Extraordinary Claims, Extraordinary Proof

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-96
Author(s):  
Thomas G. Nolen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adaptive Value ◽  
Overwhelming Evidence ◽  
Human Characteristic

In 1859, Darwin proposed an extraordinary claim that natural selection could explain both the origin of species and why organisms were so well adapted to their environments. In the past 160 years, through thousands of studies, an enormous body of evidence has been compiled supporting Darwin’s extraordinary claims. This chapter explores both the critiques of current skeptics who contend that evolutionary theory has little utility for the modern human condition and presents research that has tested the now “un-extraordinary” claims about human origins. Further, utilizing the assumption that humans are animals, the author argues that when testing the possible adaptive value of a human characteristic, the standard fall back should no longer be that the trait is “cultural” but that, on the basis of overwhelming evidence, it is biological. If this happened to not be the case, then that would require extraordinary proof.

Darwinian Evolutionary Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Robert Darwin, the English naturalist, published On the Origin of Species in 1859 and the follow-up work The Descent of Man in 1871. In these works, he argued for his theory of evolution through natural selection, applying it to all organisms, living and dead, including our own species, Homo sapiens. Although controversial from the start, Darwin’s thinking was deeply embedded in the culture of his day, that of a middle-class Englishman. Evolution as such was an immediate success in scientific circles, but although the mechanism of selection had supporters in the scientific community (especially among those working with fast-breeding organisms), its real success was in the popular domain. Natural selection, and particularly the side mechanism of sexual selection, were known to all and popular themes in fiction and elsewhere.

‘Short-Spanned Living Creatures’: Evolutionary Perspectives in Rhoda Broughton’s Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Aaron Green
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Simple Structure ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Charles Lyell ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Evolutionary Perspectives

Abstract In Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863), Charles Lyell appraised the distinct contribution made by his protégé, Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species (1859)), to evolutionary theory: ‘Progression … is not a necessary accompaniment of variation and natural selection [… Darwin’s theory accounts] equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrogressive movement towards a simple structure’. In Rhoda Broughton’s first novel, Not Wisely, but Too Well (1867), written contemporaneously with Lyell’s book, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham prompts precisely this sort of Darwinian ambivalence to progress; but whether British civilization ‘advance[s] or retreat[s]’, her narrator adds that this prophesized state ‘will not be in our days’ – its realization exceeds the single lifespan. This article argues that Not Wisely, but Too Well is attentive to the irreconcilability of Darwinism to the Victorian ‘idea of progress’: Broughton’s novel, distinctly from its peers, raises the retrogressive and nihilistic potentials of Darwin’s theory and purposes them to reflect on the status of the individual in mid-century Britain.

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Darwin
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
South America ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
The Past

Introduction When on board H.M.S. ‘Beagle,’ as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me...

The Return of Adam: Freud's Myth of the Fall

1993 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-296
Author(s):  
David Humbert
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Oedipus Complex ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Death Instinct ◽  
Psychological Constructs ◽  
The Past ◽  
Psychological Theories

Despite its loss of intellectual respectability in the nineteenth century, the myth of the fall still haunts modern religion and thought like an unquiet ghost. Discredited in its role as an historical account of human origins, it has retained its vitality as a ‘psychological’ myth, an inexhaustible metaphor for the brokeness and fragmentation of the human spirit. The myth of the fall surfaces in the twentieth century in the form of the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud, who would not normally spring to mind as someone sympathetic to the myth. Freud is perhaps the most famous ‘demythologizer’ of religion. He traced all religion and myth, including the myth of original sin, back to non-spiritual psychological processes. But although he clearly wished to deconstruct all traditional myth, myth plays an indisputable role in his own psychological theories. Some of his psychological constructs, such as the ‘Oedipus complex’ and the concept of ‘narcissism’, are inspired by Greek myths. Others, like the theory of the death instinct, are founded on scientific speculations which clearly resemble myths. The myth of the primal horde in particular draws its rhetorical power from its similarity to the Biblical account of the fall. Both the Biblical account of the fall and the psychohistorical ‘myth’ of the primal horde attribute the conflicts and imperfections of the human condition in part to an inherited guilt, an inherited guilt which stems from a decisive and fateful historical event in the past.

The Loss of Rational Design

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 235-257
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
British Association ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Darwin published hisOrigin of Specieson November 24, 1859. Whatever hurdle the theory of natural selection faced in its struggle for acceptance, its impact on human self-images was almost immediate. Well before Darwin had the chance of applying the principle of natural selection to human origins—in hisDescent of Man(1871)—his contemporaries quickly and rashly drew the inference to man's descent from the ape. Satirical magazines likePunchdelighted in depicting Darwin with his imposing head on an apish body. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (June 1860), Bishop Wilberforce asked T. H. Huxley triumphantly whether he traced his ancestry to the ape on his grandfather's or grandmother's side. A wave of evolutionary texts swept over Europe (L. Biichner, E. Haeckel, T. H. Huxley, J. B. Lamarck, C. Lyell, F. Rolle, E. Tyler and K. Vogt). Written in English, French and German, they all had a common focus: the place of humans in a Darwinian world, including religion and morality.

The Loss of Rational Design

2005 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 20-21
Author(s):  
Friedel Weinert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
British Association ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
Descent Of Man

Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species on November 24, 1859. Whatever hurdle the theory of natural selection faced in its struggle for acceptance, its impact on human self-images was almost immediate. Well before Darwin had the chance of applying the principle of natural selection to human origins—in his Descent of Man (1871)—his contemporaries quickly and rashly drew the infer–ence to man’s descent from the ape. Satirical magazines like Punch delighted in depicting Darwin with his imposing head on an apish body. At the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (June 1860), Bishop Wilberforce asked T.

Evolution by Blind Chance

1986 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-360
Author(s):  
Barrie Britton
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
World Views ◽  
Literal Interpretation ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Universe

Ever since Charles Darwin first published his revolutionary book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, there has been considerable disagreement among Christians concerning both the truth of evolutionary theory and its possible reconciliation with the Bible. Some Christians have taken the so-called ‘fundamentalist creationist’ position believing in a literal interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis. Others have adopted so-called ‘theistic evolutionist’ views accepting to various different degrees Darwinian ideas about origins. One point however on which most Christians (and indeed non-Christians) are agreed, is that an evolutionary process based on blind chance must necessarily conflict with all possible theistic world views and stands irreconcilable with the biblical text. It is this assertion which in this essay I hope to refute, as based on misunderstanding of the meaning of blind chance, of the mechanism of evolution and of the involvement of God in the universe.

scholarly journals Continuous vegetation record of the Greater Cape Floristic Region (South Africa) covering the past 300 000 years (IODP U1479)

2022 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Lydie M. Dupont ◽  
Xueqin Zhao ◽  
Christopher Charles ◽  
John Tyler Faith ◽  
David Braun
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Vegetation History ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Cape Floristic Region ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Human Origins ◽  
Last Glaciation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Last Glacial

Abstract. The Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) of South Africa is a biodiversity hotspot of global significance, and its archeological record has substantially contributed to the understanding of modern human origins. For both reasons, the climate and vegetation history of southwestern South Africa is of interest to numerous fields. Currently known paleoenvironmental records cover the Holocene, the last glacial–interglacial transition and parts of the last glaciation but do not encompass a full glacial–interglacial cycle. To obtain a continuous vegetation record of the last Pleistocene glacial–interglacial cycles, we studied pollen, spores and micro-charcoal of deep-sea sediments from IODP Site U1479 retrieved from SW of Cape Town. We compare our palynological results of the Pleistocene with previously published results of Pliocene material from the same site. We find that the vegetation of the GCFR, in particular fynbos and afrotemperate forest, responds to precessional forcing of climate. The micro-charcoal record confirms the importance of fires in the fynbos vegetation. Ericaceae-rich and Asteraceae-rich types of fynbos could extend on the western part of the Paleo-Agulhas Plain (PAP), which emerged during periods of low sea level of the Pleistocene.

VARIETIES OF ALTRUISM

2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Kitcher
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Reproductive Success ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Reproductive Cost ◽  
Preliminary Characterization ◽  
The Past ◽  
Psychological Altruism ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific

Discussions of altruism occur in three importantly different contexts. During the past four decades, evolutionary theory has been concerned with the possibility that forms of behaviour labelled as altruistic could emerge and could be maintained under natural selection. In these discussions, an agent A is said to act altruistically towards a beneficiary B when A's action promotes the expected reproductive success of B at expected reproductive cost to A. This sort of altruism, biological altruism, is quite different from the kind of behaviour important to debates about ethical and social issues. There the focus is on psychological altruism, a notion that is concerned with the intentions of the agent and that need have no connection with the spread of anyone's genes. Psychological altruists are people with other-directed desires, emotions or intentions (this is a rough preliminary characterization, to be refined below). Finally, in certain kinds of social scientific research, the important concept is that of behavioural altruism. From the outside, behavioural altruists look like psychological altruists, although their motives and preferences may be very different.

Let's Be Realistic: Evolutionary Complexity, Epistemic Probabilism, and the Cognitive Science of Religion

2007 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Day
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Cognitive Science Of Religion ◽  
Origin Of Species ◽  
The Past ◽  
Science Of Religion ◽  
Litmus Test ◽  
Philosophical Progress

John Dewey famously argued that Darwin had introduced a new conceptual vocabulary that would completely overhaul the traditional philosophical enterprise. His sense was that the kinds of monumental metaphysical questions that philosophy typically asked about causes, trends and purposes start to look meaningless and willfully unanswerable once we absorb the tough lessons of natural selection. More specifically, Dewey thought that The Origin of Species provided a strong but beneficial dose of philosophical therapy because it illustrated how to simultaneously abandon the lifeless questions of the past while formulating new questions to take their place. Darwin's achievement revealed for Dewey that sometimes philosophical progress is not “an affair of different ways of dealing with old problems, but of relegation of the problems to the attic in which are kept the relics of former intellectual bad taste.” From this perspective, the litmus test for measuring intellectual growth is surprisingly simple. If we examine the concerns that once excited our ancestors and feel only the shudder of regret that so much energy was wasted on a lost cause, we can be reasonably confident that we have taken a few steps forward.

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