Darwin's Dangerous Idea Reflection

In the movie Darwin’s Dangerous idea, It explains Darwin’s theory along with showing Darwin’s life and how it affected the way he thought about evolution. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, evolution is a theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations (Merriam-Webster Dictionary ). This is just one of the definitions.  The movie showed how his findings from South America really made him start thinking about the concept of evolution.  He found that all the birds brought back from his trip were from the same ancestor, the common ground finch, but all the birds had different characteristics that made them unique. He noticed that the beak sizes where different on all the birds that were found.  We can see this in today.  We see that species change or evolve over a certain time period.  These changes can be caused by many different factors ranging from the habit including the food source and environmental conditions and natural disasters such as drought and hurricanes.  The PBS website demonstrates how these various factors can play a role in evolution along with explaining Darwin’s dangerous idea of evolution. Another interesting point that was made in the movie is the Tree of Life.  This is that all living things on earth are related and are descendants of each other with modification. Even with all of the evidence that we have today, it is a really hard concept for people to accept.  People cannot see how humans could have ever evolved from say a single celled organism.  Another interesting thing within the movie was the religious conflict that Darwin faced with coming out with his theory.  We still have conflicts with religion and the concept of evolution.  I believe that the movie did a very good job at explaining Darwin’s idea and the different view about evolution.  It also showed where evolution stands in today’s society from a scientific stand point and from a religious stand point as well. 

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evolution

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/index.html