Surprises

I’ve not posted much lately because I’m working at a new job and on graduate school applications. Don’t worry they’re all to schools in the UK so it’s not too late. Aiming to having them all in my the end of the month so fingers crossed for me please.

Anyway with the applications I’m been working on a new writing sample, with the topic been reading a lot of bioarchaeological and evolutionary anthropology books and papers. I’ve read one from the 60′s, a couple theory books and a few on recent topics. The other night I started a book on human evolution which was written by a German professor in 1923. I had glanced through when I got the book and it seemed to be the standard archaic early anthropological writing full of ideas which now seem absolutely ridiculous and many racial slurrings which were thought to be ‘scientific observations’. Now don’t get me wrong those things are in there but there was also something that really surprised me. In the introduction there were a few quotes from earlier papers of his. I’ll share two of the quotes with you guys.

“The knowledge that man has a common natural origin with the rest of the living world can do no more harm to religion than the rotation of the earth. When this fact is so generally known that even a child at school will not be excused for not knowing it, the consciousness that our race has been evolved, under the rule of law, from a lower condition will prove a valuable possession…A religion that fears the truth must be in a bad way.”

and secondly

“If God is the substance of truth, all investigation of the truth is a service of God. We men of science would be guilty of sin if we did not share the results of our work with our fellow men.”

Amazing that something written before 1916 can still be a progressive idea in this country.

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