Darwinism Must Die So Evolution Can Live 951
Pickens writes "MacArthur fellow Carl Safina, an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University, has an interesting essay in the NYTimes that says that equating evolution with Charles Darwin opened the door for creationism by ignoring 150 years of discoveries, including most of what scientists understand about evolution — Gregor Mendel's patterns of heredity, the discovery of DNA, developmental biology, studies documenting evolution in nature, and evolution's role in medicine and disease. Darwinism implies an ideology adhering to one man's dictates, like Marxism, says Safina. He adds that nobody talks about Newtonism or Einsteinism, and that by making Darwin 'into a sacred fetish misses the essence of his teaching.' By turning Darwin into an 'ism,' scientists created the opening for creationism, with the 'isms' implying equivalence. 'By propounding "Darwinism," even scientists and science writers perpetuate an impression that evolution is about one man, one book, one theory,' writes Safina. '"Darwinism" implies that biological scientists "believe in" Darwin's "theory." It's as if, since 1860, scientists have just ditto-headed Darwin rather than challenging and testing his ideas, or adding vast new knowledge.'"
neodarwinism (Score:5, Informative)
This is why most biologist refer to Darwins theory plus all the addition thoughts of the last 150 year as neodarwinism
Darwins basic idea still stands so it doesn't seem illogical to use his name for the theory
Darwin deserves his credit. (Score:2, Informative)
A lot of other people have torn to pieces the idea that we really call it "Darwinism" in meaningful discourse. They're pretty right. Our understanding of evolution has, err, evolved, over the years since he first propounded his theory.
That said, he laid the foundations for evolutionary biology, and deserves to leave his name in history a bit. If you've never read The Origin of Species, give it a shot. It's a solid work, and quite accessible. His application of the scientific method should be a case study for all scientists.
For any interested, there's a pretty good article about him [iht.com] over at the International Herald Tribune at the moment.
Re:Ditto-Heads (Score:1, Informative)
I'm awfully amused of the misuse of the term, "Ditto-Head" in a Darwinism piece to bash non-compliant thought. The term came from Rush Limbaugh Show that shorted air time of people saying how much they loved the show and it had nothing to do with following in lock step, mind numbed robots, like the faithful followers of Darwinism do today. Now if this overview of the article has a fatally flawed description, what is a good Darwinist to do?
Re:I beg your pardon? (Score:2, Informative)
So "Darwinian evolution" raises a question: What's the other evolution?
Other evolutionary systems have been proposed. Before Darwin came along Lamarck formulated his own theory of evolution. The main difference with Darwinian evolution is that Lamarckian evolution supposes inheritance of characteristics acquired during the life time of the organisms. See wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Re:I beg your pardon? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm pretty sure we're talking about biology here, not aeronautical engineering.
What it implies is that there isn't a distinct alternative to "Darwinian evolution". Evolution as it's understood today is an improvement on Evolution as posited by Darwin rather than a distinct theory (as in the Newtonian/Quantum example).
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:neodarwinism (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How to Falsify Evolution (Score:3, Informative)
unfortunately i can't muster enough stamina to read all the statement form this AC, but if he whant an example of evolution he should read this
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html [newscientist.com]
an article about an evolution of a new genetic trait in bacteria, and it is a reproducible experiment!
that perhaps prove evolution?
Re:neodarwinism (Score:5, Informative)
Some people say he was depressed because he was a devout Christian, but his work was contradicting his beliefs.
I think that "Darwinism" is used by scientists to describe classical evolution. "Post-Darwinist" theories include punctuated (or stepped) evolution, founder affects, modern genetics, and a lot of other things. The rate of mutations is often evolved - so evolution is itself evolving - groovy hey! I haven't studied that stuff for years, but "Darwinism" has not been the alpha and omega of evolution for quite some time.
Some interesting developments outside ecology would include the use of evolution in programming (genetic algorithms), the evolution of cancers, the evolution of ideas and institutions, the evolution of ecologies, and basically anything else that satisfies the replication, competition, and mutation criteria. Myopic? I don't think so.
Re:Dumb idea (Score:2, Informative)
Re:neodarwinism (Score:5, Informative)
Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life [bbc.co.uk]?
There's also an interesting quote [guardian.co.uk] from David Attenborough in response to people asking "why he did not give "credit" to God" for the subjects of his nature documentaries:
Re:Bull. Did Newton have to die for Einstein? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, to pretend that scientists refer to evolutionary theory as "Darwinism" is walking into the creationist trap, since (in my experience, at least) only creationists refer to it that way. Scientists refer to evolution as, well, evolution.
Re:How to Falsify Evolution (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That is, as the Brits say, bollocks (Score:5, Informative)
That might be because the USA is one of the largest Protestant-majority countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestantism_by_country). Catholics (and most of the groups which split from them prior to the Protestant Reformation) aren't fundamentalists. i.e. they don't take the Bible literally, seeing Genesis as symbolic rather than historical. This enables them to reconcile evolution (and other scientific principles) with their faith.
This also demonstrates that it is possible to be both religious and scientific.
DISCLAIMER: IAAC (I am a Catholic).
Re:That is, as the Brits say, bollocks (Score:3, Informative)
Having said that, the EO is a broadcasting corporation many people actively laugh at in The Netherlands. 44% of our population is a registered atheist and I can't remember the last time anyone dragged god into political discourse on particular topics. Granted, the largest political party is the Christian Democrats' party, but at the end of the day I would say that the people who claim Evolution doesn't exist are either too old for their own good or a part of a small, small minority.
THe ugly truth is, though, that most people probably simply never thought about it. And this applies both to the US and the Netherlands. You do as you're told, rarely as you think you should do.
Re:That is, as the Brits say, bollocks (Score:5, Informative)
Allow me to acquaint you with Pete Stark (D-CA-13). He's been openly out as an atheist since January 2007. In addition to Stark, there are ten other current members of Congress who decline to list their religion, opening the possibility that some of them are, at least, closet atheists/agnostics.
Re:Maybe I didn't explain it well enough (Score:3, Informative)
I'm _not_ against darwinism or natural selection. I'm just against the "sexual selection" cludge. That's all. Remove that kludge, and I'm perfectly content with Darwinism.
It's not a "kludge". Some traits will, almost certainly, propagate solely due to them making the organism more attractive to a mate. Indeed, given that successful reproduction is the ultimate expression of "fitness", one would assume that traits existing solely for 'sexual selection' would be quite common.
Re:neodarwinism (Score:3, Informative)
Ah, the "carbon dating is only accurate for 5,000 years argument".
Sadly for them it's accurate for 60,000 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating#cite_note-0). Even so, it's not the dating method used for things like dinosaurs, or even pre-homo-sapiens times. There are other elements that decay slower and are thus far more useful as a metric - Potassium-Argon and Uranium-Lead are some I believe, but don't quote me, and I'm at work so can't keep on hunting down references.
Re:How to Falsify Evolution (Score:2, Informative)
Not at all. "How To Falsify X" is a necessary part of the evaluation of any scientific theory X.
If someone asks me... (Score:3, Informative)
If I believe in evolution, I usually reply something to the effect of, "It's not a religion that one might believe in... You can either prove it or you can't." The notion of being able to falsify scientific hypothesis seems to be a bit beyond the conceptual grasp of a large portion of the population.
I'm a Christian. Yes, I've seen evidence that there's a God, in fact, rather recently. But my belief in God isn't based on evidence, it's based on faith. That's why it's called religion. Any time a belief system is based on faith rather than repeatable experiments, we have to call it a religion.
I know this is going to ruffle a few feathers, but I'm sick of this debate being rehashed again and again. For many, many years, what was taught as evolution in public schools was largely based on blind faith in evolution. The conflict over evolution in schools had nothing to do with science and everything to do with conflicting belief systems, i.e. atheism versus theism. And for that reason, the teaching of evolutionary theory was slanted toward whatever personal agenda the teacher had with respect to the above debate. Science got lost in the process.
And evolution itself was largely a matter of religious belief for the century after Darwin. Biology was one of the few sciences which accepted a theory which was provably false by anyone with a basic knowledge of statistics. The early theories of natural selection were mathematically sound, but to go the step beyond and claim that "random change" would differentiate species only indicated the discipline's misunderstanding of randomness, and was based largely on faith. It was as if, unable to find a specific cause of speciation, biologists just gave up critical thought and claimed "random chance did it". It was intellectually lazy, and Americans knew it. And this version of evolution would be taught as late as the 1990's.
So when you hear someone questioning darwinism, or evolution, this is what the debate is about. They are probably not aware of the more recent advances in the subject, probably cannot elaborate on any of the specific theories regarding speciation (which, to biology's credit, are actually listing falsifiable hypotheses now). It is not about science, but bad science put forward in the attempt to make a larger cultural change, a shift away from belief in God.
There is no conflict between science and religion, because both seek the truth, but work in different problem domains. That said, though, there's no place for faith in science, and one need not "believe" in it the way one might have faith in the second coming of Christ. The debate over evolution should serve as an indicator of how bad things can get when science attempts to step outside of its proper boundaries into the realm of philosophy and religion. I do not want future spacecraft designed by faith any more than I want future public policy governed solely by science. (While I'll admit that science can inform public opinion, it cannot resolve the ethical and moral questions.)
So before you go about bashing evolution bashers, please remember: most of these people were taught falsehoods in the name of science. Once you address that issue, you'll find that there's really very little left to debate.
Re:neodarwinism (Score:1, Informative)
Same way they got their god: they made it up.
I think taking a course in formal logic (Score:3, Informative)
would help you in your life immensely.
Re:That is, as the Brits say, bollocks (Score:4, Informative)
is not true. Nowhere in the oath of office is any god mentioned. Nearly all presidents have added a "so help me god" to the end of the oath, but it is not in the Constitution. Most presidents have sworn the oath on a Bible, but not all. Franklin Pierce, in addition to not using a Bible, didn't swear the oath, either -- he affirmed it. If you are suggesting that the president "has" to swear to god at the inauguration in the same way that he "has" to be religious to be elected, then I am with you, but your phrasing indicates that the swearing to god is more prescribed than that.
Re:neodarwinism (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How to Falsify Evolution (Score:5, Informative)
...they eventually figured out that stars work with nuclear processes...
There is also the fact that the sun's mass is not enough to gravitationally oppose the huge outward pressures generated by a thermonuclear reaction at the needed temperatures. Gravity is simply too weak to overcome the strong nuclear and electrical forces that would have to be present in such a thermonuclear reaction furnace.
What? Balancing the pressure equation of state is how we numerically predict the structure of the Sun in the first place. Where did you hear that?
Then there is the missing neutrino problem. From thermonuclear fusion experiments and bombs, we know what the production rate of associated neutrinos should be for the sun IF it were indeed powered by fusion, as theorized. However, the actual neutrino flux from the sun is only a tiny fraction of what should be measured if fusion were the energy source of the sun. At this point scientists really are back to square one in determining the power source of the sun and similar sized stars.
This was a problem before 10 or so years ago, though (a) the solution was guessed at 30 years ago, and (b) it's not a "tiny" fraction, it was about a third. Neutrinos change species. There is no more mystery
There is also radar evidence that the sun is not a big gas ball, but actually has a solid iron core, similar to the earth, surrounded by an atmosphere of seething plasma kept hot by an as yet unknown external electrical power grid, in the same way as a metal arc lamp here on earth. There is some evidence that the sun, along with other stars in the spiral arms of our galaxy, is part of a galactic scale electrical power distribution system powered from the center of our galaxy.
A solid iron core??? Where are you getting this stuff? The central density is around 15 times higher than iron! Chemical reactions cannot power the Sun at its current luminosity for billions of years. Can I recommend to you a nice introductory astronomy (science) book?
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Score:2, Informative)
Re:do scientists actually call it Darwinism? (Score:3, Informative)
The only reason a scientist is going to talk about Darwinian evolution is to understand how the current theories of evolution came about. Science is a process, and all theories are subject to change if they don't fit the observed evidence. The progression goes something like this:
Lamarckian evolution - The idea that a parent could pass its characteristics on to its offspring. The most common (overly simplistic) example given is that a short-necked ancestor to the giraffe wanted to eat leaves, so it stretched out its neck, and all of its offspring had longer necks as well. No one believes this any more, because we have never observed it.
Weismann's germ plasm theory (favored by Darwin) helped to debunk Lamarckian evolution. It said that characteristics of somatic cells acquired during life could not be passed on to offspring - only mutations in germ cells (eggs, sperm) could. His ideas also predict the idea of an offspring getting two copies of each gene, one from each parent.
Darwinian evolution was the idea that the most fit members of a species tended to survive and reproduce. This has turned out to be a very good theory, in so far as it goes. It doesn't really provide much insight into mechanisms, but the basic observation has withstood the test of time. So, while this does provide the basis for modern theories of evolution, it is woefully incomplete. Talking about 'Darwinism' as the be-all, end-all of evolution is to stop at this point - which most fundamentalists would love to do. It makes it easier to attack evolution when you forget the next 150 years of progress.
Mendelian genetics was the insight into mechanisms by which traits might be inherited. Mendel breed pea plants and carefully observed phenotypes of the offspring relative to the parents. This leads to the basic idea of dominant and recessive traits.
Modern synthesis was the culmination of work by many biologist that finally gelled evolution into a the coherent theories we know today. It accounts for a genetic mechanism for evolution, selection as the main driver of genetic change in a population, and the need for genetic diversity in populations.
A few years after modern synthesis had come into its own, Watson and Crick (and Rosalind Franklin) figured out the structure and pairing rules for DNA, opening the door for a molecular level understanding of evolution.
Crick would go on to posit the central dogma of molecular biology, DNA <--> RNA --> proteins. This forms the core of modern thinking about evolution at a molecular level, while modern synthesis helps us to understand population genetics.
Again, as far as these theories go, they make testable predictions and failed to be disproved experiment after experiment (you can't every prove science - only disprove a theory by offering contradictory evidence).
These theories are still incomplete. It turns out that many of the interactions that Crick said would never happen as part of the central dogma do, in fact, happen. Prions are an instance of a trait (related to a protein structure in this case) being passed directly from protein to protein. This doesn't invalidate the central dogma, it just shows that our understanding of inheritance mechanisms is incomplete.
Similarly, while natural selection is the primary driver of evolution, it is not the only one. Genetic drift theory describes how individual traits move through the population. Neutral evolution describes the process of changes at the genetic level that do not change the amino acid that a gene codes for, but may still have some impact on the fitness of the species.
So yeah, 'Darwinism' fails to explain all sorts of things that we observe in the world around us. Modern evolutionary theories do a better job, but any scientist worth his salt will tell you that we don't know everything yet, and there are still holes to filled. And the only people who refer to Darwinism are those trying to understand history, or those desperate to cling to their own spec
Re:neodarwinism (Score:2, Informative)
It's a lot of work. It's also flawed. In Judges there are so many periods tagged as lasting 40 years that it's quite clear the number should not be taken literally. Probably an idiomatic expression that means "a long time".
* Technically 769. Year notation omits the hei that represents 5000.
Re:The problem with darwinism.... (Score:4, Informative)
Although admittedly, it may be a flaw that we can learn to live with, is that it fails to answer the following: what happened, exactly, that caused non-replicating molecules to become replicating, and equally importantly, what caused large collections of such molecules in a single thing to progress from having a non-living state to being a living organism?
I find it somewhat ironic that we appear to understand and know more about the origins of the universe than we do about the existence of life on this planet.
The evidence for the origin of life on earth, whatever it may be, is a lot more fragile than the evidence for the origin of the universe. A couple billion years of geology and life destroyed most of the evidence. Some of it's still there, but the vast majority of it is gone forever.
I'd like to stress, though, that evolution doesn't have anything to do with the origin of life. The first life could have formed from chemicals in the early earth's oceans, been created by the Designer, left here by aliens, or drifted in on a comet. Doesn't matter. Evolution can't happen until life can replicate itself. It would certainly be nice to know how life came about, but it's not relevant to evolution.
Re:That is, as the Brits say, bollocks (Score:3, Informative)
Obama did a lot for emancipation of black people
You're confusing Obama with Lincoln. FYI slavery has been outlawed for so long that all the slaves are dead, and all the slaveowners are dead.
Obama, Winfrey, and Cosby have a hell of a lot more in common with Donald Trump than I do. I have a lot more in common with the black people down the street than Winfrey and Cosby do.
Racism is a tool of the rich to disguise the real evil here -- classism. Black people aren't repressed because of their race, poor black people are repressed because of their poverty.
Re:neodarwinism (Score:3, Informative)
Honestly enough, I've never really understood any but the most literal creationist's objections to evolution. I mean, why aren't they protesting dinosaurs? Isn't the Earth supposed to be too young for them to have existed?
First, many of them do protest dinosaurs. They are split into camps that claim they are a hoax and camps that claim they existed at the same time as man, within the last few thousand years. Young earth creationists, however, are a fairly small group. Old earth creationists are a much larger group. They accept that the earth has been around a long time and when dinosaurs existed. They accept heliocentrism. Both of those theories are simple and understandable to them and if a preacher tries to convince them the scientists are attacking them by teaching those theories, they stop listening to the preacher.
Evolution is a more complex idea. Most of them don't understand it and it is easy for an exploitive preacher or politician to confuse the issue and conflate evolution with the big bang theory and abiogenesis. By lumping all these theories together and calling it "darwinism" or "evo-athiesm" (two terms used a lot by preachers and not really at all by scientists or anyone else) they create further confusion and at the same time try to imply that all these theories are dependent upon one another and part of a scientific attack on religion.
Most christians and organized religions in general recognize evolution as describing what is happening in the world and can reconcile that with their religious beliefs. Some can reconcile other scientific theories as well. By lumping them, preachers can gain a wider audience and are more likely to strike a belief where the listener has no understanding. This is why only the lunatic fringe can successfully attack the existence or timeframe for dinosaurs, whereas evolution is still a useful topic for them.
Re:Maybe I didn't explain it well enough (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not sure that the standard view of sexual selection is that the feathers are a disadvantage that just happen to impress females. As you said, if the tail was a disadvantage that would seem absurd.
The peacock has what look like eyes on its tail. These have a tendency to confuse predators. This is a common defensive adaptation on a number of species.
Similarly, the way the tail fans out to makes the peacock appear much larger than it really is. This also confuses predators. This is, also, a common defensive adaptation.
The peacock's tail is an evolutionary advantage. The "sexual selection" probably evolved in females as a response to the survival advantages of having a large, elaborately patterned tail, NOT the other way around.
Re:neodarwinism (Score:2, Informative)
I wonder if the anti-evolutionists were around when I was a kid; I don't remember ever hearing about them.
Probably creationists didn't see it as a threat as much as some do now. In "Mere Christianity", CS Lewis uses the evolution of man as an analogy for man's spiritual evolution. The tone he uses when speaking of evolution is one of total acceptance; I think he basically believed evolution was all true, and expected his readers would have the same belief.
Re:How to Falsify Evolution (Score:3, Informative)
No joke, they really believe stars are powered by electricity. They will usually try to pull you in with talk of plasma and electromagnetism affecting stars and planets in unforeseen ways, and build up to the 'stars are big arc lamps!" bit once they get a nibble of interest.
Re:neodarwinism (Score:1, Informative)
Well, I am a devout christian - Catholic and would just like to note that The Pope himself has stated that evolution is not in contradiction with Church Doctrine - as far as the theories go. (And please don't drag out Galileo - surely if the Church was hell-bent on repressing Science, you'd be able to bring out more than one person over the last 2000 years. Never mind that Mendel was a Christian Monk. Never mind that Georges-Henri Lemaitre, a Catholic Priest, formulated the Big Bang theory. Etc. Look it up. I could literally go on and on. And on.)
Suffice to say, somehow it all got started from somewhere, and evolution doesn't pretend it knows the source, it just attempts to track the process. There are a lot of issues with evolution as it is taught at the high school level, one being it is often taught as fact instead of theory. The other being that specific environmentally driven phenomena, like moths changing from white wings to grey wings over several generations when smog colored the birch trees grey, somehow sums up evolution. Which is simplistic.
That survival motif, the one that says "good mutations get passed on and bad mutations don't" doesn't really explain intelligence, for example.
Take plants. If raw intelligence were such an advantage for survival, you'd think some plant would've stumbled across it by now, what with all the millions of years of competition they've got under their belt.
Frankly, from a very simple survival of the species mode, intelligence seems pretty wasteful of resources. It takes up more than it's fair share of energy, takes too long to develop to the point where the creature doesn't need constant attention, etc.
A cockroach would seem to be the pinnacle of evolution on this planet, evaluated from the "selfish gene" mind-set.
But I digress - I think the "theory" that all religious people believe evolution is a Lie of Satan is silly. We have brains, we might as well use them. The earth is not 6000 years old. The fossil record is not some sort of cosmic hoax. Neither fact disproves God. I wish people would relax and use their brains.
Re:neodarwinism (Score:3, Informative)
Most Christians are NOT fundamentalists. You lumping all God-loving people into a crazy fundamentalist camp is a worse straw-man argument than calling evolution "darwinism".
Re:How to Falsify Evolution (Score:1, Informative)
because it doesn't work like that.
it is a process of a vast many graduated steps.
not 1->1.5->2
more like 1->1.00000000000001->1.00000000000002->etc
and that's assuming the conditions being adapted to don't radically change. evolution is not a linear process with a goal in mind. it is simply what is left after random change over time.
Re:How to Falsify Evolution (Score:3, Informative)
it won't work becasue...
they will say where is the transitional fossil between this and the precious fossil.
We've got them beat even there.
Foraminifera are a phylum of really tiny aquatic animals. They live on the oceans by the trillions, and they have mineral skeletons called tests. Millions of them die every day and their tests continuously rain down on the deep dark cold inert sea floor as ideal fossils. They are continuously layered in the accumulating sea floor sediment. In the 1970's we developed new technology for deep sea oil exploration, bringing up long sediment cores from the seabed. Sediment cores that were incidentally loaded with a limitless supply of these fossils. It's an evolutionary scientist's wet dream treasure trove. A perfectly continuous and complete record spanning thousands of species over more than a hundred million years. Not merely a complete sequence of transitional species, but vast samples of entire populations continuously along individual species transitions, tracing diverse modern species back to their common ancestor. Scientists are have been examining how long each individual speciation took to occur, and examining exactly how entire populations evolved during individual speciation events.
A particularly interesting thing is that they have been studying is how and why the rate of speciation increases after each mass extinction event. In short, after an extinction event there is less competition between species. This allows the survival of more borderline-fitness high-diversity outliers speeding the diversification of the species into other ecological niches that are now vacant and exploitable, and these variants can then specialize and optimize to this new ecological niche and speciate.
The only "problem" is that most foraminifera are barely visible without a magnifying glass. They are tiny aquatic animals that most people have never heard of. Not nearly as glamorous as mammal or dinosaur fossils. It's one of the most powerful proofs of evolution, and it all flies under the radar of public discussion.
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Great book on biology history (Score:2, Informative)
Genesis: The Evolution of Biology [amazon.com] is a great book on the history of biology, pre-Darwinians like Lamarck to today's (scientific) cracks showing in the Darwinian model.