Paul Schleifer

The definition of apex on www.dictionary.com reads more like a list of synonyms than an actual definition: “1. the tip, point, or vertex; summit. 2. climax; peak; acme.” According to www.etymonline.com, apex comes into the “c. 1600, from Latin apex ‘summit, peak, tip, top, extreme end;’ probably related to apere ‘to fasten, fix,’ hence ‘the tip of anything’ (one of the meanings in Latin was ‘small rod at the top of the flamen’s cap’), from PIE *ap– (1) ‘to take, reach’ (see apt).” A couple of brief digressions: first, the c in “c. 1600” is an abbreviation for the Latin circa, meaning around or approximately; it is pronounced /sərkə/, and the abbreviation is pretty common in academia. Second, a flamen was a priest assigned to one of the 15 cults in the Roman republic.

The OED lists “A small wooden rod or spike wrapped with a woollen thread, worn by the flamines and some other Roman priests as part of their ceremonial headdress” as the first definition, with “the highest point of something” as the second. So what happened with the word apex in Latin was that it referred to this stick that stuck up out of the headdress worn by priests, and then the meaning was generalized: “Look at the very tip of that mountain, Claudius.” “I see it, Julius; it looks like the flamines’ little stick.” “Ha, ha, Claudius—that’s the apex of that mountain. Good one.”

On this date in 1925 the Butler Act was passed into law by the Tennessee legislature. The act was named for State Representative John W. Butler, a Tennessee farmer and head of the World Christian Fundamentals Association. He lobbied state legislatures to pass anti-evolution laws, and he succeeded when this bill passed. The bill was signed into law by Tennessee Governor Austin Peay (and yes, Austin Peay State University was named for Governor Peay; in fact, the nickname of the school’s athletic is the Governors [pretty sick, no?]).

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) the looked for someone who was willing to defy the law and go on trial. Actually, since the State of Tennessee had adopted a science textbook that featured evolution, all the science were teachers technically in violation of the Butler Act, but the ACLU had to find someone willing to go on trial. They found John T. Scopes, a 24-year-old science and math teacher in Dayton, TN. Several members of the Dayton business community agreed to put Scopes on trial, believing that such a trial would bring needed publicity to the town. Scopes, who couldn’t really remember teaching evolution in class, got students to testify against him, coaching them in their answers. In other words, the Scopes Monkey Trial was a big show, put on for the sake of debating the issue of whether evolution should be taught in government-run schools and for getting Dayton, TN, some publicity.

The prosecution team eventually asked William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic presidential nominee and lawyer, to participate in Scopes’s prosecution. The defense team eventually persuaded agnostic lawyer Clarence Darrow to participate; he resisted at first, saying that his presence would turn the trial into a circus, but I suppose he realized that the whole thing was designed to be a circus, so he might as well be one of the clowns.

Scopes and Darrow lost the trial, which took only 11 days, and the Butler Act stayed on the books for 40 years in Tennessee. However, the conviction was set aside on a technicality—Tennessee state law said that a judge could impose a fine only under $50, and the fine was a minimum of $100 according to the statute. So the judge’s imposing of the fine was a technical violation of the law.

Scopes left teaching after the trial and went to graduate school at the University of Chicago in geology. He worked for a couple of different energy companies before retiring in 1963. He died in 1970 of cancer.

One might say that his less-than-two-week trial in little Dayton, TN, was the apex of his career.

 

The image is of the seven scientists asked to testify for the defense standing in front of the Defense Mansion. Back row, left to right: Horatio Hackett Newman, Maynard Mayo Metcalf, Fay-Cooper Cole, Jacob Goodale Lipman; Front row, left to right: Winterton Conway Curtis, Wilbur A. Nelson, William Marion Goldsmith. The Defense Mansion was a Victorian house where the defense team and witnesses stayed during the trial. July 1925. The photographer was Watson Davis.