I’ve got a request for the Loom’s hive mind. I’ve been asked to contribute a book chapter to a guide to evolutionary biology. The subject of my assignment is evolution and the media. I’ve already covered some of this territory in a 2010 review I wrote for the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach (pdf), but I’d like to flesh it out a bit. I’m familiar with the past thirty years of the subject from my own experience, and I’m familiar with Darwin’s reception in his own lifetime, thanks to all the scholarship that’s been produced about that period. But the century or so in between is a lot sketchier for me. The Scopes Monkey trial comes to mind, of course, but not a lot else. My search of the history-of-science literature has yielded little, probably because I’m not using the right search terms. If anybody has any pointers, I’d be most grateful (and will, of course, thank you in the acknowledgments). Thanks!
Originally published May 8, 2011. Copyright 2011 Carl Zimmer.