A Visit To The Senckenberg Museum And Evolution

My Top 3

Been to the famous Senckenberg Museum on Sunday and though neither my wife nor my five-year-old daughter had quite enough patience to do it full justice it was very impressive. And even outside the special guided tours for children it was much more suitable for a girl of five than I had feared.

I also learned that the Senckenberg Institute behind the Natural History Museum is not only leading research in its areas but also cares about the reception of science in society at large. Among other things it is involved in the Morphisto initiative. That in turn offers a broad range of publications and services with the ones most fit to be named here being the ones revolving around creationism and intelligent design. Morphisto offers seminars for the education of teachers about strategies of ID and how to deal with them in class. More generally, it offers reading material on the theory of science and epistemology, because it sees the lack of those subjects being taught to young scientiest at university as one cause of their inability to defend science against pseudo-scientific criticism. (Funny to think that I may have done more epistemology as a litererary critic than some scientists, because literary critics have always been accused of being a pseudo-science.) Most of that meterial is in German, like this enlightening interview but there is also reading material in English, as for example issue #3 of the “Querschnitte” magazine.