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New Science Standards Approved in Florida
anonymous_echidna writes "Florida has voted to accept the new K-12 science curriculum standards amidst a storm of controversy around the teaching of evolution, which had up until now been the scientific concept that dare not speak its name. There was a compromise made at the last minute, which was to call evolution a 'scientific theory', rather than a fact. While some lament that the change displays the woeful ignorance of science and scientific terminology, the good news is that the new curriculum emphasizes teaching the meaning of scientific terms and the scientific method in earlier grades."
I'm moving to another country where crazy isn't an approved religion.
Still, I think it would be an improvement of orders of magnitude if science classes in general focused more on:
"how did we learn this?" (i.e., the scientific method, how observations have to be done to eliminate bias, the formulation of competing theories, how experiments are designed, how hypotheses were ruled out, etc.)
as opposed to:
"here is he official list of truth that you have to memorize and then do cute IQ-test-like problems with".
The latter gives the wrong impression of what science is and why it matters.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
There have been too many occasions where the news media has persisted in "dumbing down" the terminology that they use. I even remember watching a "Faith and Values" show on CNN last year where John Edwards (the candidate, not the psychic) was asked his thoughts on Evolution which, in the words of Soledad O'brien, was the belief that man evolved from apes.
We need the news media to take the lead in helping people understand what a theory is vs. a hypothesis. How fact and theory are not opposites. The fact that a "law" is not the opposite of a theory. Too many people are getting away with murder in these debates because the termnology isn't clearly understood and the news media doesn't care to straighten it out.
Regards, Ian
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6PMhLupcYY4
I saw this guy arguing why evolution shouldn't be taught and i was literally left speechless
Live EVERY week... Like it's Shark Week
That's fair, because evolution IS a scientific theory. So is Gravity. Hopefully they'll also teach the kids what it means to be a theory, and that "theory" doesn't mean "wild-ass-guess".
Username taken, please choose another one.
Not sure that's the word said scientists would use in this context themselves...
The more dumbasses in the world, the smarter I seem! woo hoo!
Fear me, for I have studied the dark science of natural selection!
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
It is strange how a Christian will say,"Things aren't perfect now after the fall", but then they'll say,"Evolution isn't God's plan." Well how do they know that?
The 6 days of Creation match up with science on the ball when they aren't literal days as we know them, but days of God, which are explained to be any length of time in two different places in the Bible.
I wrote a chapter in my book about it, but I don't see the need to make a long post here. You can check my book on my website if you're so inclined. I updated it last week. Keep in mind that it is a rough draft.
God spoke to me.
Evolution is a fact. For example dinosaurs used to exist and they don't now; horses, dogs and cats have changed. This is accepted by everyone. What is in dispute is the explanation for that evolution. It could be caused by natural selection or by something else (certainly by something else in the case of the three animals mentioned). Natural selection is a scientific theory. So be careful with the terminology.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Isn't that like an Obama supporter lamenting that Obama was called a Presidential Candidate by the press?
What's the problem here? Evolution is a theory.
Let's face it, folks no other state has its own category on Fark.com; the utter lunacy and stupidity down there has been neatly quantified.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
I did not go through the Florida public school system, and do not know anyone who did. Still I have a hard time believing that they did not teach evolution before this... in *some* form. At least I hope they taught it, for it would be a crime against reason to omit evolution from the curriculum.
Anyone from FL wish to chime in and shed some light?
It really WOULD be nice if people knew what the hell they were talking about with this stuff. I almost wish scientists would just get together and consider changing the terminology so that the religious zealots running the country couldn't so easily dumb things down and get away with it. It's the media too, like someone previously said, but it's also the fact that people simply don't understand evolution nor do they even make an attempt to when they've got such cool catch phrases. People would rather hear, "It's Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve!" than actually examine the issue of gay marriage just like they'd rather hear "Evolution is JUST a theory!" than actually check it out or even understand what that means.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
I don't think that word means what you think it means (from a scientific standpoint)
Control the meaning of words, you control how they're percieved. For instance, most if not all the old Soviet republics considered themselves 'democratic' in that elections were held on a regular basis. Of course, there was only one slate of candidates to elect, so calling them 'democracies' was a bit of a misnomer. Likewise, their penchant for putting "People's' in front of just about everything, like 'People's Democratic Republic of'. Double whammy there...
Now, if the definition of 'approved' now means 'guaranteed not to piss off any J Random NeoCon Fundie', and 'theory' now means 'something that cannot be proved but must be taken on faith', we're in serious trouble here...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Somehow, I doubt that was the language the scientists used.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
This is one of the reasons why schools across the nation are graduating dumber and dumber children that subsequently come into the workforce and degrade goods and services because the basic academics are not taught. This simply shows that the school officials are more concerned with ridiculous and trivial details that truly have no bearing on the academic front. More concern with kids feeling good about learning only what is going to be on a test instead of just teaching the kids what they need to know. Changing the language is purely semantics. It would seem quite a bit easier to let the school teach the evolution side of the story and let the churches teach the creationism side of the story. After that let the kids decide for themselves. It is silly to just change the language to "scientific theory". It does however, lend itself to causing more confusion which creates an even lower quality graduate. Idiocracy is coming true!!! "It has Electrolytes!" Just my opinion though.
It's all fun and games until someone takes an eye out!
This is actually a good thing. A good theory stands up to scrutiny. There is not such thing as "ridiculous" challenge. Any challenge which does not deny rules of logic or observed facts has merit. If students are instilled with an extra degree of scepticism, I'd say, "good for them." Dogmatic teaching of scince as facts creates nothing but fudder for pop-culture -- it does not produce thinking minds.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The highest honor SCIENCE can bestow any idea is that of the "Theory". Science cannot claim anything to be a fact because in science, nothing is beyond disproval.
If science starts stating things are fact, and beyond disproval then the idea in question becomes dogma. Dogma is the realm of religion. Science may be your religion, but you do science a great disservice by making it so, at the expense of the scientific schema and method.
I know that the creationist/ID crowd LOVES to rub it in that evolution "is only a theory", but you've got to resist the temptation of fighting back by out-dogma-ing the dogmatists.
Evolution IS only a theory, it's among the most widely studied and tested theories of science. It's the single unifying theory of biology. Everyone say it with me: Evolution IS just a theory. The 800lb Gorrilla, bad-mother-fucker, stomp your colon theory. The king of theories.
In science, that's as good as it gets. And as science-minded people, we should know that.
THL phish sticks
Not trying to troll here, but right now we are barely at the start of understanding how these forces work. How exactly does gravity work? Can its forces be duplicated in a lab? Until then its still a really good theory and the best one so far.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The Roman Catholic church has recognized evolution essentially as fact and completely compatible with the bible. So I don't really understand what the problem is with Protestants in this country.
The only reason I see for this idiotic push to marginalize evolution and push creationism as a valid theory is because Christian conservatives see their influence on American culture slipping. This is a desperate attempt to make their religion relevant. I don't understand how this is permitted.
Evolution is a science. Creationism and Intelligent Design are not science and have no place in the science class. Those concepts don't conform to the standards established by science. There is a place for creationism, and that's the theology class.
If parents want to compromise their children's education they should do so in private schools or at home instead of trying to force this stupidity on everyone.
Yeah the fact that thetan theory is not a viable alternative to evolution makes me sad and makes poor baby Xenu cry.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
....and it seems the US is the happiest nation in the world.
Teaching evolution - does it really matter?
Evolution is the least popular theory ever proposed. It has been under continuous attack ever since it was proposed. During this time, the creationists have tried every trick they can think of to get it out of the schools. They have blamed just about every evil of society on it, and they have brainwashed millions into believing that it's incompatible with their religion. They've tried to make it illegal, and they have even tried (unsuccessfully) to disprove it. And evolution has survived all of these attacks because it is true. You can always argue that the physical evidence doesn't accurately represent reality, and of course the creationists have tried that, but it's no use when they're arguing with proper scientists.
Given this, I don't think we need to worry about evolution at all. Sure, creationists would like it to be thrown away entirely, but as long as we have scientists, that simply will not happen. You just can't do useful research in any physical science if you think the Bible has greater authority than a ton of physical evidence. There are worse problems in public schools than a bunch of nutcases wanting their crazy beliefs taught as if they were science.
There is no evidence that will convince a creationist that he is wrong. If Jesus Christ personally appeared in front of John Q. Creationist and said "Hi, John. My name's Jesus, the Earth is billions of years old and evolution is basically true," then John Q. would probably crucify him for blasphemy. That's what the fundamentalists did, the last time Jesus told them they were wrong. "Everyone" knows that God couldn't have created the Universe using evolution: he's omnipotent, sure, but he's not that omnipotent. In summary, there is no point in trying to argue with these people, their beliefs are nuts even in comparison to other Christians, so let's just ignore them..
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
For the Slashdot editors, I mean.
It's a long stretch to call evolution a "fact," and I'm not even talking from a religious standpoint here.
There are peer-reviewed, published papers that contain research that indicates that instead of being survival of the fittest, evolution proceeds along a more symbiotic path. So evolution is a first- or second-order approximation model for genetic material selection, then? For it to be labeled a "fact," it had better be damn well applicable everywhere and you should be able to precisely predict all outcomes from it. Examine the aforementioned papers and you'll find that this is not the case. For that matter, we have exactly one data point for genetic selection modeling: Earth. You'll excuse me if I wait to see how genetic selection occurs on a few other planets before accepting it as "fact."
I'm reasonably certain that one mole = 6.023 * 10^23 molecules is a fact. Evolution? Not so much. Far more precise to call it "a commonly accepted scientific theory," as that's what almost ALL science is. "Facts" and "laws" in science are pretty damned rare.
In conclusion: Slashdot editors, you just called the kettle black. Get your own terms right before slamming someone else and maybe we can have some meaningful discussion. But hey, bashing the nebulous "religious right" generates page views and advertising revenue, eh?
Every educated person knows the difference between the term "theory" in science and "theory" in legal terminology. The Florida hack confuses the two meanings again.
Theory in science means comprehensive explanation. Theory in law means hypothesis.
I'd replpace the term "theory" by "law" or "system" to prevent future confusion.
One of the conflicts I see here is the idea that evolution can be a "fact" and at the same time argue that it purely random. By being random, advocates are admitting that it does not have a pre-defined 'direction'. Evolution and De-evolution can and do both occur and since it is a random causal event, nothing can also occur making any claim of certainty quite bizarre.
How can something be a fact that is not predictable? Seems to me you can not even come up with a scientific test to prove it exists,
only that sometimes live things change for the better other times they don't. And of course if it is not random, then is it planned ?
George Carlin was right...
Anything that starts with some "There's some invisible guy, up in the sky, who can kill you, because he loves you" is deeply, persistently and fundamentally fucked up.
Creationism is merely an expression of how fucked up it is.
ANY country that has ANY religion is just as fucked up.
"Offer your sufferings to Christ" is NOT a health care policy. Got that?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
We need a large supply of inbred knuckledraggers so we still have Republicans. Personally, I lived in FL and TN for many years. If they really want a wall, it might be cool to build it on the Mason Dixon Line.
Now I'm going to get myself into trouble.
Because my understanding (as a scientist) has always been that all science was theory - scientific theory and not fact. Some scientific theories, like evolution, have so much evidence that they may as well be fact - but they're still technically not fact.
And like you said gravity is a theory. The fact there is that when I let go of an apple it ends up on the ground, that's the fact - the most sensible theory that explains that fact and other related facts is the theory of gravity. And the theory of evolution is the most sensible theory that explains the fact that there are a wide range of different types of animals and plants on this planet. Creationism and ID are also theories - not scientific theories because they cannot stand up to testing by the scientific method. (And yes FSM is a theory too).
So let baby have his bottle - tell them "Yeah! Evolution is a scientific theory - and a damned good one at that." That'll stump them.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I'll stick to countries where I don't have to worry about whether a religion is "approved" or not.
Uh. I fully believe the Theory of Evolution to be correct, at least in its generalities (most theories can be improved), but that doesn't mean it's not a theory. It is no more a fact than Newtonian theories of motion (which turned out to be wrong!) What's wrong with them representing it as the theory it is?
Simply put, it is theory, in the same way that gravity pulls is a theory. The chance that the theory is wrong approaches infinity, but there is still a minute chance for error.
--
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo. Burn. Harsh. Actually, my girl friend became my wife years ago, and I read the book that your signature is from to our son just a few nights back. But all these details clog up the simplicity of the joke.
The only time such a level of detail actually helps the joke is in a case like the 'Pink Monkey' joke or the 'Flower' joke which rely on the excessive use of details to make the joke funny. But getting a 5-15 minute long joke off is more of an art form, rarely seen these days. No, the simpler the better, especially in type, for todays crowd. That's why jokes like, "What do you call a boomerang that won't come back?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
If religious representatives insist on arguing over science standards, scientists need to barge in on all the other curricula and insist on arguing over the definitions of words in their syllabuses too. Start by telling all the comparative religion classes to teach kids that the bible being the word of god is an unsubstantiated, non-scientific hypothesis.
he stickers read, "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
So how is this different just because its Florida? I remember Cobb County getting lampooned for stating a fact, if for the wrong reasons.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
and its WRONG!
Einstein's theory of gravity is more accurate but still doesn't explain why gravity exists.
There are lost of theories which seek to explain more and more about what IS.
We're refining the decimal points trying to eliminate error.
We don't need some idiot saying some stupid phrase like "Its the will of [insert name of deity here]"
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
When people call theories facts, they are saying "I know" when they should be saying "I think, maybe I believe, but I don't know."
I think you mean that the chance approaches zero. If it's approaching infinity, I'd say it's likely wrong.
Evolution is NOT a fact. It is a theory.
Gravity itself is also NOT a fact. It is a physical property of matter that we can observe, measure, and of which we cannot deny the existance. The *existance* of gravity may well be deemed a fact, but all our maths that describe gravity are still only theories too. The best minds in the world of physics are still struggling to come up with an explanation that accurately describes what exactly gravity really is, and what causes matter to have it.
The best minds in the world of zoology are also still struggling to come up with explanations of how *exactly* evolution could explain how one species of critter evolved from another. And they're still stumped. Only an uneducated simpleton who blindly believes that mammals somehow evolved from reptiles will buy the theory of evolution without detailed and accurate explanation or proofs.... just like the same kind of simpleton blindly believes that all critters were suddenly willed into existance, like *poof* all at once.
I firmly believe in God the Creator, but am blessed with a smart enough brain to understand that God is very complex, and that his Creation may very well have taken hundreds of millions, or even billions of the time units we call "years" to accomplish, and the exact mechanisms he used to create life and diversify all the species are so very far beyond our minds' capabilities to figure it all out at this point in our existance. Maybe someday we'll know how it all was all put together, but as for today... both the groups who claim that "Evolution is FACT" and "Six-24-hour-days creation is FACT" are both equally as ignorant as the same kind of group who once said "The universe orbits around the Earth and that's a FACT". God and the universe and all about how life came into existence and to be so diverse on this planet is all just a wee bit more sophisticated than we humans can thoroughly and accurately explain at this time. We've got some good clues into some parts of it, but we're still a huge long ways off from really complete understanding it.
After all, this is the backwater town that recently booed Bill Nye off the stage for daring to posit that the moon merely reflected the sun's light, and wasn't a light emitter. They seem to be tailor made for each other.
I have a question. Evolution basically works due to a constant sequence of genocides. Other parties may be active or passive participants in these genocides, but they basically follow eachother constantly.
...
Either others actively participate in these genocides (e.g. the relation between different species of mouses and the participating eagle), or they are merely passive participants, competing for resources (e.g. the fact that trees will attempt to cut off other plants from the sunlight, monopolizing it).
Now we come to my difficulty. Exactly what happens if we apply this to humans ? And if it is the straightforward application, ie. humans are also involved in active and passive genocides, even if only by competing for limited means and that there is nothing that can ever be done to stop it
Then I have 3 questions :
1) "believers" in evolution always leave this part out, and a lot of them paint themselves of as pacifist. To say that evolution's position is non-pacifist is an extreme understatement ?
2) wouldn't you rather believe that capitalism (with it's theory of continuous growth, thereby enabling humanity to take care of any offspring it has, however many they are, thereby negating the need for active genocides within the human race) is right ? It seems trivial that "redivision of wealth" policies like e.g. the democrats propose can only lead to more active genocides (even if they are not expected tomorrow in the US, their arrival under those politics cannot be prevented according to evolution).
3) same question, but for environimentalism and "lasting" development. The basic premise of evolution is that no matter what resources you have it's going to run out. So either environmentalism must go for a "one child" policy (world-wide, so presumably imposed by violence) and it's not a given that they could support the current 6 billion humans, much less the, oh, 15 billion, by 2050.
Unless conflicting positions don't bother you at all. But obviously reality will come crashing down hard if you go for a conflicting position.
R(k)
Evolution is a theory. That's the point of science.
We need to focus more on teaching the scientific method.
From the article itself:
She said the concept of evolution is essential to understanding 21st century biology and that, in her opinion, "people who have never been taught evolution in the first place don't understand that it doesn't really undermine religion." "I'm a lifelong Methodist and I find no conflict between my spiritual life and my rational, scientific self," she said. Walker isn't alone. The Clergy Letter Project, a Butler University initiative that works to dispel the notion that religion and science are at odds, has garnered 11,183 signatures from clergy members who say teaching evolution does not undermine religion.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Evolution is a "fact" now? So, then, the worldviews that admit only material causal mechanisms are -absolutely guaranteed- to lose in every sense possible? Nice.
(sits back, drinks a beer, and waits for natural selection and entropy to take their inevitable course)
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
They should also refer to the 'Theory of gravity' as 'the Scientific Theory of gravity'.
I am not a christian, or even religous. I have come to the conclusion that science has basically become a new religion. If you question anything in science, you get a bunch of zealots who attack you equally as much as if you questioned a religion. I am sure you many of those types of replies to this post. That is not to say that evolution did not happen, but I am saying that is has not been "proven" and should not be taught as a FACT.
I feel that teaching our children that theories (even well evidenced ones) are facts causes some long term problems. If our children believe that theories are facts, then there is little reason to question them. Also, later in life, if we discover that some of these facts are wrong, then it will cause them to question science as a whole (or, at least it should). We have already disproven enough "facts" that it weakens many scientific arguements.
We (as a whole) have also tried to over simplfy evolution. A lot of people that I have talked to (including some high school and college students) thought that evolution was "linear" so it made "perfect" sense. When I explained that evolution was not linear, they became much more confused and seemed to question (well, at first, they just questioned me) science.
For example, they did not realize some of the weird anomolies that evolution supports. They thought that algea became fish, which became amphebians, which became lizards, until we finally evolved into humans.
When I explained to them that the evolution of whales, they did not believe me and thought that I was "making things up". Basically, whales evolved from fish, into amphebians, into mammals.... Then they "evolved" back into "fish", and then into whales (and dolphins, porpuses, ectcetra).
Personally, as a child, I was very upset to find out that a lot of the "facts" I was taught were in fact, incorrect. I also find that science seems to have become more a religion that an observation and peer reviewed system. For exmample: To me (and I am alone here, I know), when I studied the big bang theory (which was taught to me as a fact) my world crumbled when I realized that it did not mathmatically make sense.
Even more to my horror, is later when I discovered (they came out much later) the "dark matter" and "dark energy" theories. And instead of just addmitting that the theory was wrong, we made a new theory (dark matter) to try to "fix" the theory and claimed that we cannot see over %75 percent of the (equally distruted) matter in space because it is "naturally camaflauged". Since "dark matter" holds all of existance together, I call it the "super glue of the universe"...
Later, we realized that the universe now expanding (at an alarming rate) faster than it should based on the dark matter theory. So, instead of just admitting that maybe we were wrong and look for a different theory altogether, science has created another theory to "fix" the old broken one. This theory is that "dark energy" (which is also "natrually camaflagued") is ripping the universe apart. Combined with dark matter, this accounts for over %95 of all the matter in existance.
That is right, scienctist (tend to) scoff at religion, but believe that the universe is being ripped apart by some undetecable "dark energy". They (tend to) fault people who have blind faith in anything... except for thier own "scientific" beliefs.
.
references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_evolution
Its funny (sad) how people will quit going to a store, website, restaurant, etc. if they feel that they are not getting what they paid for, but people will keep sending their kid to a failing public school. Nearly every state has had a similar story about how education was hijacked by some group (usually religious), there is a big uproar, then after a short period of time those same people laugh the next time it happens somewhere else.
FYI, not all private schools are religious. Also, not all that homeschool their kids are doing it for religious reasons.
1) Tell kids they were adopted and are now part of "The Matrix"
2) Become a child psychologist
3) Profit !!!
Makes just as much sense as Intelligent Design or Creationism.
I also find it hard to believe that they evolved.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
....That we teach religion not as fact, theory, or even hypothesis. Teach it as what it is, make-believe for grown-ups!
I mean, since there is absolutely zero evidence or logic behind said stories, why give them credit that they most certainly do not deserve? It's only fair, right?
I'm not being sarcastic, either (for a change!). I'm dead serious. I think people should be taught at a young age that they should question, back-up, and study everything before "believing" in something. I am astounded by how we're touting our ability to use logic when so many of us still call blind faith "Truth". Maybe that would help alleviate some of the "crazy nut-job" issues we're having these days... Our education system is fudged, right now. Being the so called "leader of the free world", we should be #1 or a close second/third. Everything from funding of the teachers, to what the teachers teach, even HOW they teach what they teach.
Internet: Serious Business
So does Will Wright's spore fall more in line with Evolution or Creationism?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Yeah, and there's a theory of string (rather than string theory) because strings are a factual phenomena, I use them to tie my shoes everyday.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Don't remember where I found this one but it seems to fit in with this thread.
Christianity
The belief that some cosmic, Jewish zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.
Makes perfect sense.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
The "Theory of Evolution" is not "Evolution."
"Evolution" is a proven fact. Organisms evolve over time. It has been documented, proved, case closed. Again: it is a fact that organisms evolve. Score one for science and zoology.
Now, the more complex question, why do certain evolutionary steps take place? That is subject to theory and speculation, research, anthropology, and study. Did human being evolve from "lesser" primates? Almost certainly, barring some unforeseen UFO landing (8 million years to earth -- Quatermas and the pit) or divine intervention, the fossil record is pretty conclusive.
What is most interesting is the path from lesser primate to our current form, we still do not know everything. For instance, it seems that perhaps the Neanderthals re-joined the genetic pool rather than simply die off.
The problem is that religious fools require absolute certainty in everything but religion. The evolution of human beings is far more proven then genesis, but they "believe" genesis as "gospel." So, evolution and the path between single cell life and 21st century human beings has to be 100% documented with no missing steps or ambiguous lineage or it is just a wild theory and therefor no more valid than what they already believe.
They are, by definition, unreasonable. Unfortunately, "unreason" is the common sense of the day because we "elite" thinkers don't represent "real" America.
Eventually these sorts of people will die off or fade away... there are no scientific facts though so I guess they're right "theory"... the "theory" of gravity in classical physics... the "theory" of math... the "theory" of religion...
Well, that's OK since Newtons law/fact of gravity is in fact wrong, and has been replaced by Einsteins theory of relativity!
But anyways...
The problem is that evolution most certainly is NOT a scientific theory!
Darwin's hypothesis that there was an hereditory mechanism for individual traits could be considered a theory, but certainly not any more since DNA has been discovered is certainly a fact.
Since evolutionary fitness is defined as the capability to preferentially survive and leave numerous offspring in a given environment, "survival of he fittest" is merely a shothand tautology, as is evolution towards greater fitness, given genetic coding of traits. Nothing remotely theoretical about it.
Speciation is nothing more than evolution of (geographically, culturally, or whatever) seperated subgroups of an existing species to the point that their DNA has diverged sufficient that they can no longer interbreed. By definition if you can't interbreed you are a new species, and lack of interbreeding means seperate evolutionary paths from that initial no-going-back forking point. Whoopee, new species, and the tree of life.
Darwin's "Origin of Species" is therefore, given the existence of DNA, most certainly a fact.
I think most people don't really have a clue what the "theory of evolution" is anyway. Darwin never used such a title, and I think in the popular imagination this is equated with a scientific origin of life in the first place, which is a issue. Sure evolution could have given rise to life, and almost certainly did, but speciiation is bound to ensue regardless of where DNA based life came from in the first place.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
...then you have to believe that God has been intelligently designing diseases to be more resistant to antibiotics. Maybe to keep the threat of plague on the table?
There may be some question as to whether man evolved from apes (although the evidence is pretty overwhelming), but we can see evolution in other organisms occur literally before our eyes.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
"Theory" of Gravity? Gravity is not a Theory; it's a Law. You might do well to go back to school and study the basics of science again. Evolution is a Theory because there are still scientific doubts and inaccuracies about it to prevent it from becoming a Law. That is why proponents like to call it a "fact," because it has not been scientifically established as a Law. Note: Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
Everybody knows that "Theory of Gravity" is so flawed, but thankfully it's all been resolved with "Intelligent Falling"
I don't think I'm who's misusing his terms. It's best to follow your own advice on this particular topic my friend.
http://www.mhall119.com
You need to read this.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
you might as well teach the Native American belief that we are only here because a giant bird scooped up some mud from the ocean and dropped it in the sun. The dried mud became humans. We've been around ever since. Works for me anyway. Also, if you fail math, you go to hell because there is no room in heaven for children who can't do long division!
Somewhere in a dark place you will find:
www.m1
I like to think of the slashdot crowd as relatively well educated. When they have so much dissent over what theories and facts are you know the 'common man' is going to have no clue.
Fact: In a scientific sense, facts are just repeatably observable phenomena.
Gravity is a fact - things fall when dropped.
Evolution is a fact - hereditary traits change from generation to generation
Scientific theory: An attempt to explain a set of observed phenomena by making testable predictions. Theories are always open for debate and improvement if their predictions turn out to be falsified. Scientific 'laws' are just another name for theories. There is no difference between the two.
Newtons laws (theories) of motion - predict the motion of objects
Newtons law of universal gravitation - predict the forces exerted between objects by gravity - proven insufficient by GR
General theory of relativity - one of the current leading theories to explain gravitation but as with all theories is very much under assessment
The modern theory of biological evolution - this is a combination on several validated theories concerning how populations change over time. It includes items such as natural selection, mutation and sexual selection.
Save the whales... Collect the whole set.
I feel that teaching our children that theories (even well evidenced ones) are facts causes some long term problems.
They're not teaching that theories are facts, they are teaching what the facts are (species change, ie "the fact of evolution"), and what the possible explanations are (ie, "the theory of evolution").
So, instead of just admitting that maybe we were wrong and look for a different theory altogether, science has created another theory to "fix" the old broken one.
So instead of admitting they were wrong and coming up with a new theory, they.... admitted they were wrong came up with a new theory?
I thought you had to be retired to live there, and the only reason they kept the colleges around was to give folks something to watch on TV in the afternoon. Oh, and sell license plates. But you're telling me they actually try to educate children in the state? I don't believe it.
Evolution is both Fact and Theory as is Gravity. We can observe evolution is action (otherwise there would be no need to fear AvianFlu) and we can use the Theory of evolution to explain it. Same with Gravity. Interestingly we do not really have a good Theory of Gravity despite most people treating it as a Fact. They stress the observable phenomenon over the scientific Theory of explanation. For Evolution it is the other way around.
Help fight continental drift.
Examine the following formula:
F = (G * m1 * m2) / d^2
Where
m1 = mass of first body
m2 - mass of 2nd body
d^2 = Distance between two bodies centre of mass squared.
G = Einstein's Gravitational constant
This only predicts the attractive force between two bodies (m1, m2), if you try and apply it to three bodies you have to approximate two of the bodies into one. Sometimes this works well but sometimes it falls down.
The other main issue is the value of G. 6.67 * 10^-11 is an awful number that Einstein hated. This was one of reasons why he spent the entire rest of his life searching for something better in the form of a Grand Theory of Everything. Unfortunately he never found it.
My point after all this Physics rambling is that everything is a theory and should be taught accordingly. You should teach that the most important skill is to question everything, especially with regard to science. Nothing is set in stone when it comes to science and our understanding of the universe since we view everything from a very narrow perspective.
I think that Darwin's theory of evolution is far more likely to explain how we came to be on this earth than any junk involving Adam and Eve. The entire Bible is a series of metaphors to try and illustrate how we should live our lives. We should very soon be at a state when we can ditch all religions and just act in a humane manor for humanities sake alone. At least, I hope we should since the bible is getting very old now and although the morals of the stories have not changed the actual settings are becoming less and less relevant with each passing decade.
I dont read
Florida is the diseased phallus of America, the poster-child for state government corruption.
Take Clearwater for instance.
Anyone familiar with the topic knows that there are great gaps in the fossil record, such that the tooth of an extinct pig in Nebraska gave rise to the scientific community filling in the "evolutionary history" of homo sapien sapien with "Nebraska Man".
Been there, Done that, Sold the t-shirt to the next idiot in line
Not quite.
1. They realized the the old theory was wrong. Instead of re-evaluating the theory, they ADDED a new theory to cover up the holes in the current one.
Later, they added yet another new theory to cover up the blantent holes in the both the original and the new theory.
2. My main point was that it was being taught as a fact. Obviosly, it was not as "factual" as it was supposed to be.
If you had read the article, you'd realise that there is no mention of creationism at all. Not in the article nor in the final curriculum objectives as decided by the State School Board.
Been there, Done that, Sold the t-shirt to the next idiot in line
A scientific theory explains scientific facts.
When you drop an apple, it falls, that is a fact of gravity. A THEORY of gravity explains WHY that apple fell. That theory can also make predictions as to what happens in other areas. For example, the theory of gravity predicted that in a vacuum, all object fall at the same velocity regardless of mass. This is testable, and was proven true, thus giving creedence to the theory.
The same is with evolution. When we find strange-looking hominid fossils that have both human and ape traits, the fact that those animals once existed is a fact of evolution. The theory of evolution explains why we found those creatures, because they eventually developed into us, and that we are related to the great apes. When the DNA molecule was discovered and the field of genetics launched, evolution predicted that we would have very similar DNA to the great apes, and we did. Evolution even explains why we have one fewer chromosome pair: some time in our evolution two pairs fused and now form our chromosome #3.
This is precisely why Intelligent Design is not science. It doesn't explain why we share similar DNA to the great apes. It doesn't explain the existence of pre-human ancestors. It doesn't explain why just Chromosome #3 is actually two pairs fused together. The only answer it offer is "it was all part of the Intelligent Designer's plan," which is an untestable, unfalsifiable, and therefore unscientific claim. Evolution is testable, and it's falsifiable. If Chromosome #3 did not have evidence of being two pairs at one time, or if all the fossils we ever found were modern animals that exist in their present form, Evolution would have been in serious trouble.
Science is about providing an explanation for what we do know, not speculating on what we don't know.
At one time, when the issue of teaching religion in California schools was being discussed, I suggested that there be a "California Religion Book", put together like California ballot pamphlets.
Each religion with at least 1% market share in California would get a section. Smaller religions could combine, if desired, to get above 1%. There'd be an introduction with neutral information (headquarters, leadership, number/percent of adherents in California/US/World, symbols, official texts, etc.) Each religion would provide text and images for its own section, with a maximum page count. Drafts of those sections would be circulated to all the players, and each could then provide rebuttal arguments, as in our ballot pamphlets. Sections would be in cyclic alphabetical order, like names on ballots.
An introductory section would contain comparison tables of features: monotheism/polytheism/other, central/distributed authority, core beliefs.
That would put teaching of religion on a sound basis.
Those of us in the southern part of the state tend to be liberal. Not even liberal. Just not conservative.
Celebrating the birth of my first son last month gives me the right to weigh in on stuff like this.
I remember a time when evolution was taught in the schools of south florida as a scientific theory which happened to be as true as other scientific theories like gravity.
It has been only recently that this 'christian' revival has started to grip society in larger numbers. I witnessed a 'church' grow from a storefront behind a local grocery store, to a large corporation with tens of thousands of members and a quite large property complex with multiple new buildings. You know who you are calvary! Organizations like this have spread to every community in America. They shun science in favor of fiction. They try to tell you how to live your life.
This reminds me of the mayor of Fort Lauderdale (a member of a 'christian church') trying to spend $200k of public money on robotic toilets for the beach so he could prevent gay sex. Seeing how the sister municipality of wilton manors is one of the largest gay enclaves on the planet, he got smacked down pretty fast.
Keep your religion in your 'church'.
Evolution has been publicly accepted for decades. I want it taught in public schools.
They're using their grammar skills there.
In all fairness, he told them they were wrong and then tore shit up in the holiest temple of both Judaism and the Jewish people. It's not as though they weren't subject to the occasional prophet coming along and calling them out.
It's about how you connect to your audience.
By suggesting one can 'observe' gravity, yet not be able to observe evolution is complete nonsense and absolute avoidance of the obvious.
If you were to take a population of black haired people, and a population of white haired people, let them breed then separate the offspring into two groups isolated from each other and placed into different environmental conditions (ex. low-light/ cold vs. tropic/hot) you would see characteristic differences develop over time.
This is something that we DO observe, have observed, and continue to observe. To pretend that isn't true is typical of people who argue that evolution isn't scientific fact.
Ironically they are all to willing to believe some omnipotent man-shaped god in the sky that nobody has ever seen, is fact. Far more ridiculous is that this 'imaginary' super-being has created the above mentioned differing populations (magically from the same lineage, yet created by gods magic wand instantaneously, instead of selective adaptation). Just why is it that things we can see are no longer 'fact', and things that don't exist are?
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Theory means more than one thing, and even a lot of scientists can't elucidate the difference.
Def 1: "hunch" "guess" or "hypothesis". This is the sense that creationists mean when they say "evolution is just a theory". It's not technically correct to use theory this way in science, but people (even scientists) do all the time when speaking colloquially. ("If my theory is correct...") This is a problem - scientists should be careful not to speak this way, and when they do, they muddy the waters and make openings for the creationists.
Def 2: A model that explains all the known facts and has survived at least some testing. "The theory of evolution" and "the theory of special relativity", as phrases, mean this kind of theory. Unfortunately, theories of this definition vary quite a bit in their level of confidence and/or the amount of testing they have undergone.
Def 3: A set of principles, assumptions, and a body of work underlying a certain field. What exists when a def 2 theory has been confirmed so well and so long that it is assumed as true and used as the base principles for an entire field of scientific endeavor. Examples: "Evolutionary theory" is the understanding of DNA, mutation, genetics, heritability, natural selection and evolutionary descent that gives the inseparable background for all of biology. "Atomic theory" is the understanding of atom structure, valence electron, orbitals, quantum states, and bonds that underlies all of chemistry.
Science is a century past def. 2 "the theory of evolution" and long since completely employing def. 3 "evolutionary theory".
The key thing about a Type 3 theory is that it is so key to its field that it has become inseparable. Trying to understand contemporary research in biology while "rejecting evolution" is 100% as stupid as trying to understand chemistry while "rejecting the atom".
Atomic and Evolutionary theory are quite parallel: both arose as type 2 theories in the 19th century, replacing prior assumptions held by most knowledgeable people (special creation and infinitely divisible matter), and through decades of continuously accumulated support and evidence became essentially irrefutable type 3 theories by early in the 20th century. Both actually had inklings all the way back to the ancient Greeks but didn't become coherent (def. 2) theories until missing pieces and observations were filled in by Rutherford and Darwin.
When talking to creationists I often employ the analogy of a faith that demanded that atoms aren't real and that matter is continuously divisible because some allegorical section of their holy book could be read that way. It's easy to imagine:
"And on the second day, The Lord took the clay he had created and divided it in two, and again to make four, and again indefinitely until he had enough lumps of clay. And he fashioned their myriads into the earth, and the stars, and the waters, and the clouds, and every living thing, and every stone, and every grain of sand."
Suppose such a faith demanded that science classes miseducate their children with that obviously unsupportable position based on that one passage of text. That would only be conceivable to people who really don't understand the facts (if the atom isn't real, how in hell did we make the atomic bomb?), and it would be hazardous to our kids.
To anyone who understands biology, creationism is misguided on a nearly identical level. (if evolution isn't real, why do genetic drift/mutation accumulation, genetic structure analysis, morphological structure analysis, and the fossil record *all* produce a broadly similar tree of life? Why do we find literally billions of fossils of extinct intermediate species that fit that tree? Why do we find that every structure both macroscopic and microscopic looks like an adapted version of some preexisting structure that filled a different role?)
If God exists, He used evolution in the same way he used atoms. End of story.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
http://www.mhall119.com
I thought this sounded bizarre, and when I googled it, I found a lot of sources repeating this story, but no reliable ones. Lots of anti-fundamentalist blogs or other non-journalistic sources.
Do you have a credible link?
Or you can just use an integral form of the gravitational force equation...
Not that it would be any easier to solve for, but at least it would take 3+ bodies into account in a single formula.
I'm not disagreeing with your assertion that the current theories of gravity are flawed, just that nonsense about approximating two bodies into one.
Or...am I missing something and owe an apology?
You can't "teach" someone who has a deeply held emotional bond to something that is contrary to what you are teaching, at least most of the time. Really your best bet is to try to fit what you're telling them into their superstition. e.g. explain that evolution can still happen, maybe their "God" kicked off the whole shebang and let 'er rip. This buys into their Intelligent Design philosophy (which they call "science", but you won't win that battle).
Even more precisely, we are apes. We are in the ape superfamily Hominoidea, and inside that in the Great Ape family Hominidae. Within that family, we are in a closely related subgroup (tribe Hominini) that includes both us and the two chimpanzee species Pan paniscus and Pan troglodytes, with gorillas and orangutans being more distant relatives.
So it is not correct to say "both us and the apes evolved from a common ape-like ancestor", because "the apes" includes Homo sapiens and also because said ancestor would likewise be classified as an ape. (i.e. not "ape-like", but an actual ape.)
Correctly put, the sentence should be:
"We and the other extant apes descend from a common ancestral ape that is now extinct."
How's that for pedantry?
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
This is what I hear whenever religious proponents come within hearing distance of PUBLIC, STATE-FUNDED schools.
I truly miss the times in our nation's history when State and Religion were two separate, differential ideas.
I think that there is some general confusion about what a theory is. Theory is arrived at based on a set of tested hypotheses (grounded in a number of given facts)? Facts are the things that bolster scientific theory. To my knowledge, no one has published a biological law. No one has published a tested hypothesis in regard to ID or creationism (meaning to test a statistical and biological null and alternative hypothesis). I just don't understand the whole "it's just a theory" thing. Isaac Newton's Theory of Gravity is also "just a theory" but seems to describe some fundamentals of nature that we take advantage of daily.
I suspect evolution would make better inroads if schools would do a better job of presenting the data and research behind the theory rather than just teaching the conclusions. Darwin's original ideas are interesting, but it's the harmony of data from so many unrelated fields that make the conclusions particularly credible. Besides, if schools really want to teach science, kids need to learn to be critical of these ideas instead of just blindly accepting what's in the textbooks.
one of a few. One could argue about precise words here, evolution is a theory vs. theory of evolution and so on, but it can't be called a fact if we want to be scientific about it. So they are quite right calling it a theory.
Gravitational theory is still just theory. It's called theory because we have no idea what else might be out there in the universe that could make us re-think how gravity functions. It's a theory because, though we have plenty of proofs, there is still a possibility (however slim) that we're wrong. The same is true for evolutionary theory. No matter how many proofs we currently have, we still don't have enough to call it a law of nature. There is a very specific, scientific reason the "theory of evolution" hasn't become the "law of evolution."
I don't see what's so wrong with teaching evolution. I mean, honestly, if God does exist, then he created this place for sentient beings to explore and understand. That means: science. And if science points to evolution, then my question becomes: why couldn't God have used evolution to create humans? I cannot see the God that the Bible describes planting "fake evidence" on the earth and then laughing at us as we try to figure it out. That's just plain rubbish.
Evolution as the origin of life is a theory. It can't be reproduced under controlled circumstances using the Scientific Method. Any of you who believe Evolution as fact have made a leap of faith and are in essence practicing your own religion. The most sophisticated person would understand the difference between fact and theory. They would also accept Evolution and religion at the same time since they do not contradict each other. Or at least TOLERATE the other. Many of you people have to stop being haters and learn to tolerate.
Here's the problem. The word "evolution" is being used in two very different senses. The differences of scale do, indeed, make the words very different.
One use is for the small changes within a species over time. The "bird beaks". The deterioration of vision in humans. MRSA. These are all things that genetics easily explains. These are all evolution "facts".
The other sense covers "origin of life". Sludge turned into slime which turned into fish which turned into whatever. That's the "big E" Evolution. And yes, I know, I'm oversimplifying it alot. These are all the "could be's". These are all the ones where nobody was there to actually see it happen, so it's a theory that it is how it DID happen.
Two very different senses: these things were observed vs. these things we think happened. These observed facts vs. a theory about how unobserved results were obtained.
It is almost inevitable that whenever someone who argues for the latter, Big-E Evolution meets someone who doesn't believe in the Big-E version, the believer switches to talking about the little-E version and insults the non-believer for ignoring the "facts" of little-e evolution.
Yes, MRSA "evolved". That's a fact. A genetic mutation in non-MRSA resulted in a strain that was resistant. Simple genetics, and we can duplicate it in the lab as well as observe it in nature. Little-E evolution occurs.
BUT, little-E evolution does not prove Big-E Evolution. "This can happen" is not proof that "this did happen".
That's why "the theory of evolution" refers to Big-E evolution and is quite accurate in claiming that it is, indeed, only a theory. Science will not ever be able to convert Big-E evolution into a fact, since there is no method of proving how something DID happen, only ways to show how it COULD HAVE happened.
Maybe Big-E evolution did happen. Maybe the world was created to look as if it did. You cannot differentiate between the two, and little-E evolution does nothing to prove or disprove either.
Wait, so the Theory of Evolution is not a theory?
On behalf of the people of the state of Florida. I would just like to say.
I apologize
Sincerely
An anonymous cowardly Floridian
Examine the following formula:
F = (G * m1 * m2) / d^2
Where m1 = mass of first body m2 - mass of 2nd body
d^2 = Distance between two bodies centre of mass squared. G = Einstein's Gravitational constant
This only predicts the attractive force between two bodies (m1, m2), if you try and apply it to three bodies you have to approximate two of the bodies into one. Sometimes this works well but sometimes it falls down.
If you wanted to try and apply this to more than two bodies you'd need a formula which took account of the forces being vector quantities. Which would be several times more complex a formula in the first place...
The other main issue is the value of G. 6.67 * 10^-11 is an awful number that Einstein hated.
How is this more "awful" than C or Pi?
Expelled the Movie
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
> No one has witnessed Macro-Evolution (changes from one species to another).
Perhaps you ought to have a glance at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Mind you if you come back in 10 minutes (or anything less than 2 weeks) we will know you haven't read it. Especially if you post a random link to "Answers in Genesis".
I can understand the confusion here, given the really inconsistent use of terminology (conjecture, hypothesis, theory, law) by scientists, but who the hell modded this informative??? Mods, if you don't know anything about a subject then you probably should refrain from doling out the "informative" judgment. There have been at least two successful theories of gravity and many other hypotheses with some support.
The first was due to Newton, and it was, indeed, a theory in the modern sense. Newton postulated that the movement of celestial bodies was due to a mutual force of attraction between them and that this force existed not only between celestial bodies but all bodies and was, therefore, responsible for gravity on Earth as well. So it was an idea of how to relate many observations (of planetary motion and gravity on Earth) together, not just a summary of empirical observations. At the time many people not only didn't believe this idea but found it absurd. However, Newton's theory agreed with the empirical observations of Kepler, and the idea that all bodies have a gravitational force between them was later verified (and quantified) in the Cavendish experiment. It may be confusing that we refer to this as "Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation", but that simply reflects how scientific terminology has changed over the centuries. In today's vocabulary, this would be considered a theory of gravity.
The second theory of gravity was Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. It was again a radical shift in our understanding of gravity. It agreed with then current observations, but it also made predictions: Two early successes were the observation by Eddington of gravitational lensing of light and the calculation of the precession of the perihelion of Mercury.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
...but isn't theory the whole point of scientific investigation?
Science shouldn't be interested in holding out theory as fact, or absolute truth. Science is all about theoretical understandings based on experimental observations. If at any point the data don't correspond to your theoretical understanding, you junk the theory and start over with the new data. It doesn't seem to me that calling evolution a "theory" should cause any serious scientific mind to blow fuses.
After Newton, we had a theory of gravity and motion that was widely accepted as gospel by the scientific community for two hundred years. It was as much a bedrock understanding in physics as evolution is in biology. Then Einstein came along and the understanding changed. Maybe someday Einstein's theories (and they are properly so called) will also be revised.
So I don't understand the saber rattling that goes on every time someone suggests we call evolution a "theory"--that is, the best understanding we have based on the available information. Anyone who thinks it should be enshrined as anything more than that is guilty of the same rabid attachment to dogma as the Christian fundies.
... nice to know that the jew, and the muslim et al, accept evolution...
Except you do need a cosmological constant for a universe expanding like ours. See this is how fucking smart Einstein was, even his greatest mistake is totally correct. When you or I do something right, it still ends up fucked up half the time.
However, there is nothing preventing them from teaching accurately what a theory means in science, and dispelling the falsehood that there is some level of evidence at which a "theory" gets promoted to a "fact" or a "law."
Ramen.
That's using your noodle!
Basically, it is all gas exchange across membranes. So a gill will absorb oxygen from air to some extent, and a lung will absorb oxygen from water to some extent. It is actually easier to get oxygen from air than water, because the concentration of oxygen is higher (you can breathe highly oxygenated liquids for a short time, although it is very tiring, and it is hard to get rid of the liquid so that you can breathe air again). While a land-dwelling animal has little need to maintain the ability to extract low levels of oxygen from water, it is easy to see how the ability to extract oxygen from air can be advantageous to some fish, such as those that might be caught in drying pools or in eutrophic waters where the oxygen has all been consumed.
You don't need it for an expanding universe, but you do need it for an accelerating universe. Though of course the value is completely different.
http://www.mhall119.com
I am a scientist, and I know that in science, "theory" means any generalization or explanation that is well supported by experimental or observational evidence.
A "tautology," of course, is a statement that logically must be true, so any valid mathematical equatioin or logical proof is a tautology. Since a scientific theory must be logical, it necessarily contains embedded within it one or more tautologies, but it goes beyond that in that its conclusions constitute predictions about the physical world that can be tested to evaluate whether or not the premises are correct.
Warning: Gravity is Only a Theory
by Ellery Schempp
All physics textbooks should include this warning label:
This textbook contains material on Gravity. Universal Gravity is a theory, not a fact, regarding the natural law of attraction. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered. See link for fun article.
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p67.htm
so isn't a theory, or at least not a SCIENTIFIC theory.
Try this with a creationist: when will the next new species come along and why?
You can observe gravity? What does it look like?
Normal people are unable to observe gravity. All the rest of us can see is various objects moving around in various ways. We theorize that commonalities in this motion can be explained by an unobservable force that we call "gravity." Of course, we haven't observed every single moving object in the universe, only a small sampling of moving objects in our own region, so we can never be sure that our theory is correct. What is worse, there is good reason to believe that our mathematical description of this invisible force is not entirely correct, because the equations don't seem to work right under certain conditions--conditions where it is hard to make any kind of observations.
Very well put.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Things falling to the ground is a fact; one explanation for it is Newton's theory of gravitation, also called gravity.
Actually not true. That things have fallen to the ground is a fact. That they will continue to do so is a prediction based on previous observation. All you have observed is that every object in the past has fallen when you let it go. However that is not a guarantee that tomorrow you won't find an object, let it go, and find it 'falling' upwards.
The example you give is a good point in kind. Newtonian gravity, while fine for apples falling on your head, cannot explain the orbital precession of Mercury or gravitational lensing. This is why we have General Relativity. The only scientific facts are past observations. Theories are predictions of what will happen in various circumstances based on those past observations.
-Scientific consensus circa the sixteenth century.
As a scientific theory, evolution is nice. But it's just that, a theory. In these creationism vs. evolution debates, evolution has become a religion. Something people take at face value, not understanding the reasoning behind it. "The preacher says:" has become "The scientist says:"
because it doesn't work at really high speeds or really freaking small sizes.
However, we still don't fall off the planet.
PS would it be OK to answer some kids question about religion with "well, it's a fairy tale for grown ups"? Technically true, but "fairy tale" has connotations in common usage that are not welcome.
So can we?
Regardless, evolution is still just a theory
Anyone else's brain go, "SHUT UP! SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!!" when they hear this?
God / Nature / Cthulhu doesn't have a dictionary of prorated truth terms. Empirical models seem to work until they don't. To insist "theory becomes law becomes fact" is an affront to scientific thought; they're childish pigeonholes with no relevance to understanding anything. Indeed, they reinforce the idea reality is a committee decision us peons have no business questioning.
We have been able to quantify gravity
Actually, that's precisely the trouble with it.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
If someone can prove a different mechanism behind so called micro and macro evolution, then science can move forward with 2 separate theories. Until such time, we have one theory that explains both events.
http://www.mhall119.com
Second, Ive heard this theory BS so much I felt compelled to write. Evolution: Just a Theory? Just so I wouldn't have to type it out every time.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
This species belongs to a very ancient group Sarcopterygii, the fleshy-finned fishes which is over 400 million years old. Fossils of fish identical to N. forsteri have been dated at over 100 million years which makes this species one of the oldest extant vertebrate species.
This paragraph makes multiple assumptions that are not scientifically provable. We have no idea genetically if the fish were related. How do we know that they are fleshy? And even less proof that the fish are 400 million and 100 million years old. How do we get those dates? We observe a current phenomena(some sort of Radiometric dating) and superimpose it back on to the past. If biology can change in 400 millions years why can't the decay of isotopes.
When hypothesizing about the past(Anthropology), Science can't answer all the questions, Should it even be considered science? Even laws that have proven to be true now, will always have the possibility to be proven false given more information and time
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
This question arouses my interest when observing this conflict. Evolution is an observation of how nature behaves and through scientific analysis in the field of biology certain rules or repeating patterns were discovered which characterize how life develops in an environment of limited resources. However evolution is observable in every system that is governed by restricted resources (e.g. in the free market, selection of workforce and so on). I would even go so far as to postulate that the existence of time or even logic itself causes evolution (galaxies and starsystems evolved, just replace "DNA" with "laws of physics"). Nevertheless it is an observation, that does not contain imperatives and is as such no competitor to religion or any other form of social utopia. So why are some people fighting against it? Perhaps because the theory of evolution reminds us of how unforgiving reality is (if only the suitable lifeforms persist what happens with the unsuitable?), and the idea of god and creation is so much more comforting. But maybe its just a struggle of ideas and faiths for survival just for the sake of it. Ups there we go again, evolution...
Language also evolves so that words change. People understand words in the context they learned them. Only a closed group, like Spanish speakers or the scientific communinity can agree what a word means.
Over time English & Spanish words diverged from their Latin roots. The verbs "to molest" & "molestar" (to annoy) have very different connotations.
Even the scientific communinity has such cases. Semiconductors do not obey "Ohm's Law", and so it is not a true law! Thermodynamics added a "Zero-eth Law" because it makes sense to declare it before the "First Law".
Somebody is daring to question or challenge Evolution? That must mean they are trying to force their religious views on everyone! Come on. If Evolution is such a solid scientific theory, shouldn't people have a little more faith in it? Dear Chicken Littles, the sky is not falling.
Liberalismo es pecado.
I prefer thinking about evolution as an observation, rather than a theory. Namely, "a change in the inherited traits of a population from one generation to the next." [1]. The theory (or one of a number of theories that depends on this observation) is natural selection, not evolution.
Another example of such a comparison is acceleration, "the rate of change of velocity with respect to time."[2]. A Theory that depends on the observation of acceleration is gravity.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
/snip "...the good news is that the new curriculum emphasizes teaching the meaning of scientific terms and the scientific method in earlier grades."
Okay... So the good news is they'll be teaching science to young students? Shouldn't they have been doing this from the start? I, too, lament that there is a large pile of steaming ignorance around the stated terminology. Perhaps chapter one of any book with the labeling should explain why the label is poorly worded. Isn't this simply a baby step toward teaching young earth creationism in a science class instead of Sunday school?
It's quite a shame that educated men and women are still debating critical educational subjects such as evolution in science class.
Where's my sock? There it is...
Easy. The Old Testament was originally written in ancient Hebrew which has no vowels. In order to read it, a Rabi would have to know the context of the words.
Kinda like: cnhzchzbrgr
Science will never convert evolution (whether you use a big e or a little e) into a fact, because in science all explanations and generalizations are theories. Facts are observations, like "All known differences between the DNA of different vertebrate species are of the type created by mutation." Any interpretation, e.g. "These facts argue that all known species arose by common descent" is theory.
"I dropped a book and it fell to the ground" is a fact.
"All masses are subject to a gravitational attractive force" is a theory.
No, not quite. Newton's laws are not theories. Newtonian mechanics is a theory of motion. Newton's laws are statements that are part of the theory. Newtonian mechanics hinges on how its laws of motion work together: it's all about how bodies will move given the net forces acting upon them. Put the theory of mechanics together with the theory of gravity, and you can unify the explanation of the motions of earthly and heavenly objects, which classically were the subjects of different theories.
Also, newtonian mechanics doesn't explain inertia; inertia is part of the explanation of why bodies move the way they do.
Are you adequate?
That's why "the theory of evolution" refers to Big-E evolution and is quite accurate in claiming that it is, indeed, only a theory. Science will not ever be able to convert Big-E evolution into a fact, since there is no method of proving how something DID happen, only ways to show how it COULD HAVE happened.
While otherwise erudite, I wanted to make a clarification. One way science evolves (grin) a theory toward fact is in prediction. That is the theory which seems to explain all the facts explains some things which are not yet fact. Once those facts are seen, that is very strong implication that the parts of the theory which explain new facts in terms of old facts are themselves "fact" :) The simple anecdote is General (I think) Relativity predicted: "the apparent position of stars should change when near the sun, so we should be able to detect that during an eclipse" and then it was detected during an eclipse and Einstein became very famous.
I don't know if the theory of evolution makes any testable prediction apart from the little-e variety such as those you mentioned that continue to happen as predicted. One that would be nice to see is an actual prediction of what we should be evolving to in a few millenniums (sorry don't know latin)... like "We will become like the gray aliens". Or some kind of prediction like that. Then, in a few thousand years at least people like me wouldn't have this nagging feeling that something is missing.
Same with string theory. Long live Quantum Loop Gravity!
People who quote themselves bug the crap out of me -- Me.
The GP is probably intending to talk about three body motion.
The theory of gravity allows one to calculate the force of gravity between two bodies. From this one may derive the movement of these two bodies (assuming no other forces).
At any given instant, the gravity forces between three (or more) bodies may be calculated. The problem is that those forces act on the three bodies simultaneously. Ignoring special cases, there is no general solution to the motion of these bodies. It may be approximated via simulation with sufficiently small time steps and calculations of the instantaneous forces. There are solutions for various special cases, such as assuming that two bodies are not influenced by the third body or that two bodies will collide to form a larger body or the like.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem
Perhaps you also read "The Feynman's Lectures on Physics", where he mentioned this fact. Octopuses' eyes have the light sensitive layer in front of the signal processing cells, human eyes have the light sensitive layer in the back of the eye, which means that (a) the human eye is less sensitive, and (b) the human eye has less signal processing capability, since those cells must be transparent.
However, speaking of eyes, it's interesting to note that some creationists claim that there isn't any animal with a half-formed eye, "proving" that an eye couldn't possibly evolve. That's bullshit. Several species of rattlesnakes have half-formed eyes, in the form of infrared-sensitive areas in the head. Those haven't evolved lenses yet, they concentrate radiant energy by a pinhole.
Given enough time, one of those snakes could be born with a mutation that creates a transparent layer of tissue closing that hole, or then maybe not. But if that mutation ever happens, the lucky snake probably will hunt more mice and will procreate more than other snakes. That's how evolution works.
Yup, that's a good one. The theory of gravitation says that bodies exert a force on each other, and that the magnitude of this force is given by a certain formula involving mass and distance.
But if we want to be picky, "things falling to the ground" is also a theory, that reconciles a constellation of sensory data that do not contain the fact that things fall to the ground. Philosophically speaking, there is no definite boundary between "fact" (or "observation") and "theory"; there are just beliefs, our preferences to give up one in favor of another, and the consequences of the actions that we undertake on the basis of the beliefs we choose.
Well you can't be faulted for being false to your name 'Obfuscant'..
The 'two very different senses' for the term evolution is a creationist tactic.
Perhaps you haven't realized this and have bought into the whole 'macro-evolution' versus 'micro-evolution' baloney.
Evolution does not cover the 'origin of life'.. and there is no distinction between micro & macro.. it's all small steps, eventually resulting in large differences.
No you don't. Nothing stops you from calculating the force as three component vectors, aligned with the axis of the carthesian coordinate grid in the first place. Something like xforce = (x1pos - x2pos) / distance and repeat for the other two coordinate axes. Then, after calculating all the forces between each object pair this way, sum them up by coordinate axis and object to get the final component forces affecting each object.
Very useful if you're doing computer simulation.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Oh, gosh, I don't know how you'll handle this one - HeLa.
Quote:
Horizontal gene transfer from human papillomavirus 18 (HPV18) to human cervical cells created the HeLa genome which is different from either parent genome in various ways including its number of chromosomes. HeLa cells have a modal chromosome number of 82, with four copies of chromosome 12 and three copies of chromosomes 6, 8, and 17.
Due to their ability to replicate indefinitely, and their non-human number of chromosomes, Leigh Van Valen described HeLa as an example of the contemporary creation of a new species, Helacyton gartleri, named after Stanley M. Gartler, who Van Valen credits with discovering "the remarkable success of this species". His argument for speciation depends on three points:
End quote.
In other words, boys and girls, these people witnessed the creation of a new species out of combination of human and HPV.
Thank you, Henrietta Lacks. Don't know if you supported science of evolution, but you've contributed substantially.
It is always better to be a first grade version of yourself than a second grade version of someone else.
There are plenty of diseases, such as arthritis, which do not come from external agents, but rather from your body malfunctioning on its own, and several, such as high blood pressure due to obesity, which the patient very likely caused by mistreating his own body. So no, it was not and cannot be proven, since it is untrue.
Now, if you were to say that it is proven that some diseases come from external agents, you'd be quite correct.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
the believer switches to talking about the little-E version and insults the non-believer for ignoring the "facts" of little-e evolution.
and is quite accurate in claiming that it is, indeed, only a theory
Kinda like how a believer in Creationism (or 'intelligent design') switches from talking about the scientific definition of Theory to talking about the common definition of theory?
In science, there is no 'just a' Theory. Theory is a testable, provable, FALSIFIABLE explanation of natural behavior. You can't do 'better' than a Theory. Anyone who says 'just a theory' is flagging themselves as not understanding scientific words in the first place and not qualified to make any further comment.
It is possible to prove Big-E evolution. All you have to do is start with some non-living stuff, and produce living stuff, and then produce more complex living stuff. No one has done it yet, but that's not to say it isn't possible.
paintball
Um, no. The theory of gravity isn't named after an observed phenomena that was already named "gravity" beforehand. The phenomena that the theory of gravity addresses (in crucial conjunction with the theory of Newtonian mechanics), if we really have to name them, are called Stuff Falls to the Ground, and Lights in the Sky Move in these Plane Trajectories.
Are you adequate?
I'll handle that one like I do all interesting things I hear about. I'll say "gosh, that's interesting". If it's available (thank you for a link), I'll read about it. Like I just did. And then I'll note the following things:
Here's a trivial example. You look up and see a softball wedged up in some wires on a telephone pole. How did it get there?
Now, the CHANCES are someone climbed the pole, because the odds of hitting a ball just right to have it wedge like that are low. It's a reasonable theory. You can certainly climb the pole next to it with a ball in hand and wedge it into place so it looks like the first one. You could climb every pole in the neighborhood and wedge a ball into place by hand. However, having been the batter who hit the ball, I know the correct answer is 2.
Now, how did the first amino acids appear?
If you recall, there was a famous experiment in the 50's or so that "proved" method 1 was what happened. Some people claim number 3 is what happened, but that leaves us asking "who created the pattern"? And some think number 2. Unfortunately, nobody was here to observe the method that was actually used, so we don't know, and there is no amount of science that can differentiate the right answer.
Third example. You are sitting under an apple tree and hear a thump. You turn to the left and see an apple that wasn't there when you sat down, and look up and see a branch that is now apple-less. The apple moved because:
So they're insisting that evolution be called a scientific theory, which is exactly what scientists would want you to name it, because that's what it is. No scientist using the terminology in its purest form ever goes around calling things science facts. So those who don't think evolution should be "believed" as a theory also apparently don't "believe" in using dictionaries. I imagine the conversation went something like this:
"I won't be satisfied until you admit that evolution is a theory!"
"Um....it *is* a theory."
"Hah! See? I was right all along!"
Come on, people. Science explains how things work, religion explains why. There is no conflict here. Next thing you know, people will start claiming that gravity is the will of God. So is our continued attraction to the Earth's surface merely punishment for our sins? Wow. What does the Earth's attraction to the sun represent? What did the Earth ever do to God?
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
http://www.mhall119.com
Now here's your problem: why should the people who dispute "macroevolution" accept those studies as evidence that macro-evolution exists? The simplest retort that they have simply is to say that reproductively isolated populations are not a sufficient condition for the two populations to count as separate species in the sense required by the examples that they label as "macroevolution." Or, in other words, they don't have to accept the definition of "species" that's implicit in your argument, and your examples don't work unless they do.
While I agree with you that these people are wrong, I must say that the evidence you offer of speciation does not charitably address their argument. To put it simply, they can very well grant that natural selection can take some critters and change them into critters that are almost alike to the original ones, but no longer able to breed with their "cousins." What they really are skeptical about are claims that natural selection can turn fish-like creatures into dogs and apes and all other highly distinct mammal populations.
The argument that the evolution skeptics are making, when dissected to its bare form, is actually quite trivial. It really boils down to the following: while we have all sorts of contemporary evidence that natural selection can make "small" changes to organisms, we don't have the same kind of evidence for the larger changes that are attributed to natural selection, like turning fish into people. To get embroiled in a sub-argument about what "species" means and whether some phenomena observed within our lifetime counts as "speciation" is a waste of time, because it fails to address the real issue: what other kinds of evidence there is for the "macroevolutionary" claims, and why that evidence should be accepted as supporting the macroevolutionary claims.
And even that is missing the point. Skepticism about evolution, if you ask me, is not a big deal by itself; it's a healthy exercise everybody should indulge in every so often, to remind themselves that knowledge is fragile and fallible, and once upon a while, to discover something new. The big problem is the creationists' politics, which seeks to undo a good chunk of the good things about the Enlightenment.
Are you adequate?
Is anything more than a theory? How do you know?
The most important lesson you can get out of school is learning to use your own brain to sort reasonable information from propaganda and wishful thinking. It seems to me that exposing kids directly to the different, um, "opinions", and teaching method and analysis, is a really wonderful idea. If the religious nutcases think that they have a leg to stand on, then they will surely be quite excited to embrace this approach, right?
I wrote up a little more on this a while back, and put it here.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Anyone who says this doesn't understand the difference between "could have happened this way" and "did happen this way." One is a theory, one is a fact.
You can start with all the non-living stuff you can find and create an entire metropolis with Starbucks on every corner, and it will not PROVE that that is how exiting metropolises with Starbucks on every corner came into being. It WILL prove that it MIGHT be how it happened, but proof is more than "might be". Until you prove more than "might be", it will still be a theory. Even "just a theory", since yes, is it just a theory, in both "science" talk and "normal" talk.
So by that logic we'd have somewhere in there...
public class Supernova extends Star;
Seriously? You literally see the Earth exert a force on a rock that's proportional to the product of the masses of the rock and the Earth, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the center of mass of each? What does it look like--does it look like the Earth extending an invisible tentacle that pulls the rock with all of its strength?
No you don't. What you see is a rock falling, not "gravity in operation."
Are you adequate?
Evolution does NOT cover the origin of life. Look up abiogenesis.
KublaiKhan, you are absolutely correct; more thoughts on this:
http://www.davidjarvis.ca/dave/essays/scientific-rule.shtml
"That people do not understand is not their fault. Rather, fault lies with the scientific community. Modern scientific use of 'theory' has hardly changed since 1638. Scientists have not successfully educated the public, after nearly 400 years, on the difference between Theory and theory."
Next Round: The Earth is not flat - "A Theory".
There is a difference. Macro evolution takes species A and produces species B where A and B cannot reproduce with each other. For example a horse and a dog cannot reproduce with each other, so they are different species.
Micro-evolution takes species A and produces a variation on species A, where the resulting animals can reproduce with each other to produce another of species A. For example Alsatians and Rottweilers are both dogs; they can reproduce with each other and this will result in another dog.
Of course, for micro-evolution to lead to macro-evolution, it cannot produce offspring that are infertile.
Also a theory is only a theory until there is some evidence. So the history of dogs must go something like: non-dog -> non-dog -> non-dog => dog -> dog. Where is the non-dog that became a dog? Or some other example. Any animal will do. Where is the non-horse that became a horse? Or a non-chimpanzee that became a chimpanzee? Or, as macro evolution is an ongoing process, a current known animal that has produces offspring of a different species? Just one example will do, and the litmus test is whether or not the offspring can reproduce with its parent species (actually, at least two examples must be needed otherwise obviously that new species of one animal will die off within one generation on account of not having a mate).
Any minimally adequate highschool science curriculum should covered the subject of ring species. The Wikipedia page on Ring Species is actually somewhat disappointing, but it does cover the basics and is a reasonable place to start on the subject.
Just one example will do
There are a multitude of examples of Ring Species in nature conclusively proving that your so-called "micro evolution" can and does produce what you define as "macro evolution". There are many known examples of continuous populations where A and B do not or cannot interbreed, with no infertility issue along the way to reaching A and B.
Anyone who has learned about ring species should immediately see that evolutionary speciation is easy and blatantly true. Would immediately see it is blatantly obvious that all it would take to experimentally demonstrate a speciation event would be to simply kill some animals in the middle of a Ring Species breaking it into two distinct descendant species.
Basic highschool biology stuff answers your objection, basic highschool biology stuff answers about 99% of all anti-evolution objections. If only highschools would cover it. Unfortunately it's generally less headache for a school to drop or minimize coverage than to deal with the rants from angry parents complaining that it is being covered.
Also a theory is only a theory until there is some evidence.
And apparently your highschool never covered that evidence. Apparently your highscool never told you that Ring Species exist, never covered what Ring Species are or what their scientific significance is, and never covered much of anything else behind evolution.
If your highschool that didn't cover chemistry (or covered it poorly), it would be pretty silly for you to claim chemistry was wrong and that chemistry was "just a theory" with no evidence.
There is no scientific doubt or dispute over the basics of evolution. There is so much evidence supporting it you can spend years and years in college studying the subject and getting a PhD in any of a number of related fields and only having time to see a tiny fraction of everything supporting evolution.
Of the half-million-or-so people with an actual college degree in a relevant field, something like 0.15% fundamentally dispute the science of evolution. A minuscule fraction of one percent... which would be in the same ballpark as the percentage of degreed astronomers who dispute the sun being powered by nuclear fusion instead saying it is powered by electricity (and on that subject why the hell has Slashdot been running various junk stories from those Electric Universe crackpots?)
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The GP has a small point here. Sure you can tell me the force at the first moment, but you can't tell me any further time-evolution of the system without stepping through it numerically. The 3 body system is chaotic. Only systems satisfying certain approximations can be approached analytically.
You forgot to quote the last part of the article, which says: It should be noted that this definition has not been followed by others in the scientific community, nor, indeed, has it been widely noted.
Yeah, not a lot of people know about it.
With near unanimity, evolutionary scientists and biologists hold that a chimeric human cell line is not a distinct species.
While true for many other examples, this is not one of those. And, of course, you do understand that even human DNA is chimeric? Think fully functional viruses embedded in our DNA.
HeLa have yet to become anything that would look in the evolutionary record as anything close to human. It is a line of cancer cells which is clearly a non-advantageous adaptation in a world that lacks medical facilities that can treat the victim.
They don't have to be even remotely human. Humans aren't the holy grail of evolution, you know. The point is these cells are another species (just as other single cellular beings are) and they evolved by cross-breeding human cells and HPV cells by gene transfer - something that happens often at this level in biology. It also explains why there are other viruses in our DNA. Who is to say that some virus helped our distant ancestors (at the very beginning of life) in some way by fusing itself in part of our DNA? Hey, if cells could "adopt" mitochondria with it's own DNA into themselves, parts (or whole) of alien RNA/DNA is there too.
Mutations in human birth have happened many times, and many of the results have a different number of chromosomes than "normal".
Yeah, if they survive and can breed they form a new species over time. If they die because of some disadvantage and can't breed they die. It's then called a deleterious mutation.
In any case, the mutation of a cell line today does nothing to prove that Evolution (Big-E) is how life began or how we got here.
It's incredible to me how people can't understand that evolution says nothing, zilch, zero, nada about how life began (abiogenesis deals with that) even after years of being corrected about the same thing. I generally mark those people as stupid.
The rest of your comment is off topic, mis-adapted for this discussion and has nothing to do with evolution.
It is always better to be a first grade version of yourself than a second grade version of someone else.
That's a very interesting post and article; thanks for that.
I noticed that the Wiki article only cites three examples. Three isn't really "multitudes". Do you have any references that list the others?
Also in the article it states that "However, the Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gull are sufficiently different that they do not normally interbreed". Now it would be somewhat inaccurate to state that dogs and horses "do not normally" interbreed; they cannot, and that's the end of it, and as far as I can tell you don't have to be a biology major to understand that. Why doesn't the article state "they CANNOT interbreed"? If they can, albeit in unusual situations, then they're the same species, and not a Ring Species.
The Wiki link on Ensatina is broken but I found http://www.santarosa.edu/lifesciences2/ensatina2.htm. Interestingly it tries to argue that the two subspecies, eschscholtzi and klauberi, show that Ensatina is a ring species on the basis that "near Cuyamaca State Park they APPARENTLY FAIL to interbreed", but it also states "Near Mount Palomar, these two subspecies meet in a very narrow zone and hybridize infrequently" (if you read the article you'll see I'm not misquoting). In other words, they can and do. Neither "infrequently" nor "apparently fail to" mean "never" or "cannot". Therefore Ensatina is not a ring species.
As scientists, however, we are supposed to support whatever is most substantiated by experimental evidence. Yes, no one was there to see it happen, but we know for certain it is entirely possible, and indeed likely. The description of God is such that a believer could make it logical in their minds that he did anything, and in fact did everything, without any actual evidence. We should be above that.
That would be a long, long list. Evolution is the fundamental theory of biology, after all, so it shows up virtually everywhere.
A sampling:
Presence of particular fossils in strata of particular age.
Patterns of sequence similarity in DNA of different species corresponding to predictions of common descent via natural selection
Evolution of novel enzymatic activities in microorganisms (e.g. nylonase)
Evolution of resistance to antibiotics and antivirals
Ability of genetic algorithms based on natural selection to solve problems in mathematics and engineering design
Genetic evidence of gene duplication and repurposing
Presence of endogenous retrovirus DNA remnants in multiple species
etc., etc.
Actually one of the key points here is that there *isn't* a nice neat dividing line between species. Humans like to put nice neat labels on things dividing them into "this" and "that", but in biology things blur into each other. What day does a puppy become a dog? What offspring of a reptile was the first mammal? Is something one species or two species?
Lions and tigers can interbreed, but their offspring are infertile.
Nice neat dividing line, two species, right?
Whoops, no. Lions and tigers can interbreed, but their offspring are usually infertile. On rare occasions the offspring are fertile and can lead to 1/4th lion - 3/4ths tiger descendants or vice versa, and 1/8th lions - 7/8ths tigers and vice versa, etcetera for any potential mix.
Coyotes and dogs and wolves and dingos and jackals all crossbreed, with multiple unconfirmed fox crossings. If you try to apply a "species rule" of completely incompatible even by artificial crossings, you pretty much start lumping all canines almost down to a single species, and lumping felines down almost as much as listed here and here.
In biology the fuzzy rule for used species is populations that "normally cannot or do not produce fertile offspring". For example two species of frog might technically be able to produce crippled but minimally viable minimally fertile offspring if you artificially cross fertilize them, but they never interbreed in nature because they have completely different breeding seasons and wildly different mating habits.
When you have two gene pools that aren't mixing, their genetics are only going to further diverge and only going to increase incompatibility, even if by mere random drift. A million years ago lions and tigers were almost certainly much more cross-fertile, a million years from now lions and tigers will likely be completely cross-infertile.
Look at Chihuahuas and Great Danes, separated from their common wolf ancestor by maybe 15,000 years and separated from each other by much less than that, and physically incapable of interbreeding. If Chihuahuas and Great Danes were simply wild and given another million years or some such, they would genetically and physically and behaviorally and biochemically only get further apart.
Three isn't really "multitudes".
Ok, I was writing off the top of my head that I knew a non-trivial multiple number of examples. According to this page:
At least 23 cases have been proposed, but most of them are not such clear examples as the salamanders and warblers.
With Warblers sounding like the perhaps the best example.
It's a fuzzy issue trying to define and decide in some cases if you are looking at one species or two, and it is even fuzzier define and decide in some cases if something should be labeled a Ring Species or not. How many tiny changes need to accumulate before something is labeled a different species? How many tiny changes need to add up and just how much absolutely of a breeding divide has to build up before it is labeled a different species?
The point is that a population can continuously diversify, either over time or across physical distance, and that difference can quite easily accumulate to the point where populations genetically split in two.
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The word "law" is just earlier terminology that is still preserved. The only "law" of gravity is Newton's "Law of universal graviation", published in 1687. And despite being a "law", it's known to be wrong. Subtly wrong, so we still use it for most computations, but the planet Mercury breaks it.
If anything, a law is weaker than a good theory. A "law" of nature just says what happens, while the best theories try to explain why as well.
> What day does a puppy become a dog?
That one's easy. It became a dog the moment a dog sperm fused with a dog ovum. A puppy isn't a different species from a dog; a puppy is a baby dog. It doesn't "become" a dog because it is a dog.
> Is something one species or two species?
That's the key question. Wiki states that "A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring." Note "capable of". It's not "only do so within certain social structures". A warbler becoming a different species altogether is one thing, but a ring species of warbler producing warblers that do not recognise each other as such, or "mostly don't reproduce", is simply variation within a species, not change from one species to another. I'd agree that it was a change from one subspecies to another, but variation in species, even if you invoke millions of years, is not change from one species to another.
> you pretty much start lumping all canines almost down to a single species
Out of interest, what's wrong with that? If a species is a group of organisms that CAN interbreed, classifying them further into subspecies isn't a problem. Lions and tigers, along with jaguars and leopards, are subspecies of the species Biggus Pussius. Chihuahuas and Great Danes would be subspecies of the species canine. If some of those subspecies do not reproduce for social or physical reasons, that's not evolution from one species to another.
> The point is that a population can continuously diversify, either over time or across physical distance, and that difference can quite easily accumulate to the point where populations genetically split in two.
Yes, but all the evidence we seem to have is only of change within a species, not change from one species to another. You can't extrapolate backwards over millions of years, without any other evidence, to prove a point. For example if the Moon orbit is increasing, does that mean that millions of years ago it was whizzing around a few inches off the ground? Of course not; that would be a daft conclusion. Like variations within species, extrapolation has its limits.
Out of interest, what's wrong with that?
Massively lumping species like that is not a problem as far as science goes, it's a different but perfectly viable way to rearrange categories.
However it pretty well becomes a problem for the anti-evolution position. Lumping numerous diverse species like that as a single species pretty well equates with admitting each particular chunk of the evolutionary tree of common descent. If you admit all Feline species as mere variants descended from one or two super-species, you are admitting the last 30 million years or so of the evolutionary tree of common descent for the entire Feline branch. And presumably you are admitting all of the various feline fossils as being mere other variants in that acceptable family tree of decent from those one or two feline superspecies.
And going back to the feline fossil forms at the root of that "acceptable" tree of actual descent, and going back to canine fossil form at the root of the their acceptable tree of actual descent, and going back to the bear fossil form at the root of the their acceptable tree of actual descent, well it turns out that those three acceptable ancestor species were MORE SIMILAR to each other than various modern feline species are similar to each other. Felines and Canines and Bears are all merely varients of a Carnivore super-super-species.
Oh, and on the subject of the fossil record and the almost inevitable "gaps" issue... yeah generally finding fossil samples is random and some parts of the fossil record are "gappy"... but we have parts of the fossil record that are absolutely complete and continuous. Big mammal skeleton finds are rare and precious, but there are these wonderful tiny animals that live in all the world's oceans called forams, family Foraminifera. Think of Foraminifera as a grouping like "mammals". Actually Foraminifera is a higher level grouping than lumping together humans and whales in Mammalia, but comparing Foraminifera to Mammalia is reasonable.
Anyway... these animals are real small, usually just a fraction of an inch, and they grow these wonderful intricate mineral skeletons called "tests". They live in the oceans literally by the trillions, and vast numbers of them die every day and their tests constantly rain down on the sea floor in vast numbers. Day by day year by year millennia by millennia sediment slowly builds up in in a continuous layer on the sea floor, and that sediment is saturated with a near-infinite supply of these perfect fossil tests.
And in the 1970's we started all that deep sea oil exploration and developed all sorts of new deep seat drilling technology and started pulling up all of these sediment drill cores searching for oil. And those sediment drill cores were incidentally loaded with a limitless supply of Foraminifera fossils, which some scientists eagerly analyzed.
It provided not merely a complete sequence of transitional species, but a continuous hyperfine record of entire populations ALONG each species split event. Scientists closed the case on the fundamental issues of evolution decades ago. Here, in this particular area of study, they weren't messing around with some question of whether speciation and evolutionary common descent were true, they were measuing how long each speciation event took, and studying in detail exactly how species split, and the particularly fascinating issue of how and why the rate of speciation increases after mass extinction events.
We have perfect and complete hypercontinuous fossil record tracing diverse living foraminifera species back though many tens or hundreds of millions of years to a common ancestor. And trying to call "foraminifera" a "single kind" would be like trying to call MAMMALS a "single kind". Forams are extremely diverse, carnivores and herbivores and omnivores and some have even taken up farming algae inside their shells and they have diversified to live in essentially every possible different wet habitat on earth and they have diverse forms a
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Simply look at the selection pressures, and consider the least-exotic ways we might change.
The main selection pressure is birth control. I don't see much chance that the reproductive system can defeat birth control, though there could be a hormone quantity arms race against the pill. Mental changes can trivially defeat birth control.
The lamentable change would be increased stupidity, impulsiveness, irresponsibility, and fanatical religeous behavior. In the short term, this is likely to be the primary change.
Another possible change is attitude towards childbearing. In former times, a strong desire for sex was essentially equivalent to a strong desire for offspring. Now that the connection is mostly broken, we are likely to be selected for having a more direct desire for children. Producing kids will be at least as desirable as sex.
Another big selection pressure is diet. If you can live on french fries and Coke without dying, you have an advantage.
Other pressures include addictive drugs, child support laws, a different disease load, less need for menopause, etc.
Sometimes simple organisms are better than fancy ones.
A petri dish is an ecosystem. (a trivial one if it has less than 2 organisms, but an ecosystem none the less)
Since HeLa can survive in a petri dish but you can't survive there, HeLa is more fit than you. Remember, it's survival of the fittest. HeLa wins, you lose. HeLa is more evolved, assuming your family hasn't had any significant changes.
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Look up Nylonase. Nylon-eating bacteria. In just a few decades, we observed the development of a new metabolic pathway, and a complex enzyme/protein. Proteins make up every part of the organism. If there is no limit to the possible changes to the proteins themselves, there is no limit to how the organism itself can change. And we know that the enzyme is not just one that lay dormant and was activated all of a sudden because such things would be a huge disadvantage. They would take up energy for nothing, and thus lead to a lesser chance of survival. Also, other related bacteria have no such enzyme. So we did observe "Big E", and we see that there are no barriers which prevent small changes from accumulating into major changes over time.
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In everyday use, theory means a guess or a hunch, something that maybe needs proof. In science, a theory is not a guess, not a hunch. It's a well-substantiated, well-supported, well-documented explanation for our observations. It ties together all the facts about something, providing an explanation that fits all the observations and can be used to make predictions. In science, theory is the ultimate goal, the explanation. It's as close to proven as anything in science can be.
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