Darwinism results 5 May 20145 May 2014 Here are the results of the survey. Since we had such a small response size (n=104) I do not know what can be taken from this. The results were pretty much as I expected – Selection is the main, but not only, key idea of Darwinism, a substantial minority think Darwinism does not exclude religion (even though close to all were not religious), 40% or so include genetic drift under “Darwinism”, but most think it means “natural selection” overall. Comments? 2. Age of respondent Evolution Philosophy
Evolution The ontology of biology 2 – How to derive an ontology in biology 11 Nov 200818 Sep 2017 There have been several attempts to produce an ontology of biology and the life sciences in general. One of the more outstanding was Joseph Woodger’s 1937 The Axiomatic Method in Biology, which was based on Russell’s and Whitehead’s Principia and the theory of types. In this, Woodger attempted to develop… Read More
Evolution Does religion evolve? 2 Feb 2008 Here’s a comment that represents a widely held misconception about the evolution of religion: Whenever there is an discussion about religions and changes in religions someone always pulls out the argument that religions evolve. I am very sorry but I believe that applying the concept of evolution to religion is… Read More
Creationism and Intelligent Design So many bad puns, so little time 28 Apr 2009 Wilkins is fragile and destablised Intellectual tourist attacks local inhabitants All happy bacteria are alike (or is that like each other?) Australian current affairs gets vaccination right! [That’s not a pun, it’s an act of God] The original video is here. Evolution does spreadsheets in origin of genetic code Siris… Read More
Question 8 answers are so weird. Over 40% does not think that adaptationism is a key idea of Darwinism?! Adaptation is a key idea of natural selection. Does adaptationism mean something else than adaptation, perhaps?
Or there may have been varying ideas, including none at all, about “adaptationism”. I’m projecting here, I suppose. I know what adaptation means, or think I do; but I’m not anywhere near so confident when it’s an -ism. I tend to see the latter, because of a certain amount of usage I’ve seen, as a pejorative applied by some people whom the world would see as Darwinists to Those Other Guys (whom the world would also see as Darwinists) who consider adaptation all-important in evolution (ignoring genetic drift and cockeyed spandrels and so on). So, anybody who perceives the word in this way, if there is anybody, would see the question as not asking whether adaptation in an essential point in evolution but rather whether one agrees with the critique I tried to describe here.
The most natural interpretation of “adaptation” as a word in English is as an active process. But natural selection produces adaptedness of species by a passive process in which no individual or gene is deliberately adapting. So until someone defines it otherwise, I would say that the most natural interpretation of “adaptationism’ is as another word for Lamarkianism.
I would have said “Common descent with modification” but even after the bug with the “Other” option was (mostly) fixed, I still wasn’t able to use that for #6, so I chose “Natural selection”. As for the ” correct answers” – I’d be interested to know who you think best represent evolution, John. I’m not familiar with several of the names, so I (think I) chose Ernst Mayr.