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Monday, May 6, 2019

Level of support for evolution

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The level of support for evolution among scientists, the public and other groups is a topic that frequently arises in the creation-evolution controversy and touches on educational, religious, philosophical, scientific and political issues. The subject is especially contentious in countries where significant levels of non-acceptance of evolution by general society exist although evolution is taught at school and university.
 
Nearly all (around 97%) of the scientific community accepts evolution as the dominant scientific theory of biological diversity. Scientific associations have strongly rebutted and refuted the challenges to evolution proposed by intelligent design proponents.

There are religious sects and denominations in several countries for whom the theory of evolution is in conflict with creationism that is central to their beliefs, and who therefore reject it: in the United States, South Africa, India, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, and Brazil, with smaller followings in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Japan, Italy, Germany, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Several publications discuss the subject of acceptance, including a document produced by the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Scientific support

The vast majority of the scientific community and academia supports evolutionary theory as the only explanation that can fully account for observations in the fields of biology, paleontology, molecular biology, genetics, anthropology, and others. A 1991 Gallup poll found that about 5% of American scientists (including those with training outside biology) identified themselves as creationists.

Additionally, the scientific community considers intelligent design, a neo-creationist offshoot, to be unscientific, pseudoscience, or junk science. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that intelligent design "and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own. In September 2005, 38 Nobel laureates issued a statement saying "Intelligent design is fundamentally unscientific; it cannot be tested as scientific theory because its central conclusion is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent." In October 2005, a coalition representing more than 70,000 Australian scientists and science teachers issued a statement saying "intelligent design is not science" and calling on "all schools not to teach Intelligent Design (ID) as science, because it fails to qualify on every count as a scientific theory".

In 1986, an amicus curiae brief, signed by 72 US Nobel Prize winners, 17 state academies of science and 7 other scientific societies, asked the US Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard, to reject a Louisiana state law requiring that where evolutionary science was taught in public schools, creation science must also be taught. The brief also stated that the term "creation science" as used by the law embodied religious dogma, and that "teaching religious ideas mislabeled as science is detrimental to scientific education". This was the largest collection of Nobel Prize winners to sign a petition up to that point. According to anthropologists Almquist and Cronin, the brief is the "clearest statement by scientists in support of evolution yet produced."

There are many scientific and scholarly organizations from around the world that have issued statements in support of the theory of evolution. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society with more than 130,000 members and over 262 affiliated societies and academies of science including over 10 million individuals, has made several statements and issued several press releases in support of evolution. The prestigious United States National Academy of Sciences, which provides science advice to the nation, has published several books supporting evolution and criticising creationism and intelligent design.

There is a notable difference between the opinion of scientists and that of the general public in the United States. A 2009 poll by Pew Research Center found that "Nearly all scientists (97%) say humans and other living things have evolved over time – 87% say evolution is due to natural processes, such as natural selection. The dominant position among scientists – that living things have evolved due to natural processes – is shared by only about a third (32%) of the public."

Votes, resolutions and statements of scientists before 1985

One of the earliest resolutions in support of evolution was issued by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1922, and readopted in 1929.

Another early effort to express support for evolution by scientists was organized by Nobel Prize–winning American biologist Hermann J. Muller in 1966. Muller circulated a petition entitled "Is Biological Evolution a Principle of Nature that has been well established by Science?" in May 1966:
There are no hypotheses, alternative to the principle of evolution with its "tree of life," that any competent biologist of today takes seriously. Moreover, the principle is so important for an understanding of the world we live in and of ourselves that the public in general, including students taking biology in high school, should be made aware of it, and of the fact that it is firmly established, even as the rotundity of the earth is firmly established.
This manifesto was signed by 177 of the leading American biologists, including George G. Simpson of Harvard University, Nobel Prize Winner Peter Agre of Duke University, Carl Sagan of Cornell, John Tyler Bonner of Princeton, Nobel Prize Winner George Beadle, President of the University of Chicago, and Donald F. Kennedy of Stanford University, formerly head of the United States Food and Drug Administration.

This was followed by the passing of a resolution by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in the fall of 1972 that stated, in part, "the theory of creation ... is neither scientifically grounded nor capable of performing the rules required of science theories". The United States National Academy of Sciences also passed a similar resolution in the fall of 1972. A statement on evolution called "A Statement Affirming Evolution as a Principle of Science." was signed by Nobel Prize Winner Linus Pauling, Isaac Asimov, George G. Simpson, Caltech Biology Professor Norman H. Horowitz, Ernst Mayr, and others, and published in 1977. The governing board of the American Geological Institute issued a statement supporting resolution in November 1981. Shortly thereafter, the AAAS passed another resolution supporting evolution and disparaging efforts to teach creationism in science classes.

To date, there are no scientifically peer-reviewed research articles that disclaim evolution listed in the scientific and medical journal search engine Pubmed.

Project Steve

The Discovery Institute announced that over 700 scientists had expressed support for intelligent design as of February 8, 2007. This prompted the National Center for Science Education to produce a "light-hearted" petition called "Project Steve" in support of evolution. Only scientists named "Steve" or some variation (such as Stephen, Stephanie, and Stefan) are eligible to sign the petition. It is intended to be a "tongue-in-cheek parody" of the lists of alleged "scientists" supposedly supporting creationist principles that creationist organizations produce. The petition demonstrates that there are more scientists who accept evolution with a name like "Steve" alone (over 1370) than there are in total who support intelligent design. This is, again, why the percentage of scientists who support evolution has been estimated by Brian Alters to be about 99.9 percent.

Support for evolution by religious bodies

Many creationists act as evangelists and their organizations are registered as tax-free religious organizations. Creationists have claimed that they represent the interests of true Christians, and evolution is associated only with atheism.

However, not all religious organizations find support for evolution incompatible with their religious faith. For example, 12 of the plaintiffs opposing the teaching of creation science in the influential McLean v. Arkansas court case were clergy representing Methodist, Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal, Catholic, Southern Baptist, Reform Jewish, and Presbyterian groups. There are several religious organizations that have issued statements advocating the teaching of evolution in public schools. In addition, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, issued statements in support of evolution in 2006. The Clergy Letter Project is a signed statement by 12,808 (as of 28 May 2012) American Christian clergy of different denominations rejecting creationism organized in 2004. Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education found, of Americans in the twelve largest Christian denominations, at least 77% belong to churches that support evolution education (and that at one point, this figure was as high as 89.6%). These religious groups include the Catholic Church, as well as various denominations of Protestantism, including the United Methodist Church, National Baptist Convention, USA, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), National Baptist Convention of America, African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Church, and others. A figure closer to about 71% is presented by the analysis of Walter B. Murfin and David F. Beck.

Michael Shermer argued in Scientific American in October 2006 that evolution supports concepts like family values, avoiding lies, fidelity, moral codes and the rule of law. Shermer also suggests that evolution gives more support to the notion of an omnipotent creator, rather than a tinkerer with limitations based on a human model.

Evolution and Ahmadiyya

The Ahmadiyya Movement universally accepts evolution and actively promotes it. Mirza Tahir Ahmad, Fourth Caliph of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has stated in his magnum opus Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth that evolution did occur but only through God being the One who brings it about. It does not occur itself, according to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. The Ahmadis do not believe Adam was the first human on earth, but merely the first prophet to receive a revelation of God.

Evolution and the Baha'i Faith

A fundamental part of `Abdul-Bahá's teachings on evolution is the belief that all life came from the same origin: "the origin of all material life is one..." He states that from this sole origin, the complete diversity of life was generated: "Consider the world of created beings, how varied and diverse they are in species, yet with one sole origin" He explains that a slow, gradual process led to the development of complex entities:
"[T]he growth and development of all beings is gradual; this is the universal divine organization and the natural system. The seed does not at once become a tree; the embryo does not at once become a man; the mineral does not suddenly become a stone. No, they grow and develop gradually and attain the limit of perfection."

Evolution and the Catholic Church

The 1950 encyclical Humani generis advocated scepticism towards evolution without explicitly rejecting it; this was substantially amended by Pope John-Paul II in 1996 in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in which he said, "Today, almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis." Between 2000 and 2002 the International Theological Commission found that "Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution." This statement was published by the Vatican on July 2004 by the authority of Cardinal Ratzinger (who became Pope Benedict XVI) who was the president of the Commission at the time. 

The Magisterium has not made an authoritative statement on intelligent design, and has permitted arguments on both sides of the issue. In 2005, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna appeared to endorse intelligent design when he denounced philosophically materialist interpretations of evolution. In an op-ed in the New York Times he said "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not." This common line of reasoning among fundamentalist theologians is flawed, as evolution by natural selection is not random at all; only mutations occur in a stochastic manner, while natural selection establishes genes which aid survival in a particular environment.

In the January 16–17 2006 edition of the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, University of Bologna evolutionary biology Professor Fiorenzo Facchini wrote an article agreeing with the judge's ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover and stating that intelligent design was unscientific. Jesuit Father George Coyne, former director of the Vatican Observatory, has also denounced intelligent design.

Evolution and Sikhism

The Sikh scripture explicitly states that the Universe and its processes are created by, and subject to, the laws of Nature. Furthermore, the name that is used by Sikhs for God, Waheguru, is literally translated as "the Wonderful Teacher", implying that these laws are, in principle at least, at least partially discernible by human inquiry. One of the hymns that observant Sikhs recite daily describes the orbit of the Earth as being caused by those same laws (and not some mythological cause). Thus, the scientific world-view, which includes the Darwinian theory of evolution, is compatible with traditional Sikh belief.

Evolution and Hinduism

Hindus believe in the concept of evolution of life on Earth. The concepts of Dashavatara—different incarnations of God starting from simple organisms and progressively becoming complex beings—and Day and Night of Brahma are generally cited as instances of Hindu acceptance of evolution.

US religious denominations that dispute evolution

In the United States, many Protestant denominations promote creationism, preach against evolution, and sponsor lectures and debates on the subject. Denominations that explicitly advocate creationism instead of evolution or "Darwinism" include the Assemblies of God, the Free Methodist Church, Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, Pentecostal Churches, Seventh-day Adventist Churches, Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, Christian Reformed Church, Southern Baptist Convention, and the Pentecostal Oneness churches. Jehovah's Witnesses produce gap creationism and day-age creationism literature to refute evolution but reject the "creationist" label, which they consider to apply only to Young Earth creationism.

Support for evolution in medicine and industry

A common complaint of creationists is that evolution is of no value, has never been used for anything, and will never be of any use. According to many creationists, nothing would be lost by getting rid of evolution, and science and industry might even benefit.

In fact, evolution is being put to practical use in industry and widely used on a daily basis by researchers in medicine, biochemistry, molecular biology, and genetics to both formulate hypotheses about biological systems for the purposes of experimental design, as well as to rationalise observed data and prepare applications. As of May 2019 there are 554,965 scientific papers in PubMed that mention 'evolution'. Pharmaceutical companies utilize biological evolution in their development of new products, and also use these medicines to combat evolving bacteria and viruses.

Because of the perceived value of evolution in applications, there have been some expressions of support for evolution on the part of corporations. In Kansas, there has been some widespread concern in the corporate and academic communities that a move to weaken the teaching of evolution in schools will hurt the state's ability to recruit the best talent, particularly in the biotech industry. Paul Hanle of the Biotechnology Institute warned that the United States risks falling behind in the biotechnology race with other nations if it does not do a better job of teaching evolution. James McCarter of Divergence Incorporated stated that the work of 2001 Nobel Prize winner Leland Hartwell relied heavily on the use of evolutionary knowledge and predictions, both of which have significant implications for the treatment of cancers. Furthermore, McCarter concluded that 47 of the last 50 Nobel Prizes in medicine or physiology depended on an understanding of evolutionary theory (according to McCarter's unspecified personal criteria).

Other support for evolution

There are also many educational organizations that have issued statements in support of the theory of evolution.

Repeatedly, creationists and intelligent design advocates have lost suits in US courts. Here is a list of important court cases in which creationists have suffered setbacks:

Public support

Acceptance of human evolution in various countries.
 
There does not appear to be significant correlation between believing in evolution and understanding evolutionary science. In some countries, creationist beliefs (or a lack of support for evolutionary theory) are relatively widespread, even garnering a majority of public opinion. A study published in Science compared attitudes about evolution in the United States, 32 European countries (including Turkey) and Japan. The only country where acceptance of evolution was lower than in the United States was Turkey (25%). Public acceptance of evolution was most widespread (at over 80% of the population) in Iceland, Denmark and Sweden.

Afghanistan

According to the PEW research center, Afghanistan has the lowest acceptance of evolution in the Muslim countries. Only 26% of people in Afghanistan accept evolution. 62% deny human evolution and believe that humans have always existed in their present form..

Argentina

According to a 2014 poll produced by the Pew Research Center, 71% of people in Argentina believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 23% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Armenia

According to the PEW research, 56 percent of Armenians deny human evolution & claim that humans have always existed in their present and only 34 percent of Armenians accept human evolution.

Australia

A 2009 Nielsen poll showed that 23% of Australians believe "the biblical account of human origins," 42% believe in a "wholly scientific" explanation for the origins of life, while 32% believe in an evolutionary process "guided by God".

A 2013 survey conducted by Auspoll and the Australian Academy of Science found that 80% of Australians believe in evolution (70% believe it is currently occurring, 10% believe in evolution but do not think it is currently occurring), 12% were not sure and 9% stated they do not believe in evolution.

Belarus

According to the PEW research center, 63 percent of respondents in Belarus accept the theory of evolution while 23 percent of them deny evolution and claim that "humans have always existed their present form."

Bolivia

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 44% of people in Bolivia believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 39% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Brazil

In a 2010 poll, 59% of respondents said they believe in theistic evolution, or evolution guided by God. A further 8% believe in evolution without divine intervention, while 25% were creationists. Support for creationism was stronger among the poor and the least educated. According to a 2014 poll produced by the Pew Research Center, 66% of Brazilians agree that humans evolved over time and 29% think they have always existed in the present form.

Canada

In a 2012 poll, 61% of Canadians believe that humans evolved from less advanced life forms, while 22% believe that God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

Chile

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 69% of people in Chile believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 26% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Colombia

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 59% of people in Colombia believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 35% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Costa Rica

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 56% of people in Costa Rica believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 38% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Czech Republic

According to the PEW research center,the Czech Republic has the highest acceptance of evolution in Eastern Europe. 83 percent people in the Czech Republic believe that humans evolved over time.

Dominican Republic

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 41% of people in Dominican Republic believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 56% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Ecuador

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 50% of people in Ecuador believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 44% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

El Salvador

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 46% of people in El Salvador believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 45% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Estonia

According to the PEW research center,74 percent of Estonians accept the theory of evolution while 21 percent of Estonians deny the theory of evolution and claim that "humans have always existed their present form."

Georgia

According to the PEW research center, 58 percent of Georgians accept the theory of evolution while 34 percent of Georgians accept deny the theory of evolution.

Guatemala

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 55% of people in Guatemala believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 38% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Honduras

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 49% of people in Honduras believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 45% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Hungary

According to the PEW RESEARCH poll, 69 percent of Hungarians accept the theory of evolution and 21 percent of Hungarians deny human evolution.

Kazakhstan

According to the PEW research center, Kazakhstan has the highest acceptance of evolution in the Muslim countries. 79% of people in Kazakhstan accept the theory of evolution.

India

Among those who had heard of Charles Darwin and knew something about the theory of evolution, 77% of people in India agree that enough scientific evidence exists to support Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Also, 85% of God believing Indians who know about evolution agree that life on earth evolved over time as a result of natural selection.

In a survey carried among 10 major nations, the highest proportion that agreed that evolutionary theories alone should be taught in schools was in India, at 49%.

In a recent survey conducted across 12 states in India, public acceptence of evolution stood at 65.5% across Indian population. Highest acceptence was found in Delhi, Maharashtra and Kerala (all above 78%) while the least was found to be in Haryana (41.3%). Males were marginally more likely to accept the evolution compared with females (72% vs. 69%), and non-religious people compared with religious people (74% vs. 67%). Surprisingly people who identified as ‘rightists’ accepted the evolution more than those who identified themselves as ‘leftists’ (66% vs. 61%) in political spectra. The study also identified teachers and students (over 73%) as most likely to accept evolution while employed adults (59%) least. While at the international level, the trend is quite clear that religiosity is inversely proportional to public acceptance of evolution, situation in India was strikingly opposite. Lead author, Dr. Felix Bast from Central University of Punjab conjectured possible reason for high public acceptance of evolution in India despite the fact of high religiosity is that Hinduism does not conflict Darwin’s theory of evolution to a large extent. According to 2011 census, Hindus encompass 80.3% of Indian population. Many concepts of Vedas and Hinduism support the scientific consensus of geology, climate science and evolution to a large extent. For example, according to Rigveda, the age of earth is 1.97 billion years, which is very old compared with that of creation myth propounded by Abrahamic religions (according to creationism-also called Intelligent Design, the age of earth is around 6000 years). Current scientific consensus of the age of earth is 4.543 billion years. A number of evolutionary biologists in the past as well were baffled about the surprising similarity between evolutionary theory and Hinduism. British evolutionary biologist JBS Haldane, for instance, suggested that Hindu concept of dashavatara- the ten incarnations of lord Vishnu- is a rough idea of vertebrate evolution (fish-the vertebrate to tortoise-reptile to boar-mammal to man). Vedic concepts of pralaya and mahapralaya too surprisingly capture the cyclic nature of global climate (glacial-interglacial cycles).

Indonesia

A 2009 survey conducted by the McGill researchers and their international collaborators found that 85% of Indonesian high school students agreed with the statement, "Millions of fossils show that life has existed for billions of years and changed over time."

Israel

The theory of evolution is a 'hard sell' in schools in Israel. More than half of Israeli Jews accept the human evolution while more than 40% deny human evolution & claim that humans have always existed in their present form. 

Latvia

According to the PEW research center, 66 percent of Latvians accept the theory of evolution while 25 percent of Latvians deny evolution and claim that "humans have always existed their present form."

Lithuania

According to the PEW research center 54 percent of Lithuanians accept the theory of evolution while 34 percent of them deny evolution and claim that "humans have always existed their present form."

Mexico

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 64% of people in Mexico believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 32% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Moldova

According to the PEW research center, 49 percent of Moldovans accept the theory of evolution while 42 percent of Moldovan deny the theory of evolution and claim that "humans have always existed." 

Nicaragua

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 47% of people in Nicaragua believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 48% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Norway

According to a 2008 Norstat poll for NRK, 59% of the Norwegian population fully accept evolution, 24% somewhat agree with the theory, 4% somewhat disagree with the theory while 8% do not accept evolution. 4% did not know.

Pakistan

A 2009 survey conducted by the McGill researchers and their international collaborators found that 86% of Pakistani high school students agreed with the statement, "Millions of fossils show that life has existed for billions of years and changed over time."

Panama

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 61% of people in Panama believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 34% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Paraguay

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 59% of people in Paraguay believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 30% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Peru

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 51% of people in Peru believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 39% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Poland

According to the PEW research center, 61 percent of Poles accept the theory of evolution while 23 percent of Poles deny the theory of evolution and claim that "humans have always existed their present form."

Russia

According to the PEW research center, 65 percent of Russians accept the theory of evolution while 26 percent of Russians deny the theory of evolution and claim that "humans have always existed their present form."

Serbia

According to the PEW research center, 61 percent of Serbian accept the theory of evolution while 29 percent of respondents in Serbia deny the theory of evolution while and claim that "humans have always existed their present form."

United Kingdom

A 2006 UK poll on the "origin and development of life" asked participants to choose between three different explanations for the origin of life: 22% chose (Young Earth) creationism, 17% opted for intelligent design ("certain features of living things are best explained by the intervention of a supernatural being, e.g. God"), 48% selected evolution theory (with a divine role explicitly excluded) and the rest did not know. A 2009 poll found that only 38% of Britons believe God played no role in evolution. In a 2012 poll, 69% of Britons believe that humans evolved from less advanced life forms, while 17% believe that God created human beings in their present forms within the last 10,000 years.

United States

US courts have ruled in favor of teaching evolution in science classrooms, and against teaching creationism, in numerous cases such as Edwards v. Aguillard, Hendren v. Campbell, McLean v. Arkansas and Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District

A prominent organization in the United States behind the intelligent design movement is the Discovery Institute, which, through its Center for Science and Culture, conducts a number of public relations and lobbying campaigns aimed at influencing the public and policy makers in order to advance its position in academia. The Discovery Institute claims that because there is a significant lack of public support for evolution, that public schools should, as their campaign states, "Teach the Controversy", although there is no controversy over the validity of evolution within the scientific community.
2009 Pew Research
US Group Young Earth Creationism Belief in evolution guided by supreme being Belief in evolution due to natural processes NA
Public 31% 22% 32% 15%
Scientists 2% 8% 87% 3%
 
2014 Gallup poll
Religious Institution Attendance Young Earth Creationism Belief in God-guided evolution Belief in evolution without God
Attend Church Weekly 69% 24% 1%
Attend Church Nearly Weekly/Monthly 47% 39% 9%
Seldom/Never Attend Church 23% 32% 34%

The US has one of the highest levels of public belief in biblical or other religious accounts of the origins of life on earth among industrialized countries. However according to the PEW research center, 62 percent of adults in the United States accept human evolution and while 34 percent of adults believe that humans have always existed in their present form. The poll involved over 35,000 adults in the United States. However acceptance of evolution varies per state. For example the State of Vermont has the highest acceptance of evolution of any other State in the United States. 79% people in Vermont accept human evolution. While Mississippi with 43% has the lowest acceptance of evolution of any US state.

A 2017 Gallup creationism survey found that 38% of adults in the United States inclined to the view that "God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" when asked for their views on the origin and development of human beings, which was noted as being at the lowest level in 35 years. 19% believed that "human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process", despite 49% of respondents indicating they believed in evolution. Belief in creationism is inversely correlated to education; only 22% of those with post-graduate degrees believe in strict creationism. (The level of support for strict creationism could be even lower when poll results are adjusted after comparison with other polls with questions that more specifically account for uncertainty and ambivalence.A 2000 poll for People for the American Way found 70% of the American public felt that evolution was compatible with a belief in God.

2007 Gallup poll
Political identification Do not believe in evolution Believe in evolution NA
Republican 68% 30% 2%
Democrat 40% 57% 3%
Independent 37% 61% 2%
 
2005 Pew Research Center poll
Political identification Creationist Believe in evolution NA
Republican 60% 11% 29%
Democrat 29% 44% 27%

A 2005 Pew Research Center poll found that 70% of evangelical Christians believed that living organisms have not changed since their creation, but only 31% of Catholics and 32% of mainline Protestants shared this opinion. A 2005 Harris Poll estimated that 63% of liberals and 37% of conservatives agreed that humans and other primates have a common ancestry.

Ukraine

According to the PEW research center, 54 percent of respondents in Ukraine accept the theory of evolution while 34 percent deny the theory of evolution and claim that "humans have always existed their present form."

Uruguay

According to a 2014 poll produced by the Pew Research Center, 74% of people in Uruguay believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 20% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Venezuela

According to a 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, 63% of people in Venezuela believe "humans and other living things evolved over time" while 33% believe they have "always existed in the present form."

Trends

The level of assent that evolution garners has changed with time. The trends in acceptance of evolution can be estimated.

Early impact of Darwin's theory

The level of support for evolution in different communities has varied with time. Darwin's theory had convinced almost every naturalist within 20 years of its publication in 1858, and was making serious inroads with the public and the more liberal clergy. It had reached such extremes, that by 1880, one American religious weekly publication estimated that "perhaps a quarter, perhaps a half of the educated ministers in our leading Evangelical denominations" felt "that the story of the creation and fall of man, told in Genesis, is no more the record of actual occurrences than is the parable of the Prodigal Son."

By the late 19th century, many of the most conservative Christians accepted an ancient earth, and life on earth before Eden. Victorian Era Creationists were more akin to people who subscribe to theistic evolution today. Even fervent anti-evolutionist Scopes Trial prosecutor William Jennings Bryan interpreted the "days" of Genesis as ages of the earth, and acknowledged that biochemical evolution took place, drawing the line only at the story of Adam and Eve's creation. Prominent pre-World War II creationist Harry Rimmer allowed an Old Earth by slipping millions of years into putative gaps in the Genesis account, and claimed that the Noachian Flood was only a local phenomenon.

In the decades of the 20th century, George McCready Price and a tiny group of Seventh-day Adventist followers were among the very few believers in a Young Earth and a worldwide flood, which Price championed in his "new catastrophism" theories. It was not until the publication of John C. Whitcomb, Jr., and Henry M. Morris’s book Genesis Flood in 1961 that Price's idea was revived. In the last few decades, many creationists have adopted Price's beliefs, becoming progressively more strict biblical literalists.

Recent public beliefs

In a 1991 Gallup poll, 47% of the US population, and 25% of college graduates agreed with the statement, "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years." 

Fourteen years later, in 2005, Gallup found that 53% of Americans expressed the belief that "God created human beings in their present form exactly the way the Bible describes it." About 2/3 (65.5%) of those surveyed thought that creationism was definitely or probably true. In 2005 a Newsweek poll discovered that 80 percent of the American public thought that "God created the universe." and the Pew Research Center reported that "nearly two-thirds of Americans say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools." Ronald Numbers commented on that with "Most surprising of all was the discovery that large numbers of high-school biology teachers — from 30% in Illinois and 38% in Ohio to a whopping 69% in Kentucky — supported the teaching of creationism."

The National Center for Science Education reports that from 1985 to 2005, the number of Americans unsure about evolution increased from 7% to 21%, while the number rejecting evolution declined from 48% to 39%. Jon Miller of Michigan State University has found in his polls that the number of Americans who accept evolution has declined from 45% to 40% from 1985 to 2005.

In light of these somewhat contradictory results, it is difficult to know for sure what is happening to public opinion on evolution in the US. It does not appear that either side is making unequivocal progress. It does appear that uncertainty about the issue is increasing, however.

Anecdotal evidence is that creationism is becoming more of an issue in the UK as well. One report in 2006 was that UK students are increasingly arriving ill-prepared to participate in medical studies or other advanced education.

Recent scientific trends

The level of support for creationism among relevant scientists is minimal. In 2007 the Discovery Institute reported that about 600 scientists signed their A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism list, up from 100 in 2001. The actual statement of the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism is a relatively mild one that expresses skepticism about the absoluteness of 'Darwinism' (and is in line with the falsifiability required of scientific theories) to explain all features of life, and does not in any way represent an absolute denial or rejection of evolution. By contrast, a tongue-in-cheek response known as Project Steve, a list restricted to scientists named Steve, Stephanie etc. who agree that evolution is "a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences," has 1,382 signatories as of November 24, 2015. People with these names make up approximately 1% of the total U.S. population. 

The United States National Science Foundation statistics on US yearly science graduates demonstrate that from 1987 to 2001, the number of biological science graduates increased by 59% while the number of geological science graduates decreased by 20.5%. However, the number of geology graduates in 2001 was only 5.4% of the number of graduates in the biological sciences, while it was 10.7% of the number of biological science graduates in 1987. The Science Resources Statistics Division of the National Science Foundation estimated that in 1999, there were 955,300 biological scientists in the US (about 1/3 of who hold graduate degrees). There were also 152,800 earth scientists in the US as well.

A large fraction of the Darwin Dissenters have specialties unrelated to research on evolution; of the dissenters, three-quarters are not biologists. As of 2006, the dissenter list was expanded to include non-US scientists.

Some researchers are attempting to understand the factors that affect people's acceptance of evolution. Studies have yielded inconsistent results, explains associate professor of education at Ohio State University, David Haury. He recently performed a study that found people are likely to reject evolution if they have feelings of uncertainty, regardless of how well they understand evolutionary theory. Haury believes that teachers need to show students that their intuitive feelings may be misleading (for example, using the Wason selection task), and thus to exercise caution when relying on them as they judge the rational merits of ideas.

The eclipse of Darwinism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Julian Huxley used the phrase “the eclipse of Darwinism” to describe the state of affairs prior to what he called the modern synthesis, when evolution was widely accepted in scientific circles but relatively few biologists believed that natural selection was its primary mechanism. Historians of science such as Peter J. Bowler have used the same phrase as a label for the period within the history of evolutionary thought from the 1880s to around 1920, when alternatives to natural selection were developed and explored—as many biologists considered natural selection to have been a wrong guess on Charles Darwin's part, or at least as of relatively minor importance. An alternative term, the interphase of Darwinism, has been proposed to avoid the largely incorrect implication that the putative eclipse was preceded by a period of vigorous Darwinian research.
 
While there had been multiple explanations of evolution including vitalism, catastrophism, and structuralism through the 19th century, four major alternatives to natural selection were in play at the turn of the 20th century:
  • Theistic evolution was the belief that God directly guided evolution.
  • Neo-Lamarckism was the idea that evolution was driven by the inheritance of characteristics acquired during the life of the organism.
  • Orthogenesis was the belief that organisms were affected by internal forces or laws of development that drove evolution in particular directions
  • Mutationism was the idea that evolution was largely the product of mutations that created new forms or species in a single step.
Theistic evolution largely disappeared from the scientific literature by the end of the 19th century as direct appeals to supernatural causes came to be seen as unscientific. The other alternatives had significant followings well into the 20th century; mainstream biology largely abandoned them only when developments in genetics made them seem increasingly untenable, and when the development of population genetics and the modern synthesis demonstrated the explanatory power of natural selection. Ernst Mayr wrote that as late as 1930 most textbooks still emphasized such non-Darwinian mechanisms.

Context

Evolution was widely accepted in scientific circles within a few years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, but acceptance of natural selection as its driving mechanism was much less. Six objections were raised to the theory in the 19th century:

Blending inheritance leads to the averaging out of every characteristic, which as the engineer Fleeming Jenkin pointed out, makes evolution by natural selection impossible.
  1. The fossil record was discontinuous, suggesting gaps in evolution.
  2. The physicist Lord Kelvin calculated in 1862 that the earth would have cooled in 100 million years or less from its formation, too little time for evolution.
  3. It was argued that many structures were nonadaptive (functionless), so they could not have evolved under natural selection.
  4. Some structures seemed to have evolved on a regular pattern, like the eyes of unrelated animals such as the squid and mammals.
  5. Natural selection was argued not to be creative, while variation was admitted to be mostly not of value.
  6. The engineer Fleeming Jenkin correctly noted in 1868, reviewing The Origin of Species, that the blending inheritance favoured by Darwin would oppose the action of natural selection.
Both Darwin and his close supporter Thomas Henry Huxley freely admitted, too, that selection might not be the whole explanation; Darwin was prepared to accept a measure of Lamarckism, while Huxley was comfortable with both sudden (mutational) change and directed (orthogenetic) evolution.

By the end of the 19th century, criticism of natural selection had reached the point that in 1903 the German botanist, Eberhard Dennert  [de], wrote that "We are now standing at the death bed of Darwinism", and in 1907 the Stanford University entomologist Vernon Lyman Kellogg, who supported natural selection, asserted that "... the fair truth is that the Darwinian selection theory, considered with regard to its claimed capacity to be an independently sufficient mechanical explanation of descent, stands today seriously discredited in the biological world." He added, however, that there were problems preventing the widespread acceptance of any of the alternatives, as large mutations seemed too uncommon, and there was no experimental evidence of mechanisms that could support either Lamarckism or orthogenesis. Ernst Mayr wrote that a survey of evolutionary literature and biology textbooks showed that as late as 1930 the belief that natural selection was the most important factor in evolution was a minority viewpoint, with only a few population geneticists being strict selectionists.

Motivation for alternatives

Alternatives to evolution by natural selection included directed evolution (orthogenesis), sometimes invoking divine control directly or indirectly.
 
A variety of different factors motivated people to propose other evolutionary mechanisms as alternatives to natural selection, some of them dating back before Darwin's Origin of Species. Natural selection, with its emphasis on death and competition, did not appeal to some naturalists because they felt it was immoral, and left little room for teleology or the concept of progress in the development of life. Some of these scientists and philosophers, like St. George Jackson Mivart and Charles Lyell, who came to accept evolution but disliked natural selection, raised religious objections. Others, such as Herbert Spencer, the botanist George Henslow (son of Darwin's mentor John Stevens Henslow also a botanist), and Samuel Butler, felt that evolution was an inherently progressive process that natural selection alone was insufficient to explain. Still others, including the American paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Alpheus Hyatt, had an idealist perspective and felt that nature, including the development of life, followed orderly patterns that natural selection could not explain.

Another factor was the rise of a new faction of biologists at the end of the 19th century, typified by the geneticists Hugo DeVries and Thomas Hunt Morgan, who wanted to recast biology as an experimental laboratory science. They distrusted the work of naturalists like Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, dependent on field observations of variation, adaptation, and biogeography, considering these overly anecdotal. Instead they focused on topics like physiology, and genetics that could be easily investigated with controlled experiments in the laboratory, and discounted natural selection and the degree to which organisms were adapted to their environment, which could not easily be tested experimentally.

Anti-Darwinist theories during the eclipse

Theistic evolution

Louis Agassiz (here in 1870, with drawings of Radiata) believed in a sequence of creations in which humanity was the goal of a divine plan.
 
British science developed in the early 19th century on a basis of natural theology which saw the adaptation of fixed species as evidence that they had been specially created to a purposeful divine design. The philosophical concepts of German idealism inspired concepts of an ordered plan of harmonious creation, which Richard Owen reconciled with natural theology as a pattern of homology showing evidence of design. Similarly, Louis Agassiz saw the recapitulation theory as symbolising a pattern of the sequence of creations in which humanity was the goal of a divine plan. In 1844 Vestiges adapted Agassiz's concept into theistic evolutionism. Its anonymous author Robert Chambers proposed a "law" of divinely ordered progressive development, with transmutation of species as an extension of recapitulation theory. This popularised the idea, but it was strongly condemned by the scientific establishment. Agassiz remained forcefully opposed to evolution, and after he moved to America in 1846 his idealist argument from design of orderly development became very influential. In 1858 Owen cautiously proposed that this development could be a real expression of a continuing creative law, but distanced himself from transmutationists. Two years later in his review of Darwin's On the Origin of Species Owen attacked Darwin while at the same time openly supporting evolution, expressing belief in a pattern of transmutation by law-like means. This idealist argument from design was taken up by other naturalists such as George Jackson Mivart, and the Duke of Argyll who rejected natural selection altogether in favor of laws of development that guided evolution down preordained paths.

Many of Darwin's supporters accepted evolution on the basis that it could be reconciled with design. In particular, Asa Gray considered natural selection to be the main mechanism of evolution and sought to reconcile it with natural theology. He proposed that natural selection could be a mechanism in which the problem of evil of suffering produced the greater good of adaptation, but conceded that this had difficulties and suggested that God might influence the variations on which natural selection acted to guide evolution. For Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley such pervasive supernatural influence was beyond scientific investigation, and George Frederick Wright, an ordained minister who was Gray's colleague in developing theistic evolution, emphasised the need to look for secondary or known causes rather than invoking supernatural explanations: "If we cease to observe this rule there is an end to all science and all sound science."

A secular version of this methodological naturalism was welcomed by a younger generation of scientists who sought to investigate natural causes of organic change, and rejected theistic evolution in science. By 1872 Darwinism in its broader sense of the fact of evolution was accepted as a starting point. Around 1890 only a few older men held onto the idea of design in science, and it had completely disappeared from mainstream scientific discussions by 1900. There was still unease about the implications of natural selection, and those seeking a purpose or direction in evolution turned to neo-Lamarckism or orthogenesis as providing natural explanations.

Neo-Lamarckism

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
 
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had originally proposed a theory on the transmutation of species that was largely based on a progressive drive toward greater complexity. Lamarck also believed, as did many others at the time, that characteristics acquired during the course of an organism's life could be inherited by the next generation, and he saw this as a secondary evolutionary mechanism that produced adaptation to the environment. Typically, such characteristics included changes caused by the use or disuse of a particular organ. It was this mechanism of evolutionary adaptation through the inheritance of acquired characteristics that much later came to be known as Lamarckism. Although Alfred Russel Wallace completely rejected the concept in favor of natural selection, Charles Darwin always included what he called Effects of the increased Use and Disuse of Parts, as controlled by Natural Selection in On the Origin of Species, giving examples such as large ground feeding birds getting stronger legs through exercise, and weaker wings from not flying until, like the ostrich, they could not fly at all.

Alpheus Spring Packard's 1872 book Mammoth Cave and its Inhabitants used the example of cave beetles (Anophthalmus and Adelops) that had become blind to argue for Lamarckian evolution through inherited disuse of organs.
 
In the late 19th century the term neo-Lamarckism came to be associated with the position of naturalists who viewed the inheritance of acquired characteristics as the most important evolutionary mechanism. Advocates of this position included the British writer and Darwin critic Samuel Butler, the German biologist Ernst Haeckel, the American paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Alpheus Hyatt, and the American entomologist Alpheus Packard. They considered Lamarckism to be more progressive and thus philosophically superior to Darwin's idea of natural selection acting on random variation. Butler and Cope both believed that this allowed organisms to effectively drive their own evolution, since organisms that developed new behaviors would change the patterns of use of their organs and thus kick-start the evolutionary process. In addition, Cope and Haeckel both believed that evolution was a progressive process. The idea of linear progress was an important part of Haeckel's recapitulation theory of evolution, which held that the embryological development of an organism repeats its evolutionary history. Cope and Hyatt looked for, and thought they found, patterns of linear progression in the fossil record. Packard argued that the loss of vision in the blind cave insects he studied was best explained through a Lamarckian process of atrophy through disuse combined with inheritance of acquired characteristics. Packard also wrote a book about Lamarck and his writings.

Many American proponents of neo-Lamarckism were strongly influenced by Louis Agassiz and a number of them, including Hyatt and Packard, were his students. Agassiz had an idealistic view of nature, connected with natural theology, that emphasized the importance of order and pattern. Agassiz never accepted evolution; his followers did, but they continued his program of searching for orderly patterns in nature, which they considered to be consistent with divine providence, and preferred evolutionary mechanisms like neo-Lamarckism and orthogenesis that would be likely to produce them.

In Britain the botanist George Henslow, the son of Darwin's mentor John Stevens Henslow, was an important advocate of neo-Lamarckism. He studied how environmental stress affected the development of plants, and he wrote that the variations induced by such environmental factors could largely explain evolution. The historian of science Peter J. Bowler writes that, as was typical of many 19th century Lamarckians, Henslow did not appear to understand the need to demonstrate that such environmentally induced variations would be inherited by descendants that developed in the absence of the environmental factors that produced them, but merely assumed that they would be.

Polarising the argument: Weismann's germ plasm

August Weismann's germ plasm theory stated that the hereditary material is confined to the gonads. Somatic cells (of the body) develop afresh in each generation from the germ plasm, so changes to the body acquired during a lifetime cannot affect the next generation, as neo-Lamarckism required.

Critics of neo-Lamarckism pointed out that no one had ever produced solid evidence for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The experimental work of the German biologist August Weismann resulted in the germ plasm theory of inheritance. This led him to declare that inheritance of acquired characteristics was impossible, since the Weismann barrier would prevent any changes that occurred to the body after birth from being inherited by the next generation. This effectively polarised the argument between the Darwinians and the neo-Lamarckians, as it forced people to choose whether to agree or disagree with Weismann and hence with evolution by natural selection. Despite Weismann's criticism, neo-Lamarckism remained the most popular alternative to natural selection at the end of the 19th century, and would remain the position of some naturalists well into the 20th century.

Baldwin effect

As a consequence of the debate over the viability of neo-Lamarckism, in 1896 James Mark Baldwin, Henry Fairfield Osborne and C. Lloyd Morgan all independently proposed a mechanism where new learned behaviors could cause the evolution of new instincts and physical traits through natural selection without resort to the inheritance of acquired characteristics. They proposed that if individuals in a species benefited from learning a particular new behavior, the ability to learn that behavior could be favored by natural selection, and the end result would be the evolution of new instincts and eventually new physical adaptations. This became known as the Baldwin effect and it has remained a topic of debate and research in evolutionary biology ever since.

Orthogenesis

Henry Fairfield Osborn's 1918 book Origin and Evolution of Life claimed the evolution of Titanothere horns was an example of an orthogenetic trend in evolution.

Orthogenesis was the theory that life has an innate tendency to change, in a unilinear fashion in a particular direction. The term was popularized by Theodor Eimer, a German zoologist, in his 1898 book On Orthogenesis: And the Impotence of Natural Selection in Species Formation. He had studied the coloration of butterflies, and believed he had discovered non-adaptive features which could not be explained by natural selection. Eimer also believed in Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics, but he felt that internal laws of growth determine which characteristics would be acquired and guided the long term direction of evolution down certain paths.

Orthogenesis had a significant following in the 19th century, its proponents including the Russian biologist Leo S. Berg, and the American paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn. Orthogenesis was particularly popular among some paleontologists, who believed that the fossil record showed patterns of gradual and constant unidirectional change. Those who accepted this idea, however, did not necessarily accept that the mechanism driving orthogenesis was teleological (goal-directed). They did believe that orthogenetic trends were non-adaptive; in fact they felt that in some cases they led to developments that were detrimental to the organism, such as the large antlers of the Irish elk that they believed led to the animal's extinction.

Support for orthogenesis began to decline during the modern synthesis in the 1940s, when it became apparent that orthogenesis could not explain the complex branching patterns of evolution revealed by statistical analysis of the fossil record by paleontologists. A few biologists however hung on to the idea of orthogenesis as late as the 1950s, claiming that the processes of macroevolution, the long term trends in evolution, were distinct from the processes of microevolution.

Mutationism

Painting of Hugo de Vries, making a painting of an evening primrose, the plant which had apparently produced new forms by large mutations in his experiments, by Thérèse Schwartze, 1918
 
Mutationism was the idea that new forms and species arose in a single step as a result of large mutations. It was seen as a much faster alternative to the Darwinian concept of a gradual process of small random variations being acted on by natural selection. It was popular with early geneticists such as Hugo de Vries, who along with Carl Correns helped rediscover Gregor Mendel's laws of inheritance in 1900, William Bateson a British zoologist who switched to genetics, and early in his career, Thomas Hunt Morgan.

The 1901 mutation theory of evolution held that species went through periods of rapid mutation, possibly as a result of environmental stress, that could produce multiple mutations, and in some cases completely new species, in a single generation. Its originator was the Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries. De Vries looked for evidence of mutation extensive enough to produce a new species in a single generation and thought he found it with his work breeding the evening primrose of the genus Oenothera, which he started in 1886. The plants that de Vries worked with seemed to be constantly producing new varieties with striking variations in form and color, some of which appeared to be new species because plants of the new generation could only be crossed with one another, not with their parents. DeVries himself allowed a role for natural selection in determining which new species would survive, but some geneticists influenced by his work, including Morgan, felt that natural selection was not necessary at all. De Vries's ideas were influential in the first two decades of the 20th century, as some biologists felt that mutation theory could explain the sudden emergence of new forms in the fossil record; research on Oenothera spread across the world. However, critics including many field naturalists wondered why no other organism seemed to show the same kind of rapid mutation.

Morgan was a supporter of de Vries's mutation theory and was hoping to gather evidence in favor of it when he started working with the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster in his lab in 1907. However, it was a researcher in that lab, Hermann Joseph Muller, who determined in 1918 that the new varieties de Vries had observed while breeding Oenothera were the result of polyploid hybrids rather than rapid genetic mutation. While they were doubtful of the importance of natural selection, the work of geneticists like Morgan, Bateson, de Vries and others from 1900 to 1915 established Mendelian genetics linked to chromosomal inheritance, which validated August Weismann's criticism of neo-Lamarckian evolution by discounting the inheritance of acquired characteristics. The work in Morgan's lab with Drosophila also undermined the concept of orthogenesis by demonstrating the random nature of mutation.

End of the eclipse

Several major ideas about evolution came together in the population genetics of the early 20th century to form the modern synthesis, including competition for resources, genetic variation, natural selection, and particulate (Mendelian) inheritance. This ended the eclipse of Darwinism.

During the period 1916–1932, the discipline of population genetics developed largely through the work of the geneticists Ronald Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright. Their work recognized that the vast majority of mutations produced small effects that served to increase the genetic variability of a population rather than creating new species in a single step as the mutationists assumed. They were able to produce statistical models of population genetics that included Darwin's concept of natural selection as the driving force of evolution.

Developments in genetics persuaded field naturalists such as Bernhard Rensch and Ernst Mayr to abandon neo-Lamarckian ideas about evolution in the early 1930s. By the late 1930s, Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky had synthesized the ideas of population genetics with the knowledge of field naturalists about the amount of genetic diversity in wild populations, and the importance of genetically distinct subpopulations (especially when isolated from one another by geographical barriers) to create the early 20th century modern synthesis. In 1944 George Gaylord Simpson integrated paleontology into the synthesis by statistically analyzing the fossil record to show that it was consistent with the branching non-directional form of evolution predicted by the modern synthesis, and in particular that the linear trends cited by earlier paleontologists in support of Lamarckism and orthogenesis did not stand up to careful analysis. Mayr wrote that by the end of the synthesis natural selection together with chance mechanisms like genetic drift had become the universal explanation for evolutionary change.

Historiography

The concept of eclipse suggests that Darwinian research paused, implying in turn that there had been a preceding period of vigorously Darwinian activity among biologists. However, historians of science such as Mark Largent have argued that while biologists broadly accepted the extensive evidence for evolution presented in The Origin of Species, there was less enthusiasm for natural selection as a mechanism. Biologists instead looked for alternative explanations more in keeping with their worldviews, which included the beliefs that evolution must be directed and that it constituted a form of progress. Further, the idea of a dark eclipse period was convenient to scientists such as Julian Huxley, who wished to paint the modern synthesis as a bright new achievement, and accordingly to depict the preceding period as dark and confused. Huxley's 1942 book Evolution: The Modern Synthesis therefore, argued Largent, suggested that the so-called modern synthesis began after a long period of eclipse lasting until the 1930s, in which Mendelians, neo-Lamarckians, mutationists, and Weismannians, not to mention experimental embryologists and Haeckelian recapitulationists fought running battles with each other. The idea of an eclipse also allowed Huxley to step aside from what was to him the inconvenient association of evolution with aspects such as social Darwinism, eugenics, imperialism, and militarism. Accounts such as Michael Ruse's very large book Monad to Man ignored, claimed Largent, almost all the early 20th century American evolutionary biologists. Largent has suggested as an alternative to eclipse a biological metaphor, the interphase of Darwinism, interphase being an apparently quiet period in the cycle of cell division and growth.

Emergent evolution

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Emergent evolution was the hypothesis that, in the course of evolution, some entirely new properties, such as mind and consciousness, appear at certain critical points, usually because of an unpredictable rearrangement of the already existing entities. The term was originated by the psychologist C. Lloyd Morgan in 1927.
 
The hypothesis was widely criticized for providing no mechanism to how entirely new properties emerge, and for its historical roots in teleology.

Historical context

The term emergent was first used to describe the concept by George Lewes in volume two of his 1875 book Problems of Life and Mind (p. 412). Henri Bergson covered similar themes in his popular 1907 book Creative Evolution on the Élan vital. Emergence was further developed by Samuel Alexander in his Gifford Lectures at Glasgow during 1916–18 and published as Space, Time, and Deity (1920). The related term emergent evolution was coined by C. Lloyd Morgan in his own Gifford lectures of 1921–22 at St. Andrews and published as Emergent Evolution (1923). In an appendix to a lecture in his book, Morgan acknowledged the contributions of Roy Wood Sellars's Evolutionary Naturalism (1922).

Origins

Response to Darwin's Origin of Species

Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace's presentation of natural selection, coupled to the idea of evolution in Western thought, had gained acceptance due to the wealth of observational data provided and the seeming replacement of divine law with natural law in the affairs of men. However, the mechanism of natural selection described at the time only explained how organisms adapted to variation. The cause of genetic variation was unknown at the time.
Darwin knew that nature had to produce variations before natural selection could act …The problem had been caught by other evolutionists almost as soon as The Origin of Species was first published. Sir Charles Lyell saw it clearly in 1860 before he even became an evolutionist…(Reid, p.3)
St. George Jackson Mivart's On the Genesis of Species (1872) and Edward Cope's Origin of the Fittest (1887) raised the need to address the origin of variation between members of a species. William Bateson in 1884 distinguished between the origin of novel variations and the action of natural selection (Materials for the Study of Variation Treated with Especial Regard to Discontinuity in the Origin of Species).

Wallace's further thoughts

Wallace throughout his life continued to support and extend the scope of Darwin's theory of evolution via the mechanism of natural selection. One of his works, Darwinism, was often cited in support of Darwin's theory. He also worked to elaborate and extend Darwin and his ideas on natural selection. However, Wallace also realized that the scope and claim of the theory was limited. Darwin himself had limited it.
The most prominent feature is that I enter into popular yet critical examination of those underlying fundamental problems which Darwin purposely excluded from his works as being beyond the scope of his enquiry. Such are the nature and cause of Life itself, and more especially of its most fundamental and mysterious powers - growth and reproduction ...

Darwin always ... adduced the "laws of Growth with Reproduction," and of "Inheritance with Variability," as being fundamental facts of nature, without which Natural Selection would be powerless or even non-existent ...

... even if it were proved to be an exact representation of the facts, it would not be an explanation... because it would not account for the forces, the directive agency, and the organising power which are essential features of growth …
In examining this aspect, excluded ab initio by Darwin, Wallace came to the conclusion that Life itself cannot be understood except by means of a theory that includes "an organising and directive Life-Principle." These necessarily involve a "Creative Power", a "directive Mind" and finally "an ultimate Purpose" (the development of Man). It supports the view of John Hunter that "life is the cause, not the consequence" of the organisation of matter. Thus, life precedes matter and when it infuses matter, forms living matter (protoplasm).
A very well-founded doctrine, and one which was often advocated by John Hunter, that life is the cause and not the consequence of organisation ... if so, life must be antecedent to organisation, and can only be conceived as indissolubly connected with spirit and with thought, and with the cause of the directive energy everywhere manifested in the growth of living things ... endowed with the mysterious organising power we term life ...
Wallace then refers to the operation of another power called "mind" that utilizes the power of life and is connected with a higher realm than life or matter:
evidence of a foreseeing mind which...so directed and organised that life, in all its myriad forms, as, in the far-off future, to provide all that was most essential for the growth and development of man's spiritual nature ...
Proceeding from Hunter's view that Life is the directive power above and behind living matter, Wallace argues that logically, Mind is the cause of consciousness, which exists in different degrees and kinds in living matter.
If, as John Hunter, T.H. Huxley, and other eminent thinkers have declared, "life is the cause, not the consequence, of organisation," so we may believe that mind is the cause, not the consequence, of brain development.

... So there are undoubtedly different degrees and probably also different kinds of mind in various grades of animal life ... And ... so the mind-giver ... enables each class or order of animals to obtain the amount of mind requisite for its place in nature ...

Emergent evolution

Early roots

The issue of how change in nature 'emerged' can be found in classical Greek thought - order coming out of chaos and whether by chance or necessity. Aristotle spoke of wholes that were greater than the sum of their parts because of emergent properties. The second-century anatomist and physiologist Galen also distinguished between the resultant and emergent qualities of wholes. (Reid, p. 72)

Hegel spoke of the revolutionary progression of life from non-living to conscious and then to the spiritual and Kant perceived that simple parts of an organism interact to produce a progressively complex series of emergences of functional forms, a distinction that carried over to John Stuart Mill (1843), who stated that even chemical compounds have novel features that cannot be predicted from their elements. [Reid, p. 72]

The idea of an emergent quality that was something new in nature was further taken up by George Henry Lewes (1874–1875), who again noted, as with Galen earlier, that these evolutionary "emergent" qualities are distinguishable from adaptive, additive "resultants." Henry Drummond in The Descent of Man (1894) stated that emergence can be seen in the fact that the laws of nature are different for the organic or vital compared to the inertial inorganic realm.
When we pass from the inorganic to the organic we come upon a new set of laws - but the reason why the lower set do not seem to operate in the higher sphere is not that they are annhilated, but that they are overruled. (Drummond 1883, p. 405, quoted in Reid)
As Reid points out, Drummond also realized that greater complexity brought greater adaptability. (Reid. p. 73)

Samuel Alexander took up the idea that emergences had properties that overruled the demands of the lower levels of organization. And more recently, this theme is taken up by John Holland (1998):
If we turn reductionism on its head we add levels. More carefully, we add new laws that satisfy the constraints imposed by laws already in place. Moreover these new laws apply to complex phenomena that are consequences of the original laws; they are at a new level.

C. Lloyd Morgan and emergent evolution

Another major scientist to question natural selection as the motive force of evolution was C. Lloyd Morgan, a zoologist and student of T.H. Huxley, who had a strong influence on Samuel Alexander. His Emergent Evolution (1923) established the central idea that an emergence might have the appearance of saltation but was best regarded as "a qualitative change of direction or critical turning point."(quoted in Reid, p. 73-74) Morgan, due to his work in animal psychology, had earlier (1894) questioned the continuity view of mental evolution, and held that there were various discontinuities in cross-species mental abilities. To offset any attempt to read anthropomorphism into his view, he created the famous, but often misunderstood methodological canon:
In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.
— Morgan, 1894, p. 53
However, Morgan realizing that this was being misused to advocate reductionism (rather than as a general methodological caution), introduced a qualification into the second edition of his An Introduction to Comparative Psychology (1903):
To this, however, it should be added, lest the range of the principle be misunderstood, that the canon by no means excludes the interpretation of a particular activity in terms of the higher processes, if we already have independent evidence of the occurrence of these higher processes in the animal under observation.
— Morgan, 1903, p. 59
As Reid observes,
While the so-called historiographical "rehabilitation of the canon" has been underway for some time now, Morgan's emergent evolutionist position (which was the highest expression of his attempt to place the study of mind back into such a "wider" natural history) is seldom mentioned in more than passing terms even within contemporary history of psychology textbooks.
Morgan also fought against the behaviorist school and clarified even more his emergent views on evolution:
An influential school of 'behaviorists' roundly deny that mental relations, if such there be, are in any sense or in any manner effective... My message is that one may speak of mental relations as effective no less 'scientifically' than... physical relations...
— Morgan, 1930, p. 72
His Animal Conduct (1930) explicitly distinguishes between three "grades" or "levels of mentality" which he labeled: 'percipient, perceptive, and reflective.' (p. 42)

Alexander and the emergence of mind

Morgan's idea of a polaric relationship between lower and higher, was taken up by Samuel Alexander, who argued that the mental process is not reducible to the neural processes on which it depends at the physical-material level. Instead, they are two poles of a unity of function. Further, the neural process that expressed mental process itself possesses a quality (mind) that the other neural processes don’t. At the same time, the mental process, because it is functionally identical to this particular neural process, is also a vital one.

And mental process is also "something new, "a fresh creation", which precludes a psycho-physiological parallelism. Reductionism is also contrary to empirical fact.
All the available evidence of fact leads to the conclusion that the mental element is essential to the neural process which it is said to accompany...and is not accidental to it, nor is it in turn indifferent to the mental feature. Epiphenomenalism is a mere fallacy of observation.
At the same time Alexander stated that his view was not one of animism or vitalism, where the mind is an independent entity action on the brain, or conversely, acted upon by the brain. Mental activity is an emergent, a new "thing" not reducible to its initial neural parts.
All the available evidence of fact leads to the conclusion that the mental element is essential to the neural process which it is said to accompany...and is not accidental to it, nor is it in turn indifferent to the mental feature. Epiphenomenalism is a mere fallacy of observation.
For Alexander, the world unfolds in space-time, which has the inherent quality of motion. This motion through space-time results in new “complexities of motion” in the form of a new quality or emergent. The emergent retains the qualities of the prior “complexities of motion” but also has something new that was not there before. This something new comes with its own laws of behavior. Time is the quality that creates motion through Space, and matter is simply motion expressed in forms in Space, or as Alexander says a little later, “complexes of motion.” Matter arises out of the basic ground of Space-Time continuity and has an element of “body” (lower order) and an element of “mind” (higher order), or “the conception that a secondary quality is the mind of its primary substrate.” 

Mind is an emergent from life and life itself is an emergent from matter. Each level contains and is interconnected with the level and qualities below it, and to the extent that it contains lower levels, these aspects are subject to the laws of that level. All mental functions are living, but not all living functions are mental; all living functions are physico-chemical, but not all physico-chemical processes are living - just as we could say that all people living in Ohio are Americans, but not all Americans live in Ohio. Thus, there are levels of existence, or natural jurisdictions, within a given higher level such that the higher level contains elements of each of the previous levels of existence. The physical level contains the pure dimensionality of Space-Time in addition to the emergent of physico-chemical processes; the next emergent level, life, also contains Space-Time as well as the physico-chemical in addition to the quality of life; the level of mind contains all of the previous three levels, plus consciousness. As a result of this nesting and inter-action of emergents, like fluid Russian dolls, higher emergents cannot be reduced to lower ones, and different laws and methods of inquiry are required for each level.
Life is not an epiphenomenon of matter but an emergent from it ... The new character or quality which the vital physico-chemical complex possesses stands to it as soul or mind to the neural basis.
For Alexander, the "directing agency" or entelechy is found "in the principle or plan".
a given stage of material complexity is characterised by such and such special features…By accepting this we at any rate confine ourselves to noting the facts…and do not invent entities for which there seems to be no other justification than that something is done in life which is not done in matter.
While an emergent is a higher complexity, it also results in a new simplicity as it brings a higher order into what was previously less ordered (a new simplex out of a complex). This new simplicity does not carry any of the qualities or aspects of that emergent level prior to it, but as noted, does still carry within it such lower levels so can be understood to that extent through the science of such levels, yet not itself be understood except by a science that is able to reveal the new laws and principles applicable to it.
Ascent takes place, it would seem, through complexity.[increasing order] But at each change of quality the complexity as it were gathers itself together and is expressed in a new simplicity.

Within a given level of emergence, there are degrees of development.

... There are on one level degrees of perfection or development; and at the same time there is affinity by descent between the existents belonging to the level. This difference of perfection is not the same thing as difference of order or rank such as subsists between matter and life or life and mind ...

The concept or idea of mind, the highest emergent known to us, being at our level, extends all the way down to pure dimensionality or Space-Time. In other words, time is the “mind” of motion, materialising is the “mind” of matter, living the “mind” of life. Motion through pure time (or life astronomical, mind ideational) emerges as matter “materialising” (geological time, life geological, mind existential), and this emerges as life “living” (biological time, life biological, mind experiential), which in turn give us mind “minding” (historical time, life historical, mind cognitional). But there is also an extension possible upwards of mind to what we call Deity.
let us describe the empirical quality of any kind of finite which performs to it the office of consciousness or mind as its 'mind.' Yet at the same time let us remember that the 'mind' of a living thing is not conscious mind but is life, and has not the empirical character of consciousness at all, and that life is not merely a lower degree of mind or consciousness, but something different. We are using 'mind' metaphorically by transference from real minds and applying it to the finites on each level in virtue of their distinctive quality; down to Space-Time itself whose existent complexes of bare space-time have for their mind bare time in its empirical variations.
Alexander goes back to the Greek idea of knowledge being “out there” in the object being contemplated. In that sense, there is not mental object (concept) “distinct” (that is, different in state of being) from the physical object, but only an apparent split between the two, which can then be brought together by proper compresence or participation of the consciousness in the object itself.
There is no consciousness lodged, as I have supposed, in the organism as a quality of the neural response; consciousness belongs to the totality of objects, of what are commonly called the objects of consciousness or the field of consciousness ... Consciousness is therefore "out there" where the objects are, by a new version of Berkleyanism ... Obviously for this doctrine as for mine there is no mental object as distinct from a physical object: the image of a tree is a tree in an appropriate form...
Because of the interconnectedness of the universe by virtue of Space-Time, and because the mind apprehends space, time and motion through a unity of sense and mind experience, there is a form of knowing that is intuitive (participative) - sense and reason are outgrowths from it.
In being conscious of its own space and time, the mind is conscious of the space and time of external things and vice versa. This is a direct consequence of the continuity of Space-Time in virtue of which any point-instant is connected sooner or later, directly or indirectly, with every other...

The mind therefore does not apprehend the space of its objects, that is their shape, size and locality, by sensation, for it depends for its character on mere spatio-temporal conditions, though it is not to be had as consciousness in the absence of sensation (or else of course ideation). It is clear without repeating these considerations that the same proposition is true of Time; and of motion ... I shall call this mode of apprehension in its distinction from sensation, intuition. ... Intuition is different from reason, but reason and sense alike are outgrowths from it, empirical determinations of it...
In a sense, the universe is a participative one and open to participation by mind as well so that mind can intuitively know an object, contrary to what Kant asserted. Participation (togetherness) is something that is “enjoyed” (experienced) not contemplated, though in the higher level of consciousness, it would be contemplated.
The universe for Alexander is essentially in process, with Time as its ongoing aspect, and the ongoing process consists in the formation of changing complexes of motions. These complexes become ordered in repeatable ways displaying what he calls "qualities." There is a hierarchy of kinds of organized patterns of motions, in which each level depends on the subvening level, but also displays qualities not shown at the subvening level nor predictable from it… On this there sometimes supervenes a further level with the quality called "life"; and certain subtle syntheses which carry life are the foundation for a further level with a new quality. "mind." This is the highest level known to us, but not necessarily the highest possible level. The universe has a forward thrust, called its "nisus" (broadly to be identified with the Time aspect) in virtue of which further levels are to be expected...

Robert G. B. Reid

Emergent evolution was revived by Robert G. B. Reid, a biology professor at the University of Victoria. In his book Evolutionary Theory: The Unfinished Synthesis (1985), he stated that the modern evolutionary synthesis with its emphasis on natural selection is an incomplete picture of evolution, and emergent evolution can explain the origin of genetic variation. Biologist Ernst Mayr heavily criticized the book claiming it was a misinformed attack on natural selection. Mayr commented that Reid was working from an "obsolete conceptual framework", provided no solid evidence and that he was arguing for a teleological process of evolution.

Reid later published the book Biological Emergences (2007) with a theory on how emergent novelties are generated in evolution. According to Massimo Pigliucci "Biological Emergences by Robert Reid is an interesting contribution to the ongoing debate on the status of evolutionary theory, but it is hard to separate the good stuff from the more dubious claims." Pigliucci noted a dubious claim in the book is that natural selection has no role in evolution. It was positively reviewed by biologist Alexander Badyaev who commented that "the book succeeds in drawing attention to an under appreciated aspect of the evolutionary process". Others have criticized Reid's unorthodox views on emergence and evolution. Biologist Samuel Scheiner stated that Reid's "presentation is both a caricature of evolutionary theory and severely out of date."

Cryogenics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenics...