Nolan Springer

The film on radiolarians and Ernst Haeckel was very interesting. I enjoyed it and even learned some pretty cool facts. Radiolarians are part of the oceanic plankton. They are also over 500 million years old. Some cool things I found out about Haeckel’s work is that he had the theory way before Darwin that man came from ape. I also found it interesting that he enjoyed painting pictures of landscapes, especially rock forms. This film definitely made me think differently about the art and science relationship because if Haeckel wasn’t able to draw those images, who knows what would have happened.One major historical issue was Haeckel’s stem tree. He made a racial tree that put minorities at the bottom, with white people at the top. Doing some further digging, people believe his words may have helped with the Nazi’s rise. In today’s world, everyone knows that that was such a horrible thing to do. But to only single him out would be crazy. Many people back in his day believed these same things. You just wish that what everyone knows today would’ve been taught back then. You could argue that if this didn’t happen, Haeckel wouldn’t be known as he is today. Some issues that could come up are we don’t know just how accurate these drawings from hundreds of years ago truly are. Another obstacle is that he drew them in 2D. For our sculptures, we have to bring the object to life and make our best guesses as to how they would have looked. The thing I found the most interesting was the fact that they stumbled upon the organisms at the bottom of the Ocean. Crazy to think how big of a discovery that was, and makes you think what else has been discovered by being in the right place at the right time. 

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