Thursday, August 09, 2007
Evolution stands up to scrutiny
From the RoundTable blog
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Roy G. Miles
Miles lives in Roanoke and is a retired professor of geology.
I'm always saddened to read commentaries such as "Troglodytes, unite" (July 19). From many discussions I've had, I realize that people who "know" that their beliefs are absolutely correct cannot be swayed by the evidence, especially if they don't even see the evidence.
However, I felt that some of the many errors in Richard Carr's commentary must be corrected. The commentary states that Gregor Mendel proved a general theory of evolution in the mid-1850s. Gregor Mendel (sometimes known as the father of genetics) was an Augustinian monk in the early 19th century. By experimenting with the crossing of garden peas, Mendel showed how characteristics were inherited -- the rules of heredity.
Unfortunately his results were published in an obscure Bavarian nature publication and were unknown to other scientists for some time.
This information would have been of great help to Charles Darwin because one of his main problems was not being able to explain heredity. Mendel had no theory of evolution or natural selection and knew nothing of Darwin's work.
Perhaps the most egregious error is Carr's misunderstanding of the term, "theory." He states that, "Science uses the term 'theory' to label assumptions or concepts that are still unproven." This is a mystery. This term has been repeatedly explained in multiple places including the letters and commentary pages of this paper, television science programs, articles in magazines, etc.
It is indeed unfortunate that there are two meanings of "theory." The one Carr uses is not the scientific meaning but rather the layman's usage and could more clearly be called a hypothesis. Scientists also use the word this way in everyday conversation.
However, in science, theory refers to a generally proven, widely accepted, thoroughly grounded concept, e.g., atomic theory, chaos theory, molecular theory, quantum theory, theory of natural selection. Strictly speaking, one cannot claim that any of these theories is "proven." There is always the possibility that change will be made. Newton's "Law of Gravity" turned out not to be the complete answer.
Carr argues that there is no complete and consistent fossil record of changes. In the first place, knowing the odds of any one organism being preserved, does one expect a perfect and complete record of all previously living organisms? Yes there are gaps in the fossil record. It is amazing to me that the record is so complete.
For example, in chronological order, we can trace the general evolution of vertebrates from a fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal to primate -- not necessarily species to species but related form to related form. There is, for example, an excellent record of the changes of the reptilian jaw to the mammalian jaw.
The fossil record is too vast to describe further in this space but I would be happy to discuss it with Carr. He seems to be an intelligent and curious man. He may have been reading the wrong material.
