{Caution! Evolution in progress ... }
Today is Charles Darwin's birthday.
He was born 200 years ago today.
Of course, for most (well, OK, at least many), his importance to evolutionary biology requires no explanation. His theory of natural selection stands as one of the central pillars of the modern paradigm of biological evolution, which is one of the greatest ideas in the history of science, ranking with the discovery of the laws of motion by Newton; cell theory by Schleiden, Schwann & Virchow; the theories of relativity by Einstein; the structure of DNA by Watson, Crick & Franklin; & the elucidation of cell metabolism by a nearly uncountable number of scientists.
As an evolutionary biologist who earned a PhD in it (UNM, 1990) & teaches classes about it at Euglena Academy, I greatly respect & admire Darwin & his ideas. As both an idea & a reality in nature, natural selection stands very tall in my conceptualization of evolution. It is, clearly, a major factor in how biological evolution works.
In the last few days & weeks, during the lead up to his birthday, myriad articles & editorials have been published about Darwin in newspapers & blogs. UO has developed a months-long lecture series devoted to Darwin.
(Euglena Academy had planned to offer a month long series on life & evolution at Cozmic Pizza during February, but - alas - our workload & need to focus our energy elsewhere precluded it. Natural selection, I suppose.)
Several of those articles & editorials stop just short of equating evolution theory & Darwin's natural selection, so great a role does he play in their conceptualization.
However, in this post, to be developed over the next few days (I'm beginning it on his birthday, then letting it evolve), I will argue that Darwin's theory of natural selection - as important as it is - is NOT the final word in our understanding of biological evolution. As mathematicians would say, natural selection is a necessary but not sufficient condition for evolution.
Even by adding genetics, including not merely genetic mutations but all of the many complexities of modern genetics, the theory is not sufficient. That is, the traditional neo-Darwinian claim - that evolution can be explained by natural selection acting on random genetic mutation - is not sufficient. Necessary? Yes. But not sufficient.
Instead, over the last few decades, several other major factors - all residing in the edifice of systems sciences taught at Euglena Academy but not taught in the halls of mainstream academia like UO - have been discovered & formalized that play huge roles in our explanation & understanding of biological evolution.
A summary of those are the focus of this evolving post:
- self-organization & emergence
- symbiogenesis, developed by Lynn Margulis
- geophysiology or Gaia theory (no longer hypothesis)
They, along with a treatment of the traditional neo-Darwinist views, will also form the core of a new short course - the Evolution of Life - that I am developing, to be offered soon.
They are also necessary, nay crucial, to completely addressing the criticisms of evolutionary theory being slung like so much dung by advocates of "intelligent design", who are merely creationists who have repackaged their assertions without using the word "God". ID advocates base their ideas on criticisms of neo-Darwinism with no testable alternative models as required by science other than suggesting, implicitly, that some sentient entity in the universe must be responsible for evolution. That is, "intelligent design" is not science, but religion thinly veiled as science. IMO, it's not intelligent, either.
More to come ... please stay tuned ...
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