Once We All Had Gills: Growing Up Evolutionist in an Evolving World

Noting that science has too often been the object of controversy in school curriculums and debates on public policy issues ranging from energy and conservation to stem-cell research and climate change, Raff argues that when the public is confused or ill-informed, these issues tend to be decided on religious, economic, and political grounds that disregard the realities of the natural world.

22 answers for creationists from someone who understands evolution

Speaking up for science and scientific literacy, Raff tells how and why he became an evolutionary biologist and describes some of the vibrant and living science of evolution. Once We All Had Gills is also the story of evolution writ large: Hardcover , pages.

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Read an excerpt from the book. But serious scientific controversies also arose, first in Britain and then on the Continent and in the United States. One occasional participant in the discussion was the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace , who had hit upon the idea of natural selection independently and had sent a short manuscript about it to Darwin from the Malay Archipelago , where he was collecting specimens and writing. On July 1, , one year before the publication of the Origin , a paper jointly authored by Wallace and Darwin was presented, in the absence of both, to the Linnean Society in London—with apparently little notice.

Greater credit is duly given to Darwin than to Wallace for the idea of evolution by natural selection; Darwin developed the theory in considerably more detail, provided far more evidence for it, and was primarily responsible for its acceptance. A younger English contemporary of Darwin, with considerable influence during the latter part of the 19th and in the early 20th century, was Herbert Spencer. His ideas considerably damaged proper understanding and acceptance of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

His deductive manner of treating any subject is wholly opposed to my frame of mind. These experiments and the analysis of their results are by any standard an example of masterly scientific method. His theory accounts for biological inheritance through particulate factors now known as gene s inherited one from each parent, which do not mix or blend but segregate in the formation of the sex cells, or gametes.

In the meantime, Darwinism in the latter part of the 19th century faced an alternative evolutionary theory known as neo-Lamarckism. Adherents of this theory discarded natural selection as an explanation for adaptation to the environment. Prominent among the defenders of natural selection was the German biologist August Weismann , who in the s published his germ plasm theory.

He distinguished two substances that make up an organism: Early in the development of an egg, the germ plasm becomes segregated from the somatic cells that give rise to the rest of the body. This notion of a radical separation between germ plasm and soma—that is, between the reproductive tissues and all other body tissues—prompted Weismann to assert that inheritance of acquired characteristics was impossible, and it opened the way for his championship of natural selection as the only major process that would account for biological evolution.

De Vries proposed a new theory of evolution known as mutationism , which essentially did away with natural selection as a major evolutionary process.

According to de Vries who was joined by other geneticists such as William Bateson in England , two kinds of variation take place in organisms. Distinguished members of this group of theoretical geneticists were R. Yet their work had a limited impact on contemporary biologists for several reasons—it was formulated in a mathematical language that most biologists could not understand; it was almost exclusively theoretical, with little empirical corroboration; and it was limited in scope, largely omitting many issues, such as speciation the process by which new species are formed , that were of great importance to evolutionists.

A major breakthrough came in with the publication of Genetics and the Origin of Species by Theodosius Dobzhansky , a Russian-born American naturalist and experimental geneticist. Genetics and the Origin of Species may be considered the most important landmark in the formulation of what came to be known as the synthetic theory of evolution, effectively combining Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian genetics.

It had an enormous impact on naturalists and experimental biologists, who rapidly embraced the new understanding of the evolutionary process as one of genetic change in populations. Interest in evolutionary studies was greatly stimulated, and contributions to the theory soon began to follow, extending the synthesis of genetics and natural selection to a variety of biological fields. The main writers who, together with Dobzhansky, may be considered the architects of the synthetic theory were the German-born American zoologist Ernst Mayr , the English zoologist Julian Huxley , the American paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson , and the American botanist George Ledyard Stebbins.

These researchers contributed to a burst of evolutionary studies in the traditional biological disciplines and in some emerging ones—notably population genetics and, later, evolutionary ecology see community ecology. The most important line of investigation after was the application of molecular biology to evolutionary studies. The genetic information is encoded within the sequence of nucleotide s that make up the chainlike DNA molecules.

Evidence for evolution

Genetic information contained in the DNA can thus be investigated by examining the sequences of amino acids in the proteins. In the mids laboratory techniques such as electrophoresis and selective assay of enzymes became available for the rapid and inexpensive study of differences among enzymes and other proteins. The application of these techniques to evolutionary problems made possible the pursuit of issues that earlier could not be investigated—for example, exploring the extent of genetic variation in natural populations which sets bounds on their evolutionary potential and determining the amount of genetic change that occurs during the formation of new species.

Comparisons of the amino acid sequences of corresponding proteins in different species provided quantitatively precise measures of the divergence among species evolved from common ancestors, a considerable improvement over the typically qualitative evaluations obtained by comparative anatomy and other evolutionary subdisciplines. This would make it possible to reconstruct an evolutionary history that would reveal the order of branching of different lineages, such as those leading to humans, chimpanzees, and orangutans, as well as the time in the past when the lineages split from one another.

See below The molecular clock of evolution and The neutrality theory of molecular evolution. The laboratory techniques of DNA cloning and sequencing have provided a new and powerful means of investigating evolution at the molecular level. The fruits of this technology began to accumulate during the s following the development of automated DNA-sequencing machines and the invention of the polymerase chain reaction PCR , a simple and inexpensive technique that obtains, in a few hours, billions or trillions of copies of a specific DNA sequence or gene. Major research efforts such as the Human Genome Project further improved the technology for obtaining long DNA sequences rapidly and inexpensively.

By the first few years of the 21st century, the full DNA sequence—i. The Earth sciences also experienced, in the second half of the 20th century, a conceptual revolution with considerable consequence to the study of evolution. The theory of plate tectonics , which was formulated in the late s, revealed that the configuration and position of the continents and oceans are dynamic , rather than static, features of Earth.

Oceans grow and shrink, while continents break into fragments or coalesce into larger masses. Biogeography , the evolutionary study of plant and animal distribution, has been revolutionized by the knowledge, for example, that Africa and South America were part of a single landmass some million years ago and that the Indian subcontinent was not connected with Asia until geologically recent times. Evolutionary ecology see community ecology is an active field of evolutionary biology; another is evolutionary ethology , the study of the evolution of animal behaviour.

Sociobiology , the evolutionary study of social behaviour, is perhaps the most active subfield of ethology. It is also the most controversial, because of its extension to human societies. The theory of evolution makes statements about three different, though related, issues: The first issue is the most fundamental and the one established with utmost certainty. Darwin gathered much evidence in its support, but evidence has accumulated continuously ever since, derived from all biological disciplines.

The evolutionary origin of organisms is today a scientific conclusion established with the kind of certainty attributable to such scientific concepts as the roundness of Earth, the motions of the planets, and the molecular composition of matter. But the theory of evolution goes far beyond the general affirmation that organisms evolve. The second and third issues—seeking to ascertain evolutionary relationships between particular organisms and the events of evolutionary history, as well as to explain how and why evolution takes place—are matters of active scientific investigation.

Some conclusions are well established. One, for example, is that the chimpanzee and the gorilla are more closely related to humans than is any of those three species to the baboon or other monkeys. Another conclusion is that natural selection, the process postulated by Darwin, explains the configuration of such adaptive features as the human eye and the wings of birds. Many matters are less certain, others are conjectural, and still others—such as the characteristics of the first living things and when they came about—remain completely unknown.

Since Darwin, the theory of evolution has gradually extended its influence to other biological disciplines, from physiology to ecology and from biochemistry to systematics. All biological knowledge now includes the phenomenon of evolution. The term evolution and the general concept of change through time also have penetrated into scientific language well beyond biology and even into common language. These and other disciplines use the word with only the slightest commonality of meaning—the notion of gradual, and perhaps directional, change over the course of time.

Toward the end of the 20th century, specific concepts and processes borrowed from biological evolution and living systems were incorporated into computational research, beginning with the work of the American mathematician John Holland and others. One outcome of this endeavour was the development of methods for automatically generating computer-based systems that are proficient at given tasks. These systems have a wide variety of potential uses, such as solving practical computational problems, providing machines with the ability to learn from experience, and modeling processes in fields as diverse as ecology, immunology, economics, and even biological evolution itself.

To generate computer programs that represent proficient solutions to a problem under study, the computer scientist creates a set of step-by-step procedures, called a genetic algorithm or, more broadly, an evolutionary algorithm , that incorporates analogies of genetic processes—for instance, heredity , mutation , and recombination —as well as of evolutionary processes such as natural selection in the presence of specified environments.

The rules of reproduction may involve such elements as recombination strings of code from the best programs are shuffled and combined into the programs of the next generation and mutation bits of code in a few of the new programs are changed at random. The evolutionary algorithm then evaluates each program in the new generation for fitness, winnows out the poorer performers, and allows reproduction to take place once again, with the cycle repeating itself as often as desired. Evolutionary algorithms are simplistic compared with biological evolution, but they have provided robust and powerful mechanisms for finding solutions to all sorts of problems in economics, industrial production, and the distribution of goods and services.

See also artificial intelligence: Social Darwinism was an influential social philosophy in some circles through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when it was used as a rationalization for racism, colonialism, and social stratification. Darwinism understood as a process that favours the strong and successful and eliminates the weak and failing has been used to justify alternative and, in some respects, quite diametric economic theories see economics.

These theories share in common the premise that the valuation of all market products depends on a Darwinian process.

Evolution and natural selection

Specific market commodities are evaluated in terms of the degree to which they conform to specific valuations emanating from the consumers. On the one hand, some of these economic theories are consistent with theories of evolutionary psychology that see preferences as determined largely genetically; as such, they hold that the reactions of markets can be predicted in terms of largely fixed human attributes.

The dominant neo-Keynesian see economics: Keynesian economics and monetarist schools of economics make predictions of the macroscopic behaviour of economies see macroeconomics based the interrelationship of a few variables; money supply , rate of inflation, and rate of unemployment jointly determine the rate of economic growth.

On the other hand, some minority economists, such as the 20th-century Austrian-born British theorist F. Hayek and his followers, predicate the Darwinian process on individual preferences that are mostly underdetermined and change in erratic or unpredictable ways. According to them, old ways of producing goods and services are continuously replaced by new inventions and behaviours. These theorists affirm that what drives the economy is the ingenuity of individuals and corporations and their ability to bring new and better products to the market. The theory of evolution has been seen by some people as incompatible with religious beliefs , particularly those of Christianity.

Review of Once We All Had Gills () — Foreword Reviews

A literal interpretation of Genesis seems incompatible with the gradual evolution of humans and other organisms by natural processes. Other Protestant theologians saw a solution to the difficulty through the argument that God operates through intermediate causes. Similarly, evolution could be seen as the natural process through which God brought living beings into existence and developed them according to his plan. Gradually, well into the 20th century, evolution by natural selection came to be accepted by the majority of Christian writers.

New scientific knowledge has led us to realize that the theory of evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge.

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The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory. Similar views were expressed by other mainstream Christian denominations. In this sense both science and religion are here to stay, and…need to remain in a healthful tension of respect toward one another. Opposing these views were Christian denominations that continued to hold a literal interpretation of the Bible.

The Bible is the Written Word of God, and because it is inspired throughout, all of its assertions are historically and scientifically true in the original autographs. To the student of nature this means that the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple historical truths. Many Bible scholars and theologians have long rejected a literal interpretation as untenable , however, because the Bible contains incompatible statements. The very beginning of the book of Genesis presents two different creation narratives.

But in verse 4 of chapter 2 a different narrative starts, in which God creates a male human, then plants a garden and creates the animals, and only then proceeds to take a rib from the man to make a woman. Biblical scholars point out that the Bible is inerrant with respect to religious truth, not in matters that are of no significance to salvation. Augustine , considered by many the greatest Christian theologian, wrote in the early 5th century in his De Genesi ad litteram Literal Commentary on Genesis:. It is also frequently asked what our belief must be about the form and shape of heaven, according to Sacred Scripture.

Many scholars engage in lengthy discussions on these matters, but the sacred writers with their deeper wisdom have omitted them. Such subjects are of no profit for those who seek beatitude. And what is worse, they take up very precious time that ought to be given to what is spiritually beneficial. What concern is it of mine whether heaven is like a sphere and Earth is enclosed by it and suspended in the middle of the universe, or whether heaven is like a disk and the Earth is above it and hovering to one side. Augustine adds later in the same chapter: It is a book about religion, and it is not the purpose of its religious authors to settle questions about the shape of the universe that are of no relevance whatsoever to how to seek salvation.

In the same vein, John Paul II said in The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise but in order to state the correct relationships of man with God and with the universe. Sacred scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. Any other teaching about the origin and make-up of the universe is alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how the heavens were made but how one goes to heaven.

In modern times biblical fundamentalists have made up a minority of Christians, but they have periodically gained considerable public and political influence, particularly in the United States.

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Opposition to the teaching of evolution in the United States can largely be traced to two movements with 19th-century roots, Seventh-day Adventism see Adventist and Pentecostalism. Consistent with their emphasis on the seventh-day Sabbath as a memorial of the biblical Creation, Seventh-day Adventists have insisted on the recent creation of life and the universality of the Flood, which they believe deposited the fossil-bearing rocks.

Many Pentecostals, who generally endorse a literal interpretation of the Bible, also have adopted and endorsed the tenets of creation science, including the recent origin of Earth and a geology interpreted in terms of the Flood. They have differed from Seventh-day Adventists and other adherents of creation science, however, in their tolerance of diverse views and the limited import they attribute to the evolution-creation controversy. During the s, biblical fundamentalists helped influence more than 20 state legislatures to debate antievolution laws, and four states—Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Tennessee—prohibited the teaching of evolution in their public schools.

A spokesman for the antievolutionists was William Jennings Bryan , three times the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the U. In the Supreme Court of the United States declared unconstitutional any law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. Creation science maintains that all kinds of organisms abruptly came into existence when God created the universe, that the world is only a few thousand years old, and that the biblical Flood was an actual event that only one pair of each animal species survived. In the s Arkansas and Louisiana passed acts requiring the balanced treatment of evolution science and creation science in their schools, but opponents successfully challenged the acts as violations of the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.

The Arkansas statute was declared unconstitutional in federal court after a public trial in Little Rock. After his meticulous description of each biological object or process, Paley draws again and again the same conclusion—only an omniscient and omnipotent deity could account for these marvels and for the enormous diversity of inventions that they entail. I know no better method of introducing so large a subject, than that of comparing…an eye, for example, with a telescope. As far as the examination of the instrument goes, there is precisely the same proof that the eye was made for vision, as there is that the telescope was made for assisting it.

They are made upon the same principles; both being adjusted to the laws by which the transmission and refraction of rays of light are regulated. Accordingly we find that the eye of a fish, in that part of it called the crystalline lens, is much rounder than the eye of terrestrial animals. What plainer manifestation of design can there be than this difference? What could a mathematical instrument maker have done more to show his knowledge of [t]his principle, his application of that knowledge, his suiting of his means to his end…to testify counsel , choice, consideration, purpose?

The strength of the argument against chance derived, according to Paley, from a notion that he named relation and that later authors would term irreducible complexity. When several different parts contribute to one effect, or, which is the same thing, when an effect is produced by the joint action of different instruments, the fitness of such parts or instruments to one another for the purpose of producing, by their united action, the effect, is what I call relation; and wherever this is observed in the works of nature or of man, it appears to me to carry along with it decisive evidence of understanding, intention, art…all depending upon the motions within, all upon the system of intermediate actions.

But I can find out no such case. In the s several authors revived the argument from design. Others, because they wished to see the theory of intelligent design taught in schools as an alternate to the theory of evolution, avoided all explicit reference to God in order to maintain the separation between religion and state. The call for an intelligent designer is predicated on the existence of irreducible complexity in organisms.