{"id":1433,"date":"2009-02-11T05:00:57","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T10:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=1433"},"modified":"2009-02-11T05:00:57","modified_gmt":"2009-02-11T10:00:57","slug":"i-started-a-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/1433","title":{"rendered":"I Started a Joke \u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finally died
\nWhich started the whole world living<\/em><\/p>\n

Carl Safina blames the term “Darwinism” for holding up science, and I think he’s wrong.<\/p>\n

Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live<\/a><\/p>\n

Science has marched on. But evolution can seem uniquely stuck on its founder. We don\u2019t call astronomy Copernicism, nor gravity Newtonism. \u201cDarwinism\u201d implies an ideology adhering to one man\u2019s dictates, like Marxism. And \u201cisms\u201d (capitalism, Catholicism, racism) are not science. \u201cDarwinism\u201d implies that biological scientists \u201cbelieve in\u201d Darwin\u2019s \u201ctheory.\u201d It\u2019s as if, since 1860, scientists have just ditto-headed Darwin rather than challenging and testing his ideas, or adding vast new knowledge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As I’ll get to below, I don’t think it’s the scientists you have to worry about here.<\/p>\n

\nUsing phrases like \u201cDarwinian selection\u201d or \u201cDarwinian evolution\u201d implies there must be another kind of evolution at work, a process that can be described with another adjective. For instance, \u201cNewtonian physics\u201d distinguishes the mechanical physics Newton explored from subatomic quantum physics. So \u201cDarwinian evolution\u201d raises a question: What\u2019s the other evolution?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s the other evolution? We discuss time evolution of the wave function in quantum mechanics. Evolution is used generically as a term to mean change over time<\/em> in many non-biological systems. So while Darwinian<\/em> evolution may not be the best term, there are non-biological kinds.<\/p>\n

And Darwinian selection<\/em> is synonymous with natural selection<\/em>, at least as far as I understand the terminology. The other kind? How about artificial selection?<\/p>\n

Into the breach: intelligent design. I am not quite saying Darwinism gave rise to creationism, though the \u201cisms\u201d imply equivalence. But the term \u201cDarwinian\u201d built a stage upon which \u201cintelligent\u201d could share the spotlight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe I just hang out with the wrong crowd, but it’s been my experience that the worst offenders in this category are the cdesign proponentsists<\/a>, not the scientists. I’d argue that anyone who regularly uses Darwinism to describe evolution should fail the biology portion of any scientific literacy test. In other words, it’s the ones who don’t understand evolution, even at a superficial level, who are turning it into an -ism<\/em>. I strongly suspect that it’s either intentional, for the purpose of casting it as an ideological belief system rather than science, or stems from the almost complete cluelessness of someone parroting arguments they don’t understand. And removing Darwin<\/em> isn’t really going to stop this, even if you could, because in my younger days hanging out on talk.origins I saw many uses of evolutionism<\/em>. They are going to portray this as ideology no matter what. They have to. It’s one of the fallacious arguments they try and use to tear down evolution. To place the blame on Darwin’s name is to not understand the argument \u2014 it’s a symptom, not the disease itself.<\/p>\n

The second half of the article is fine, in documenting things that happened after Darwin framed the theory. I just think that it makes almost no difference to the problem \u2014 the ones doing the most to promote the objectionable terminology are the ones least likely to care about getting these facts right. The truth is their enemy in this fight, so they have nothing to gain. To expect them to stop churning out straw-man arguments and start discussing the real theory of evolution is highly optimistic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally died Which started the whole world living Carl Safina blames the term “Darwinism” for holding up science, and I think he’s wrong. Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live Science has marched on. But evolution can seem … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}