Darwinism and (R)evolution: Paradigm Shifts and Science Through Time

Shanivi Srikonda

Artist’s statement (read more here, too):

As someone interested in both science, history, and art, I wanted to create a project that could combine all of these interests. Especially with a topic like Darwinism, all three of these themes play a pretty substaintial role — many scientific processes are often influenced by history, and art is often a response to history. I considered many formats for this project, but felt a website would be the best psossible option. Why? Websites are quite easy to access — just type in a url! My project can be viewed by anyone, which will hopefully make it a useful tool for learning in the future. Moreover, the interactive elements that websites provide is pretty fun: clicking around a cool website (like this one!) and seeing what you can find and learn can be a enjoyable experience, and I hope you enjoy this project! Making a website for my project might be cool, but I wanted to take it even one step further by also having a VR Art Gallery component to my project as well. Not in Harvard Yard? No problem! All of the artwork used in my project is part of the Harvard Art Museums’ collections, so hopefully it’ll feel like you’re back in Cambridge (besides the fun themed backgrounds for my VR gallery rooms, which you can read more about here) Moreover, to fully articulate my thoughts about the different scientific paradigm shifts in relation to Darwin’s ideas through time, you can read a very, very detailed explanation for each event, and how it relates to the artwork and the scientific paper here — just click and read every time you see “Read the full explanation here”! Thanks for exploring my GenEd 1004 Final Project, I hope you like it!

All of my sources are here (also in the Sources page tab in the top right corner). This source list has all my sources (over 200 of them! I collected and read through a lot of material for this project, and I also wrote more than 12,000 words for this project, too!). Throughout this website, you will see my sources in brackets after when they were used with the corresponding matching number between the information and the number of the citation on my source list. Also, in-text citations are hyperlinked to their specific online resource whenever possible. For the VR Art Gallery, there aren’t bracketed citations (due to issues with the code and brackets/parenthesis), but you can find the specific Harvard Art Museums source links for all the pieces on the Timeline page or in my Source list page drectly.