What do you think?
Rate this book
Do Elephants Have Knees? And Other Darwinian Stories of Origins
Thinking whimsically makes serious science accessible. That's a message that should be taken to heart by all readers who want to learn about evolution. Do Elephants Have Knees? invites readers into serious appreciation of Darwinian histories by deploying the playful thinking found in children's books. Charles R. Ault Jr. weds children s literature to recent research in paleontology and evolutionary biology. Inquiring into the origin of origins stories, Ault presents three portraits of Charles Darwin curious child, twentysomething adventurer, and elderly worm scientist. Essays focusing on the origins of tetrapods, elephants, whales, and birds explain fundamental Darwinian concepts (natural selection, for example) with examples of fossil history and comparative anatomy.
The imagery of the children s story offers a way to remember and recreate scientific discoveries. By juxtaposing Darwin s science with tales for children, Do Elephants Have Knees? underscores the importance of whimsical storytelling to the accomplishment of serious thinking. Charles Darwin mused about duck beaks and swimming bears as he imagined a pathway for the origin of baleen. A "bearduck" chimera may be a stretch, but the science linking not just cows but also whales to moose through shared ancestry has great merit. Teaching about shared ancestry may begin with attention to Bernard Wiseman s Morris the Moose. Morris believes that cows and deer are fine examples of moose because they all have four legs and things on their heads. No whale antlers are known, but fossils of four-legged whales are. By calling attention to surprising and serendipitous echoes between children s stories and challenging science, Ault demonstrates how playful thinking opens the doors to an understanding of evolutionary thought."
The imagery of the children s story offers a way to remember and recreate scientific discoveries. By juxtaposing Darwin s science with tales for children, Do Elephants Have Knees? underscores the importance of whimsical storytelling to the accomplishment of serious thinking. Charles Darwin mused about duck beaks and swimming bears as he imagined a pathway for the origin of baleen. A "bearduck" chimera may be a stretch, but the science linking not just cows but also whales to moose through shared ancestry has great merit. Teaching about shared ancestry may begin with attention to Bernard Wiseman s Morris the Moose. Morris believes that cows and deer are fine examples of moose because they all have four legs and things on their heads. No whale antlers are known, but fossils of four-legged whales are. By calling attention to surprising and serendipitous echoes between children s stories and challenging science, Ault demonstrates how playful thinking opens the doors to an understanding of evolutionary thought."
- GenresScienceNonfiction
240 pages, Hardcover
Published August 15, 2016
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 12, 2024
Charles R. Ault, Jr. seems to be an amiable kind of fellow. He is not by profession a biologist, really; he's a Professor (Emeritus) at the Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling. Thus, while he is obviously well educated in matters related to evolution, that's not really his specialty, per se. His specialty is in how to educate people about topics such as evolution.
His technique in this book is to try to tie each topic (for example, the origin of new traits from existing ones, or how scientists deduce family relationships between species) to some non-technical short story or fairy tale, from the likes of Rudyard Kipling. This is not something that I need in order to have an interest in such topics, but it did add a whimsical flavor to what otherwise might have been, for some, too serious a theme. I suppose it might have helped keep my interest a bit, and in any case I am thoroughly convinced that if touches like that were routinely added to textbooks, the students who are supposed to be reading them would be better off for it.
He's not breaking any new ground, here, nor is he attempting to; if you have read other books on evolution then you already know a fair bit of what is covered. However, there is a bit more effort spent on topics like how do we know that hippos and whales are relatively speaking close relations, even compared to other mammals? Nowadays we might just assume, "DNA", but that doesn't really answer the question, and in any case there are a lot of other kinds of evidence that gave the biologists who looked at such questions the right answers, as later confirmed by DNA, so it's worth looking at in a little more depth. The results of science are often given a lot more coverage than the methods of real-world science, and the latter is actually a lot more worth taking time to study.
Not paradigm-shifting or revolutionary, but yet more evidence, if more were needed, that the dry and tedious nature of our school textbooks is not because they have to be that way; it is entirely possible to have easily readable books about topics like evolution. Now if we can just find a way to get our society's schools to use them.
His technique in this book is to try to tie each topic (for example, the origin of new traits from existing ones, or how scientists deduce family relationships between species) to some non-technical short story or fairy tale, from the likes of Rudyard Kipling. This is not something that I need in order to have an interest in such topics, but it did add a whimsical flavor to what otherwise might have been, for some, too serious a theme. I suppose it might have helped keep my interest a bit, and in any case I am thoroughly convinced that if touches like that were routinely added to textbooks, the students who are supposed to be reading them would be better off for it.
He's not breaking any new ground, here, nor is he attempting to; if you have read other books on evolution then you already know a fair bit of what is covered. However, there is a bit more effort spent on topics like how do we know that hippos and whales are relatively speaking close relations, even compared to other mammals? Nowadays we might just assume, "DNA", but that doesn't really answer the question, and in any case there are a lot of other kinds of evidence that gave the biologists who looked at such questions the right answers, as later confirmed by DNA, so it's worth looking at in a little more depth. The results of science are often given a lot more coverage than the methods of real-world science, and the latter is actually a lot more worth taking time to study.
Not paradigm-shifting or revolutionary, but yet more evidence, if more were needed, that the dry and tedious nature of our school textbooks is not because they have to be that way; it is entirely possible to have easily readable books about topics like evolution. Now if we can just find a way to get our society's schools to use them.
March 12, 2017
3 stars from Bill, read the full review at FANTASY LITERATURE
Disclaimer: just so you know, some of the books we review are received free from publishers
In Do Elephants Have Knees and Other Stories of Darwinian Origins (2016), Charles R. Ault, Jr. takes a unique path to explaining the complexities of evolution, using children’s books such as Morris the Moose, Treasure Island, Diary of a Worm and others as springboards to discussing Charles Darwin’s path to discovery, from his time as an insatiably curious child to his adventure-filled twenties to the twilight years he spent focused on the lowly (though not to him) earthworm.
The focus is, as the title notes, on origins, and so we learn about the early ancestors and evolutionary route to those elephants (yes, by the way, they do have knees), whales, tetrapods, and probably most familiarly to readers, birds, who of course entered our world via the dinosaur evolutionary tree as just about any four-year-old now knows.
Ault’s book is filled with up to date information and discoveries, but perhaps my favorite aspect of Do Elephants Have Knees though is the way he presents us with a young Charles Darwin filled with life and a spirit of adventure, rather than the plum, bewhiskered elder of science we usually think of him as....3 stars from Bill, read the full review at FANTASY LITERATURE
Disclaimer: just so you know, some of the books we review are received free from publishers
In Do Elephants Have Knees and Other Stories of Darwinian Origins (2016), Charles R. Ault, Jr. takes a unique path to explaining the complexities of evolution, using children’s books such as Morris the Moose, Treasure Island, Diary of a Worm and others as springboards to discussing Charles Darwin’s path to discovery, from his time as an insatiably curious child to his adventure-filled twenties to the twilight years he spent focused on the lowly (though not to him) earthworm.
The focus is, as the title notes, on origins, and so we learn about the early ancestors and evolutionary route to those elephants (yes, by the way, they do have knees), whales, tetrapods, and probably most familiarly to readers, birds, who of course entered our world via the dinosaur evolutionary tree as just about any four-year-old now knows.
Ault’s book is filled with up to date information and discoveries, but perhaps my favorite aspect of Do Elephants Have Knees though is the way he presents us with a young Charles Darwin filled with life and a spirit of adventure, rather than the plum, bewhiskered elder of science we usually think of him as....3 stars from Bill, read the full review at FANTASY LITERATURE
July 21, 2023
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: One third concise, accessible potted biography of Charles Darwin, two-thirds essays offering new, if odd, pathways to contextualizing Darwin's famous Theory of Evolution by means of natural selection. It's enjoyably presented, contains enough illustrative figures to give the reader a sense of what they're reading about, and makes its science plain.
I really don't get the inclusion of quotes from kidlit. It's not always apt, at least it wasn't so to me, but it really didn't ever detract from my reading of Dr. Ault's stories. If you, like I did, think this book is aimed at younger audiences, get that misconception out of your head now. Maybe a high-school senior at the youngest, more likely a not-very-science-oriented twentysomething is at the sweet spot. The older reader whose science education is behind the curve will get a lot out of the read because it's packed with reasonably current science. Really good analogies and examples bring meaning to often abstract concepts. The vocabulary pulls no punches, so have your preferred reference source handy. There are endnotes aplenty, and the index actually functioned as an index...it was, after all, published by a university press. All of this, on top of the popular-science tone of the author's presentation, gave me a very enjoyable reading experience.
My Review: One third concise, accessible potted biography of Charles Darwin, two-thirds essays offering new, if odd, pathways to contextualizing Darwin's famous Theory of Evolution by means of natural selection. It's enjoyably presented, contains enough illustrative figures to give the reader a sense of what they're reading about, and makes its science plain.
I really don't get the inclusion of quotes from kidlit. It's not always apt, at least it wasn't so to me, but it really didn't ever detract from my reading of Dr. Ault's stories. If you, like I did, think this book is aimed at younger audiences, get that misconception out of your head now. Maybe a high-school senior at the youngest, more likely a not-very-science-oriented twentysomething is at the sweet spot. The older reader whose science education is behind the curve will get a lot out of the read because it's packed with reasonably current science. Really good analogies and examples bring meaning to often abstract concepts. The vocabulary pulls no punches, so have your preferred reference source handy. There are endnotes aplenty, and the index actually functioned as an index...it was, after all, published by a university press. All of this, on top of the popular-science tone of the author's presentation, gave me a very enjoyable reading experience.
June 20, 2017
Disappointing & repetitive
March 19, 2018
I really, really wanted to like it but it's just not very well executed. I couldn't follow its premises and arguments and I'd argue that it's not my fault as I read a lot of similar literature.
November 25, 2018
Great book. Novel intermingling of fiction as lead in to fiction.
September 26, 2016
DO ELEPHANTS HAVE KNEES? And other Darwinian Stories of Origins
BY CHARLES R. AULT Jr.
3 ½ STARS
DARWINISM FOR DUMMIES
We all know something about Charles Darwin and his famous voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle, and we may know a bit more about his Theory of Evolution. It’s difficult not to be aware of evolution nowadays in view of the many interesting fossils turning up in different places worldwide. We also know about the on-going conflict between creationists and evolutionists, and ne’er the twain shall meet.
The early chapters are devoted to the young Darwin. Like Rudyard Kipling’s Elephant’s Child, Charles Darwin, and his father before him, were born with a “’satiable curtiosity” about everything that lived, walked, crawled, wriggled or flew. He was the first naturalist to circumnavigate the globe, and knew enough basic geology to be able to look at the present and interpret the distant geologic past.
His epic voyage on the Beagle, from 1831 to 1836, is legend. I am in awe of the fortitude of the seamen of those days and of the hardships they encountered both at sea and on shore. There are many quotes from his account of this voyage, and his horrifying descriptions of the rough seas and rogue waves in the Drake Passage threatened on several occasions to swamp the tiny ship (the Beagle was only 27.5m long). Not all of the time was spent at sea, of course, and during the many times when the Beagle was ashore for repairs or re-victualling Darwin carried out numerous exploratory trips on land, collecting all manner of specimens, rocks, old bones etc. and storing them on board for the eventual journey home. Paleontology was an unknown science in those days so all he could do was to hazard an educated guess as to the origins of his finds. In many cases, of course, he was completely off track, but he can be forgiven for that.
The author then tackles the convoluted and tangled web that is evolution in an entertaining and accessible way, using as a basis the simple, yet penetrating, questions so often asked by children and quoting passages of childrens’ literature to segue seamlessly into the somewhat more difficult theories that are put forward in the rest of the book. He quotes from Rudyard Kipling, Leo Lionni, Bill Peet’s Chester the Pig and Bill Wiseman’s Morris the Moose (in this chapter we learn that cows, moose and buck are related to whales!) – among many others.
Once or twice I was tempted to leave out the more detailed sections (too many long and erudite words!) but there are so many fascinating gems of information that I didn’t dare skip a page. His prose has a light touch, providing some relief from the complications of the subject. The humorous illustrations by Jan Glenn are a delight, as is the occasional use of interesting but rather clunky words I can only assume are the author’s own invention, for example trunk-getting and embiggening.
There are many quotations, from Darwin’s writings as well as from a variety of experts, and it would have made it easier to read if the author had used quotation marks. However this might just be the particular Kindle edition that I read.
I enjoyed this book, and the author is to be congratulated on making an incredibly complicated subject somewhat easier for the layman to understand. And do elephants have knees? Read the book to find out!
OoOoO
The catchy title is a real attention-grabber, and the author’s deft turn of phrase makes a complicated subject much more accessible to people like me. While I had to concentrate hard to keep up, it’s a fascinating subject and I didn’t want to put it down until the very end.
Do elephants indeed have knees? Read the book to find out!
PSEUDONYM
Add: Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.
BY CHARLES R. AULT Jr.
3 ½ STARS
DARWINISM FOR DUMMIES
We all know something about Charles Darwin and his famous voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle, and we may know a bit more about his Theory of Evolution. It’s difficult not to be aware of evolution nowadays in view of the many interesting fossils turning up in different places worldwide. We also know about the on-going conflict between creationists and evolutionists, and ne’er the twain shall meet.
The early chapters are devoted to the young Darwin. Like Rudyard Kipling’s Elephant’s Child, Charles Darwin, and his father before him, were born with a “’satiable curtiosity” about everything that lived, walked, crawled, wriggled or flew. He was the first naturalist to circumnavigate the globe, and knew enough basic geology to be able to look at the present and interpret the distant geologic past.
His epic voyage on the Beagle, from 1831 to 1836, is legend. I am in awe of the fortitude of the seamen of those days and of the hardships they encountered both at sea and on shore. There are many quotes from his account of this voyage, and his horrifying descriptions of the rough seas and rogue waves in the Drake Passage threatened on several occasions to swamp the tiny ship (the Beagle was only 27.5m long). Not all of the time was spent at sea, of course, and during the many times when the Beagle was ashore for repairs or re-victualling Darwin carried out numerous exploratory trips on land, collecting all manner of specimens, rocks, old bones etc. and storing them on board for the eventual journey home. Paleontology was an unknown science in those days so all he could do was to hazard an educated guess as to the origins of his finds. In many cases, of course, he was completely off track, but he can be forgiven for that.
The author then tackles the convoluted and tangled web that is evolution in an entertaining and accessible way, using as a basis the simple, yet penetrating, questions so often asked by children and quoting passages of childrens’ literature to segue seamlessly into the somewhat more difficult theories that are put forward in the rest of the book. He quotes from Rudyard Kipling, Leo Lionni, Bill Peet’s Chester the Pig and Bill Wiseman’s Morris the Moose (in this chapter we learn that cows, moose and buck are related to whales!) – among many others.
Once or twice I was tempted to leave out the more detailed sections (too many long and erudite words!) but there are so many fascinating gems of information that I didn’t dare skip a page. His prose has a light touch, providing some relief from the complications of the subject. The humorous illustrations by Jan Glenn are a delight, as is the occasional use of interesting but rather clunky words I can only assume are the author’s own invention, for example trunk-getting and embiggening.
There are many quotations, from Darwin’s writings as well as from a variety of experts, and it would have made it easier to read if the author had used quotation marks. However this might just be the particular Kindle edition that I read.
I enjoyed this book, and the author is to be congratulated on making an incredibly complicated subject somewhat easier for the layman to understand. And do elephants have knees? Read the book to find out!
OoOoO
The catchy title is a real attention-grabber, and the author’s deft turn of phrase makes a complicated subject much more accessible to people like me. While I had to concentrate hard to keep up, it’s a fascinating subject and I didn’t want to put it down until the very end.
Do elephants indeed have knees? Read the book to find out!
PSEUDONYM
Add: Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.
August 29, 2016
A difficult book to rate. The premise behind the book is to take Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection and use well known children's stories to demonstrate how the theory works to classify animals. Its a great premise but unfortunately the execution was a little lacking. While the book is packed solid with information , and is definitely informative on its topic, at times it felt quite dry , almost like reading a textbook . Also while some of the stories chosen to illustrate the points were quite well known, others I had never heard of , so the analogy was a little less clear. The first third or so of the book deals with Darwin's early life and work , and was concise yet informative biography of the man, and this section was the strongest of the book in terms of readability.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.
August 11, 2016
This book was okay. I am interested in the subject of natural selection, but the most interestng part of the book was the first half when discussing Charles Darwin's history. The second half of the book contained snippets of stories and poems to make the more "science-y" part of the book digestible. Charles R. Ault Jr. did a good job of breaking down the ways in which different animals differentiated and evolved, but I found the matter a bit dry. Overall, a pretty good book.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews