The Scopes Monkey Trial

998 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Conservatism and liberalism

The Scopes Monkey Trial

In a tiny courtroom in the county of Dayton Tennessee, the jury settled into their seats, ready to return the verdict in the most controversial case of the 1920’s, the scopes “monkey” trial. Up to this point, the trial itself had been a media spectacle; the lawyers, the witnesses, even the defendant had become media icons in the commercialism of the twenties. The trial itself was set up to be a media demonstration to challenge the constitutionality of the butler act. This act prohibited the teaching of “any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the bible,” and in particular, the theory of evolution. the American civil liberties union petitioned for a teacher to challenge this statute; john Thomas scopes, the local high school track coach and science teacher accepted the challenge and stood trial for teaching evolution the previous spring. Over the course of the trial Charles Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, the attorneys on the case, debated each other profusely. Eventually Bryan even testified to the truth of the biblical story, even though he was massacred by Darrow upon examination. Despite all that the trial stood for, the most lasting aspect of the trial was that it brought the media into the courtroom, and the courtroom into the daily life of the American citizen.

The most common association with the trial is as an example of the debates that raged during the 1920’s; this case particularly described the battle between the conservative religious movement and the new liberalized ideas of evolution. The case is most often referred to for, and most commonly associated with, the debate between science and religion. The scientific revolution had its roots in the arguments of the trial. “Because of this, scientific thought becomes very prominent and also with this, self consciousness is elaborated upon. With the clear understanding of why mankind is self conscious, commercialism and consumerism start booming like never before!” (Gerstein 14) the monkey trial opened people’s eyes, as well as their pocketbooks; consumerism flourished more so now because people could use reasoning to justify the spending that they did. Every religion in the world preaches some form of love for others and respect for humanity, while science, and especially evolution, advocate the survival of the fittest organism. By developing a scientific outlook on life, people felt less indebted to their contemporaries and instead found themselves concentrating on material possessions.

Show More
Related

  • Review of Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee

    1205 Words  | 3 Pages

    Bertram Cates - the defendant, who is a teacher. He taught his students about Charles Darwin's Origins of the Species in spite of the fact that it was against the laws of his state.

    Read More

  • Now You See It by Cathy Davidson

    1322 Words  | 3 Pages

    A video is put on, and in the beginning of this video your told to count how many times the people in the white shirts pass the ball. By the time the scene is over, most of the people watching the video have a number in their head. What these people missed was the gorilla walking through as they were so focused on counting the number of passes between the white team. Would you have noticed the gorilla? According to Cathy Davidson this is called attention blindness. As said by Davidson, "Attention blindness is the key to everything we do as individuals, from how we work in groups to what we value in our classrooms, at work, and in ourselves (Davidson, 2011, pg.4)." Davidson served as the vice provost for interdisciplinary studies at Duke University helping to create the Program in Science and Information Studies and the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience. She also holds highly distinguished chairs in English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke and has written a dozen different books. By the end of the introduction Davidson poses five different questions to the general population. Davidson's questions include, "Where do our patterns of attention come from? How can what we know about attention help us change how we teach and learn? How can the science of attention alter our ideas about how we test and what we measure? How can we work better with others with different skills and expertise in order to see what we're missing in a complicated and interdependent world? How does attention change as we age, and how can understanding the science of attention actually help us along the way? (Davidson, 2011, p.19-20)." Although Davidson hits many good points in Now You See It, overall the book isn't valid. She doesn't exactly provide answers ...

    Read More

  • Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District

    1632 Words  | 4 Pages

    In cases having to do with constitutionality, the issue of the separation of church and state arises with marked frequency. This battle, which has raged since the nation?s founding, touches the very heart of the United States public, and pits two of the country's most important influences of public opinion against one another. Although some material containing religious content has found its way into many of the nation's public schools, its inclusion stems from its contextual and historical importance, which is heavily supported by material evidence and documentation. It often results from a teacher?s own decision, rather than from a decision handed down from above by a higher power. The proposal of the Dover Area School District to include instruction of intelligent design in biology classes violates the United States Constitution by promoting an excessive religious presence in public schools.

    Read More

  • Essay On Des Moines Independent Community Schools

    579 Words  | 2 Pages

    Remy, Richard C., Gary E. Clayton, and John J. Patrick. "Supreme Court Cases." Civics Today. Columbus, Ohio: Glencoe, 2008. 796. Print.

    Read More

  • Science V. Religion: The Scopes Monkey Trial

    1401 Words  | 3 Pages

    The 1920’s were a time of change. New ideas were becoming more readily experimented with and even accepted by large portions of the population. Some of these included jazz music and the fight against the alcoholic prohibition. The radical idea I will focus on in this paper, however, is Evolution. It is a theory that had been around for over half a century before the 20’s but had only more recently caught on in the US. It contradicted the Christian theory of Divine Creation as described in the Bible. This caused many religious fundamentalists to fight against it. They took their battle to the law books, and they were challenged by pro-evolution modernists in the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925.

    Read More

  • The Second Challenge: Imperial Judiciary

    1279 Words  | 3 Pages

    Palmer, Elizabeth A. "The Court and Public Opinion." CQ Weekly 2 Dec. 2000. CQ Weekly. SAGE Publications. Web. 1 Mar. 2000. .

    Read More

  • Different Theories of Inattentional Blindness

    985 Words  | 2 Pages

    The effects of perceptual load on the occurrence of inattentional blindness were demonstrated clearly by experiment. In an experiment conducted by Finch and Lavie in 2007, participants were given identical series of central cross-targets with two arms of clearly different color (blue and green) and slightly different length. Participants were split in two groups, one performing an easy task (low load condition) and the other a harder task (high load condition). The group performing the easiest task only had to make color discrimination between the tw...

    Read More

  • Euthanasia: A Way to End the Agony

    848 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...d to a person’s suffering. People from all over the world have completely different opinions about assisted suicide. Many people believe that euthanasia is a very effective way of ending a person’s grief. Many people are fighting against the law. The law against assisted suicide is unjust and should be illuminated. The government should have no say in whether a person’s heart stops beating because of their agony. Euthanasia should be up to the sick individual and the government’s decision to place a law should be withdrawn. But euthanasia has to be done in an ethical manner and humanely. Restrictions should be placed around euthanasia and should be done in a very delicate and specific way. It should be understood that euthanasia should only be used under extreme circumstances and to ease a person’s pain. A person’s torturous life can easily come to a gentle close.

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Change Blindness

    950 Words  | 2 Pages

    Though the experiment shows that attention is vital for change detection, we should consider the size/ impact of the change in the environment. If the change to an environment is small, would it result in the change being detected? Do providing little clues draw attention effectively to where the change is being made? In support of this argument, Rensink (1997) showed that even with small clues, if the clue is not directed properly then detecting change will not have an effect. A proposal of Rensink is that the absence of attention will cause visual contents to be missed. On the other hand, Simon and Levin (1998) suggest that a person could miss things happening in their environment if his or her attention is occupied by something

    Read More

  • Euthanasia

    1169 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to Immanuel Kant, a person has dignity that makes him autonomous. Thus, the decision of the autonomous patient to die has intrinsic value. Because patients are rational agent, they are able to make their own decision based on reason. A rational patient will reason that if continued existence is full of suffering and no-hope for better well-being, therefore, the best option is to discontinue his/her life to save him/herself from that future condition. It is the patient’s approach to manage his/her own life. Dan W. Brock is right in his article “Voluntary Active Euthanasia” when he said that, “self-determination [or autonomy] has fundamental value… [because]… individual [can] control the manner, circumstances, and timing of their dying and death” (75). The dignity of the patient lies in their “capacity to direct their lives” (Brock 75).

    Read More

  • Social Psychology Research

    2016 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...ehavior and social sciences of studying human and animals’ behavior, this type of research may be conducted by a combination of academic regulations for example; psychology, sociology, anthropology and others. However, when conducting psychology research, psychologists are obligated to protect client confidentiality and privacy, maintain professional’s standards and follow inform consent rules.

    Read More

  • Parental School Involvement Essay

    944 Words  | 2 Pages

    Parental school involvement includes many activities. Hill and Taylor (2004) state that parental school involvement reflects activities, such as volunteering in the classroom, communicating with the teacher, participating in academic-related activities in schools, communicating the positive value of education, and participating in the parent-teacher relationship are all included in parental school involvement, and each is positively related to children’s academic success. Moreover, Hill and Taylor (2004) demonstrate several factors influencing parental school involvement, including demographic characteristics, such as socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and cultural background, and other parental characteristics are systematically associated with parental school involvement. They conclude that parents from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely than those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to be involved in schooling and manage children’s

    Read More

  • Social Psychology Essay

    853 Words  | 2 Pages

    The question of what social psychology actually is, is not something that is easy to answer as it has been regarded as a diverse and fragmented discipline that is divided by the battle between experimental and critical social psychology. This is based on whether it should be a science or not, the ideology and what constitutes the social world (Rogers,). It is regarded as an umbrella discipline in which many sub-disciplines sit under including biological, clinical and organisational. (Myers,) Many social psychologists argue that social psychology is a scientific study that investigates how others influence thoughts, behaviour and feeling (Hogg & Vaughan,). Theses are the experimental psychologists who try to find a cause effect relationship between two variables by testing hypotheses, whilst ensuring that all variables are operationalized in order to gain results that are valid and there are no confounding variables. They do this whilst in a controlled laboratory environment ensuring that no other factors could play a part and act as a confounding variable. Critical psychology on the other hand would argue that the scientific method to measure behaviour is not the only method that can be used. It argues that the scientific method if often unsuitable for studying certain aspects of peoples ...

    Read More

  • Euthanasia

    1577 Words  | 4 Pages

    The applied ethical issue of euthanasia, or mercy killing, concerns whether it is morally permissible for a third party, such as a physician, to end the life of a terminally ill patient who is in intense pain. The word euthanasia comes from the Greek words eu (‘well’) and thanatos (‘death’). It means a painless and gentle death. But in modern usage, it has come to imply that someone’s life is ended for compassionate reasons by some passive or active steps taken by another person. The euthanasia controversy is part of a larger issue concerning the right to die. Staunch defenders of personal liberty argue that all of us are morally entitled to end our lives when we see fit. Thus, according to these people, euthanasia is in principle morally permissible. Two additional concepts are relevant to the discussion of euthanasia. First, voluntary euthanasia refers to mercy killing that takes place with the explicit and voluntary consent of the patient, either verbally or in a written document such as a living will. Second, non-voluntary euthanasia refers to the mercy killing of a patient who is unconscious, comatose, or otherwise unable to explicitly make his intentions known. (Downing 1969) In these cases it is often family members who make the request. It is important not to confuse non-voluntary mercy killing with involuntary mercy killing. The latter would be done against the wishes of the patient and would clearly count as murder.

    Read More

  • The Right To Die

    1025 Words  | 3 Pages

    We live an ever-changing society that should not view Euthanasia as an unethical action, but as a way of help for suffering patients. Everyday their are thousands of hard working individuals that are diagnosed with a terminal illness and are now faced with decisions that must both be in the best interest for them and their families. This is neither an easy choice nor one that should be made without serious thought, but it should not be denied or penalized by society or government. It is a choice that must be made only by the patient in question with the input and understanding of their families. Many members of our society have worked very hard throughout their lives and if it is their desire to elect Euthanasia to spare them of the pain and the financial burden that a fatal illness would leave behind, then so be it.

    Read More

More about The Scopes Monkey Trial

Open Document