Who Owns the Standard Definition of Evolution

Abiogenesis isn't part of the theory of evolution. This is a possible implication but not part of the theory itself. Increasing complexity is a possible outcome of evolutionary forces like competition and differential reproductive success but is not part of the theory itself. Close enough. All life is a product of evolution. "Highest life form" isn't a scientific term, but it would be accurate to say that humans are an extremely successful species that inhabits a very broad range of environments. Yes.--Percy

Why do you think evolution is untestable? Can you think of any experiment that didn't validate descent with modification and natural selection?
​ If anything that can be explained in different ways has been nullified then everything is nullified. Or to put it another way, when something isn't understood the first time it is frequently helpful to try a different approach. Oops, I just nullified everything, didn't I.--Percy

Let's have a look. Could you present some of it here?--Percy

The last one requires a log in, I assume to Professor Gingeric's personal account at the University of Michigan.You said that you have "seen a great deal of supporting data", but the remaining three links do not appear to contain any data. They contain descriptions of what has been deduced or inferred from the data. I only gave them a cursory glance, but they don't appear to contain any data themselves.If you can be specific about any data you would like to see then let us know and we'll see if we can find it for you. For example, if you're interested in how we know that the whale's closest living land relative is the hippopotamus you might look at Analyses of mitochondrial genomes strongly support a hippopotamus-whale clade.--Percy

And within evolution there are very clear definitions of nucleotide, DNA, gamete, mutation, descent, et al. But you'll get a variety of definitions for physics, just as you did for evolution earlier in the discussion. True. At heart all science is physics. Physics is all-encompassing. Which "key principles of evolution" do you believe are lacking experimental support?--Percy

Seeing this I tried Firefox and was able to access it. Thanks.--Percy

Could you explain your reasoning? The latter might require a little contemplation to see the implications, but isn't descent with modification overtly obvious everywhere? Haven't you observed this yourself with every baby? I'm not certain enough of your meaning to comment. I certainly hope so. All theories, even those of physics, are subject to change in light of new information or improved insights. You were offered a number of concise definitions. My own favorite short definitions are descent with modification winnowed by natural selection, and changing allele frequencies in populations over time.--Percy

Would that your conclusions possessed the same rigor. For just a single counterexample, give this a click: Google Scholar search for "creating new species"Your conclusions seem to ignore mountains of empirical research on evolutionary topics.--Percy

Horse evolution is one such example. The Evolution of the Horse. A Record and its Interpretation is an overview paper from 1926. Here's a diagram from the third page of the paper: Naturally we've added immensely to our evidence and understanding of horse evolution in the past hundred years. Try this Google Scholar search for "horse evolution".As someone else already said, all species are transitional, including us. Stasis isn't possible given changing environments and circumstances, mutations and genetic drift. Even the modern horseshoe crab, famous in the popular imagination for remaining unchanged over millions of years, has changed in small ways. While we only have a record of fossils and not of DNA, since mutations are inevitable the horseshoe crab genome could not possibly be identical to its ancestors from millions of years ago.The completeness of any fossil record of evolutionary change over time for any life is subject to circumstances outside our control. What decays or erodes away or subducts or becomes buried deeply enough under sediment is gone to us forever. The fossil record for upland regions is very poor because they are regions of net erosion. Small or delicate species are much more likely to decay before preservation than large species. Most of the record of life's history on Earth either no longer exists or is inaccessible.--Percy

More than several definitions were provided. You nonsensically complained that anything that can be explained in different ways has been nullified, as if you believe different people usually explain things the same way. You complained that there is no "official" definition of evolution, as if there are any "official" definitions in science. Even physics has no "official" definition:

Wikipedia:

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Physics is the natural science of matter, involving the study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force.

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Britannica:

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Physics, science that deals with the structure of matter and the interactions between the fundamental constituents of the observable universe.

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Commenting on what you say you're experiencing as scorn, when you first began this discussion there was much presumption, which I then felt premature but have since been proven wrong, that where you are now is exactly where you were headed.
​ You'll have to describe your reasoning. You seem to be ignoring much of what's been said, pretending that mountains of evidence and research do not exist, and drawing conclusions unsupported by anything in this discussion.--Percy

I already gave you an answer in the very message you're replying to: You seem intent on ignoring people while restating your opinions. If this isn't the kind of thing you're looking for then just say so and explain what you are looking for. How so? How are fossil digs and fossil analysis not (to use your words) "direct observance & recording of the phenomenon."What if they found fossils of bunnies back in the Permian, creating numerous difficulties for evolutionary theory? Would that count?--Percy

The evolutionary process is the same, whether tracing lineages from eohippus to equus, or from sea creatures to land animals, or from ancient reptiles to dinosaurs to birds. It's all descent with modification (mutations, and also genome mixing for sexual species) winnowed by natural selection. What is most pronounced in the fossil record is the increasing difference from modern forms with increasing distance in the past. The ancestral species are the same family as horses, but they're extinct and are not the same species as horses. Yes, all dogs are the same species, Canis lupus. That's why they can all interbreed. Wolves, from which dogs are descended, are also the same species, and dogs can interbreed with wolves, too.
​ Evolution is a theory that places the evidence into an interpretive framework. Theories don't prove things. While the evidence we have is consistent with a universal common ancestor, there are other possibilities and no proof that it is the correct one. If by "genetics" you mean the imperfect copying that occurs with almost all reproductive events then this is exactly the process that produces variation. In general the more time that passes the more variation accumulates until at some point it is no longer the same species.
​ All science is tentative. There is no certainty. The best we can do is improve upon evidence and insight to increase our confidence that our understanding is likely true.
​ Imagine a town through which a hurricane has passed. Some neighborhoods are decimated, some spared. Who knows why.It is the same with the fossil record. In some regions sedimentary layers have been preserved, in others they've been eroded away, in yet others they've subducted back into the mantle, and in yet others they've become hopelessly deeply buried. Fossil preservation after death and the preservation and/or accessibility of the region where the fossilization occurred are serendipitous.--Percy

It's copy-n-pasted.--Percy

Maybe we could just stick to the facts?--Percy

This is the first time you've mentioned a religious motivation. No one here is trying to refute Biblical creation. Creationism only receives attention from scientists in response to efforts to teach it as accepted science in public schools.What you're calling "random, non-directed, continuing common ancestry" does not "go beyond" descent with modification combined with natural selection. Descent with modification already means random, non-directed mutations. Common ancestry is a necessary implication of the process. Gradually, one generation at a time. Descent with modification combined with natural selection. Has the origin of a new species been observed? Maybe at the single-celled level where generations are short. There are some claims of speciation being observed in real time at much higher classification levels, but I'm not convinced.But we'll never observe the origin of a new species of fish, amphibian, reptile, bird or mammal because each generation takes too long. For example, the changes in Eohippus ("dawn horse") that gradually became Orohippus ("mountain horse") probably took a couple million years. Each Eohippus/Orohippus birth included a number of mutations, and with many births every year there would be millions and millions of mutations over a couple millions years. Each Eohippus/Orohippus would live out its life in its environment and be selected or not to contribute its genes to the next generation, i.e., its mutations would either be passed on or not. It would not be possible to duplicate such a lengthy process in the laboratory. Especially it wouldn't be possible to accelerate the mutation rate.We could of course exert strong selection pressures in the lab, but your own example of the dog shows that strong selection pressures do not produce speciation. Domestically bred pigeons are another example of huge variation within a single species.There's another more subtle reason why it would be difficult to observe speciation, and that's that speciation is a very gradual process. One way that speciation is thought to happen is when a species population becomes divided into two separate populations, for example by a river changing course. The separate populations evolve independently and only gradually become less and less capable of interbreeding.This means that there is no exact point where the two populations become two different species. There's a point where interbreeding is 90% successful, then 80%, then 70%, and so on until finally they'll incapable of interbreeding at all. At what point do they become two different species? At 50%? 20% 0%?Examples are helpful in considering this question. Even though the lion and the tiger are two different species, a male lion can mate with a female tiger to create a liger. A male donkey and a female horse can mate to create a mule. Species are not hard boundaries but a continuum. Some species are closely related and can interbreed to some extent, others are less closely related and can interbreed less successfully, and distantly related species cannot interbreed at all.DNA can provide us a measure of relatedness. Chimp and human share 98.8% of their DNA and yet cannot interbreed at all. One widely held viewpoint is that everything in science is tentative, including facts. Stephen Jay Gould (paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at Harvard) had this to say about facts:

Stephen Jay Gould:

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In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

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"The Great Deceit of many scientific theories?" Now you sound anti-science. This isn't really the topic, but which theories do you think science has been deceitful about? Evolutionism? Is that analogous to religionism?The theory of evolution is a theory, not a fact, but it *is* a fact that one little step of evolution takes place with nearly every reproductive event.--Percy