This chart should end once and for all the debate about the word “Darwinism.” But I doubt that it will, because if Darwinists were not so shameless, there would be no debate to begin with.
48 Replies to “Darwinism — Yeah, It’s a Thing”
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Honest to Darwin!
Bravo! Thank you for this post.
It should be balanced with Paleyist and neo-Paleyist. Maybe even Mungian for those who want to be pigeon-holed with the other two.
Seversky is clueless- evolutionists call it Darwinism. It’s to honor the man.
To be truthful it should be called nonsense. Would that be better, Seversky?
It hardly matters, but there is a substantial difference in the way creationists of all ilks use the term ‘Darwinism’ and the way scientists use it.
Very often, creationists use it as a catch-all for pretty much all of evolutionary biology. I’m sure this is a (possibly subconscious) choice to make a field of science seem like an ideology to be resisted.
In science, we generally use “Darwinism” to differentiate Darwin’s theory of evolution from others, especially in terms of competing theories from the turn of the 20th century (Lamarckianism and Mendalism and all that). Similarly, we usually use “Darwinian” to specifically refer to natural selection (or schools of evolutionary thought that focus on selection). To demonstrate,Genome Biology and Evolution has published ~450 papers since the start of 2017. The word “Darwinian” has appeared in 21 of those papers, and 15 of those 21 times it came in the phrase “Darwinian selection”.
So, yes, “Darwinism” is a thing. But it’s note clear the “Darwnism” scientists refer to is that same thing that creationsists are talking about.
Ambly:
Nonsense
As does Dawkins and many other evos.
I am sure that you are just spewing unsupportable nonsense
And yet the evidence for Darwinism is always given in terms of Lamarckism- the evolution of eyes is a perfect example- it is always about the actual eyes and never about the genetics behind them.
Exactly as everyone uses it
Whatever- you have FAILed to make your case.
In the end it doesn’t matter as natural selection has proven to be impotent and Darwin’s ideas are still untestable.
And many use “Darwinist” as refer to someone who is a materialist also, which conflates metaphysics with biology.
Lewontin in 3, 2, 1 … 🙂
jdk:
Any evidence for that? Or do you think you just get to assert and not support?
The legend to the chart says
but is there any evidence for this? One citation is given, but I can’t find the full article. EN&V does give one quote from the correct page, but that doesn’t have anyone saying what is claimed. This is puzzling, because I’ve never seen anyone claiming that design proponents (or even creationists!) invented the term “Darwinism”.
From the Wikipedia entry on “Social Darwwinism:
Bob O’H:
Visit TSZ, after the bar closes or any number of evo-run sites.
They say we invented it to disparage both Darwin and evolution.
Seversky needs to buy a dictionary and learn the difference between the words “some” and “all”. 😛
ET @ 12 – can you give me any specific examples? I do visit sites like that, but don’t recall seeing anyone making that specific claim.
It’s been said here, too, Bob.
They say crap like “Darwin is dead and his theory has moved on so we are ignorant for saying “Darwinism””- even though they should have known what we were referring to.
Larry Moran is famous for that because he thinks Darwinism is just natural selection.
ET – I guess that’s a “no” to the question I asked, then.
Whatever Bob. You aren’t the most observant person and you are definitely clueless.
Read this:
Darwinism– read the comments too.
Then there is Wikipedia: Darwinism
and Closet Darwinism, and definitions
Interesting that 17 came before 18, which sort of (not really) answers Bob question. Also I see nothing in the Wikipedia article that supports ET’s claim in 12 and 15.
15 answered Bob’s question. The Wikipedia article says that we use Darwinism as a “pejorative term”.
Also Jack isn’t the most objective and observant, either. So when he sez Also I see nothing in the Wikipedia article that supports ET’s claim in 12 and 15. It means the evidence was there
Darwinian evolution, by strict definition, is the theory as expressed by Darwin. Which had been expanded on greatly since his day. But many refer to evolution in general as Darwinian to indicate that it requires a source of heritable variation and differential reproduction based on this variation.
Whether or not a word is used as a pejorative has more to do with tone than with the actual definition. For example, the term “progressive” is a neutral word but is often used by the right as a pejorative. As are the terms “liberal” and “social justice”. But just to emphasize that this tactic is not limited to one side of the spectrum, the left will often use terms such as “Christian right” and “social conservative” in a pejorative manner. Sadly, I’m afraid, we are all guilty of this.
re 20: The Wikipedia article doesn’t say at all that “They say we invented it to disparage both Darwin and evolution,”, as you wrote in 12, or that “Some critics have accused intelligent design (ID) proponents of inventing terms such as “Darwinism,” “Darwinist,” or even “Neo-Darwinism” (and similar variations)”, as Bob pointed out the chart in the OP says.
Yes, creationists use it as a pejorative term – I mentioned that in 7, and Wikipedia says exactly the same thing: “In the United States, creationists often use the term “Darwinism” as a pejorative term in reference to beliefs such as scientific materialism.”
But Wikipedia does not support your statement, or the statement in the OP, at all.
Umm, Jack, Wikipedia says we use it as a pejorative term. That means we invented it as such, duh. Clearly the problem is you and your inability to think.
So yes, Wikipedia supports both my claim and the OP.
And if it is used as a pejorative term it is only because of the fact it is untestable pseudoscience.
R J Sawyer:
Whether or not a word is used as a pejorative has more to do with the fact it is untestable pseudoscience. Period. End of story.
ET
Thank you more making my point that whether or not a word is a pejorative is more about tone than actual definition.
re 23: ET, creationists did not invent the word. Creationists made it a pejorative term. By adding the phrase “as such” you moved the goal posts.
Silly discussion.
Jack, clearly you have reading comprehension and honesty issues
R J Sawyer:
It has nothing to do with tone and everything to do with science, or the total lack of, and reality.
Jack:
I never said they did
No, reality made it a pejorative term
That is your stupid opinion, anyway. But that is the entire point and it is very telling that you can’t grasp that
Jack once said:
But that is a lie.
Yes Intelligent Design is both testable and potentially falsifiable:
ID is based on three premises and the inference that follows (DeWolf et al., Darwinism, Design and Public Education, pg. 92):
There you have it- to falsify Intelligent Design all one has to do is demonstrate that natural selection can produce irreducibly complex biological systems.
The criteria for inferring design in biology is, as Michael J. Behe, Professor of Biochemistry at Leheigh University, puts it in his book Darwin ‘ s Black Box: “Our ability to be confident of the design of the cilium or intracellular transport rests on the same principles to be confident of the design of anything: the ordering of separate components to achieve an identifiable function that depends sharply on the components.” That is the positive case.
The ATP Synthase is a system that consists of two subsystems-> one for the flow of protons down an electrochemical gradient from the exterior to the interior and the other (a rotary engine) that generates ATP from ADP using the energy liberated by proton flow. These two processes are totally unrelated from a purely physiochemical perspective*- meaning there isn’t any general principle of physics nor chemistry by which these two processes have anything to do with each other. Yet here they are.
How is this evidence for Intelligent Design? Cause and effect relationships as in designers often take two totally unrelated systems and integrate them into one. The ordering of separate subsystems to produce a specific effect that neither can do alone. And those subsystems are composed of the ordering of separate components to achieve a specified function.
ATP synthase is not reducible to chance and necessity and also meets the criteria of design.
So the truth is ID is scientific and evolutionism is not
re 30: You have a strange definition of “lie”, seeming to mean “statement that I disagree with.”
re 31- No, Jack, what you said was and still is a lie. That you ignored the rest of my post is evidence enough for that.
What you said is total BS and if you weren’t lying then you were willfully ignorant and obviously remain so. I disagree with it because there isn’t any truth to it and it was easily refuted.
Had I been there I would have easily eviscerated you.
Tell us, Jack, how can we test the claim that ATP synthase evolved by means of natural selection, drift or any other blind and mindless process?
How about it, Jack? Would you like to ante up and see who would win a debate on science? I will take ID and you can have evolution by means of blind and mindless processes.
Darwin’s ideas are testable and we are getting close to the point where computers are fast enough and the database large enough where it can be evaluated.
I happen to believe it will fail the testing. Once it does, ID will be in an even stronger position. Here is a brief discussion I had with Ann Gauger over a year ago.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/do-nylon-eating-bacteria-show-that-new-functional-information-is-easy-to-evolve/#comment-631468
OK , jerry, how can we test the claim that ATP synthase evolved via Darwinian processes?
How about vision systems, bacterial flagella, or any other system?
Nylonase is a great example of built-in responses to environmental cues and now=t Darwinian evolution.
But please try to answer those questions as Dr Behe has been asking for 2 decades without any response
OK so Jack is proud to be a liar or a willfully ignorant troll.
And I bet jerry will never support his claim about Darwinian evolution being testable by answering my questions
Usage of words through time is really, really easy. It’s called the Google N-Gram viewer:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/
Just type into the search bar the following phrase:
“Darwinian,Neo-Darwinian,Darwinist,Neo-Darwinist,Darwinism,Neo-Darwinism”
Click the checkbox “case insensitive”, and then click “search lots of books”
There are plenty of advanced features, like using “(Darwinian*10)” so it doesn’t get overwhelmed by the high percentage of “Darwinist” and “Darwinism”.
So both -ian and -ism began to rise in published books around 1860—no big surprise. -ist was a poor 3rd, showing growth in usage around 1950, but increasing in popularity up to 2000 with a slight decline since.
The three “Neo-” have much lesser appearance, with Neo-Darwinist the least common. But all of them show a bump upward around 1970, which is two decades before the ID movement began. If increasing pejorative usage is attributed to ID, then the timing is wrong. Perhaps there would be a way to search on pejorative usage as well, but I haven’t discovered it.
The pejorative use began with YEC, and has since been adopted by others.
Discovered another N-gram trick. Searching on:
“Darwinism=>*”
will give the most common modifiers. #5 & #8 on the list is “neo”. Much more common is “Social”.
“Darwinian=>*” shows that “neo” is #1 modifier, though in 1900, the most common modifier was “Post”, though it all went away at the start of WWI.
“Darwinist=>*” shows that “neo” is #5 again, but “Social” takes spots #2 & #3. If you think that “social” is pejorative, then “neo” is a much less common insult.
See how much you can learn from this study?
JDK in 37.
Try this search:
“Darwinism fail_INF”
You will see that aspersions on Darwin began around 1880, which seems a bit early for YEC, which officially began around 1961 with Henry Morris’ “Genesis Flood”. So once again, it seems a bit simplistic to blame all criticism on a select few.
Interesting tool, Robert. I’ll study this a bit when I have time.
jdk:
No, the pejorative use began once objective- minded people realized that it- Darwinism/ evolution by means of blind and mindless processes- was total untestable claptrap.
You may have missed what I said. I am interested in debunking Darwinian processes. I provided a way to start that process by using testable hypotheses. If Darwinian processes fail at the simple test I proposed then it would be hard for anyone supporting Darwinian processes to claim it leads to even more complex structures.
If it does happen to lead to new novel proteins then that would be interesting but I doubt it will. But if it did then the process would have to be focused broader across species with different systems.
Right now a major objection to Darwinian processes by ID people is that naturalistic processes cannot produce new proteins. Investigating that is a start. There are some very strident researchers out there that think the developing of new proteins is a slam dunk.
While I said the process is simple, in reality it would require many researchers using lots of computer time. Such a process is really not that simple but the basic idea is.
jerry:
And I am interested in how it can be tested.
Your approach is unable to differentiate between evolution by means of blind and mindless processes and evolution by means of intelligent design.
Even Dembski admitted that existing CSI can be shuffled around like what happened when T-URF13 formed in maize mitochondria from recombination
i don’t think you understand what I am proposing. The supporters of punctuated equilibrium claim that new proteins are developed by numerous processes (engines of variation) that rearrange and create new DNA sequences. Their claim is that eventually a DNA sequence will be exapted and transcribed, translated and become functional.
Such a process would leave a forensic trail in the DNA of related species without the fully functional protein. It would show how the DNA sequence leading to the protein was created if such was found. This is definitely testable.
If such DNA sequences and their un-transcribed sequences in related species were found, it may be able to see just what took place to reach the transcribed/translated sequence. As I have said, I anticipate it will not lead anywhere but it would undermine the main avenue of new protein development offered up by those who endorse naturalistic evolution.
This theoretically differs from Darwinian processes which are the accumulation of small changes that are transcribed/translated and then add up to a new capability. This process takes considerable time to develop a new protein and was meant to answer why new species seemed to pop into existence out of nowhere.
jerry:
The supporters of evolution by means of telic processes, such as built-in responses to environmental cues ala Dr. Spetner, claim that new proteins are developed by numerous processes (engines of variation) that rearrange and create new DNA sequences. Their claim is that eventually a DNA sequence will be exapted and transcribed, translated and become functional. Which actually makes sense given the fact that organisms were intelligently designed to be able to evolve to adapt.
It all depends on how life originated. If that was via Intelligent Design then we get my scenario. If not then the Darwinists win.
Except that Richard Dawkins, a staunch supporter of Darwinian evolution, is OK with duplications, even whole genome duplications, that can lead to more segments on a segmented organism. Start with one segment, a duplication produces two, and so forth. He talks about it in one of the books titled “Life”, with Vetner, Church, Dyson, et al.
So it isn’t out of the realm, theoretically, of Darwinian processes to do what you described. It’s just that such a thing is asking way too much of blind and mindless, ie Darwinian, processes. See Waiting for Two Mutations: With Applications to Regulatory Sequence Evolution and the Limits of Darwinian Evolution
They set out to try to refute Dr Behe and ended up showing that there are severe limits to Darwinian evolution.
My point is and has always been that this process is at best extremely limited and does not produce anything of value. I am just describing a way to show that it is bogus. But there are very insistent voices in evolutionary biology that maintain it does produce all we see. I was taken back by how confident they were but have not seen anything of consequence from their research. You should read Jurgen Brosius who is a major player in this area to see now strident he is. He runs a major research lab in Germany
Thank you for your comments.
jerry:
Genetic diseases and deformities are the specialties. And yes “they” are confident but that is because they “know” they are right. It’s just a matter of time to them.
Given the dogma of materialism it has to be so
Dogma of materialism
It’s a war, of sorts. People need to wake up to that fact