The Theory of Evolution

What "shifting sands" are you speaking of?

shifting_sands

Thanks for the Link. I laughed so much that I forgot what I was going to say in response to the post. Doesnt matter now as it has evolved into a new ?????? anyway

Thanks for that, it just happens that 'Shifting sands' is my favorite episode...

As long as it takes....

That's how science works.

We postulate a theory, which must be capable of tested (read Karl Popper on falsifiability). As soon as the theory is dissproved we modify it or postulate a new one.

It is impossible to say a theory is ever 100% proven, even with a million tests! Something may always be discovered tomorrow which will require a re-think, it can take just one result to dissprove a theory!

As long as the theory produces useful results then it will be used.

Theories and scientific 'laws' (and maths) are just tools to help understanding and to allow us to predict and design and explain.

So then if a theory, by definition, is a constantly moving target, and here is the shifting sand, why is evolution taught to children as fact?

Oh blimey don't start that twaddle...

Read the other reply...

'COS ITS THE BEST THEORY WE HAVE AT THE MOMENT.

E.g. It explains more of the observed data than any other.

Creationism..isn't a valid theory..because it isn't falsifiable. (See Karl Popper).

e.g. It can't be tested.

Any theory that says God made it like that can't be tested or dissproved because whatever evidence to the contrary is unearthed...the theorist just say ah, but he made it like that.

Actually, it's taught as a theory. Which is a step up from a hypotheses! This is how science works, everything starts as a hypotheses and is tested to try and disprove it. When it has survived a period of time being tested, it then becomes a theory. As techniques improve to test the theory, or new ideas occur, scientists will go back and retest the theory. So far, evolution has been a very robust theory, and has withstood many tests. Just because you may have a different world picture or belief doesn't make it wrong. I would ask you to test you beliefs to the same criteria that the evolutionary theory has been tested. Of course, you would have to be prepared to live with a result you may not like.......this is also how science works......

Religious beliefs are taught as fact....whats wrong with this picture?

If you were taught evolution as a fact, maybe your teacher didn't understand it?

This was never ment to desend into an argument over evolution v religion, that was not the intent. If we teach our children a 'Santa Claus' theory we end up with a flight pattern for Xmas delivery no cabin crew could keep up with. If kids are treated as intelligent humans from day one and know they have a firm base to work from then purhaps we might have a better world to live in? A best guess moving target doesn't work well with kids.

that was not the intent

hmmmm...yesss...well what exactly is the intent?

You seem intent on missing the point....

No one can ever actually prove that anything is 'certain'.

Newtons laws of motion are fine for everyday use....you can't teach advanced quantum physics from day one, so we teach Newtons laws of motion...the wise teacher will make passing reference to the limitations.

I suggest you go to your own home page http://www.zero-ppm.com/, look at the test and measurement section and apply these disciplines to any theory of evolution and see which comes out best.

The Theory of Evolution is stable. I have seen nothing to say its not. What changes is the facts that prove the theory correct. Not the theory it self. The tools in which the scientists started with to prove the theory have improved ten fold.

Sounds like a complaint about the weather man when it rained on your day off. He's doing the best he can reading the instruments and then making an educated guess.

The idea that life on Earth has evolved is based on such a massive and diverse amount of data that it can be assumed as a "fact", as much as many other things that are considered "fact". Like the existence of eletrons, for instance. There are NO data that cast reasonable doubt upon the idea of evolution. Some debate still occurs, but only as to the specific MECHANISMS by which that evolution occurs, as to the relative importance of those mechanisms, and as to how they integrate. Or as to how punctual branches of the phylogenetic tree should be arranged. This is far, waaaaaaaay too far from saying that evolution is "instable" or "like quicksand".

- For how long will scientist believe in this ridiculous fairy tale called 'physics'? It seem so shaky that even a grown man with some twenty years of proper education cannot make up his mind weather a particle is a solid entity or a wave-function representing potential energy?

- For how long will people take seriously their never-ending obsession to meticulously measure and document natural phenomena, as if there is nothing else more interesting to occupy their mind with but the behaviour of nature?

- For how long will sane and serious people keep coming up with theories and propositions on the physical world, and even suggest ways to test their theories against the behaviour of this physical world, or, God forbid, make bold predictions as to the outcomes of such tests?

Don't they know that the future cannot be predicted ?

What is this obsessive and irrational seeking of knowledge for?

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A hint for the mentally challenged - SURVIVAL

Just bored, I guess....

Right.

I have seen this just tooo many times. Why not apply a design review DFMEA maybe?

Good idea but don't know if anyone here could apply it.

Good idea but don't know if anyone here could apply it.

Yes, I can apply it, but I'd like to know how far your parameters go, in fact, what are you're design parameters?

I'd say go for a cockroach, the pinnacle of evolution. Can you live for a month with you're head cut off? The definition would be easier, and the reproductive cycle is certainly less of a problem.

You don't have to go to the lengths that we lowly humans do, I'm surprised the human race got this far! If there is a god, I'd like to ask; - Thanks for all the sex, but why? (What a methodology! And where are the design controls?)

OK let's try the cockroach, your shout.

He he. I was thinking of downsizing to an ant colony, great organization. See ant country!

OWK - YAOOH

Ant country

Chicken then?

Make your mind up..cockroach or chicken!

Mind..they both do pretty well with the head off....

I've seen plenty of senoir management running around like headless chickens too!

What about a ship, there has to be plenty of design reviews on ships knocking around.

And back to the original poster's question:

First, there was Lamarck, who suggested that during an organism's life, all the effort channeled to achieve some extraordinary ability, will be imprinted in the hereditary system, to be passed out to the next generation. For famous example, if a Giraffe will extend it's neck all her life to reach high branches for food, it's offspring will come to this world with somewhat longer necks.

This is called Lamarckism, and it was proven wrong by Meyer, in his experimented where he cut the tails of many generations of mice, and they kept being born with their normal-length tails.

Ever since Darwin and Wallace, which founded the school of thought we call Darwinism, and today's molecular-biology updated version called Neo Darwinism, there has been no real, fundamental change, in the initial premises, originally expressed by Darwin and Wallace.

In a nutshell it can be expressed as:

- An organism is the sum of expression, of the genetic legacy of it's direct parental predecessor, be it parents in sexual reproduction, or otherwise, as the case ma be.

- Any variation in traits and abilities to appear in a newborn, are only a result of re-combination of genetic material or that of mutation.

- New traits and abilities appear in random, with no premature design, and those may eventually prove to advance or retreat the organism's chance of survival and fertility, as the case may be.

- An organism's ability to maintain it's typical form for numerous generations, depends on it's given set of traits and abilities, to withstand natural selection ( the environmental changing survival pressures, such as: availability and quality of food, resistance to bacterial and viral attack, resistance to predators, fertility in general).

In individual life-span, it means being able to survive long enough, until you manage to reproduce, and father a fertile offspring, and protect it long enough, until it can stand on it's own.

Then, there is the last issue of Speciation. New species always stem from existing species, in a process called speciation. This means that if you enquire long enough into the past, any two given species have some common ancestry in their lineage.

Speciation usually occur when a community of a given species get somehow separated into two isolated territories, and during enough generations, accumulate enough different set of mutations, or withstand different set of environmental pressures (which basically the same thing, to withstand different environment you would need a different set of mutations), to finally reach a state where the two newly evolved communities, can no longer inter-breed, be it by different courting rituals of pheromonal incompatibility, of mutative gametes, it's all the same, a Procreational Barrier appears.