Darwinism Benefits Scientific Method?

Inverto, we're talking about Darwinian evolution, not generic natural selection (variation within gene pools).

 

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Since Darwinism was formulated by qualitative observation, it has no empirical value, and so, is predictive of nothing except what "may" be.

 

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Funny.
I could have sworn the thread was about how Darwin's ideas have affected other sciences.

Natural selection was Darwin's chief contribution to the field of evolution in case you didn't know. Thus, examples of natural selection being used as models in other sciences are key to the discussion. Or at least the topic you presented, apparently not the one you had in mind.

I still think you just have nothing to say after being presented with valid examples of what you asked for in the opening post.

 

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Ahh, much better. Yes, it certainly was "wishfull thinking" on Darwin's part. Or perhaps not, perhaps he was skeptical himself of what his findings meant. Yet the apparent lack of transitional fossils in the know fossil record has an obvious reason. Only under rare circumstances are bones preseverd long enough to fossilize, and even then it is rare when they are in any apparent order. Independant of how long the earth has been here, there has been much geologic activity since the fossilization of these bones. Tectonic plates converge, mountains rise up; rock is split, land shifts and avalanches. Most of the bones that happened to reach fossilization would have been destroyed by such widespread and violent geologic action.

So the fossil record is only a skeletal fraction of what has lived on this earth. Even then, it only shows a mineral replacement of the original organism.

And do not be so condescending as to call it "goo", please. They are cells, they are life. Look at your own body under a microscope to see the similarities.

Could you elaborate on this point? How is it "belied by the geologic record"? And could you provide examples of this evidence?

It is treated as fact for the same reason you treat the existence of god as fact. Faith. You both have faith in the words of your fellow people, with the reinforcement of your own senses and perception.

 

How is it qualitative?

 

People have known about that natural selection for millennia, you know, breeding horses, dogs, etc., that's all that Darwin's finches example was, with differing sized beaks, they still were just finches, it's the morphing from lizards to birds that people have a problem with, Darwinian evolution.

 

And of course there is the massive benefit that Darwinism ceded to the cultural sciences...e.g. Memes

 

Well. There you go. You've just made a breakthrough in your own bias.
This thing you call 'Darwinism' isn't any such thing. He didn't come up with evolution or even natural selection. He merely put the two together in a way that forwarded the science of evolution.

Lizards to birds, eh?
You've been eating mushrooms or something?

 

You may want to start a new thread on geology if you like.

 

Yeah.
Only IceAge can hijack his own thread.
Don't you dare ask him to actually explain his statements!!! That's rude!

 

How can a meme ("unit of cultural transmission") be related to biological "evolution," speak or no speak?

 

An anus says what?

 

Analogy.

 

Does yours talk?

 

If a tribe doesn't talk much, their tongues shrink?

 

Yeah.
It talks all this nonsense about the ice age lasting until some few thousand years ago rather than 10 or more as the standard model suggests.

Then it rambles on endlessly about how stupid darwinism is and fails to understand even the simplest aspects of the theories that it's so desperate to shoot down.

I used to find it cute. But it gets old real quick.

It even wrote a book once. It's called Ice Age Civilizations. What a crock of shit that was...

 

Know any 'tribes' that 'don't talk much'?

 

What's to keep those small changes from building up over time? Won't a lot of small changes eventually make an animal look very different in a few thousand years?

 

Think more sex-related/attraction based.

Its all about attracting the mate. And if you don't survive, then you don't attract the mate and you don't have kids, and there won't be more like you.

Maybe if their culture "meme" favored small tongues. Then mostly the small tongued people would have kids, and would overpopulate the others, starving or shunning them off. And the small tongued people's kids would probably have even smaller tongues, due to how genetic recombination works--as shown by Mendel

Then, the long-tongued people shunned by the short-tongues would form their own culture in a new area. Their genes would be selected for longer tongues, because they all had them. But they would also be selected for the people who survive the best in the new environment. So here the two would have a split, eventually becoming two (or more) different species.

That is, unless they don't soon become technologically advanced enough to share the same culture again.

 

>> impedes it has people are preoccupied with that nonsensical notion which has no bearing on how the world works. >>

How we work, and the rest of LIFE

Darwinian theory is an elitist theory, so elites like it. But so what it is still plainly wrong.

LIFE is one super organism, and all extant life forms are welcome at the table of LIFE... and that is ALL, not just some.