antibiotic resistance
Breeding like bacteria – the spread of antibiotic resistance
It’s an image seared into the consciousness of just about every schoolkid who has ever glanced through an encyclopaedia – over the course of a dozen or so intermediate forms, a knuckle-dragging ape is gradually transformed into an upright, bare-chested man, who strides confidently towards the edge of frame with all the bravado that his impressive pectorals might suggest.
I
t’s impossible to deny the cultural impact of Rudolph Zallinger’s The March of Progress. First published in 1965, it went on to become, according to the great Stephen Jay Gould, “the canonical representation of evolution – the one picture immediately grasped and viscerally understood by all.” It has been reproduced and parodied perhaps more than any other scientific illustration, appearing in comic books, movies and textbooks around the world.
that “life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress.
It has also, however, been heavily criticised as a depiction of the idea that, as a natural phenomenon, evolution is ‘heading somewhere’, as opposed to simply being the blind, inevitable outcome of genetic mutation and natural selection. This idea, called ‘orthogenetic evolution’, neglects to present the whole picture – Gould himself lamented what he saw as Zallinger’s failure to depict the fact
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Nº 463 JULIO-AGOSTO 2021
Despite its potential inaccuracies, The March of Progress succeeds in one difficult task – igniting a passion for science in the minds of the general
