Who Owns the Standard Definition of Evolution

I have always liked RAZD's definitions of evolution. Message 7

RAZD:

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The process of evolution involves changes in the composition of hereditary traits, and changes to the frequency of their distributions within breeding populations from generation to generation, in response to ecological challenges and opportunities.

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Why does it seem there should be, to you? Can you point to a single "accepted authority" on the other major scientific fields? Why should there be one for biology? Many universities offer series of courses that cover biological evolution and there have been many textbooks written on the subject.You want a few simple sentences to define one of the most complex processes in nature. How would a more detailed, simpler definition be more useful than those already provided? It's interesting that biologist seem to be able to communicate just fine using the definitions we already have and are not clambering for "better definitions."

Actually, that is the definition of an hypothesis. And you are erroneously using the nonscientific, common usage, meaning of theory: as a wildass guess.A scientific theory consists of all the supporting evidence. A scientific theory is everything we know about the subject. This is the normal understanding across all scientific disciplines. Well, I don't have any knowledge of your experience, but you appear to be unaware of the the incredible amount of supporting evidence that evolution accounts for the diversity of life we see on this planet today. The supporting evidence comes from many different scientific fields and fills university libraries and museums around the globe.You also seem to be unaware that millions of scientists around the globe test many aspects of evolution on a daily basis and they also write millions of papers every years detailing their observations. Well then, you'll be glad to hear that any good recent evolutionary biology textbook should document numerous experiments. One I can highly recommend is: Evolution, Third Edition by Carl T. Bergstrom and Lee Alan Dugatkin, W. W. Norton & Company; Third edition (July 1, 2023). It's a shame you haven't read any Ernst Mayr. If you had you would see that considering all the different modes of reproduction and selection, you might expect modes and patterns of evolution to differ also. So a broad definition of evolution is, flawed reproduction (mutations) leads to descent with modification and differential selection removes some less fit individuals from the population, but the specific details of evolution can very greatly for different taxa.If you are looking for one simple rule for all of evolution, then it is descent with modification.

How specifically do you define superior in a biological sense. Can you give an example? We are talking about reproduction here, parent and offspring.More complex in what sense? Can you give an example? We are talking about reproduction here, parent and offspring. I have no idea what you are saying here. Can you provide any example of any parent ever giving birth to to a wholly different life form, ever, in the history of this planet?

Hey, can I use this in my signature? Please?

Are you serious? Reproduction, every single reproductive event is the verification. It has been observed for millennia that offspring do not exactly resemble their parents, like they would if they were exact clones. Every offspring carries mutations that did not occur in the parents. That's the descent with modification or the genetic part of evolution. And selection is the other aspect of the process that plays out on the tapestry of populations across time. Really? So you are saying, the pictures and explanations were NOT showing and describing and explaining the supporting evidence?What were the pictures and explanations for if not showing the supporting evidence? You mean like mapping and comparing the genomes of tens of thousands of species, and often from multiple populations of a species, that kind of hard repeatable data? You mean like mapping the paleo-biogeographical history of this planet, that kind of hard repeatable data? You mean like cataloging all the endogenous retroviral insertion in all the genomes that are sequenced, that kind of hard repeatable data?I don't know about your scientific method, but our scientific method is chugging along just fine on that data. And by the way, these huge datasets generated by rapidly advancing genome sequencing technology are being combed for hidden patterns are wonderful testing grounds for AI systems that are good at looking for interesting patterns.ABE: It occurred to me that maybe by "hard repeatable data" you meant something like fossils, going and finding the same type of fossils from the same rock layers? Or maybe you meant you wanted the actual fossils instead of pictures and descriptions?

Yep, that's exactly what he expects to see. The problem here is, no matter how many times and how many ways we try to correct his basic misunderstanding of evolution, he will continue to think evolution is an organism giving birth to a "wholly different lifeform."

Well, I guess you haven't been paying attention, because that's exactly what we find. All fossils are "in between" their ancestors and their descendants. In fact, that's kind of a standard principal of life, all organisms are between their ancestors and their potential offspring. Do you disagree? Please provide specific examples of what you are talking about, since almost all species that have ever existed are extinct. Are you saying they didn't have ancestors because they are now extinct? That's true. Do you dispute that organisms with a spinal chord and internal skeleton are all members of Phylum Chordata? Do you dispute that the only organisms with feathers are birds and avian dinosaurs? Do you dispute that organisms with 3 major body regions, 6 legs and at most 4 wings are all insects? Actually Evolution is a scientific field of study and not a thinking, acting entity.I think you will find that any speculations in reputable scientific papers or texts are clearly labeled and discussed. This is often to encourage further exploration or observation and discovery. Scientists build on the discoveries of their predecessors, that's part of the repetition in science.

Says who? You don't make the rules about what science can or cannot observe.

Please see Message 64

So, what do you think? I'm predicting he's a student in a christian high school, so called science class. He gets extra credit for owning the evolutionists...

I'm kind of disappointed he hasn't brought up probabilities of proteins or something happening...

How is this fundamentally different from what was already posted multiple times in this thread?

What are you talking about? No one thinks lizards evolved from birds!The evolutionary process in question governing the descent of one life form from another is called reproduction, and all lifeforms descend from their parents. The process is reproduction. Life falls into nested hierarchies based on morphology, which is the pattern you would expect to see if life evolved from a common ancestor. When it was discovered that species fall into the same nested hierarchy based on genetics, that added tremendous support for the common ancestor part of the theory of evolution. In fact, genetics absolutely shows this pattern for all the species that have been sequenced so far. And when exceptions were found for that, re-evaluation of the morphology showed errors in the original groupings.Pretending that genetics and natural selection are not part of the process evolutionary descent with modification is just illogical and silly and certainly not based on any scientific observations, and in fact, is counter to what is actually observed. The certainty that the descriptions we have for the millions of fossils of hundreds of thousands to millions of species are are accurately documented. And this was a poorly formed question rather than an observation. You are trying to imply that if we don't know everything, we cannot know anything, which is absurd. Scientists observe and report that all the fossils are obviously transitional between their ancestors and their possible descendants. It's a pretty simple and obvious concept, that we see demonstrated with every single birth of every single organism.

I don't see how this is a response to anything i wrote in Message 102, or anywhere else, and just what the hell is evolutionism? Rebranding evolutionary biology as evolutionism just makes you look ignorant, immature, and petty. Well, when are you going to reveal a "couple essential components" that go beyond natural selection and genetic mutations within a species? I have no idea what you are trying to communicate here, what is "continuing common ancestry for all life forms?" Well, the thing is, biblical creation in all its forms has been refuted by all of science for the last 2 centuries. We just object to dimwits and religious nutjobs trying to force it into science classes. You don't actually seem to be trying to understand, you have ignored the questions we've asked you to try and understand what you do know, and you have also ignored every single answer you have been given, so you can drop the act of innocent scholarship.Yes, we can and have observed many different kinds of mutations in wild and captive (laboratory) populations. We observe changes in allele frequency in populations. We observe populations adapt to changes in their environment. We observe species going extinct because selective pressures were greater or more rapid than genetic variability and descent with modification could adapt them to. Yep, that would be a basic part of their training, but you don't seem to be aware that there is far more to scientific publication, the conclusion is usually just a small section near the end. Often the conclusions also include speculation or new hypotheses to be explored. Note that this is just something you just made up. If not, please show your references. I don't know why you are discussing a situation where no observations can be made, if you can't observe something how would you get the idea to study it? This seems to be rhetorical filler and it shouldn't be repeated. Well, you might want to take that up with the non-scientific media. Yeah, since "Evolutionism" is something you made up along with "Scientific Fact" none of us care how you present it.As I mentioned earlier, the conclusions come near the end.