Class on Cosmos: Possible Worlds, "Vavilov"
••••••
But first, For a "review" of last class, listen to the music of the elements:
••••••
Assignments for "Vavilov"
• Watch the episode; jot down your comments and notes about things that interest you or that you want to understand better. Try to have your questions in by Saturday, but late questions are better than none.
• Formulate your questions and comments and post them at the bottom of this or any page at Discuss "Cosmos: Possible Worlds".
• To think about: Compare the ways Vavilov and Lysenko would have explained how giraffes came to have such long necks.
• To think about: Compare the methods that Vavilov and Lysenko were using to try to come up with cold-resistant wheat.
• In what respects was Hitler more scientifically informed than Stalin about Vavilov's work?
Student Questions for Discussion
• What happened to all those seeds Vavilov had stored away? Or, is that a detail we'll get answered in the next episode?
See this article, from 10 years ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/sep/20/campaign-russia-pavlovsk-seed-bank
• Between Hitler and Stalin - Hitler had a higher/better opinion of Vavilov because he'd had more schooling than Stalin? Could he understand it better? Was Stalin afraid of things (like evolution) that he didn't understand or know about? Was he suspicious of anything 'new'?
• So the spider web poem is showing us (however obtusely) that each time Spider A makes his web its a bit different depending upon its location. Yet, it's enough like all the other spider webs Spider A has ever made to identify it as made by that kind of spider? And where does that knowledge come from?
Miscellaneous Resources
• Organisms, cells, molecules
Give a light reading to this introduction to my first OLLI course for nonscientists, "Biochemistry for Citizens" (2014). I hope it helps you to get your bearings at several different scales of life on Earth: organisms, cells, molecules.
• Can order arise from disorder? Happens all the time.
• Check out this challenging poem on the subject.
• How Scientists Know About Genes
You might have watched this earlier, but have a refresher of background for talking about genetics and evolution.
• How Scientists Know About Evolution
Some parts for a primer about evolution, how scientists think it works, and how they study it.
