Darwin's Private Papers Get Released To The Internet

bibekpaudel writes "ScienceDaily reports that a wealth of papers belonging to Charles Darwin have been published on the internet, some for the first time. Some 20,000 items and 90,000 images were posted today to http://darwin-online.org.uk/. The new site is the largest collection of Darwin's work in history, according to organizers from Cambridge University Library 'This release makes his private papers, mountains of notes, experiments, and research behind his world-changing publications available to the world for free,' said John van Wyhe, director of the project. The collection includes thousands of notes and drafts of his scientific writings, notes from the voyage of the Beagle when he began to formulate his controversial theory of evolution, and his first recorded doubts about the permanence of species."

Comments

How fitting...

[Kingrames]

...that his works would be the ones to survive.

Re:How fitting...

[Sabz5150]

...that his works would be the ones to survive. Naturally :)

Re:How fitting...

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the most interesting discoveries in these newly-released papers concerns Darwin's research into the FSM. Turns out that it originally swam before developing the ability to fly, the noodly appendages are actually vestigial flippers and the entire being evolved from a particularly virulent strain of fusili.

Re:How fitting...

[Rei]

Now, quickly, everyone search through the papers for Swastikas or Nazi propaganda. I hear Ben Stein would sell out his dignity for something like that.

Re:How fitting...

[CowTipperGore]

I hear Ben Stein would sell out his dignity for something like that. He can't sell something that he doesn't have. Wouldn't that be fraud?

Re:How fitting...

[Rei]

What truly is the underpinning for any morality at all if everything exists because of random chance?

Read some Nietzsche. Learn about existentialism, perspectivism, nihilism. Questions on the existence of meaning in a world devoid of objective truth have already been asked and answered a countless times over throughout the ages.

My story? As a teenager (unversed in philosophy), I reached the same point as Kierkegaard's "Young Man":

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the managerI have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

In a world devoid of objective truth, rationalism leads to an inherent contradiction. Love is meaningless, hate is meaningless. Joy, what people strive for, meaningless. Given this, what meaning is there to any choice? None. What reason to not, say, walk around naked all the time? None. What reason to live at all? None. No *inherent* meaning. Yet, choices are continually taken. To stop living, that *too* would be a choice. No matter what you choose, there are ultimately meaningless consequences associated with it.

To make a choice, I independently invented existentialism. No choice you make has an inherent meaning. But you can *create* meaning. In fact, you don't need to create meaning for every individual action; all you need is to create overarching principles, and everything else falls from that. Yes, your principles are utterly meaningless. In existentialism, you know this and you accept this. Note that the only difference between existentialism and a standard theistic viewpoint of a universe of objective truth is that someone else told you a particular set of principles and you accepted them without question. At least in existentialism, you have a choice.

My choice began with what I'd term "lazy existentialism". Going with the flow; it's the easiest way. Adopting the general basic principles of society around me -- not every nuance, many of which are contradictory, but the overarching elements. This quickly formed into the independent invention of humanism. The morality of humanism would be quite familiar to most people with a religious worldview -- except that it's a lot less self-contradictory and judgemental ;). A religious person adheres to their beliefs because of a sense of divine punishment. A humanist adheres to their beliefs because to violate them is to betray one's self revert to nihilism.

But this is a brief summary, and just my particular case for the evolution of my worldview evolution. Philosophy is a far broader topic.

Re:How fitting...

[Alsee]

Maybe he's been taking lessons from SCO?

-

Re:How fitting...

[chunk08]

No no no. An intelligent designer is necessary for objective morality, but does not necessarily mean that there is morality. I'm not saying that having a creator means there must be morality, I'm saying that since there is morality, there must be a creator.

So...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Should we tag this one "privacy"?

Re:So...

[hansraj]

Dead people don't care one way or the other, you know? :-)

Re:So...

[orkysoft]

You've never been to the Head Museum? It's free on Tuesdays!

Survival

[wombatmobile]

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."

--Charles Darwin

Re:Survival

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."

A little off-topic, but this just looks like the epitaph on the RIAA's grave :)

Re:Survival

[hansraj]

Exactly. Quite often I am amazed at how much misunderstanding there is about Darwin's theory. The part about who survives is pretty much tautological: "Whoever survives, survives", and hence not the interesting part. The interesting part is how big changes in species (even birth of completely new species) can be seen as aggregation of minor changes that increase the odds of one's survival, and the changes themselves do not always necessarily reflect our notion of "stronger" or "better".

It is a pity really that many people have fallen in the social interpretation of Darwin's theory and more than once we have seen ugly consequences of that.

Re:Survival

[mikelu]

The evolutionary tautology is more, "Organisms that survive long enough to reproduce, reproduce."

The only question was how organisms transferred traits to their offspring, and this has since been answered to the professed satisfaction of even the creationists. Genetic passage of traits is indisputable, and evolution is a straightforward corollary.

Re:Survival

[boris111]

Then there is no hope for us.

Re:Survival

[MightyMartian]

That completely depends on which Creationist you're talking to, and with the leaders and thinkers of the ID movement, it often depends on the audience they're talking to.

Some Creationists still pretty much deny anything but some sort of weak microevolution, insisting that species (or "kinds", a favorite term because it's so weakly defined) are the direct creation of God. Others are willing to accept a certain amount of macro-evolution, often simply by enlarging "kinds" into a nebulous grouping that can be as big as "birds" and "fish", but always with humans being completely separate from any other group, regardless of any genetic, developmental and morphological relationship that you can point out.

The one key thing that seems to unite virtually all Creationists is a rejection of humans as being a product of any evolutionary process. It seems to boil down, for them, to denial of the "specialness" of humans, and in their minds to be descended from an ape-like animal is an affront to their religious and moral beliefs.

Re:Survival

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Actually, that's a load of crap. Pure, pure crap. Assume an environment where changes are small and strength affords a huge advantage. In such a circumstance, the minor changes are just noise and the physically stronger species get their genes into next generations better, in direct contradiction of the "most adaptable" principle.

Actually it's not crap, although it is not really something Darwin ever said. Your example above is true only for the geologically short period of time where the environment remains stable. Change always comes, sooner or later. When the environment changes, your example species must either change with it or become extinct. Some species retain a great deal of genetic variability, while others do not.

Re:Survival

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of "Creationists" who accept humans as being a process of evolutionary process. In fact, this is the official stated position of the Catholic Church.

Even among the "Intelligent Design" crowd (well, the less fanatical part), "Intelligent Design" is basically "guided evolution". It's not that there is no evolution, but they hold the belief that certain 'irreducable complexities' in some structures (Which, to my knowledge, all of the examples they give have been reduced to lower complexities quite easily) show that 'survival of the fittest' wouldn't explain those structures as reducing them, in any way, would make the organism 'less fit', and thus evolution, in the hypothesis, would be shown NOT INCORRECT, but rather incomplete.

Again, I'm not an 'intelligent design' proponent, but people who misrepresent the hypothesis (And I mean both those for it and against it) annoy me.

Re:Survival

[MightyMartian]

This seems to be a confusing of the term. The term "Creationist" when used by almost everyone in discussion of evolution refers to those who advocate one form of special creation or another. Yes, you could probably lump in various types of theistic evolutionists, but Creationism almost always is used to refer to those who deny one of a number of key principals of evolutionary theory including Common Descent, faunal succession, and in particular that humans themselves are the products of a long evolutionary line that includes ape-like ancestors.

What you're invoking appears to be a private definition. Theistic evolutionists (which is what I would count most Catholic theologians) are explicitely not included in this category, because they do not deny any of the above things, but rather add a sort of "guiding" force principle. YOu will find, almost to a man, that Creationists deny not only evolution beyond the species/kinds level, but expressely deny any sort of universal common descent (all organisms having a common ancestor) and specifically that humans are, in fact, simply a relatively hairless, bipedal ape.

As to Intelligent Design advocates, what they believe is cleverly altered depending on who they're talking to. If they talk to someone who accepts evolution, they don't deny the underlying principles of biological evolution, but rather, like theistic evolutionists, invoke some sort of prime mover/grand tinkerer. Inevitably, when they're talking to a Creationist crowd, they pretty much become Special Creationists. That's because ID (as opposed to Theistic Evolution) is a political movement, one of the key constructs of the infamous Big Tent, which is supposed to unite Special Creationists (Young Earth and Old Earth Creationists and everything in between) and Theistic Evolutionists. For the most part, Theistic Evolutionists, including many Catholic thinkers (save for a notable few like Cardinal Schoenborn) have not entered the ID camp, so, other than a small number like Michael Behe, you're dealing with Special Creationists.

So, to put the long to short, when discussing evolution, the title "Creationist" is usually confined to variants on Biblical Literalist Special Creationists (though it also includes Muslim Creationists and other groups that make similar anti-evolutionary claims). It does not include Theistic Evolutionists, who, for the most part, reject the Creationist tenets and have refused to enter the Big Tent alongside these individuals and to lend credence to what is clearly a legalistic attempt to get by the First Amendment.

Controversial?

[KDan]

...when he began to formulate his controversial theory of evolution...

Maybe it was controversial back then, but it sure as heck isn't now (not in civilised parts of the world, anyway). Should have phrased that "his then-controversial theory" - might have been a less controversial turn of phrase!

Daniel

Re:Controversial?

[king-manic]

Oh, the eternal burden of white man... surviving as a race. His Assertion: For all civilized parts, evolution controversy = no.
Your Assertion: For all civilized parts, people = white
Counter point:
In parts of the US, evolution controversy = yes.
Those parts people = mostly white.
Thus your assertion creates a contradiction.

Re:Controversial?

[FurtiveGlancer]

Does civility advocate|excuse dismissing opposing|differing opinions as meritless simply due to an innate sense of superiority? I've always believed that truly civilized indivduals have learned to disagree without being disagreeable. The quote was from John van Wyhe, director of the project. I'd think his opinion would hold some value in this dicussion. We seem to have a difference of opinion over controversy; how odd.

Re:Controversial?

[Deadplant]

Maybe it was controversial back then, but it sure as heck isn't now Hilarious!
I guess you weren't watching when the CNN moderator asked the republican presidential candidate contenders to raise their hands if they thought that the theory of evolution was incorrect.

oh wait, you said 'civilized world'... never mind.

Re:Controversial?

[jimlintott]

http://www.expelledexposed.com/

Truth is truth regardless of points of view. Open discussions are great but science still places a large emphasis on empirical evidence. When it comes to evolution you can find the evidence everywhere. Half the time the evidence is found lying on he ground.

Re:Controversial?

[UnknowingFool]

I think the GP was stating that in the field of science and especially biology there is no real controversy about the acceptance of evolution. There is a controversy in the acceptance of evolution in politics, education, and society. There may be some smugness by scientists about evolution but the main reason why most scientists dismiss alternates (creationism, intelligent design) is that those alternates are not grounded in science at all. Science generally welcomes differing opinions if they are grounded in good reasoning and are testable(and/or falsifiable). Anti-evolutionists do not present such opinions.

Re:Controversial?

[Chris Mattern]

Does civility advocate|excuse dismissing opposing|differing opinions as meritless simply due to an innate sense of superiority?

No, but it does allow dismissing opposing|differing opinions as meritless because they *are* meritless.

Re:Controversial?

[mfrank]

There's discussing alternative views, and then there's wasting time wrestling with a pig. There is a difference between the two.

Darwin to file DMCA C&D Notice.

[Anonymous Coward]

News Item: Enforcement of 19th-century copyright precludes evolution of evolutionary sciences.

I wonder how much the theory has changed

[Devin Jeanpierre]

Considering the 'evolution' (in the loosest possible sense) of his own theory, I'm wondering, first of all, how much it's really changed, and second of all, how many people will either get confused, or deliberately cause confusion, using these documents. It's not unheard of for certain creationists to misrepresent the theory, and the original flawed drafts and theory seem like fuel for this.

Re:I wonder how much the theory has changed

[MightyMartian]

Using Darwin's theory to attack evolutionary theory is rather like using Newtonian physics to attack General Relativity. Like physics, biology has grown substantially since both men's time.

Darwin did get some things run. Most obvious was the means of heredity. He was not aware of Mendel's work. In fact, Mendelian genetics pretty much eclipsed Darwinian selection early in the 20th century. That, not Natural Selection, was the origin of a lot of the Social Darwinist/Eugenics movements; the application of barnyard selective breeding to humans, something that's quite opposed to Darwin's fundamental point that species could become better adapted to their environments naturally, whereas eugenics/social darwinism was more in the mode that a species needed active improvement, because the natural state was towards degradation.

That's why Expelled and all those nuts out there trying to associate Darwin's theory with the eugenics movement and with Nazi race theory are completely off base. Darwin's theory is in opposition the very idea that a population's reproduction needs to be rigorously managed (as a farmer would do) for a "better" (which, in Darwinian selection, is always a relative, statistical view, and not an absolute one as it was with the eugenics proponents) species.

Re:I wonder how much the theory has changed

[interiot]

I'm wondering, first of all, how much it's really changed

At the time, Darwin didn't know about any of the actual mechanisms that enabled the transmission of genes, he just inferred that they must exist via statistics. Since then, we've discovered DNA, and it confirmed most of his findings. We've been able to use population genetics to figure out what route humans took to initially expand to all the continents, and everything else that the actual mitochondrial/nucleic DNA mechanisms taught us.

Re:I wonder how much the theory has changed

[MightyMartian]

The claims that Darwin inspired Hitler (which, from what I understand, is one of the major themes of the pro-ID film Expelled) is not as straightforward as Creationists would like to claim. First of all, Darwin seems to have been, for a Victorian, a rather enlightened man. He was against slavery, and doesn't seemed to have believed that any particular race was better or lesser than the other. He never advocated Natural Selection as some sort of social remedy, but rather as the way in which life has diversified from a common ancestor.

Second of all (and as I've pointed out elsewhere), the real inspirations of the Nazi racial theory are the eugenics movement (which grew out of a period in the early 20th century when Mendellian genetics was actually seen as replacing Darwinian selection, the so-called Eclipse of Darwin) and the racial theories quite common in Victorian times (but certainly dating early, as some of the apologists for slavery like Thomas Jefferson himself suggested that the negro was somehow inferior to the white man). There's no doubt that Christian anti-Semitism played an enormous role, if in no other way than in making Germans much more receptive to the Nazi anti-Semitic message. And let's put this in some perspective, two other major ethnic/racial groups were subjected to Nazi "remedies". The Gypsies, who for centuries (right down to the present day in Europe) were also targeted as an inferior race (a view that predates Darwin by centuries), and the Slavic peoples were seen as inferior as well, and seemed destined under the Third Reich to be little more than a slave class. The Slavs had long been feared and loathed by the peoples of Central Europe.

Hitler didn't invent the idea of the greedy Jew, the thieving immoral Gypsy and the subhuman Slav. Those were cultural motifs to be found throughout Europe for many centuries. As to the Aryan superman nonsense, well eugenics is pretty damned ancient as well, and apparently was practiced by the Spartans nearly 2500 years before Darwin was born, and besides, the eugenics movement grew out of a period when natural selection was not viewed favorably, and where it was felt that leaving things to nature would only lead to the degradation of the population. Eugenics was hardly limited to Germany, but many Western countries passed such laws.

Did you RTFA?

[QuantumHobbit]

"Some 20,000 items and 90,000 images were posted today"

I'll assume this means that no one read the article before posting, although that isn't anything new.

I can't say this enough....

[zappepcs]

THIS is what the Internet is about. This is why information wants to be free.

Just 100 years ago, maybe less, you would have had to be someone very special to see this much information from one scientist, and most probably have to be vested in whatever answers or information can be gleaned from it.

Now, however, the Internet allows us ALL to enjoy the privilege of reading his works, notes, and seeing his drawings... for free, at will, at home.

If knowledge is power, this is some really powerful stuff. Forget listening to anyone tell you what he said, just look it up in HIS notes. I wonder how many college papers were written about Darwin and the fallout from this information to date? Wonder what future papers will look like?

The Internet, for all its down sides, is a great thing....

Re:Expelled

[Reality Master 101]

When is someone going make a movie about the persecution of cartographers who believe in a flat earth? WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE MAP MAKERS??

spluff!

[spazdor]

That sound you just heard was the collective orgasms of the entire RichardDawkins.net forum membership.

Re:spluff!

[williamhb]

That sound you just heard was the collective orgasms of the entire RichardDawkins.net forum membership.

The sister project Darwin Correspondence Project provides access to the letters Darwin wrote, including those describing his own views on science and religion.

According to someone close to the project, one of their hopes is that by opening up Darwin's letters to the public and showing how he took a moderate and considerate approach in his own correspondence, we can move away from the invective-filled polarisation that tends to occur in public discussions on science and religion (the RichardDawkins.net forums being the obvious example).

Wow, that's a lot of stuff

[sootman]

20,000 items and 90,000 images were posted today... The new site is the largest collection of Darwin's work in history...

Wow, quite a feat. Must have taken some really intelligent design to put all that together and make it work.

Re:Expelled

[explosivejared]

I know right!!! One time in a physics class I tried to argue that black body radiation was a result of the "heated" exchanges between particles resulting from domestic disturbances amongst ethnically darker sub-atomic units in objects. When he told to be quiet, I told him that he was committing his own brand of a holocaust and was just as guilty as Hitler for the murder of the Jews. The professor called me crazy and kicked me out of class and gave me a poor grade for the day!

Can you believe such barbarism exists in this day and age. It's outrageous. I'm sick and tired of these stiffs pushing "Dead White Male Science" that is little more than soma. ALL THEORIES DESERVE TO BE HEARD!! I will gladly become a martyr for any of my theories. We deserve the truth!

Controversial? sad...

[interactive_civilian]

when he began to formulate his controversial theory of evolution It really seems sad to me that it is still considered "controversial".

The theory of evolution through natural selection, while it has been modified to more accuracy through advances in genetics and our understanding of environmental science and ecology, is one of the best supported theories that science has to offer about how ANYTHING works. It's up there with things like "Ohm's Law" (E=IR), Newton's Laws of Gravity and/or Einstein's Theories of Relativity, the kinetic theory of gases, etc.

People don't question the scientific understanding about what makes our computers, mobile phones, PDAs, microwaves, etc. work, yet they still have issues with evolution, despite the fact that it is all based on EXACTLY THE SAME scientific method (in a nutshell, "observe - question - hypothesize - test - analyze - repeat") as the those things. It really boggles the mind.

I'm not saying the theory of evolution should not be questioned. ALL SCIENCE should be questioned, periodically even, but it should be questioned scientifically (i.e. does my hypothesis fit the data better, and can I devise a test to show this?) But, is it really so hard to accept the idea that we may not be "God's gift to the universe" and are only as important as we make ourselves to be, rather than relying on some higher power, some creator to make us the most important thing around? Honestly, and I grew up with religion, it is a concept that I can no longer understand (and I doubt I ever understood it in the first place)...

What is it? Fear that there may be nothing but what we leave behind after we die? Fear that if we are the product of an unimaginable amount of interactions over a difficult to imagine number of years and nothing more than that? Is it hubris? Fear that we may share the same ancestors as gorillas and orangutans?

Why is the theory of evolution still a controversy? As far as science goes, there is no other hypothesis that even comes close to explaining biology as well. How can so many people (and, honestly, mainly in the United States) still reject at most and at least question based on unscientific ideas -- i.e. not based on the scientific method -- the theory of evolution?

I have no problems with the idea of questioning the theory of evolution, if you can do it on scientific grounds. But doing otherwise is the same (to me) as questioning gravity, electronics, chemistry, etc. If one can accept those things, then why is evolution so hard to accept?

Re:Controversial? sad...

[SpinyNorman]

It's worse than that - evolution isn't just up there with things like Ohm's law and the law of gravity... it ceased being a theory/law altogether when DNA was discovered thereby making Darwin's hypothesized inheritable traits a reality.

Given the now known existence of DNA & mechanisms of genetic variation, the tautology "the fittest survive" points out that evolution HAS to occur.

variation + the fittest survive + hereditory traits => successive generations become fitter

How could they possibly NOT become fitter (evolve)?!!

Speciation is similarly unavoidable. Population genetic drift comes about by interbreeding, so lack of interbreeding will lead to diverging sub-population genetics, and there is nothing to stop this proceeding past the no-turning-back (speciation!) point of no longer being able to interbreed.

Some of the reasons why some people find it hard to accept are :

- It's personal - it clashes with their religious beliefs

- It's personal - it clashes with their egotistical belief of being special, not an animal

- Evolution of large animal species happens to slowly to observe, and most people are not familiar with other forms of evolution (e.g bacterial, or genetic design) that do happen observably quickly

- It's taught horribly in schools. When you are taught properly about population speration and genetic drift, environmental change and punctuated equilibrium, speciation as evolution past the point of inability to interbreed, it makes sense. If you instead believe evolution happens to individuals vs populations, or that all genetic changes are claimed to be incrementally beneficial (vs punctuated equilibrium, or even Lamarkian drivel like giraffe's necks getting longer because of their stretching for leaves, then you will be very confused!

Re:Controversial? sad...

[Copid]

http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/abstract/176/3/1759 [genetics.org]

No offense, but did you actually read that paper? I don't think that it says what you think it says.

You may also be interested in a more detailed explanation which includes some examples of beneficial mutations and not-so-beneficial mutations as well.

I appreciate the link, but I was looking for a source for your specific claims like the "3 generations" claim and the claim about "simultaneous" mutation.

As to Dawkin's actual quote in the Blind Watchmaker, he repeats the usual line about how micro evolution over time can lead to macro evolution given enough time while at the same time referring to the contradiction that we find in the problem posed by the Cambrian Explosion.

And before the quote, after the quote, and inside some of the ellipses you've added, he explains why these observations are not the problem you think they are. I note that you assiduously avoid posting those portions of the text each time you quote mine Dawkins.

Credits: I am quoting portions from www.anointed-one.net

I hope that you quote them more honestly than you quote Dawkins. Then again, if the Dawkins quotes are cribbed from anointed-one.net, I wouldn't be quite as proud as you are to be quoting from their web site.

Not really.

[jd]

Adaptation implies a flawed transfer, as a perfect transfer cannot yield the ability to adapt, only the ability to perpetuate. It may be a different permutation of traits, but the traits must already exist. The most adaptable, therefore, are those with the greatest number of flaws in the transfer of traits, as that will yield the greatest number of candidates with greater fitness for a new environment than the previous generation. Well, up to an extent. If the process exceeds an error rate proportional to the rate of change of the environment, you'd decrease the odds of holding onto traits that actually are useful/optimal. However, as the rate of change of the environment also changes, the ideal error rate changes, therefore what constitutes ideal adaptability must also change. This means that a species that is near-perfect in its ability to adapt at one point in time may be completely unsuitable at another point in time. It follows that the ability to adapt is a trait that itself must be held subject to the ability to adapt.

I'd therefore rewrite the last piece to say something like "those with an ability to adapt most closely aligned with the pressure to adapt at that time, including those pressures exerted by changes within the pressure to adapt". Well, except that it's longer, less succinct, and less obvious in meaning to those not already familiar with the idea of evolution.

It's not really a tautology. It's recursive and reversible (and therefore provable by induction from first principles) but the statement isn't necessarily true simply because of itself, mostly because "adapt" does not have a constant definition.

Re:If that's the case...

[What Would NPH Do]

You have to leave your parent's basement first before you can start picking up chicks.

"survival of the fittest" is a vacuous tautology.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."

--Charles Darwin

And how do we measure "the one most adaptable to change"? Why it is whichever one survives, of course. Because of this definition it is not possible to falsify the claim that "the best-adapted ones survive". Imagine that we set out to corrupt an expirment which tries to prove, over a thousand years, that the best-adapted animals survive. The experimenters create a biodome out of an area of New Zealand and proceed to raise the temperature to 120 degrees. Then they wait a thousand years.

If the thousand years proceeds normally, then let's assume by the end certain species will have flourished. They're the ones that have survived. Others, not so much. Maybe some species can't stand the heat, they die out. They're the ones that haven't survived.

So far we haven't entered the realm of tautology. But look, the scientists don't just call the surviving ones "the survivors" they look at survivors and say "Whoa, they're not just survivors. They're adapters. The survivors are the ones who are the best adapted. THEREFORE, there is a process, natural selection, by which the most fit, the best adapted survive".

Okay. They conclude that "natural selection" is "true". Now for the falsifiability test. Let's be God, and let's falsify they're experiment by corrupting their data. How can we lead them to conclude "whoops; there's no natural selection. the fittest, the best adapted didn't survive, a less fit, a less well-adapted group did."

We can't. If the day before they open the biosphere we 'disappear' EVERY thriving species and, of the species that are now poorly representated, we choose the one that has the FEWEST members, is on the brink of extinction, because it is so poorly adapted, so unfit (indeed, we could choose a species, if there is one, that died within hours of the temperature being raised to 120 degrees - but we don't want to arouse their suspicions), and of that species, we "smuggle in" enough to make it the MOST thriving speices, will the scientists conclude "holy shit, these species are completely unfit to be here, they're totally maladapted. It seems survival ISN'T necessarily of the fittest, of the best-adapted. In at least this one case, survival has been of species that are totally maladapted and unfit to survive. Natural selection, at least in this experiment, HASN'T been shown to favor the fittest".

No. They won't say that. They'll look at the species that seems (because of our corruption) to be thriving and label it the FITTEST and label it the BEST ADAPTED. We could fill their biosphere with polar bears sweating their asses off and they would say, "it seems that, for unknown reasons, the polar bears are the fittest ones in this sweltering environment. they're the best adapted. natural selection has favored them, and this proves 'survival of the fittest'. indeed, perhaps if we wait a thousand more years the rest of the speices will have 'evolved' into polar bears too." (just kidding on the last point).

It's because they're laboring under the tautology that NO MATTER WHAT survives, it proves natural selection favors the fittest, because THE FITTEST (ie THE SURVIORS) are whatever survived and flourished. If there are any survivors, it proves 'survival of the fittest', since they have been selected for their traits to survive.

We could 'disappear' every animal with the B trait of a completely irrelevant A/B possibility, and the New Zealanders would conclude that "survival of the fittest" is proved by the fact that the survivors have the A trait, therefore they are the fittest, and it is just this that has caused them to survive.

I'd like to hear if anyone here has a way to falsify the New Zealand experiment so that they conclude "well I guess THIS ONE experiment doesn't bear out 'survival of the fittest'. it doesn't show that natural selection favors the best-adapted species. species don't become better and better adapted over time".

Really, how would you do it?

Re:If that's the case...

[MightyYar]

Not if you have a sister.

Micro vs. Macro is fiction

[interactive_civilian]

If you have a problem with so-called "macro-evolution" then I contend that you cannot possibly conceive of 1 million years. It does not take that long for speciation (which you call macro-evolution, though I contend that there is only evolution). We have witnessed speciation. We have caused speciation in the lab. What more do you need?

You live for maybe 70 years, yet you have a hard time with the idea that several MILLION years ago, humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor?

Hell, we are close to speciation of dogs. Though still genetically compatible, it shouldn't be hard to argue that St. Bernards and Chihuahuas are reproductively isolated. If we could both be around to see the outcome, I would bet on complete reproductive genetic isolation within a few thousand years, i.e. speciation, or what you want to call "macro-evolution".

Scientifically show me that there is indeed a distinction between your so-called "micro-" and "macro-evolution", and I will be willing to accept the evidence. Otherwise, SCIENCE has shown, repeatedly, that there is no real distinction.

Separating evolution into "micro-" and "macro-" is just another red herring from those unwilling to question their own beliefs about their own importance to the universe, as I mentioned above.

Organisms change over time, due to a number of genetic and environmental factors. This is a FACT. The mechanisms of it are a theory (which is as close to truth as science can get). Why is it difficult for you to believe that, over enough time, things will change so much as to be incompatible (reproductively speaking)?

You may proceed with your laughter AFTER you refute what I have said with EVIDENCE.

Re:Micro vs. Macro is fiction

[Copid]

So...where are the transient forms?

You may try your local university or museum of natural history.

HTH.

Re:Micro vs. Macro is fiction

[typidemon]

Transient forms don't necessarily have to hang around for millions of years. Once you get an adaptation that works it can quickly become another total form. Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0

Re:Micro vs. Macro is fiction

[Copid]

Though it is often argued that macro evolution follows the same processes as micro evolution, famous evolutionists such as Gould have nonetheless proposed theories such as the "Punctuated Equilibrium" theory which states that evolution actually took place in big steps and it wasn't always through millions of accumulated micro-level evolution.

Not so much. Punctuated equilibrium has to do with the distribution of changes over long periods of time, not how gradual changes over short periods of time. The end result of "macroevolution" is still the result of small changes adding up. They just don't happen uniformly over time.

Another reason for this theory is to account for the Cambrian Explosion problem which Dawkins also refers to in his books including the Blind Watchmaker.

Cambrian explosion "problem"?

Some of the other theories proposed for large changes between generations is the Horizontal Gene Transfer theory. However, the problem with this theory is that horizontal gene transfer is seen in simpler organisms like bacteria and is not seen on any other organisms such as vertebrates.

Are you claiming that experts in biology are positing a gene transfer mechanism not found in vertebrates as an explanation for rapid changes in vertebrates?

So is it not accurate to say that micro evolution and macro evolution follow the same processes. Even many prominent evolutionists will disagree with that.

Not at all. I think that you're missing the point of punctuated equilibrium.

Re:"survival of the fittest" is a vacuous tautolog

[the phantom]

The central insight of evolution is not that "the strong survive," that "the weak die off," or that "the best adapted have more offspring." These are fairly basic truisms that people have known, at an intuitive level, for thousands of years. Where do you think cows, sheep, wheat, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, and pigs come from? Domestic plants and animals are the result of thousands of generations of artificial selection. Farmers wanted larger kernels, so they bred corn plants with larger kernels to other corn plants with larger kernels, resulting in offspring with even larger kernels. Herders wanted more passive animals, so the animals with the best personalities were bred more often. That certain traits could be bred for has been known for a very long time.

The great insight that Darwin had was that nature could provide as much of a selective force upon a population as human selection. Thus, your argument is nonsensical. Evolution is not about the "survival of the fittest." It is about changes in populations over time, as driven by process that include variation and natural selection.

Re:If that's the case...

[mrbooze]

Really? After 15+ years in IT, I haven't noticed that much adaptability to change in most IT folk. Confront a Windows admin with the need to work on UNIX, or a UNIX admin with the need to work on Windows, and hair starts falling out. Heck, sometimes asking a Linux admin to work on a commercial UNIX product gives them fits, and vice versa.

And it goes on, make the sendmail person switch to postfix. The CVS expert switch to Subversion., etc etc.

My experience leads me to believe that almost nobody hates change more than many IT professionals. Presumably because it means more hassles and work in a job where many are already overworked, maybe?

Theory of Evolution vs ID

[mlwmohawk]

I'm pretty disgusted with Ben Stein. I used to see him as an example of an intelligent conservative, and yet now, he blows all his credibility.

The problem with evolution is that it requires an amount of critical thinking to understand, and while subtle, the nuances are easily exploited by the cynical against the theory itself.

The "Ben Steins" of the world mystify me. I can't believe someone is so evil to purposefully make an argument they know to be false against science. I can't also believe that he is so stupid as to believe ID.

And yes, ID supporters, ID is stupid. It isn't science. It is religion, and "god did it" is not a valid scientific theory. ID is to biological science what "circle squaring" is to mathematics.

Evolution is a proven fact. Organisms change with their environment. This is irrefutable. The "Theory" of evolution is the hows, whys, and over all path that organism A has taken to become what it is.

In science, we seek to understand the hows, whys, and path better.

Just in time

[Plazmid]

Excellent, they released them just in time, that Expelled movie comes out tomorrow. Hopefully someone can convince Ben Stein that evolution isn't lightning striking a mud puddle.

Re:"survival of the fittest" is a vacuous tautolog

[nuttycom]

Your thought experiment is interesting, but it treads close to something like solipsism; how can we know that the outcome of *any* given scientific experiment hasn't been meddled with by Descartes' demon?

You'd be just as well off stating that scientists are laboring under some misapprehension of causality.

Besides, you think that the scientists haven't been watching through the windows for that thousand years?

Re:Survival my @ss

[atlastiamborn]

I might be falling for a troll here, but you don't seem to understand what a "theory" means in the realm of science.

A scientific theory is not just a hypothesis you come up with at 3am after having had a couple of beers. Scientific theories are constantly tested and examined.

Any theory that is able to survive testing and questioning as long as Darwin's, is truly fit for survival.