Why Evolution is science

PaulK wrote:"To the best of my knowledge Blythe only acknowledged stabilising selection. The idea that natural selection could drive adaptive change, then would properly belong to Darwin and Wallace. Certainly his 1836 paper on Varities in Animals holds that selection forces animals to retain their current form."Whilst accepting the quote you selected, I'm afraid that isn't the whole story. Blyth did, in fact, in one of the articles presented in full on my website, acknowledge the possibility that differences which occurred in isolated populations might occasionally lead to the emergence of new species.Unfortunately I cannot give a direct quote because it's been several years since I re-read the articles myself.One of the problems, of course, is that even now there is NO universally accepted definition of speciation or what constitutes a species. So I don't believe there's a lot to be gained by harping on the fuzzyness of a naturalist writing on the subject over 150 years ago and who wouldn't have recognised a gene if it jumped up and smacked him round the face with a wet double helix.BTW, as a more general point, the accusation of "YECS coming through" seems both pointlessly prejudicial, and inaccurate, in this context.
As I understand it, the translation of the relevant passage in Genesis as "six unspecified periods of time" rather than "six periods of twenty-four hours" has long been accepted by many Christians. In addition to which there is no evidence (that I know of) to show that Blyth was either a "literalist" or a "young earther" of any description.So even if Blyth's work is being quoted by someone who might be a creationist of some description (I don't think creationists are absolutely standardised, are they?), surely the point is what Blyth actually did or did not do, NOT the beliefs of the person doing the quoting.
Otherwise, going by what I've witnessed on other lists, you end up with a slanging match rather than an intelligent and useful discussion.Be wellAndy B.
Charles Darwin - The Truth?
Charles Darwin - The Truth?

Ooops yerself, matey!You wrote:"I also have Andrew Bradbury, a "real" Scientist by your own standards too who makes the point loud and clear that Francis Hitching was an Evolutionist"Oh really? I don't think so! For the simple reason that I don't question whether people are or aren't evolutionists. Only the validity of their evidence and arguments.
(FWIW, all I knew about Hitching was that he didn't think much of some of Darwin's ideas. A point of view shared by numerous evolutionists who feel perfectly capable of supporting the evolutionist point of view without having to face West and pray to Darwin three times a day).If you know better please give an URL, because I've just "searched" through my Darwin site and I can't find even a mention of Hitching's name.
(I suspect you are confusing my web site with a site - yes, I Googled it - called "The Darwin Papers" where my site is mentioned and Hitching is cited as being an evolutionist on the page that deals with Edward Blyth.)RegardsAndrew Bradbury

Tut, tut. More of the personal attacks and inaccuate information.PaulK says:"Checking Bradbury's website (Honest Abe's NLP Emporium) for all I can tell his main occupation is "Neuro-linguistic Programming" - a pseudo-science."1. I have a degree in social psychology and qualifications in hypnosis and hypno-therapy. I wouldn't claim that any of these are "sciences".2. No, NLP isn't a pseudo-science - in fact it isn't any kind of science. I fear you may have placed too much faith in the Wikipedia page, much of which WAS blatant misinformation peddled by someone who was running something like 6 sock puppets and apparently couldn't tell the difference between NLP and Scientology.3. In any case, dragging in NLP is a complete red herring.
Regardless of what is or isn't my main occupation (I'm actually a freelance writer, occasional therapist and until recently a technical author and trainer in the IT sector for a certain quite well-known UK telecommunications company), what the heck has that got to do with the material on my Darwin site? Which is, by the way, very extensively referenced.4. I have also worked, for about 10 years as a history tutor at a UK 6th Form college. Which might be considered as being somewhat relevant to my ability to carry out historical research.
(Incidentally, I have a second historical website: Introduction to the Scopes Trial. And to save any further irrelevant criticism, the spelling is down to the fact that the site was first created under Windows98 which only allowed 8 letter file names.)So, would it be too much to ask that you respond to the evidence rather than continuing these personal attacks which add precisely nothing to the discussion?Thanks in anticipationAndrew Bradbury

Well, I guess you finally managed to hoist yourself on your own petard, as the saying goes."SO lets get this straight. You do not claim to be a scientist but nobody is allowed to say that you aren't because it constitutes a 'personal attack'."No. The point is that it is irrelevant.
You had no idea whether I was a scientist or not when you wrote your reply - you just made the totally unfounded assumption that my main "occupation" was NLP.Now it may be that you really meant my main PRE-occupation was NLP, but even that would be a false assumption. My Darwin site was my first web site, not the NLP site - you've read far too much into the hierarchy of my site.That is why I describe your ill-informed remarks as a personal attack - because you're making all sorts of spurious comments about me (NOT my sites) with not a scrap of valid evidence."Or is it that you just didn't bother to read my comments in context and note that they were a direct response to Casey Powell's claim that you were a scientist."As above - you didn't know any more than Casey knew. So I guess you're in the same boat as him?And there's more.You write me off as a non-scientist, yet you quote talkorigins as though they were a reliable resource.Oops!Check this out in their e-mail archive - back in the late 1990's I had to write in and correct their article on the Blyth-Darwin link because it contained a manufactured quotation which allegedly came from a book by Ernst Mayr.
It so happens that I live not too far away from the University of Sussex, and as an alumnus was able to read the relevant book in their library to see what Mayr really wrote.Suffice it to say, the fact that the talkorigin page is now reasonably accurate is down to corrections made as a result of my intervention - NOT to the best efforts of the dilittantes at talkorigin.
(And no, that isn't a personal attack, it's a statement of fact based on information supplied by the head of the outfit at the time I wrote to them.)I may not be a "scientist", but I guess I certainly do better research than the some of the people you seem to put your faith in.Now, can we please get back to the discussion and stop wasting time.Thank youAndrew Bradbury

RAZD writes:"I am always a little perplexed at why creationists seem to need to discredit Darwin as if that would make evolution go away."And I am always perplexed by people who seem to be writing at a tangent.To answer the questions I think you're asking:1. I have no idea why you would imagine that all "creationists" (a hopelessly vague generalisation) have common ideas and motives at the back of their actions. As far as I can tell, people tend to be individuals and have individual motives and ideas, regardless of their personal beliefs.2. Why did I create my site? Well, if you'd bothered to read it I guess you'd know by now. The bottom line, as I state quite clearly, is NOT to discredit Darwin as such, but to clarify and document the true level of his scientific knowledge and skill.3. You write:"There were many things that Darwin said in his books that have been invalidated since, where the science has moved on. That is what science does after all..."as though this were a self-evident, universally agreed fact.
Well, sorry, you are incorrect in your assumption. Even college/university professors in the US (let alone teachers) are being persecuted on this score - NOT because they don't agree with evolution (because the ones who have written to me have all been (according to them) staunch believers in evolution), but because they dare to dispute the ongoing primacy of Darwin's work.4. "You seem to be particularly caught up in the issue of discrediting Darwin"Well, I appreciate that is apparently what you think you read, though I have to say the nature of your questions **suggests** that you didn't read very much. Either way, that isn't what I was trying to do.If Darwin has been appreciated for what he actually did, and evolutionists had all "moved on" as you suggest, Eiseley wouldn't have written his book and hence my site wouldn't exist.In fact this is most definitely NOT what has happened, otherwise why on earth do you suppose that one of the most aggressive groups of pro-evolution academics refer to themselves as Neo-Darwinists, and why are the MOST vociferous members of the group referred to by other (pro-evolution) academics as Ultra-Neo-Darwinists?The fact is, as I explain on my site, that evolutionary studies are no longer benefitting from Darwin and his ideas, on the contrary, the whole field seems bogged down in ridiculous disputes over Darwinian orthodoxy.5. "what would be accomplished about the science of evolution IF it was shown that Darwin cribbed all his notes from other sources and is only responsible for putting it all together in one piece?"Again, answered on my site, but since you didn't read that - it would bring Darwin and his work into perspective and HOPEFULLY evolutionists would at last move on for real, NOT just in theory.BTW, "evolution" is NOT a science, though **some** aspects of what is usually included under the "evolution" banner can certainly be investigated by the use of various branches of the sciences.Evolution is not a science for one very simple reason - the only universally agreed definition of "evolution" is:Evolution = ChangeAnd that's it! Once you go beyond that simple definition things start to get fuzzy.So is "change" a "science" - or is it a huge subject, parts of which can be investigated using scientific "instruments"?FWIW, NLP is very much about understanding and implementing psychological "change", but I still wouldn't try to claim it was therefore "scientific".I hope this answers your questions adequately. If not I respectfully suggest that you try reading the whole thing without prejudging the nature of what you are reading.Be wellAndrew Bradbury

Dear Mod"I hope you will take the opportunity to peruse other threads..."Don't need to. I'm completely in agreement with your comments and your request. I only interceded here because I found my name being bandied around.I'll be only too happy to abide by your "suggestions" (?). Indeed, you will find that in my answer to RAZD I have wrapped it up by returning to the original subject.Be wellAndy Bradbury

PaulK wrote:"According to dictionary.com "relativity" is "the state or fact of being relative". So it seems that all your points apply to Relativity as much as to Evolution. Does this mean that Relativity is not science ? I think that there are a good many physicists who would disagree with you."Sorry, I'm sticking by the rules - this thread is on the subject "Is evolution science?" and that's all I'm prepared to discuss.As far as my previous comments are concerned, I said:"Evolution is not a science for one very simple reason - the only universally agreed definition of 'evolution' is:Evolution = Change"I take my lead here from (amongst others) Douglas Futuyma, author of "Evolutionary Biology", who appears to be held in pretty high regard by his peers. Futuyma writes:"In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve."
"Evolutionary Biology" (1985, 2nd edition)He then goes on to say that BIOLOGICAL evolution - which is maybe what you had in mind, but you didn't actually say so:"is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual."Another version, from Lawrence Moran, professor of biochemistry at the University of Toronto, is:"When biologists say that they have observed evolution, they mean that they have detected a change in the frequency of genes in a population."Now I'm not suggesting that these two men would disagree with weach other's definitions. And quite possibly most evolutionists would agree with both descriptions. There are, however two problems:1. (apparently minor) the two descriptions don't in fact quite match up. Moran only specifies a change in gene frequency - no mention of it causing changes to the population. Futuyma's explanation specifies actual changes in the population. In other words, Futuyma expects the genetic changes to take effect; Moran's only calls that they will exist.2. Futuyma goes on to claim that:"Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions."In a word, though many evolutionists hate the distinction, Futuyma is outlining micro-evolution (slight changes) and macro-evolution (an accumulation of successive alterations).Of course microevolution used to be openly acknowledged, under the label "adaptation".
Adaptation, I happily agree, is entirely open to scientific investigation. Thousands of experiments (hundreds of thousands?) have demonstrated the reality of adaptation - whether brought about by natural selection or human selection.But "successive changes", or "accumulated changes"? Where's the science there? It's pure pie in the sky. What experiments we have (such as growing extra bristles on a fruit fly) only show that the accumulation of adaptive changes are limited in their extent.
Of course various explanations have been offered, but no evidence has been produced to demonstrate that these boundaries can be overcome.So, I say again, some aspects of evolution - and more specifically biological evolution - can be supported by scientific investigation. And some are purely hypothetical. And insisting that something MUST have happened, when there's no evidential support for it, and definite evidence against it, is not "scientific" - it's plain wishful thinking.Anyone who has read "On the Origin of Species" will know that Darwin himself was well aware of this problem. He reported stories from pigeon breeders who effectively told him that breeding for difference was limited in its possibilities, and that even after such breeding had been successfully achieved, if the offspring were left to their own devices then subsequent generations began to revert, physiologically, to their ancestral type (as did the "hairy" fruit flies in more recent trials).So has it been "scientific" to ignore the evidence and constantly struggle to show that the Darwinian model - already invalidated before it was first published - must be right?If that's "science" then the definition seems to have changed quite radically since I did a "minor"in the basics of genetic heredity at university.Be wellAndy Bradbury

Crashfrog wrote:"I don't know how you determine what definitions are "universally agreed", but the idea that scientists don't have any deeper understanding of evolution except as "change" is ludicrous and betrays a significant lack of research on your part."That ISN'T what I atually wrote. It IS your interpretation.
I have no intention of getting into a slanging match OR of defending a position I never held in the first place.Be wellAndy B.

"I have two choices: doing nothing, or suspending everyone involved. I don't plan on taking the former course of action."Is it REALLY that difficult to tell who is being abusive to whom?You don't plan on doing nothing, and I don't have much respect for the latter threat. So please remove me from your list of members.Bye nowAndy Bradbury