Disney and Darwinism Final - Revised

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

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 - shermer

Approx. how many years did Darwin wait before publishing his most-important theory?

20 years

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

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 - shermer

"Truth in science is not determined by the vox populi. It does not matter whether 99% or just 1% of the public accepts aa 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 - shermer

"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 - shermer

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

accurate - shermer

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

accurate - shermer

"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 - shermer

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 Lindquist, 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 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

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 was never a class meeting. The reason you know you had attended this class is due to your senses

accurate

Two extreme views are that (1) science and religion must 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 - gould

Regarding the previous question (about two extreme views), Gould contends that _______ most specifically grants dignity and distinction to each subject.

a golden mean

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

inaccurate

opposite

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

accurate - gould

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..."

NOMA is "non-overlapping magisteria"

accurate

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

22

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

accurate

It is possible that the above verse (proverbs in Darwin’s funeral) helps illustrate 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 Disney he knew and worked with was a racist

inaccurate

Disney was not a racist

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

accurate

Walt told 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, bulging cranium and smaller pudgier legs and feet. Adult heads are altogether more apeish." Mickey however has traveled this ontogenetic pathway in reverse during his 80+ years among us."

accurate - gould

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'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 magical 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 his nephews surely as Mickey approaches Morty. But Donald, having inherited Mickey's original misbehavior, remains more adult in form with his projecting beak and more sloping forehead."

accurate - gould

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

inaccurate - gould

opposite

And as a second, serious biological comment on Mickey's Odyssey in form, Gould notes that his path to eternal youth repeats, in epitome, our own evolutionary story. For human are neotenic. We have evolved by retaining to adulthood the originally juvenile features of our ancestors. Our australopithecine forbearers, like Mickey in Steamboat Willie having 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 Its a Small World attraction facilitates happiness in people

inaccurate

not scientific fact

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

inaccurate

not scientific fact

As x increases so does happiness. What you can say:

X is correlated with happiness

*but not neccessarily caused by*

With regard to the previous item (x correlating with happiness), how would you design an experiment to show causation?

randomly assign ~2,000 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 group 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, 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

According to Neal Gabler, “Walt Disney did nothing for money," but rather “to be excellent.”

accurate

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

theory because evolution 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?

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

2. direct large-scale changes based upon sequences in the fossil record

3. 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 the 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

Steven 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

if not logically accurate, cannot be scientifically

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

“Scientists don't usually talk about proving themselves right, because proof suggests certainty.”

accurate - scott

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 least important in order to how scientists would rank the following: laws, facts, theories, hypotheses.

inaccurate

facts → hypotheses → laws → theories

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 not scientifically testable

inaccurate

is scientifically testable

Creationism is not scientifically testable

accurate

According to Dr. Scott, "science is an especially goof 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

According to a 2017 Gallup poll discussed in class, what approx percentage of Americans view the origin and development of human beings as being non-God-guided human evolution?

50%

intelligent design is a type of creationism.

accurate

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

accurate - moore

Darwin was Cambridge University trained

accurate

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

accurate - moore

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 - moore

“Working through the implications gave him migraines, left him writhing on his sickbed, fearing 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 the gates?”

accurate - moore

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

close to 22

“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 - moore

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

accurate - moore

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

accurate - moore

“Darwin has transformed the way we see ourselves on the planet”

accurate - moore

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

no

“A simple answer is that evolution is the basic context of all biological science.”

accurate - alters

“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 - alters

“Biology can't be fully understood without an evolutionary context.”

accurate - alters

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

accurate - alters

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 a part of human or paleohuman mating rituals.

accurate - levitin

Levitin agrees that the scientific evidence supports this idea as well.

accurate

“Once in awhile, 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 Gould called a spandrel...Birds evolved feathers to keep warm, but the coopted the feathers for another purpose . - flying. this is a spandrel."

accurate - levitin

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

Darwin believed that music preceded speech as a means of courtship

accurate

Genetic mutations that enhance one's likelihood to live long enough to reproduce become adaptations.

accurate

“Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech communication and for the very cognitive, representational flexibility necessary to become humans.”

accurate - levitin

“the multiple reinforcing cues of a good song - rhythm, melody, contour - cause music to stick in our heads. That is the reason that many ancient myths, epics, and even the Old Testament were set to music in preparation for being passed down by oral tradition”

accurate - levitin

As a tool for activation of specific thoughts, music is not as good as language

accurate

As a tool for arousing feelings and emotions, music is not better than language

inaccurate

music is better

The combination of the two - as best exemplified in a love song - is the best courtship of all

accurate

Jerome Kern (considered one of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works) wrote “Walt Disney has made the twentieth century’s only important contribution to music. Disney has made use of music as language.”

accurate

Walt wrote “I cannot think of the pictorial story without thinking about the complementary music which will fulfill it.”

accurate

Walt has formal music training

inaccurate

"Since Aristotle, happiness has been thought of as consisting of two aspects: hedonia (pleasure) and eudaimonia (a life well-lived)"

accurate - kringelbach and berridge

Hedonia is basically the conscious experience of positive feelings or emotions

accurate

hedonic and eudaimonic aspects empirically cohere together in happy people

accurate