Category: Natural selection
Design Disquisitions: H. Allen Orr on Darwin’s Failure
| June 28, 2017 | Posted by Joshua G under Biology, Darwinism, Food for thought, Natural selection, speciation |
Did Darwin really explain the origin of species? My quote of the month is now up on my blog. This is an interesting one as it comes from an evolutionary biologist and critic of ID. I also focus on comments of a similar nature that have been made in more recent years. Surprise, […]
Can sexual selection cause a decline in evolutionary fitness?
| May 9, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolution, extinction, Intelligent Design, Natural selection |
From evolutionary biologist Richard O. Prum at the New York Times: Are These Birds Too Sexy to Survive? Natural selection can’t explain this. Wow. Careers have been wrecked over such departures from dogma. Most biologists believe that these mechanisms always work in concert — that sex appeal is the sign of an objectively better mate, […]
A Unifying Principle for the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis
| April 16, 2017 | Posted by johnnyb under Evolutionary biology, Natural selection |
There has been quite a controversy over the past few years over whether the extended evolutionary synthesis is a replacement of the modern synthesis or a refinement of it.
Twelve hallmarks of good theories in science
| April 12, 2017 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Natural selection, News, Philosophy, Science |
From Michael Keas at Synthese: Essay Abstract: There are at least twelve major virtues of good theories: evidential accuracy, causal adequacy, explanatory depth, internal consistency, internal coherence, universal coherence, beauty, simplicity, unification, durability, fruitfulness, and applicability. These virtues are best classified into four classes: evidential, coherential, aesthetic, and diachronic. Each virtue class contains at least […]
Design Disquisitions: Jeffrey Koperski on Two Bad and Two Good Ways to Attack ID (Part 2): Two ‘Good’ Ways
| March 20, 2017 | Posted by Joshua G under Biology, Convergent evolution, Darwinism, ID, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Natural selection, Naturalism, Peer review, Philosophy, Probability, Science, theistic evolution |
Part two of my series looking at Jeffrey Koperski’s paper ‘Two Bad Ways to Attack Intelligent Design and Two Good Ones’ is now up on my blog. This one is quite in depth, but a couple of interesting issues come up along the way. I examine the concept of soft and hard anomalies in scientific […]
Design Disquisitions: Critic’s Corner-Kenneth Miller
| February 12, 2017 | Posted by Joshua G under Biology, Cell biology, Darwinism, Evolution, ID, Irreducible Complexity, Natural selection |
This week’s post at Design Disquisitions is the first in a series of articles entitled ‘Critic’s Corner’ where I focus on a critic of ID. The main purpose of these posts is to document their work relevant to ID and also to document the direct responses to the particular critic in question, by those sympathetic to […]
Natural selection hard to measure?
| August 19, 2016 | Posted by News under Natural selection, News |
You mean the same way that ghosts in the barn loft are hard to find? From Evolution News & Views: Charles Darwin’s idea that an unguided natural process led to all the beauty and diversity of the world, including its Undeniable appearance of design, guides scientific thinking to this day. But what if his signature […]
Insects used camouflage 100 million years ago
| June 27, 2016 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Design inference, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Natural selection, News |
From Eurekalert: A research team under Dr. Bo Wang of the State Key Laboratory of Paleobiology and Stratigraphy in Nanjing (China) worked together with paleontologists from the University of Bonn and other scientists from China, USA, France, and England to examine a total of 35 insects preserved in amber. With the aid of grains of […]
Natural selection as negative principle only
| March 26, 2016 | Posted by News under Natural selection, News, Philosophy, Science |
A friend writes to note what philosopher of science, John Elof Boodin (1869-1950), had to say about natural selection: The principle of natural selection is indeed an important contribution to biology. But it is a negative, not an architectonic, principle. It does not explain why variations appear, why they cumulate, why they assume an organization […]
Debate Redux: The Myth of Natural Selection
| March 20, 2016 | Posted by Cornelius Hunter under Intelligent Design, Natural selection |
Philosophers call it incommensurability—when the language and underlying concepts are so different, theorists cannot even have meaningful communication. Anyone who doubts the reality of incommensurability need look no farther than this weekend’s “What’s Behind It All? God, Science, and the Universe” debate, where Stephen Meyer explained the random nature of evolution and the limits of […]
Bateson: Don’t let zoologists hog stage
| March 12, 2016 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Natural selection, News |
… at the Royal Society’s November meet on evolution. From Suzan Mazur interviews eminent ethologist Patrick Bateson at Huffington Post: Sir Patrick Bateson: Zoologists Should Not ‘Hog’ Upcoming Royal Society Evolution Meeting Suzan Mazur: When will the speakers for the November Royal Society event be announced? Patrick Bateson: Very shortly, I think. Suzan Mazur: Can […]
Mating males can create new species?
| March 5, 2016 | Posted by News under Natural selection, News, speciation |
From Science Daily: Researchers at Michigan State University, with the help of some stickleback fish, have shown that intense competition among males most definitely has a big say in creating new species. The results, featured in the January issue of Ecology Letters, also show that such competition can reverse the process, actually erasing boundaries between […]
The selfish gene: Stay in bed if you have a cold
| February 29, 2016 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Evolutionary psychology, Natural selection, News |
If you have a cold. From ScienceDaily: Research suggests that our selfish genes are behind the aches, fever The symptoms that accompany illness appear to negatively affect one’s chance of survival and reproduction. So why would this phenomenon persist? Symptoms, say the scientists, are not an adaptation that works on the level of the individual. […]
Natural selection has limits? Who knew?
| February 27, 2016 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Natural selection, News |
From Trends in Genetics: Evolutionary theory predicts that factors such as a small population size or low recombination rate can limit the action of natural selection. The emerging field of comparative population genomics offers an opportunity to evaluate these hypotheses. However, classical theoretical predictions assume that populations are at demographic equilibrium. This assumption is likely […]
Study: Zebra stripes neither hide nor flaunt
| January 25, 2016 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Natural selection, News |
Remember “Why zebras have stripes? This time we really mean it!“? Yes, same time last year: Further to How the zebra got its stripes, maybe and How the zebra got its stripes (December 18, 2013), this time really (April 2, 2014), we now learn that it depends on the temperature, … Forget all that! Now, from […]
Researchers question Darwin’s theory of “fecundity selection”
| November 10, 2015 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Natural selection |
It almost feels like researchers think it is okay now to just doubt Darwin. It seems, we’re a long way from the “Darwin himself said” rubbish that used to deface media releases even a few years ago.* From ScienceDaily: A key concept in Darwin’s theory of evolution which suggests nature favors larger females that can […]
Real Time Evolution “Happening Under Our Nose”
| October 12, 2015 | Posted by Eric Anderson under Darwinism, Evolution, Genetics, Natural selection, speciation |
A couple of weeks ago a friend forwarded me a link to this recent article about “ongoing research to record the interaction of environment and evolution” by University of California, Riverside biologist David Reznick. Reznick’s team has been studying adaptive changes in guppies. Reznick’s work focuses on tracking what happens in real-world situations in the […]
Creation-Evolution Headlines on natural selection
| October 4, 2015 | Posted by News under Natural selection |
Time to ditch natural selection? If NS were a law of nature, we would see every organism trending along the same trajectory: for instance, bearing more offspring. But NS explains opposite outcomes with equal ease (see Oct 1 entry for examples). It explains why the sloth is slow and the cheetah is fast. It explains […]
Natural selection?: Die poor if you hold that stock
| September 24, 2015 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Natural selection, News |
We can’t help you. Sign noted in a computer guy’s office somewhere in North America: If after ten minutes at the poker table you do not know who the patsy is—you are the patsy. First, what exactly is Darwin’s theory anyway, other than an invite to the approved parties? Here it is: Information can be […]
Conifers: Darwinism can explain anything if you believe hard enough
| May 1, 2015 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Natural selection, News |
Devolution? From ScienceDaily: A new study offers not only a sweeping analysis of how pollination has evolved among conifers but also an illustration of how evolution — far from being a straight-ahead march of progress — sometimes allows for longstanding and advantageous functions to become irrevocably lost. Moreover, the authors show that the ongoing breakdown […]
