The Getty in Los Angeles has a pretty cool exhibit - on a topic I'm happy to tell you I'm fairly intimate with: Maria Sibylla Merian, a 17th-century engraver who applied her artistic talents to science, drawing and observing insects in the jungles of Surinam, and one of the first to apply the scientific method to the process of metamorphosis.
Merian truly spawned across many disciplines: art, science, printing and literature, even adventure.
It's with disappointment then, that I heard that the exhibit would be reviewed by the Los Angeles Times...in its "Home" section.
Kinda' reminds me of the opening of Virgina Woolf's "A Room of One's Own," in which she's contemplating a topic she's been assigned - "women and fiction" - on the campus of Oxford University. Only she's chased by a beadle from the park where she sat musing by the river, and denied entrance to the university library to do research...because she's a woman.
That's the thing with sexism today, isn't it? It isn't heavy-handed, but still puts up a velvet rope to steer women away from serious topics. Get out of line, and the beadle shouts at you.
Speaking of Woolf, I've written out a couple of interesting quotes from the same book below the fold...
I am not really sure what to make of this new museum that integrates Genesis with modern science. I am a believer that some forms of Creationism need not be in conflict with the theory of evolution. However, the proprietor of this museum is seeking to "undo the damage" inflicted by Clarence Darrow at the Scopes Monkey trial, and that sounds a little off to me. Moreover, he seems to think that this museum will answer the questions that William Jennings Bryan was "not prepared for." Bryan was many things, but unprepared is not one of them. He was an incredibly smart, devout man who was outfoxed by a legal genius.
Regardless, I don't think that the monkey trial caused the damage to religion that it is chalked up to have caused. In reality, the intellectual greed of some religionists caused a natural reaction from scientists. This is like a regular old turf war. You don't have to abandon some intellectual pluralism in order to be faithful. Faith, not creation, is the province of religion. Put another way, God (raised Catholic...but I think the same holds true for most other Dieties) could probably not care less that Creationism is not taught in public schools. I think that he would care that people have decided faith isn't good enough any more.
Update -- In related news, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) has an op-ed in the NYT. trying to explain his view on evolution. He feels that raising his hand against evolution in the presidential primary debate was not explanation enough of the issue. I think he is right about that, and, while I disagree with a lot of his views, they are certainly worth a read.
