ID types are urging people to sign the petition. Sign it if you like Uncommon Descent. Because we are just so NOT Cancel Culture.
Darwinism
(Reformed) New Scientist on life forms evolving without changing genes
At New Scientist: Some plants change without changing genetically, in their quest to survive. This just in: The Selfish Gene has left the building in tears. They shouldn’t even have been discussing this.
(Reformed) New Scientist 9: Survival of the Luckiest
At New Scientist: “But evolution can also occur through a non-adaptive process called genetic drift, whereby a gene may become dominant in a population purely by chance… ‘Genetic drift can definitely be a significant driver of evolution,’ says Miles.”
The Economist: Hybrids have “upturned” evolutionary theory
At The Economist: “These findings muddy Darwin’s concept of speciation as a slow and gradual process. Biologists now know that in the right circumstances, and with the help of hybridisation, new species can emerge and consolidate themselves in a mere handful of generations. That is an important amendment to evolutionary theory. “
(Reformed) New Scientist 8: Evolution can happen very quickly
Does anyone remember Darwin’s claim: “It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, wherever and whenever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.” Yes, that “daily, hourly” thing seems quaint to us too. It probably even seems quaint over at New Scientist, given the stuff they’re saying now.
Cancel Culture lets an ID-friendly paper slip through the cracks
At ENST: “Sure enough, after Darwinists discovered the article, they succeeded in obtaining a “disclaimer” from the journal’s editors, who proclaimed their bias against ID. But the disclaimer actually made publication of the article all the more significant.”
(Reformed) New Scientist 6: Lamarck is out of the doghouse!
At New Scientist: “Today,there is evidence of Lamarckian evolution – of a sort… ‘It reorients how we think about the adaptive process,’ he says. “
How much computing power would we need to evolve computer via Darwinian evolution that can program itself ?
But read the fine print: We would need to run many trials of planets in parallel in order to simulate the real conditions in the universe. Yampolskiy concludes, ‘In fact, depending on some assumptions we make regarding multiverse, quantum aspects of biology, and probabilistic nature of Darwinian algorithm such compute may never be available.’”
(Reformed) New Scientist 3: The Selfish Gene Is No Longer Cool
Readers may recall that New Scientist published an article three days ago on 13 ways we need to “rethink the theory of nature.” Their Number 3 rethink is … Move Over, Selfish Gene. It’s replaced not just by kin selection now but by cultural group selection. Most of the article is paywalled but here’s the Read More…
Reformed New Scientist 2: Evolution shows intelligence
At New Scientist: “‘Maybe, evolution is less about out competing others and more to do with co-creating knowledge,’ says Watson.” That really is a radical idea. Radical yes, but it really is a good idea. We find it hard to improve on. The only thing we can think of is, keep the “intelligent” part in your description of nature and add “design.”
Rob Sheldon on Darwinism and the problem of why intelligent women marry less intelligent men
If regression toward the mean is a nearly universal tendency, how could evolution proceed via sexual selection? Outliers would tend to get reabsorbed far more often than not.
At The Scientist: Stuff about Darwinian racism we’ve been saying for years…
But let biologist and science writer David Bainbridge tell it, riffing off his new book, How Zoologists Organize Things: The Art of Classification…
SwiftKey co-founder: Computers can’t just “evolve” intelligence; cites James Shapiro’s self-organization
In a still-interesting 2017 paper, Ben Medlock talks about the way life forms self-organize: (which computers don’t, really).
At New Scientist: We must rethink the (Darwinian) theory of nature
If by “our greatest theory of nature,” the writers mean textbook Darwinism, well the new concepts they list are destroying it. What becomes of “natural selection acting on random mutation” if a variety of means of evolution are “natural,” mutations are not necessarily random, genes aren’t selfish and don’t come only from parents, and the fittest don’t necessarily survive? Just for a start…
Michael Egnor: Darwinism as Hegel’s philosophy applied to biology
He sees that as a framework for much of the change around us: Nineteenth-century Darwinism was much more than a revolutionary scientific theory. It was hardly a scientific theory in any meaningful sense. Natural selection, as atheist philosopher Jerry Fodor has pointed out, isn’t a meaningful level of scientific explanation. It’s barely more than a Read More…