The Burgess Shale fossils
Fauna vanished with a whimper, not a bang
Some discoveries are so unusual it takes decades and sometimes even centuries to understand their full significance. One such discovery is the fossil bed known as the Burgess Shale, which contains a record of bizarre creatures that lived 505 million years ago. It was discovered in the Canadian Rockies over a century ago and was popularised in 1989 in a book, Wonderful Life, by Stephen Jay Gould, an American palaeontologist.
The Burgess Shale fossils were created at a time when the future Canadian land mass was situated near the Earth’s equator. The creatures were preserved when an entire marine ecosystem was buried in mud that eventually hardened and became exposed hundreds of millions of years later in an outcrop of the Rocky Mountains. American palaeontologist Charles Walcott, following reports of fabulous fossil finds by construction workers on a Canadian railway who were digging in the mountains in the late 19th century, is said to have tripped over a block of shale in 1909 that revealed the area’s remarkable supply of specimens. It has long been believed that the curious fauna that lived there vanished in a series of extinctions because the fossil record ends abruptly, but that no longer appears to be the case.
The Burgess Shale began to form soon after a period of time known as the Cambrian explosion, when most major groups of complex animals arose over a surprisingly short period. Before 560m years ago, most living things were either individual cells or simple colonies of cells. Then, and for reasons that remain a mystery, life massively diversified and became ever more complex as the rate of evolution increased. An unusual feature of the Burgess Shale is that it is one of the earliest fossil beds to contain impressions of the soft body parts alongside the remains of bones and shells, which is highly unusual.
Although the fossil bed was discovered on a mountain, these animals originally existed below an ocean, the bed of which was later pushed up to create the Rockies. Nobody knows exactly why they were so well preserved. One possibility is that the creatures were buried quickly and in conditions that were hostile to the bacteria that cause decomposition of soft body parts.
Those that first worked on the Burgess Shale, unearthing 65,000 specimens over a 14-year period up to 1924, assumed that the fossils came from extinct members of groups of animals in existence today. This turned out to be misleading because many of the creatures are so unusual that they are still difficult to classify.
One such example is Opabinia, a creature that grew to about 8cm (3 inches), had five eyes, a body that was a series of lobes, a tail in the shape of a fan and that ate using a long proboscis. The proboscis had a set of grasping claws on the end, with which it grabbed food and stuffed it into its mouth. Nectocaris, meanwhile, could be mistaken for a leech, with fins and tentacles. Weirdest of all was Hallucigenia, described by palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris when he re-examined Walcott’s specimens in 1979. With its multiplicity of spines and tentacles, little about Hallucigenia made sense. Scientists hypothesized that the spines were legs that helped it move and the tentacles were for feeding. Like an abstract painting, its orientation is a mystery at first, making it difficult to work out which way up it went, which hole food went into, and which hole food came out of.
Palaeontologists had long thought that many of the Burgess Shale animals were examples of experiments in evolution. In other words, entirely new forms of life that did not survive or lead to other groups or species. Hallucigenia, ironically, turned out to be the exception that proved the rule. It is now thought to be an ancestor of the modern group of arthropods, which includes everything from flies and butterflies to centipedes and crabs.
Now another misconception has been quashed. Writing in Nature, Peter Van Roy of Yale University and his colleagues suggest that the sudden absence of such crazy soft-bodied fossils does not indicate a mass extinction, but merely an end to the unusual local circumstances that caused the creatures to be preserved. In an area of the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, Van Roy’s team of researchers have found another diverse (and sometimes bizarre) assemblage of soft-bodied organisms from a period after the Burgess Shale was formed. One discovery includes something that may be a stalked barnacle. This suggests that the evolution of such complex life went on uninterrupted. For its part, the Burgess Shale continues to produce an astonishing array of indefinable creatures faster than palaeontologists can examine them. The world still has plenty to learn about this wonderful life.
Early Approaches to Organisational Design
A review of the classical and neoclassical theories of organisational structures
Determining the 'best' type of organisational structure for a particular situation has long been an important task for managers in all types of organisations. All structures have advantages and disadvantages and managers face the challenge of developing the most appropriate design for changing circumstances.
The Classical Approach: Early management writers attempted to approach organisational design using a set of principles that would make an organisational structure perform efficiently in most situations, independent of external conditions and internal objectives. The sociologist Max Weber and management writers Frederick Taylor and Henri Fayol were major contributors to this so-called classical approach. They believed that the most efficient organisations had a legalised formal and hierarchical structure called a 'bureaucracy'. Members of the organisation were guided by a sense of duty to the organisation and by a set of rational rules and regulations. According to Weber, such organisations were characterised by the specialisation of tasks, appointment by merit, and an impersonal climate.
Today the word 'bureaucracy' sometimes has negative connotations. Early management writers, however, commended bureaucracy as an organisational design for its rationality, rules for decision-making, clear chain of command, and promotion of people based on ability and experience, rather than favouritism or whim. Weber also believed that clearly specified authority and responsibility made performance easier to evaluate and reward.
Criticism of the Classical Approach: Weber, Taylor and Fayol developed their theories when organisations that resembled this bureaucratic model were modern and efficient. It became evident, however, that some of the major advantages of the bureaucratic structure could become disadvantages if the theory were applied dogmatically. For example, the safeguards against favouritism could be rigidly imposed by adhering excessively to rules, resulting in both managers and subordinates becoming depersonalised.
The classical approach has been criticised from two major perspectives. First, the theory may not have a basis in reality. Have organisations like those described by Weber and the others ever existed? Second, it claims that organisations designed and managed according to bureaucratic principles will enjoy the predicted benefits. But critics argue that the world no longer fits the assumptions in Weber's model (if it ever did), and so a bureaucracy might not yield beneficial results.
Early human relations researchers and behavioural scientists attempted to deal with the major inadequacy of the classical bureaucratic model: neglect of the human element. They argued that an industrial organisation has two objectives: economic effectiveness and employee satisfaction. They also wrote that the bureaucratic structure could be improved by permitting more subordinate participation in decision-making. Because these researchers tried to improve, and not reject, the classical model, they are sometimes called neoclassical theorists and include Douglas McGregor, Chris Argyris and Rensis Likert.
The Neoclassical Approach: McGregor believed that the vertical division of labour that characterised bureaucratic organisations was derived from negative and false assumptions about workers which he called 'Theory X'. Managers assume lower-level employees lack ambition and need orders to work effectively. The rigid formal hierarchy is designed to maintain managers' power over subordinates. Decision-making takes place at upper levels of management while the decisions are carried out by people at lower levels. McGregor argued that organisations based instead on 'Theory Y' assumptions use their members' potential. Theory Y assumes that most people find work satisfying, commit themselves willingly to organisational goals and seek responsibility. Members have more independence than in bureaucratic organisations and lower-level participation in decision-making is encouraged.
Argyris was concerned that managers in bureaucratic organisations had near-total responsibility for controlling their subordinates' work. He argued that managerial domination makes subordinates passive and dependent, and decreases their sense of responsibility and self-control. Argyris argued for an alternative organisational design that acknowledged human needs and feelings, and increased workers' satisfaction. Like McGregor, he favoured giving subordinates more independence and decision-making power to create a more informal organisational culture.
Likert shared the perspectives of McGregor and Argyris. In his research, he found that managers who encouraged their subordinates could motivate them more than traditional authoritarian managers. Likert based a model of four possible systems on these findings. In System 1 power and authority are distributed strictly according to the classical management-subordinate relationship: a manager gives orders to lower-level members. In System 4 organisations, by contrast, there is extensive participation in decision-making and problem-solving groups. Some individuals in each group also belong to other work groups to ensure communication between them. System 4 represents Likert's view of an ideal organisation.
Criticisms of the Neoclassical Approach: The neoclassical approach to organisational design compensates for limitations in the traditional classical model, but it has also been criticised. First, the neoclassicists share the classical assumption that there is one best way to design an organisation. They overlook environmental, technological, and other variables that might affect an organisation's design, and overemphasise psychological and behavioural variables. Second, Theories X and Y oversimplify human motivation and neglect individual differences. Not everyone is motivated by the non-monetary aspects of work, nor is all work satisfying. Finally, the coordination of work groups to achieve organisational goals may be more difficult than the neoclassicists suggest, particularly when the objectives of lower-level employees are not consistent with those of upper-level managers.
The Algebra Debate
It is widely agreed upon that mathematical skills and knowledge are crucial for future scientists, computer programmers, and engineers, but for the rest of us, it is unclear what level of mastery is needed in this field. In recent years, the necessity of education in mathematics has been brought into question by those in the education field, social scientists, and even politicians. However, some teachers feel that mathematical skills will be an integral part of America's future success. It is believed by many that competence in the STEM fields – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – will keep the United States economically competitive in the ever-developing and accelerating world economy. Some educators believe that if students do not take algebra classes by ninth grade, they will fall behind and not have the requisite skills and knowledge for higher education and a number of trades. Researchers, on the other hand, see a corporate agenda for forcing students to take algebra, and as many of these students are not ready for it and inevitably fail the course, the result could be higher dropout rates. So, the question remains: is algebra really that important?
First, it is important to define what algebra is and why it is so difficult for many students. To answer this question, the root of the problem must be identified, which is the difficulty young people find in learning math in general. Arithmetic, the most basic branch of mathematics, is challenging to many but most people are able to grasp the major tenets, thanks to the fact that numbers occur naturally around us in our everyday lives. Numbers are abstract, but are tied to concrete things that surround us, from taking measurements in a clothes department to weighing fresh produce at the supermarket. Past research relating to the teaching and learning of algebra was mostly concentrated on the issues of secondary school students, but these problems can be traced back to a lack of algebraic reasoning in early childhood years. Errors in school-level algebra stem from a fundamental difference in the approach to algebraic and arithmetic problem solving, as a student who has learned to solve a problem through arithmetic will need to adopt a whole new way of thinking.
In-depth research related to this issue was conducted with a group of 120 high school students in Sri Lanka, coming from three different schools in urban, semi-urban, and rural areas. A pre-screened algebra test with 30 questions was given to all students, and a random sample of 32 students was selected for interviewing following the test. The interview transcripts and the students' written assessments were analysed, and a number of recurring errors were prevalent. Most errors occurred during the processing stage (57.8%), followed by comprehension error (21.9%), encoding error (15.6%), and verification error (4.7%), with these figures revealing that the majority of errors occurred during processing and comprehension. This research showed that symbolic interpretation is difficult for many students.
Both arithmetic and algebra have their own set of practical applications in life. Arithmetic is more useful in everyday activities that involve whole numbers, fractions, and percentages, such as calculating monthly budgets and taking measurements. It is indeed possible to succeed in adulthood without the use of algebra, and adults may have never learned about its practical applications. Algebra’s value may not be as readily apparent as arithmetic's, but without it, access to a number of professions or university courses is impossible. Algebra may seem abstract, but that is part of why it is so useful in a number of situations and settings. It can be argued that due to its abstract nature, it should be taught from an early age, much as language already is, which is also an abstract concept.
The emphasis placed on algebra in school curricula varies significantly from country to country, as was highlighted by PISA, an international comparative study that looked into various profiles of mathematical education around the world. A consistent result of these studies was that Nordic and English-speaking countries place far less importance on the application of algebraic problem-solving than East Asian and East European countries. This was due to the fact that real-world mathematics, namely arithmetic, was the main focus of school mathematics in the former countries, and there has been a shift away from the more formal aspects of mathematics, such as algebra. There also seem to be some problems with the organisation of the curricula, as students in Norway take algebra classes late in their schooling career, with teachers stressing that the abstract nature of algebra makes it difficult to teach, and therefore, difficult for students to learn. Not only is algebra difficult to teach, it is also difficult for many teachers to understand themselves, so school boards in the Nordic and English-speaking countries do not stress training their student teachers in this. For this reason, if teachers feel that they are not competent in algebra, it makes sense that they do not make a point of teaching it, or at least put off including it in their syllabi for as long as possible.
Given the vast number of difficulties experienced by both teachers and students when it comes to algebra, a central question in determining the importance of algebra is how to find a balance between what students need in their everyday lives and their requirements for this knowledge in pursuing higher education and careers later in life. Another equally important question is how arithmetic and algebra can be effectively implemented in the classroom. These questions are not easily answered, but are incredibly important and deserve more attention from both educators and researchers.