statement

Inaccurate

How can evolution be simultaneously a "fact" and a "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?

Direct small-scale changes in controlled laboratory experiments or observed in nature or produced during a few thousand years; direct large-scale changes, based upon sequences in the fossil record; 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 usual, method of inference in science?

No

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

Wisdom

According to Michael Broggie, who was Walt Disney's most important sounding board?

Lillian (his wife)

When Walt Disney gave Michael Broggie that first ride in the locomotive before Disneyland opened, what were Walt's words of wisdom to young Broggie?

Have curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy.

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

Harvard

Statements that are not logically accurate can be scientifically accurate

Inaccurate

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

Accurate