This is not a bad course, and Prof. Larson is an excellent lecturer, one of the better ones that I've listened to. I bought this series because the reviews were pretty good, and I generally have enjoyed the science oriented lectures that I've purchased. I also have steered away from lectures dealing with evolution because I'm pretty sure I'll disagree with them, but I did buy the series Biology: The Science of Life, which I quite enjoyed it and learned a lot from it. There was a lot of hand waving in the parts where it talked about evolution but when it talked about the current trends in Biology it was fascinating. In fact I would suggest Prof. Larson might benefit from listening to it.
One good thing did happen from this series was for myself. Prof. Larsen talked about the "red eyed fruit fly" and that's something that I'd never heard of. A little background checking to see what he was talking about and it appears that Prof. Larsen made a mistake and meant the white eyed fruit fly. That's OK we all make mistakes but I'm somewhat surprised that this wasn't found and edited out some how. It seems that I've noticed things that sound like edits on other series (when the sound quality changes somewhat from the surrounding lecture). Well I'd heard of the white eyed fruit fly before, but didn't know very much about it and while I was checking on it I read a lot more about it. That was very interesting.
Then Prof. Larsen talked about the peppered moth in England and I said to myself; "What the heck, that study's been discredited and he's using it?" Now the funny thing is, that I'm nearly 100% sure that the first time I'd heard about the discrediting of that study was on another Great Courses series because that pretty much all I listen to anymore and it's not something that I remember reading. It was most probably in Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It by Prof. Steven Goldman or Philosophy of Science by Jeffery Kasser. If I had to guess it is probably the first series, Science Wars, one of my favorite series. He also talked about the fossil record of the horse as being proof of evolution, and I knew that had been discredited as well. This caused me to look around for more information about the peppered moth studies and that caused me to finally read The Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells. I'd pretty much decided I wasn't going to read that book, because from the reviews I'd read I thought it was going to be a strident discourse about how evil evolution is and why it shouldn't be taught in schools. I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't that. All it was was a critique of the way evolution is taught as dogma in schools, and how all the examples taught as dogma have been discredited. This course by Prof. Larsen proves Prof Wells case perfectly as far as I'm concerned.
After reading the book by Prof. Wells I went back and listened to the lectures again just to make sure that I'd heard everything correctly and it was just my imagination. I found that Prof. Larsen used even more icons of evolution in his lectures and I hadn't known they'd been discredited so I had heard correctly, it was just worse than I thought.
Obviously I'm a person who finds the way evolution is taught is a travesty, so why would I buy this course? Well first the title was Theory of Evolution: A History of a Controversy and I was hoping that the course might actually explain why there is still a controversy about evolution. However, the only thing that I got from the series is that the only reason there is a controversy is because of benighted fundamentalist Christians don't accept evolution. That may be a little polemical but that's how I felt. However, I do have to give Prof. Larson points for admitting that Julian Huxley pushed a humanist atheist religion that was based on evolution. Probably because Julian Huxley was honest enough to admit that that was what he was doing as opposed to Richard Dawkins who teaches the dogma just as strongly but doesn't claim to be doing that, he claims he's doing science. Also, I have to give Prof. Larsen credit that when he talked about Intelligent Design (ID) he was honest enough to, seemingly grudgingly, admit that those who support ID are "mostly" Christian. Most people who don't agree with ID just say that it's a bunch of Christian Creationist's and that it is only "Creationism in a tuxedo". At least Dr. Larson's statement allows those who might be interested to know that there are atheists, agnostics, Indian Hindi's and people of other philosophical beliefs involved with it, who often don't like to be described as Christian Creationists. Phillip Johnson may have started the Discovery Institute and came up with the idea of using ID as a wedge, but there are many others who find the ID arguments compelling and the Discovery Institute is practically the only place people can do ID research because everywhere else they are censored by the establishment. The discovery Institute accepts fellow travelers even if they're not Christians.
The other reason I bought the series was because it was on sale and I had a coupon code that made it even cheaper.
Over all listening was a good experience and I learned a lot, not so much from the content of the lectures, but just from the fact that the lectures prove a point. This has actually decided me on buying the other course on evolution that others reviewers have recommended as being more in depth just to see if it confirms my suspicions on college level teaching of evolution.
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