[thechat] Darwin was (Re: Mythology)
Judah McAuley
judah at wiredotter.com
Thu May 24 17:21:12 CDT 2001
At 05:34 PM 5/24/01 -0400, Matt wrote:
> > And concerning whether or not science is a religion, I don't know.
> > But I do know that Evolution is still classified as a theory, not
> > a fact, and even Darwin publicly stated that he regretted
> > publishing such an obviously inaccurate theory.
>
>AFAIK, he simply co-founded the theory of natural selection and
>evolution was a later finding that stemmed from this. Though, I do
>remember a book by him entitled The Anscestry of Man or something
>like that, so I could be wrong.
>
>Clarification, anyone? Thanks.
Darwin's big book was entitled "The Origin of Species" (available online
at: http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-origin-of-species/)
Darwin didn't invent the idea of Evolution. The fact that species change
(or evolve) was pretty well accepted in the scientific mainstream by
Darwins time. There were also people who were questioning the age of the
Earth. As a matter of fact, Darwin was heavily influenced by the work of
Charles Lyle (a geologist) who worked on fossils.
Darwins big contribution was the idea species could be created by the
process of descent with modification, which we now call natural
selection. This, simply stated, is that some organisms survive better than
others and that the things that cause them to survive better are passed on
to their offspring. Therefore, the organisms that change as the
environment change are going to survive best and are going to have more
offspring. And, importantly, he claimed that this process alone was enough
to cause speciation, or the creation of new species. This undermined the
biblical idea that all the species of the Earth were formed at creation and
the species are immutable. This is the reason that the book was entitled
"The Origin of Species" instead of evolution or something else. The big
controversy at the time was wether those fossils represented different
species that had died out and whether our modern species existed
contemporaneously with the fossils or whether they have come into existence
since Creation.
And to clarify, Evolution is classified as a theory as are all explanatory
ideas put forth by science. Rule #1 of the Scientific Method
(traditionally) is that you can never prove a theory true, you can only
disprove it. The reason is that it only takes one counter example to
disprove a theory. A theory could only be proved by eliminating all
possible counter examples. Due to our limits in knowledge, this can never
be assured. Therefore you cannot prove anything to be absolutely
true. For convenience, we tend to believe something if there is an
overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of a theory and a general lack of
credible counter examples. But if someone comes forward with a counter
example, then its back to the drawing board.
Judah
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