Posts Tagged ‘natural selection’

In November 1859, Charles Darwin released the first edition of The Origin of Species. While an instant worldwide sensation – all 1250 copies sold on the first day – critics kept Darwin returning to the drawing board. Over the next thirteen years, Darwin edited, added and deleted major sections of The Origin of Species eventually leading to six editions. The Sixth Edition was published in February 1872.

Now, Ben Fry of Computational Information Design has retraced these evolutionary changes through Darwin’s six editions, chapter by chapter, highlighting the changes in a color-coded greeked version of the text at pixel-scale, as seen in the illustration. Continue Reading

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ exists which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications,” Charles Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species, “my theory would absolutely break down”.

This week a team of scientists from Australia and Spain lead by John R. Paterson, a paleontologist at the University of New England in Australia, extended even further Darwin’s dilemma. Continue Reading

In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded evolution theorist Lynn Margulis the National Medal of Science Award. Amazingly, in 2008, Margulis was awarded the Darwin-Wallace Medal by the Linnean Society of London.  Margulis, who died on Tuesday in Amherst, Massachusetts, however, was no friend of the Darwinian theory evolution.

At the center of the raging theory of evolution debates, Margulis emerged as a strong critic of Darwin during the late twentieth century. In the words of Margulis, “Darwin’s claim of ‘descent with modification’ as caused by natural selection is a linguistic fallacy”. Continue Reading

Charles Darwin proposed a theory that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry in The Origin of Species through a process he coined natural selection. Since its publication in 1859, this theory of evolution has been one of the most hotly contested theories in the history of science. A recent ancient eel discovery is the latest example of why.

In February of 2009, research diver Jiro Sakaue, descending into a dark fringing reef cave in the Pacific Ocean Republic of Palau, discovered a small unusual eel-like fish. The species of the fish has since been named Protaguillae palau. Prot(o) means prototype, first, or original, guilla means eel (a shortened form of Anguilliformes - an order of fish) with palau referring to the discovery location. Continue Reading

Anti-Science, evolution and climate change are now at the center of the 2012 Presidential campaign. The answers to the head-turning question, “Do you believe in evolution?” gets top media attention even though few politicians have biology training beyond Biology 101. Of course, “does life have meaning and purpose?” is the real core of the question.

The use of the term Anti-Science today has evolved to mean anti-evolution and anti-climate change. How candidates manage the “evolution” question will likely leverage an effect on the final vote next year.” Question like “Do you believe in evolution” are now one of the most dreaded types of questions on the political campaign trail. But, what is Anti-Science? As we will see, the history of the Anti-Science is an amazing saga of irony.

At the core of the Anti-Science debate is the definition of Science. The Oxford English Dictionary says that science is “a method of procedures that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.” Continue Reading

In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin developed his revolutionary theory of “slight, successive” evolutionary changes. During the mid-nineteenth century, however, knowledge about genes and genetics was speculative at best, no less the evolution of genes.

In fact, Darwin abandoned the scientific method and declared that his theory of evolution was based on speculation –

I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.

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In the same way Isaac Newton discovered the physical laws of motion and gravity, Charles Darwin attempted to discover the natural laws of evolution in The Origin of Species. Natural selection became Darwin’s proposed natural law, as expressed in the title−The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

Today, Darwin’s theory of evolution is promoted as a “fact” that accepted by “all scientists”. Evolution as a “fact”, not theory, is center stage in the realm of politics. The media hammered presidential candidate Rick Perry for stating that evolution is “just a theory”. Ironically, though, the facts of evolution continue to elude even the vast majority of the most educated in Western society.

In an article published in BioEssays (2011) entitled “Why is it so difficult to accept Darwin’s theory of evolution?” Jacques Dubochet, professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, was amazed to discover that less than 20% of attendees to a celebration of Darwin’s 200th birthday could “[w]rite down in a few words, the essential elements of Darwin’s theory of evolution”. Continue Reading

Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian right-wing extremist, confessed to be the perpetrator of the dual terrorist attacks in Norway on 22 July 2011. The attach included the bombing of government buildings in Oslo, causing eight deaths, and a mass shooting at a camp of the Workers’ Youth League (AUF) of the Labour Party on the island of Utøya, where he killed 69 people. Others are still missing.

In his 1518-page “European Declaration of Independence,” Breivik reveals himself as a champion of modern biology and the scientific worldview, listing The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin as one of his most “important” books. (p. 1407)

“Social-darwinism was the norm before the 1950”, Breivik laments. “Back then, it was allowed to say what we feel. Now, however, we have to disguise our preferences to avoid the horrible consequences of being labeled as a genetical preferentialist.” (p. 1227) Continue reading

Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species hoodwinks natural selection with alternating unlimited and limited power. Natural selection was Darwin’s “grand” natural law acting through the ages giving rise to ever increasing complex forms of life. This essence of the concept is captured in the title: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

Natural selection, the proposed natural law driving the progress of evolution, was envisioned by Darwin, on the one hand, with powers like that of a deity: It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets?
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The puzzling platypus was discovered long before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species. This duck-billed oddity is like a mammal, a bird, and a reptile all in one species.

When the platypus, nicknamed the “watermole,” was first discovered in 1797 by early European settlers near the Hawkesbury River, outside Sydney, it triggered a lasting controversy. The perplexed local governor, Captain John Hunter, sent specimens back to Mother England for study.

The “watermole” was equally mystifying in England. Zoologists George Shaw suggested it was a “freak imposture” sold to gullible seamen by Chinese taxidermists. Suspecting fraud, they tried to pry the “duck’s bill” off of the pelt, leaving marks on the bill that are still visible today at the British Museum in London.
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