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c h a p t e r s i x Stooping to Conquer, and a Hall Full of Elephants Early in 1926, Osborn received a note from O. Farneur, a man from Brooklyn, who had read in the New York World of attacks by Boston’s Cardinal William Henry O’Connell on the human evolution exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. Farneur suggested that Osborn reply to such attacks in a series of radio broadcasts, beginning with a program about dinosaurs—“most people are familiar with them due to the movie ‘Lost World’”—and, having thus prepared the way, Farneur thought, Osborn could “then work down to your many proofs of early man’s existence.” This sensible plan even included advice about which New York radio stations would be most appropriate.1 When anti-evolutionists challenged the human evolution exhibits at the American Museum, however, Osborn chose not to respond in the manner suggested by Farneur’s letter. The rhetorical strategies he did adopt highlight the di¤erences between scientists and science popularizers and between scientists and nonscientist intellectuals, and they suggest some of the complications of communicating scientific ideas in the midst of public controversy. Farneur’s suggestions had much to recommend them. Dinosaurs were in vogue. The movie version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, featuring Willis O’Brien’s special-e¤ects dinosaurs, had indeed been one of the cinematic highlights of 1925. Probably no one, however, had done more than Osborn to increase the fame of dinosaurs. He had sent numerous fossil-hunting field crews out to the American West to bring back spectacular dinosaur bones for the museum , and the dramatic exhibits of dinosaur skeletons in his museum—exhibits he had helped to design—taught several generations of visitors to visualize dinosaurs and other extinct animals as once-living, active creatures. Osborn himself had named Tyrannosaurus rex, the “tyrant lizard king,” a christening that amounted to something of a public relations coup for the dinosaurs. And his book, The Age of Mammals, had told the story of the history of life in accessible language illustrated with vivid images.2 Osborn did not take Farneur’s advice, however. The contrast between his vivid descriptions and exhibits of large extinct animals and his discussions of human evolution illuminates an underlying tension in his work. The debates of the 1920s exacerbated this tension, revealing the complexity of the relationship between scientists, science, and the public. In his defenses of evolution during the decade, Osborn increasingly emphasized human evolution. Although his book about human ancestors, Men of the Old Stone Age, had been well received, the prolific Osborn had not begun his professional life as primarily a physical anthropologist; he became interested in human evolution when new discoveries of fossil hominids and especially of cave art early in the twentieth century piqued his imagination, and that of the public. His greatest passions as a paleontologist to that point had been for two families of large mammals, the Proboscidea, or elephant family, and the extinct family of large ungulate mammals called Titanotheres, and he remained committed to studies of those animals. Throughout the decade of the twenties he worked to complete large monographs on these two groups—his private diaries show that even during the Scopes trial he saved time each day for work on them—and he considered the 1929 publication of the Titanothere monograph the crowning achievement of his career. The Titanothere and Proboscidea monographs were lavishly illustrated volumes and comprehensive studies. The Titanotheres included some of his—and his students’—most interesting and insightful theoretical work. But in responding to anti-evolutionists, Osborn focused increasingly on the much more fragmentary evidence for human evolution. As the evolution debate of the decade progressed, science popularizers tended to be circumspect about human evolution. Henshaw Ward explicitly excluded human ancestry from his widely advertised and well-reviewed Evolution for John Doe. Complaining that “the average man . . . thinks evolution is ‘the doctrine that man is descended from monkeys,’” Ward eliminated from his book any “attention to the ‘monkey doctrine’ [or] any reference to any ape-like creature.” Ward’s solution to the touchy issue of human evolution was extreme, but other authors also deemphasized human evolution. They had good reasons for doing so. As Ward said, the “average man” who associates evolution with monkeys “is so amused or o¤ended at this theory that his whole mind is occupied with it.”3 Ward recognized that...

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