Darwin's Theory Of Evolution

Hello everyone! And welcome back to EnglishPod! We have anadvanced lesson for you today. My name is Marco.

And my name is Catherine and I’m very excited about this lesson, Marco.

It’s very interesting, it’s about a very, uh, controversial topic and a very popular person in history – Charles Darwin.

That’s right, so he’s most famous, perhaps, for his book The Origin of the Species. And we’re gonna be talking a lot about science today, so put your thinking caps on.

Alright, so, uh, without further ado, why don’t we listen to this dialogue for the first time?

Alright, interesting. They have very different views on, uh… on Charles Darwin, right?

They do, and they’re both pretty nerdy people. This is a verynerdy university… like conversation that’s happening between classes.

Yeah. Yeah, I think maybe they’re like PhD candidates or something.

Perhaps.

Hehe.

Alright, so before we get to talking about some of the ideas in today’s dialogue, let’s talk about some of the words and phrases that we hear to understand better what’s going on – the first part we’re gonna talk about in today’s “language takeaway”. Voice: Language takeaway.

Alright, on language takeaway today let’s take a look at the first word and, well, one of the things that many people say is that Darwinrevolutionized the fields of biology.

And so, he revolutionized these, because he pushed them forward, he made many changes…

Uhu.

He forced changes. So people had to change the way that they thought about these things.

If you revolutionize something, a topic or an idea, you are creating new knowledge, almost, right?

Exactly, you can think of the word revolution, which is a thing, so you can think of The Russian Revolution or The American Revolution, these are times of change.

Uhu.

So to revolutionize is to bring about change.

Very good. Alright, so moving forward, they were talking abouthuman evolution, human evolution. What is that exactly?

Good question, so, uh, you’re not a monkey, I’m not a monkey, but we come from monkeys, right?

So we evolved.

Right, so the process is called human evolution that means the process by which humans changed forms to become what we are today.

Okay, so you evolve. Now, is it… evolution, you usually think as something positive, right? Something evolves into something better. Is it always that way?

Um, no, we have another word for the negative, right?

Uhu.

So the positive is to evolve, to be… become better.

Uhu.

Um, to get worse is to devolve.

Okay, to devolve.

Yeah, to devolve – to go back and to kind of lose things that you had.

Okay, interesting. And then they were also talking about Darwin’s theory of natural selection, natural selection.

Okay, this is maybe one of the things that Darwin was most famous for and that’s why we’ve included it in this, um, language takeaway, because it’s… it’s a key phrase, it’s something you hear people talk about a lot.

Uhu.

Okay, so natural selection is a process, again, and it’s, uh, the process by which, um, stronger animals survive over time…

Uhu.

And weaker animals don’t. So, um, it… there’s a weak species, it can’t really survive, because it keeps dying and dying and finally there’s no more and so, this is called natural selection, because no one’s actually choosing what animals will survive, but it’s kind of a natural process.

Right, Mother Nature is choosing it.

Right.

Very good, so natural selection. This is one of… this is one of the things that Darwin is most famous for. And, well, as Catherine mentioned, uh, Darwin wrote the book Origin of the Species.

Alright, so, uh, origin means beginning. So the origin of mankind, right?

Uhu.

So there’re many different kinds of animals. You can even say there’re many different kinds of, um, like mammals.

Uhu.

But there’re many different species within that, so, um, human beings, black bears, um…

Uhu, uhu.

Koalas, chimpanzees – these are all species.

Uhu

And so, a species is a classification, so the origin of the species is kind of a way of telling the story of how all these things came about.

Alright, the origin of the species. And the last one, this word is kind of strange, he talked about the conundrum of the chicken and the egg.

Okay, conundrum, it… I love this word, it’s very funny sounding.

Yeah, it is.

Conundrum.

Conundrum.

Um, it means like a problem or a riddle or something that’s hard to understand.

Alright, so, in this case it’s the conundrum of the chicken and the egg, right? Which came first? Uh, how else can you use conundrum?

Um, you could say that maybe there’s a situation that’s very strange and hard to understand: this is quite a… quiet a conundrum!

This is quite a conundrum we have.

Yeah, so…

It sounds very fancy, very well educated.

It does.

Alright, so, interesting words on language takeaway. Why don’t we move on now to four phrases on “fluency builder”? Voice: Fluency builder.

Alright, on fluency builder today we have four phrases as we said, so what’s the first one?

The first one is great. It’s, uh… it’s very visual, you say: I’m up to my neck in work. Or I’m up to my neck in papers to write.

Uhu, uhu.

Alright, so this means I have so much stuff to do that you couldpile it up and it would come up to my neck.

Uhu. So I have as many papers that are almost as tall as I am.

Exactly, and so, I could say: I’m up to my neck in work, I have no more time to do anything.

Sometimes people also say: I’m up to here; and then they’ll also like… they’ll… they’ll…

They’ll point.

They’ll point at their forehead or somewhere around their head: I’m up to… I’m up to here with your nonsense.

Exactly, so…

Right?

This is a way of saying that I’m really busy, uhu.

I’m really busy. I’m really tired of it. Alright, and, uh, our next phase is one that most mothers use: I’m sick and tired.

Ugh, I’m sick and tired of all of your whining! Go do the dishes and don’t complain!

Right, so it’s always… it always goes together – you are sick andtired.

Right, and sick comes first, so I’m sick and tired of this. I’m sick and tired of your bad attitude.

Mm, okay, so and that means that you are…

I’m just tired of it. I don’t want you to have a bad attitude anymore. I’m just… yeah, I’ve done.

I’m really annoyed by it.

I’m annoyed, uhu.

Okay, sick and tired. And then we saw a phrase that was a little bit separated. He said, the sentence went like this: his work turned thousands of years of ideas about creation on their head. So to turn something on its head.

Like you said, Marco, it’s… it’s slitting to two parts.

Uhu.

So, um, he turned the field of computer science on its head.

Uhu.

So to turn on its head means to completely reverse something, to turn it around.

Alright.

You think a hundred and eighty degrees.

Okay.

And so, if biology used to be one way, then, um, Darwin made it completely different.

So we can say that Isaac Newton completely turned physics on its head with his theory or his findings on gravity.

And then years and years later we had Albert Einstein who turned those theories, uh… who turned that theory on its head with his own ideas about physics.

Very good, so to com… to turn something on its head – to completely change the course of… or prove something to be maybe wrong.

Uhu.

And the last phrase that we have is the… the person argued that Darwin’s theories were full of holes.

Okay, so to say a theory is full of holes is a little bit different than saying that his pants are fool of holes. Because when you say something is full of holes, maybe they actually have holes…

Uhu.

But a theory is… it’s an idea, so it can’t have holes. What you’re saying is that it’s not completely sound, it’s not without some problems, and so…

Okay.

Maybe you’re saying that, um, well the cookies were gone out of the kitchen, Marco, and I saw you in the kitchen, so, clearly, you ate the cookies.

Right, so I can say that’s full of holes, because it was me and it was three other people who were in the kitchen, so…

Uh.

You can’t blame me.

It could’ve ??? two… the other two people.

Right. So if something is full of holes is that it has maybe mistakes or it’s still missing complete evidence to prove it right.

Or it has bad logic.

Bad logic, alright. Interesting, so, um, we’ve taken a look at a lot of words and different phrases here. Let’s listen to this argument one last time.

Alright, we’re back. So, uh, interesting these Darwin’s theories and his explanations for the origin of… of species and life as we know it. Um, but there’s the opposite to this, right? There’s a… a certain thing called creationism.

There is, and this is a big source of controversy, especially in the United States, because, um, in some places people want to teach creationism as well as evolution in schools, and so…

Uhu.

This is the big question: are they still equal as theories or is one theory more proven than the other?

Right, and it… it is kind hard to determine which one is better, because one is f… based on faith, the other one is based more on scientific evidence, right? So they’re not really even in the same… on the same scale. As we learned before that’s kind of like apples and oranges, right?

It is, and there’re some people who would say that we have lots of ways of, um… of quote-unquote “proving” what happened in the past, but as long as we weren’t there we never really do know.

Right.

And there’s always… changes in science, so how can we be sure that what we know now isn’t false?

Exactly.

Isn’t misunderstandings?

Right, I think for now it… this is the best explanation, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the… it’s the correct one. Maybe in a hundred years from now we’ll have another explanation that’s much better or maybe complementary to this one.

Uhu.

Well, we wanna know what you guys think. Uh, come to our website englishpod.com, where we really wanna hear your opinions what you think about this topic. It is a little bit controversial, so we really look forward to your comments and any other questions you may have.

Yup, and just a reference: creationism is the idea that God created the world or a h… a superior being created the world, and that everything came from that, and so, let us know what you think, I am very curious too. And, uh, that’s about it for today.

Alright.

So, until next time…

We’ll see you guys there…

Bye-bye!

Bye! ***