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Why Did Darwinism Emerge?

1. Yes there is disagreement between the "gradualist" and "punc-eq" camps. This is due to the patchy nature of the available data.

2. Their disagreement is not over competition vs. environment as the main influence over the direction of evolution, it is over the speed of the response to environmental change.

3. "post darwinism" began the day that the theory was added to beyond that written in Origin.

However, if you have a take on evolutionary theory since 1980, let's hear it.
 
phildwyer said:
Well obviously not everyone will agree about every single detail of a subject this complex. But I think we've reached a broad consensus on the two major points that I describe above.

If you still have any objection to them, feel free to raise them now. For once we move on, there will be no going back to the matters with which we have already disposed.
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Pretty well everyone on here has categorically disagreed with you.

Personally I speak as a layman who has read hardly any of those books and just relied on an OU general science course I scraped in 1987, plus interpretations by Attenborough and Dawkins (and I doubtless skipped over the difficult stuff in Selfish Gene and Watchmaker) - oh and the Jehovas Witnesses left me an interesting book of their own. :D

Darwin was destined to be a vicar. His philosophical stance would probably have come from there.
His contemporaries were totally hung up on God not having made "mistakes" ...
 
phildwyer said:
1. Darwinism emerged as an ideological counterpart to the early capitalist economics of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus.

.
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Well.....

I think that Darwinism emerged from the head of Charles Darwin, in a similar manner and for similar reasons that that runny shit emerged from your butt when you arose from bed this morning. Both emerged as a result of what had been digested by the relevant body part, and because each relevant body part then did what it is that those body parts do.

Into Darwin's head went his training as a naturalist, his observations of species, and his trip on the Beagle. With all due respect, he didn't jury-rig a naturalist theory as some sort of abstruse counterpoint to the theories of whichever economic theorists. It's about biology, genetics; ontogeny; phylogeny.

It is about what it appears to be about.
 
Gawd, I just went and googled "socialist evolution" ..
There's masses of this turgid stuff out there.

No wonder so many of us can't scrape together much in the way of revolutionary fervour...

I thought we'd got beyond worrying that much about the fine details of how things came about and were now mostly concerned with agriculture and cancer..
 
gentlegreen said:
Gawd, I just went and googled "socialist evolution" ..
There's masses of this turgid stuff out there.

No wonder so many of us can't scrape together much in the way of revolutionary fervour...

I thought we'd got beyond worrying that much about the fine details of how things came about and were now mostly concerned with agriculture and cancer..
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if you want the end result of trying to make science fit a political theory, you might want to look at lysenko.
 
Crispy said:
1. Yes there is disagreement between the "gradualist" and "punc-eq" camps. This is due to the patchy nature of the available data.

2. Their disagreement is not over competition vs. environment as the main influence over the direction of evolution, it is over the speed of the response to environmental change.

3. "post darwinism" began the day that the theory was added to beyond that written in Origin.

However, if you have a take on evolutionary theory since 1980, let's hear it.
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and afaik, nothing pissed gould off more than the people who tried to use his theories to attack the validity of the study of evolution or proove ID.
 
Crispy said:
1. Yes there is disagreement between the "gradualist" and "punc-eq" camps. This is due to the patchy nature of the available data.

2. Their disagreement is not over competition vs. environment as the main influence over the direction of evolution, it is over the speed of the response to environmental change.

3. "post darwinism" began the day that the theory was added to beyond that written in Origin.

However, if you have a take on evolutionary theory since 1980, let's hear it.
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I don't really disagree with any of this, but I don't think you've grasped the full implications of punk-ek. It destroys Darwin's gradualism, and therefore also undermines the contention that natural selection is the sole cause of evolution.

This is important because, if natural selection were the sole cause of evolution, then intelligent design is ruled out tout court. But if it is not the sole cause, then intelligent design is not ruled out. Nor is it automatically a factor, of course, but it is no longer out of the question.

This in turn opens the possibility for a theory of evolution to fit our post-secular age. But I'll pause there for a bit.
 
Johnny Canuck3 said:
With all due respect, he didn't jury-rig a naturalist theory as some sort of abstruse counterpoint to the theories of whichever economic theorists.
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I think that's exactly what he did. From Darwin's Autobiography:

"In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species."
 
phildwyer said:
Well I must say that I thought it was a given that anti-capitalists would favor Gould's post-Darwinism over Dawkins's ultra-Darwinism, but this thread has proved me wrong.
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Biology's not really the right place to look for uplifting encomiums. I wish politicos would keep away from the subject, they spoil it for everyone else.
 
Spud Murfy said:
Biology's not really the right place to look for uplifting encomiums. I wish politicos would keep away from the subject, they spoil it for everyone else.
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Sorry, but I don't believe that science can be separated from other social discourses.
 
phildwyer said:
Sorry, but I don't believe that science can be separated from other social discourses.
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Do you think if someone sets out to find examples from the natural world which conveniently flatter their own interests, that they're doing science?

Look at the cuddly meercats all helping each out. Or - look at the ant colony wipe out its rival, as nature intended. Not even a Walt Disney level of biology.
 
phildwyer said:
I don't really disagree with any of this, but I don't think you've grasped the full implications of punk-ek. It destroys Darwin's gradualism, and therefore also undermines the contention that natural selection is the sole cause of evolution.

This is important because, if natural selection were the sole cause of evolution, then intelligent design is ruled out tout court. But if it is not the sole cause, then intelligent design is not ruled out. Nor is it automatically a factor, of course, but it is no longer out of the question.

This in turn opens the possibility for a theory of evolution to fit our post-secular age. But I'll pause there for a bit.
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This puzzles me. And I don't doubt for a second that it would have puzzled Gould, who would have vehemently disagreed with and taken exception to your misunderstandings and misrepresentations of his work.

Sorry if that's a bit blunt, but you simply don't grasp this stuff. I know you think you do. I know you're not trolling on this subject, but you have a logical block over it.

Your first paragraph regarding punctuated equilibrium is complete nonsense.

What do you even mean by 'natural selection is not the sole cause of evolution'? Do you really grasp what PE is? I'll tell you, but I'm sure you've been told before and not grasped it. It is a theory regarding the way in which natural selection has caused speciation. It is an explanation of the data - incomplete as it is - using natural selection as its mechanism for change. For instance, a comet strike does not cause evolution. It causes a change in the environment. This change in the environment may be sudden, and will change what is and is not fit to survive, but it may then take thousands or even millions of years for the full impact of that change to be seen in the changed forms of organisms, the disappearance of the dinosaurs or whatever. That's PE. Nothing more. And nothing that provides any room for any other mechanism for evolution than natural selection.

I know you've been told by many people that you have misunderstood Gould's work. Badly misunderstood it. Well, I'm telling you again, fwiw. It appears that you think you've understood something that the rest of us have all missed. You have not.
 
I wish you would just cut to the chase, Phil, and stop worrying that we're "ready" to receive your brave new thesis - because it's not going to happen.
If you don't feel able to, no doubt they'll accept it uncritically over at Icke's forum - though maybe you should weave-in a more directly conspiratorial angle ...
 
phildwyer said:
I think that's exactly what he did. From Darwin's Autobiography:

"In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species."
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That may be an explanation for the appearance of the idea. In the history of ideas, there is an interesting discussion to be had about how ideas come about and how changes in the wider society can spark new theories.

But you're badly conflating two things here and your thinking is mushy to say the least. That a new theory's appearance can be explained through social conditions has no impact whatever on the theory itself. In that sense, any idea is 'transcendental' as you would put it. So, your theory that capitalism was necessary for the theory of evolution to be formulated has no impact whatever on the rightness or not of the theory of evolution. Whether or not evolution by natural selection is the explanation for the development of life on Earth is not a moral question. Your distaste for empirical evidence has led you down a blind alley on this one. Start your thinking again.
 
And, interestingly, there's a Turkish connection :-

Darwinism is the root of terrorism; Islam the antidote.

Dear Charles Darwin,
In the Year of our Lord, 2009 – which marks the 200th anniversary of your birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species – I am writing to inform you that one of the greatest living intellects on planet Earth has been investigating your theory of evolution with great scientific thoroughness, and has concluded that it is just a steaming heap of moo poo.

I am sure that this, on its own, will not disturb you, as many of your critics said as much when you were still with us.
However, Mr Adnan Oktar – good citizen of Turkey, incurable fashionista, and the world’s greatest authority on creationism -lays the blame firmly on your shoulders for all the terrorism in the world. This, Charles, is pushing it a bit, which is why I have taken the trouble to draw your attention to the slur.

http://freethinker.co.uk/2009/02/18/darwinism-is-the-root-of-terrorism-islam-the-antidote/
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Greebo said:
Explain please?

Edited to add: I can't be bothered to search L&L and PD's respective activity, so I'd appreciate you quantifying their contributions to urban. Thanks in advance.
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Dwyer is surely informed, informing and provocative, whereas LL is plodding, repetitive and reactionary?
 
Ok, a simple question for pd, because this is the point at which he becomes vague on this:

What is or might be another mechanism for evolution other than natural selection? Specifically, please, not hand-wavy. And I'm not asking for mechanisms by which changes in the environment can come about, such as volcanoes, comets, etc. I'm asking for mechanisms by which changes at the level of the organism can come about.

Supplementary question:

What about evolution, specifically, cannot be explained simply by the mechanism of natural selection?

So: What might be an alternative mechanism? and then: Why would it be needed?

To me and many others, the answer to the first question is 'nothing as far as we can tell' and the answer to the second question is 'it isn't, as far as we can tell'. I think you need to justify yourself from the beginning here.
 
bi0boy said:
Jesus Christ.
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Hallelujah !

Good gawd - I've been a'Googling and found pseudo-scientific papers on the minimum set of species that would have been needed on the Ark - by all accounts some Xtians are prepared to accept that a single pair of "proto-cats" could have micro-eveolved into all of today's species in a matter of about 5,000 years ... :eek:
 
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