SciTech† for August 2025
100th Anniversary of the Scopes "Monkey" Trial
A Century after Scopes, Teaching about Evolution Faces New Legal Uncertainty
Amid the spectacle of the Scopes trial in 1925 it was easy to forget that there were actual legal issues involved in the case. The defendant, a young teacher, John Thomas Scopes, was on trial for violating the Butler Act, a recently enacted law that forbade the state’s educators “to
Scopes in its Cultural Context: Then and Now
The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes — alternatively known as “the Scopes Trial” or “the Scopes Monkey Trial” — holds an ambiguous place in American life, society, and culture. On the one hand, it is likely that most people have some knowledge of it, thereby signaling some enduring significance. On
William Jennings Bryan, the Round Table Club, and Religious Freedom
In his blockbuster “Cross of Gold” speech given at the 1896 Democratic National Convention William Jennings Bryan said, “I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty — the cause of humanity.”[1] Bryan was a politician who cared deeply about Americans’ economic
America Through an English Woman’s Eyes
In the first half of the twentieth century, Agnes Maude Royden (1876-1956) was one of the most famous women in the English-speaking world. Born to a prominent and well-to-do family in Liverpool, England, she became the first woman to hold a full-time preaching position in a London church and a
Astrobiology and the Search for Life
On April 17, it was announced with great fanfare that we were the closest yet to discovering exoplanetary life. Roughly 8.6 times larger than Earth and merely 120 light years away, exoplanet K2-18 b orbits a red dwarf star within the so-called Goldilocks zone for possible planetary life. Allegedly discovered
The Government’s Control over Science and Religion
I would like to put the Scopes trial in a broader perspective, in the world of 1926 and a century later. Let’s be clear: this was about the government’s attempt to restrict what is acceptable in science, but also in religious life. With Tennessee’s Butler Act the...
Have You Read?
Edward Larson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book offers an engaging and often entertaining account of what led to the Scopes trial, what happened during it, and the trial’s aftermath. The court case came about because of heightened tension in American life over the teaching of the theory of evolution in public schools.
Have You Read?
It was inevitable that the 100th anniversary of the Scopes trial would produce a new book or two. My last read about the trial and its history was the 2006 book Summer for the Gods, by Edward Larson. I recall it as being a thorough reportage and analysis of the
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