Talk:History of evolutionary thought
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This article is part of WikiProject Evolutionary biology, an attempt at building a useful set of articles on evolutionary biology and its associated subfields such as population genetics, quantitative genetics, molecular evolution, phylogenetics, evolutionary developmental biology. It is distinct from the WikiProject Tree of Life in that it attempts to cover patterns, process and theory rather than systematics and taxonomy. If you would like to participate, there are some suggestions on this page (see also Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ for more information) or visit WikiProject Evolutionary biology. |
There ought to be a bit in the recent developments section or discipline section about problems in evolutionary biology being the origin of philosophy of biology, which differentiated itself considerably from general philosophy of science (which was and remains mainly physics-oriented).--ragesoss 15:21, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] Modboddo again
I've removed the following recent addition:
- Between 1767 and 1792 James Burnett, Lord Monboddo included in his writings the concepts that man was derived from primates, and that creatures had found methods of transforming their characteristics over long time intervals in response to their environment. He also produced important research on the evolution of linguistics. Jan-Andrew Henderson states (Henderson, 2000) that Monboddo was the first to articulate the theory of natural selection:
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- "He [Monboddo] was a minor celebrity in Edinburgh because he was considered to be very eccentric. But he actually came up with the idea that men may have evolved instead of being created by God. His views were dismissed because people thought he was mad and in those days it was a very controversial view to hold. But he felt it was a logical possibility and it caused him a great deal of consternation. He actually did not want to believe the theory because he was a very religious person."
- This credit to Monboddo is echoed by numerous other scholars including Lovejoy, Cloyd and Bailey.
- Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon published extensive taxonomic volumes on species; he agreed with Monboddo regarding the common ancestry of apes and man, but Monboddo rebutted Buffon's work, indicating that Buffon did not understand that man had transformed to a higher state by adaptive change over long periods of time to produce a better (or altered) species. In fact, Monboddo did not have a deep understanding of taxonomy and would not have used the term "different species" to discuss apes and man.
This is way too much credit to Monboddo, and none of the scholars mentioned are historians of evolution. This content above also conflates natural selection with common descent -- they are not the same thing. Sayiing that you think humans and apes (monkeys, to be specific in Monboddos case, if I remember correctly) are related is not the same thing as having a theory of natural selection. Considering that Monboddo is generally not even mentioned in most definitive textbooks on the history of evolutionary thought, any reference to him should be short and fleeting if we are to include it in this article. He was not influential, his theories were not well articulated, and his theories had little to do with any future evolutionary thought which came along. The above excerpt conveniently leaves out all of the aspects of Monboddo's theories which are now seen as ridiculous in an attempt to give him some sort of ridiculous amount of priority which nobody serious attributes to him. I do not know what motivates this on-going attempt to label Lord Monboddo as the creator of the theory of natural selection but it seems to me most misguided. --Fastfission 17:01, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
- first of all ff, you are incorrect that the material you removed was a recent addition . the intitial part has been standing for quite some time and was written at your express suggestion that this article was the proper venue to comment on Monboddo's role along with other early precursors. you have had about a month to examine that portion of the monboddo text along with everyone else in the world and that initial text had stood unopposed for all that time!
- secondly you specifically asked me to bring in more recent sources than some of the older ones. i just brought two new sources and you eliminate them without taking the time to read the original sources i provided.
- i think your censorship of the monboddo role is clearly POV. what makes the scholars you cite the "only ones" that are the "true scholars of evolution". all this makes me think that you are not open to hearing all sides of the real story.
- monboddo clearly understood more than the morphological similarities of species. his works are full of references to adaptation and selection of trait development.
- just because a number of scholars havent given monboddo credit doesnt mean they are correct. it just shows they havent read his work. (Erasmus Darwin read it and charles darwin read eramus work; erasmus clearly understood evolution as well)
- now as for your ad hominem remark that my editing seems misguided, i would encourage you to give other scholars the same good faith sentments as we give you.
- i shall not make a reversion at this time, but shall give you the benefit of the doubt and let you read some of the new references and have time to digest what is at stake here. isnt wikipedia the place to report what all credible scholars think, whether we personally agree with them or not? best regards Anlace 20:28, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
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- You seem to be completely agreeing with me that mainstream scholars do not ascribe Monboddo the role you are trying to have him labeled as, so either you do not agree with our WP:NPOV policy or you do not understand it. The only additional perrson I've seen added to the list of sources is Jan-Andrew Henderson (and the quote you have from him does not support at all the claim that Henderson ascribed Monboddo with having created natural selection), who seems to be a local Edinburg historian who runs ghost tours and is not, to my knowledge, someone known for his historical work (the Emperor's New Kilt, from what I can tell, seems to explicitly be positing itself as revisionist history).
- All of the respected historical sources here, ones which aren't trying to be a booster for one person or one country, are against the idea that Monboddo had anything substantial to do with the history of evolution, and our articles must reflect that. I am happy if the Monboddo article itself has a description of his work and mentions some of the hyperbolic accolades that a small minority of writers have given him (as long as it states that these are not mainstream opinions), but giving him more space on this page than Lamarck is simply ridiculous. --Fastfission 22:55, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Add external link
I suggest you add the link <http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk> to the web links in the article on History of evolutionary thought. The website is of the Darwin Correspondence Project, which is editing and publishing all of the correspondence of Charles Darwin. Since Darwin did a very large part of his work through his correspondence, the development of his thought, including his ideas on evolution, can be studied by studying his correspondence. I am not editing the page itself, since I work for the Project. Eadp 11:51, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Cut section from Evolution article
Don't know if this'll stay cut, but....
[edit] History of evolutionary thought
The idea of biological evolution has existed since ancient times, notably among Greek philosophers such as Anaximander and Epicurus and Indian philosophers such as Patañjali. However, scientific theories of evolution were not proposed until the 18th and 19th centuries, by scientists such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin.
The transmutation of species was accepted by many scientists before 1859, but Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection provided the first convincing exposition[1] of a mechanism by which evolutionary change could occur: natural selection. After many years of working in private on his theory, Darwin was motivated to publish his work on evolution when he received a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace in which Wallace revealed his own, independent discovery of natural selection. Accordingly, Wallace is given shared credit for originating the theory.[2][3]
The publication of Darwin's book sparked a great deal of scientific and social debate. Although the occurrence of biological evolution of some sort came to be widely accepted by scientists, Darwin's specific ideas about evolution — that it occurred gradually, through natural selection — were actively attacked and contested. Additionally, while Darwin was able to observe variation, and to infer natural selection and thereby adaptation, he was unable to explain how variation might arise or be altered over generations.[4]
Work on plant hybridity by a contemporary of Darwin's, Gregor Mendel, revealed that certain traits in peas occurred in discrete forms (that is, they were either one distinct trait or another, such as "round" or "wrinkled") and were inherited in a well-defined and predictable manner.[5] When Mendel's work was "rediscovered" in 1901, it was initially interpreted as supporting an anti-Darwinian "jumping", saltationist form of evolution, and contradicting the biometricians' gradualism.[6]
However, the simple version of the theory of early Mendelians soon gave way to the classical genetics of Thomas Hunt Morgan and his school, which thoroughly grounded and articulated the applications of Mendelian laws to biology. Eventually, it was shown that a rigorous statistical approach to Mendelism was reconcilable with the data of the biometricians by the work of statistician and population geneticist R.A. Fisher in the 1930s. Following this, the work of population geneticists and zoologists in the 1930s and 1940s synthesized Darwinian evolution with genetics, creating the modern evolutionary synthesis.[5] Genes were then still theoretical entities, and many paleontologists and embryologists were inclined to dismiss them as being of no, or minor, importance, but subsequent advancements have made genetics a key aspect of evolutionary biology.[7]
The most significant recent developments in evolutionary biology have been the improved understanding of and advances in genetics.[8] In the 1940s, following up on Griffith's experiment, Avery, MacLeod and McCarty definitively identified DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) as the "transforming principle" responsible for transmitting genetic information. In 1953, Francis Crick and James D. Watson published their famous paper on the structure of DNA, based on the research of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. These developments ignited the era of molecular biology and transformed the understanding of evolution into a molecular process (see molecular evolution): the mutation of segments of DNA. George C. Williams's 1966 Adaptation and natural selection: A Critique of some Current Evolutionary Thought and Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene marked a departure from the idea of groups or organisms as units of selection toward the modern gene-centered view of evolution. In the mid-1970s, Motoo Kimura formulated the neutral theory of molecular evolution, a significant departure from the consensus view of evolution, as it considered genetic drift, rather than natural selection to be the predominant mode of evolution.
Debates over various aspects of how evolution occurs have continued. Two prominent debates are over the theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed in 1972 by paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould to explain the paucity of gradual transitions between species in the fossil record, as well as the absence of change or stasis that is observed over significant intervals of time; and also the Neutralist-Selectionist debate.
Adam Cuerden talk 00:44, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
