Darwin's Private Papers Get Released To The Internet 237
bibekpaudel writes "ScienceDaily reports that a wealth of papers belonging to Charles Darwin have been published on the internet, some for the first time. Some 20,000 items and 90,000 images were posted today to http://darwin-online.org.uk/. The new site is the largest collection of Darwin's work in history, according to organizers from Cambridge University Library 'This release makes his private papers, mountains of notes, experiments, and research behind his world-changing publications available to the world for free,' said John van Wyhe, director of the project. The collection includes thousands of notes and drafts of his scientific writings, notes from the voyage of the Beagle when he began to formulate his controversial theory of evolution, and his first recorded doubts about the permanence of species."
Survival (Score:5, Insightful)
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."
--Charles Darwin
Controversial? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it was controversial back then, but it sure as heck isn't now (not in civilised parts of the world, anyway). Should have phrased that "his then-controversial theory" - might have been a less controversial turn of phrase!
Daniel
Controversial? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Survival (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a pity really that many people have fallen in the social interpretation of Darwin's theory and more than once we have seen ugly consequences of that.
I can't say this enough.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just 100 years ago, maybe less, you would have had to be someone very special to see this much information from one scientist, and most probably have to be vested in whatever answers or information can be gleaned from it.
Now, however, the Internet allows us ALL to enjoy the privilege of reading his works, notes, and seeing his drawings... for free, at will, at home.
If knowledge is power, this is some really powerful stuff. Forget listening to anyone tell you what he said, just look it up in HIS notes. I wonder how many college papers were written about Darwin and the fallout from this information to date? Wonder what future papers will look like?
The Internet, for all its down sides, is a great thing....
Re:Survival (Score:5, Insightful)
The only question was how organisms transferred traits to their offspring, and this has since been answered to the professed satisfaction of even the creationists. Genetic passage of traits is indisputable, and evolution is a straightforward corollary.
Controversial? sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
The theory of evolution through natural selection, while it has been modified to more accuracy through advances in genetics and our understanding of environmental science and ecology, is one of the best supported theories that science has to offer about how ANYTHING works. It's up there with things like "Ohm's Law" (E=IR), Newton's Laws of Gravity and/or Einstein's Theories of Relativity, the kinetic theory of gases, etc.
People don't question the scientific understanding about what makes our computers, mobile phones, PDAs, microwaves, etc. work, yet they still have issues with evolution, despite the fact that it is all based on EXACTLY THE SAME scientific method (in a nutshell, "observe - question - hypothesize - test - analyze - repeat") as the those things. It really boggles the mind.
I'm not saying the theory of evolution should not be questioned. ALL SCIENCE should be questioned, periodically even, but it should be questioned scientifically (i.e. does my hypothesis fit the data better, and can I devise a test to show this?) But, is it really so hard to accept the idea that we may not be "God's gift to the universe" and are only as important as we make ourselves to be, rather than relying on some higher power, some creator to make us the most important thing around? Honestly, and I grew up with religion, it is a concept that I can no longer understand (and I doubt I ever understood it in the first place)...
What is it? Fear that there may be nothing but what we leave behind after we die? Fear that if we are the product of an unimaginable amount of interactions over a difficult to imagine number of years and nothing more than that? Is it hubris? Fear that we may share the same ancestors as gorillas and orangutans?
Why is the theory of evolution still a controversy? As far as science goes, there is no other hypothesis that even comes close to explaining biology as well. How can so many people (and, honestly, mainly in the United States) still reject at most and at least question based on unscientific ideas -- i.e. not based on the scientific method -- the theory of evolution?
I have no problems with the idea of questioning the theory of evolution, if you can do it on scientific grounds. But doing otherwise is the same (to me) as questioning gravity, electronics, chemistry, etc. If one can accept those things, then why is evolution so hard to accept?
Re:Controversial? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Controversial? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Survival (Score:5, Insightful)
Some Creationists still pretty much deny anything but some sort of weak microevolution, insisting that species (or "kinds", a favorite term because it's so weakly defined) are the direct creation of God. Others are willing to accept a certain amount of macro-evolution, often simply by enlarging "kinds" into a nebulous grouping that can be as big as "birds" and "fish", but always with humans being completely separate from any other group, regardless of any genetic, developmental and morphological relationship that you can point out.
The one key thing that seems to unite virtually all Creationists is a rejection of humans as being a product of any evolutionary process. It seems to boil down, for them, to denial of the "specialness" of humans, and in their minds to be descended from an ape-like animal is an affront to their religious and moral beliefs.
"survival of the fittest" is a vacuous tautology. (Score:2, Insightful)
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change."
--Charles Darwin
If the thousand years proceeds normally, then let's assume by the end certain species will have flourished. They're the ones that have survived. Others, not so much. Maybe some species can't stand the heat, they die out. They're the ones that haven't survived.
So far we haven't entered the realm of tautology. But look, the scientists don't just call the surviving ones "the survivors" they look at survivors and say "Whoa, they're not just survivors. They're adapters. The survivors are the ones who are the best adapted. THEREFORE, there is a process, natural selection, by which the most fit, the best adapted survive".
Okay. They conclude that "natural selection" is "true". Now for the falsifiability test. Let's be God, and let's falsify they're experiment by corrupting their data. How can we lead them to conclude "whoops; there's no natural selection. the fittest, the best adapted didn't survive, a less fit, a less well-adapted group did."
We can't. If the day before they open the biosphere we 'disappear' EVERY thriving species and, of the species that are now poorly representated, we choose the one that has the FEWEST members, is on the brink of extinction, because it is so poorly adapted, so unfit (indeed, we could choose a species, if there is one, that died within hours of the temperature being raised to 120 degrees - but we don't want to arouse their suspicions), and of that species, we "smuggle in" enough to make it the MOST thriving speices, will the scientists conclude "holy shit, these species are completely unfit to be here, they're totally maladapted. It seems survival ISN'T necessarily of the fittest, of the best-adapted. In at least this one case, survival has been of species that are totally maladapted and unfit to survive. Natural selection, at least in this experiment, HASN'T been shown to favor the fittest".
No. They won't say that. They'll look at the species that seems (because of our corruption) to be thriving and label it the FITTEST and label it the BEST ADAPTED. We could fill their biosphere with polar bears sweating their asses off and they would say, "it seems that, for unknown reasons, the polar bears are the fittest ones in this sweltering environment. they're the best adapted. natural selection has favored them, and this proves 'survival of the fittest'. indeed, perhaps if we wait a thousand more years the rest of the speices will have 'evolved' into polar bears too." (just kidding on the last point).
It's because they're laboring under the tautology that NO MATTER WHAT survives, it proves natural selection favors the fittest, because THE FITTEST (ie THE SURVIORS) are whatever survived and flourished. If there are any survivors, it proves 'survival of the fittest', since they have been selected for their traits to survive.
We could 'disappear' every animal with the B trait of a completely irrelevant A/B possibility, and the New Zealanders would conclude that "survival of the fittest" is proved by the fact that the survivors have the A trait, therefore they are the fittest, and it is just this that has caused them to survive.
I'd like to hear if anyone here has a way to falsify the New Zealand experiment so that they conclude "well I guess THIS ONE experiment doesn't bear out 'survival of the fittest'. it doesn't show that natural selection favors the best-adapted species. species don't become better and better adapted over time".
Really, how would you do it?
Re:How fitting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Micro vs. Macro is fiction (Score:4, Insightful)
You live for maybe 70 years, yet you have a hard time with the idea that several MILLION years ago, humans and chimpanzees had a common ancestor?
Hell, we are close to speciation of dogs. Though still genetically compatible, it shouldn't be hard to argue that St. Bernards and Chihuahuas are reproductively isolated. If we could both be around to see the outcome, I would bet on complete reproductive genetic isolation within a few thousand years, i.e. speciation, or what you want to call "macro-evolution".
Scientifically show me that there is indeed a distinction between your so-called "micro-" and "macro-evolution", and I will be willing to accept the evidence. Otherwise, SCIENCE has shown, repeatedly, that there is no real distinction.
Separating evolution into "micro-" and "macro-" is just another red herring from those unwilling to question their own beliefs about their own importance to the universe, as I mentioned above.
Organisms change over time, due to a number of genetic and environmental factors. This is a FACT. The mechanisms of it are a theory (which is as close to truth as science can get). Why is it difficult for you to believe that, over enough time, things will change so much as to be incompatible (reproductively speaking)?
You may proceed with your laughter AFTER you refute what I have said with EVIDENCE.
Re:Survival (Score:3, Insightful)
Even among the "Intelligent Design" crowd (well, the less fanatical part), "Intelligent Design" is basically "guided evolution". It's not that there is no evolution, but they hold the belief that certain 'irreducable complexities' in some structures (Which, to my knowledge, all of the examples they give have been reduced to lower complexities quite easily) show that 'survival of the fittest' wouldn't explain those structures as reducing them, in any way, would make the organism 'less fit', and thus evolution, in the hypothesis, would be shown NOT INCORRECT, but rather incomplete.
Again, I'm not an 'intelligent design' proponent, but people who misrepresent the hypothesis (And I mean both those for it and against it) annoy me.
Re:Controversial? sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the now known existence of DNA & mechanisms of genetic variation, the tautology "the fittest survive" points out that evolution HAS to occur.
variation + the fittest survive + hereditory traits => successive generations become fitter
How could they possibly NOT become fitter (evolve)?!!
Speciation is similarly unavoidable. Population genetic drift comes about by interbreeding, so lack of interbreeding will lead to diverging sub-population genetics, and there is nothing to stop this proceeding past the no-turning-back (speciation!) point of no longer being able to interbreed.
Some of the reasons why some people find it hard to accept are :
- It's personal - it clashes with their religious beliefs
- It's personal - it clashes with their egotistical belief of being special, not an animal
- Evolution of large animal species happens to slowly to observe, and most people are not familiar with other forms of evolution (e.g bacterial, or genetic design) that do happen observably quickly
- It's taught horribly in schools. When you are taught properly about population speration and genetic drift, environmental change and punctuated equilibrium, speciation as evolution past the point of inability to interbreed, it makes sense. If you instead believe evolution happens to individuals vs populations, or that all genetic changes are claimed to be incrementally beneficial (vs punctuated equilibrium, or even Lamarkian drivel like giraffe's necks getting longer because of their stretching for leaves, then you will be very confused!
Re:"survival of the fittest" is a vacuous tautolog (Score:3, Insightful)
The great insight that Darwin had was that nature could provide as much of a selective force upon a population as human selection. Thus, your argument is nonsensical. Evolution is not about the "survival of the fittest." It is about changes in populations over time, as driven by process that include variation and natural selection.
Re:Controversial? sad... (Score:1, Insightful)
It seems odd to me that for a group of people seemingly intelligent,
Until you understand this, you aren't going to understand that while in general, even Fundies believe science, yet oppose "evolution". It isn't about science; it's about politics.
Theory of Evolution vs ID (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with evolution is that it requires an amount of critical thinking to understand, and while subtle, the nuances are easily exploited by the cynical against the theory itself.
The "Ben Steins" of the world mystify me. I can't believe someone is so evil to purposefully make an argument they know to be false against science. I can't also believe that he is so stupid as to believe ID.
And yes, ID supporters, ID is stupid. It isn't science. It is religion, and "god did it" is not a valid scientific theory. ID is to biological science what "circle squaring" is to mathematics.
Evolution is a proven fact. Organisms change with their environment. This is irrefutable. The "Theory" of evolution is the hows, whys, and over all path that organism A has taken to become what it is.
In science, we seek to understand the hows, whys, and path better.
Re:Controversial? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Controversial? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"survival of the fittest" is a vacuous tautolog (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd be just as well off stating that scientists are laboring under some misapprehension of causality.
Besides, you think that the scientists haven't been watching through the windows for that thousand years?
Re:I wonder how much the theory has changed (Score:3, Insightful)
Second of all (and as I've pointed out elsewhere), the real inspirations of the Nazi racial theory are the eugenics movement (which grew out of a period in the early 20th century when Mendellian genetics was actually seen as replacing Darwinian selection, the so-called Eclipse of Darwin) and the racial theories quite common in Victorian times (but certainly dating early, as some of the apologists for slavery like Thomas Jefferson himself suggested that the negro was somehow inferior to the white man). There's no doubt that Christian anti-Semitism played an enormous role, if in no other way than in making Germans much more receptive to the Nazi anti-Semitic message. And let's put this in some perspective, two other major ethnic/racial groups were subjected to Nazi "remedies". The Gypsies, who for centuries (right down to the present day in Europe) were also targeted as an inferior race (a view that predates Darwin by centuries), and the Slavic peoples were seen as inferior as well, and seemed destined under the Third Reich to be little more than a slave class. The Slavs had long been feared and loathed by the peoples of Central Europe.
Hitler didn't invent the idea of the greedy Jew, the thieving immoral Gypsy and the subhuman Slav. Those were cultural motifs to be found throughout Europe for many centuries. As to the Aryan superman nonsense, well eugenics is pretty damned ancient as well, and apparently was practiced by the Spartans nearly 2500 years before Darwin was born, and besides, the eugenics movement grew out of a period when natural selection was not viewed favorably, and where it was felt that leaving things to nature would only lead to the degradation of the population. Eugenics was hardly limited to Germany, but many Western countries passed such laws.
Re:Survival my @ss (Score:2, Insightful)
A scientific theory is not just a hypothesis you come up with at 3am after having had a couple of beers. Scientific theories are constantly tested and examined.
Any theory that is able to survive testing and questioning as long as Darwin's, is truly fit for survival.
Re:Micro vs. Macro is fiction (Score:3, Insightful)
HTH.
Re:How fitting... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Controversial? sad... (Score:3, Insightful)
I appreciate the link, but I was looking for a source for your specific claims like the "3 generations" claim and the claim about "simultaneous" mutation.
And before the quote, after the quote, and inside some of the ellipses you've added, he explains why these observations are not the problem you think they are. I note that you assiduously avoid posting those portions of the text each time you quote mine Dawkins.
I hope that you quote them more honestly than you quote Dawkins. Then again, if the Dawkins quotes are cribbed from anointed-one.net, I wouldn't be quite as proud as you are to be quoting from their web site.