“Critical Thinking” in Honors Biology
Monday, October 31st, 2005I was assigned twenty some questions in Biology today. This was the seventh question.
7.) Applying Concepts: If you could go back in time, how would you explain the cell theory to someone who had never heard of cells?
This begs the question, “WHAT KIND OF FOOL WOULD GO BACK IN TIME AND EXPLAIN A LAME THEORY ABOUT CELLS TO A BUNCH OF PEASANTS???”
I was seriously tempted to write a very sarcastic reply. Instead, I regurgitated the stupid theory, which reads something like “All life is made up of cells. Cells are the smallest things that are living. All cells come only from other cells reproducing.”
However, I wanted to write something like, “Well, supposing that Back to the Future is wrong and going back in time does not alter the present, and supposing that I wasn’t thrown in an asylum, or hung (I would be suggesting to 16th century peasants that life only comes from other life, which was blasphemy), I would be explaining to uneducated farmers/smiths/whatever that we are all made up of unimaginably small little box like things, and that so are plants and cows and the like.”
I also want to point out that if I had time travel, explaing the cell theory is so low on my list of priorities that it wouldn’t even register.