Evolution is a basic, biological process

Soplar,Reading the opening post reminded me of an essay recently written by Ernst Mayr on his 100th birthday. It is titled "HAPPY BIRTHDAY:
80 Years of Watching the Evolutionary Scenery" and can be found here. In my opinion, it is one of the greatest essays on the development of the Modern Synthesis. Not so much because of the breadth of information it covers, but because of it's simplicity and honesty. TheLiteralist should give it a once over. It's a great summary of the development of the Modern Synthesis, the theory of evolution that was developed from Darwin's ideas.The following paragraph from Mayr's essay is almost a step by step portrayal of your opening post. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did: Oh, and a picture of the sex idol that is Ernst Mayr:

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While the deduction of the DNA shape by W&C was an important step, Mayr doesn’t mention (at least in this excerpt) what I believe is an even more important step, the determination of the genes sprinkled along the DNA molecule, since knowing the genome, one can then begin to examine the fabrication of proteins using the gene blueprint and in particular examine the effects of defects in various genes such as the BRCA and P53 which are involved in cancer.

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Mayr's essay is pretty short and focuses mainly on the different camps within evolutionary biology during the 20's and 30's. What I find interesting is even before DNA's properties were discovered the Evolutionary Synthesis seemed to predict that heredity worked with units of genetic material. Mendel's work alone strongly suggested that certain characteristics were independently inherited in a binary-like fashion. Luckily, Mendel did not bog down on multiple allele systems, environmentally cued responses, etc., otherwise his work may have been lost. But it is still quite striking that "genes" were predicted before they were found. Being only 30 years old and learning in an atmosphere where DNA was easily manipulated, it flabberghasts me that early biologists were able to discern the patterns of heredity, modes of speciation, and other evolutionary mechanisms without even understanding the basics of molecular heredity. Mayr even speaks to the percieved "robustness" of the Evolutionary Synthesis in the 1940's, and how it paled in comparison to discoveries made even 20 years later and yet was able to survive the onslaught of these new discoveries.In this on-line world of debate we often forget the history of the theory of evolution. That it has survived almost intact from it's inception in the 19th century is quite amazing. Even stalwarts such as Newton's Laws of Motion were shown to be critically flawed, but yet the essence of Darwin's ideas have survived these last 150 years. It is a testament to the accuracy of Darwin's observations and demonstrates what a luminary he truly was (and Wallace get's credit as well). Ernst Mayr occupied a privileged position, a chair from which he was able to watch the development of a functional and far reaching biological theory. I might be inserting romanticism where it doesn't belong (being a science geek), but for every young biologist the period between 1900 and 1960 represented the "Indiania Jones" period of biology.Looking back, it does make me wonder why creationists continue to plug along as if the last 150 years of biological research and discovery never happened. The caricatures of evolution that creationists depict are laughable when compared to the amount of time, research, hard work, and testing that the actual theory has gone through. Phrases such as "if men evolved from apes why are there still apes" reveal much about the creationist mind set. They have long since stopped doing science and have instead focused on propoganda. They know that winning the battle within scientific circles is never going to happen so they try and sway public opinion instead.If you don't mind me asking, how long did you work within biology? Maybe you could give us a little background in another thread? Perhaps a little on the research you did, or the classes you taught?

To comment on the divide between theory and law, you also have to recognize that the philosophy of science has changed over the last 400 years. At one point, Bacon was the leading scientific philosopher. In his system of science everything must be positively observed. In other words, a law was something that was absolutely proven true. This is where "laws" came from, a set of DIRECT observations that were invariably predictable and mathematically explainable. As new theories came along, most notably Evolution, a new philosophy had to be created. Evolution was not directly observable as gravity, thermodynamics, and other laws were. Before, laws were derived from deduction, direct support from observations. Now, a new way of deriving theories had to be constructed, namely an inductive method. This new philosophy was constructed by Popper and others. This method, which is used today, does not look for direct observations. The new philosophy can be summed up in the phrase "true statements should not have false consequences". Popper felt that nothing could be proven true in an absolute sense, but theories can be absolutely proven false. Therefore, experiments are not attempts to prove theories true but attempts to prove them false. If a theory can not be shown to be false, then it is tentatively held to be true. This is a major shift in scientific investigation, but Popper's method has been shown to be the best. The weakness of Bacon's philosophy is best seen in the falsification Newton's Laws, as mentioned above.

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By this I mean that although genetic mutation can result in changes (natural selection) and even produce a new species, no matter how many mutations occur and how much change take place, one kind of animal has NEVER been observed to change into another (macroevolution).

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Macroevolution, as it is used in science, is change that result in a new species. Therefore, macroevolution has been observed. The point of this meandering topic is that evolution is a basic process that will result in divergently different species over time. Evolution is a process just like river formation. Due to the natural laws present a river will always flow downhill. In the same way, imperfect replicators such as life will always result in divergent species through evolution.You contend that mutations will never result in different "kinds" of animals. Why do you claim this? Is it because this hasn't been witnessed in the last 150 years? Don't you think this is a little shortsighted, especially with the amount of change we see in the fossil record?However, science agrees in a sense in that there is only one type of animal and all of those animals can be found in the Kindgom Animalia. No animal has ever produced something other than an animal, but they have produced different types of animals. This is the consequence of a twin nested hiearchy, something that is only possible through the mechanisms of evolution. In the same way, vertebrates have always produced vertebrates, mammals have always produced mammals, primates have always produced primates, and humans have always produced humans. It is all a matter of when a species is considered to be in one category or the other.However, due to evolution and the resulting nested hierarchy, a mammal will never have bird features that aren't shared by the larger classificiation of vertebrates. Whales will not have fish features that aren't shared with the rest of the mammals. Evolution is why we don't see feathered bats or gilled whales. Instead, everything fits within this nested hiearchy, a hiearchy that would not need to be present if everything were specially created.