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richard
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Darwin was right!
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Jan 18 01:38 UTC 2006 |
I had the day off yesterday (mlk day), so I opted to spend the day in
higher pursuits. I went uptown to the American Museum of Natural
History, on Central Park West. The AMNH is an amazing place, one of
the largest and best museums there is anywhere. When I go, I often
like to spend time up on the fourth floor where resides the world's
largest collection of dinosaur fossils. I could spend hours just
staring at the T-Rex and the Stegosaurus and the giant reptile birds.
But not on this day. Today my purpose was to visit the museum's
special exhit on Charles Darwin, the most in-depth presentation of his
life, work and materials ever mounted. The Darwin exhibit is really
something, it chronicles his life and how he came to his theories.
Darwin was actually planning to join the ministry, but fate intervened
and he got the chance to go on a five year around the world journey as
the ship's scientist on the HMS Beagle. His job was in part to collect
specimens of animals/life forms and send them back to England for
cataloging. The ship gets to the Galapagos Islands, and Darwin is
startled to find that the birds he finds on each island are the same
species but each slightly different. The birds on one island, with one
environment and weather conditions, adapted differently than birds on a
different island. In different parts of the world on his long sea
journey, he encountered species that were the same, and yet were
different. He discovered fossils that indicated that new species now
living there had replaced old species. The only logical explanation
was that these species were evolved from the earlier species, had each
adapted over time to their particular needs and circumstances. He
found an earlier species of snake fossils that had tiny legs,
indicating snakes had evolved to the point where they no longer needed
and therefore no longer grew tiny legs. His work indicated snakes had
evolved from a species of lizards. What Darwin realized he was seeing
was a process of change that was constant. Again and again, he found
countless examples of species which had gone extinct, only to be
replaced by newer species.
Darwin's exhaustive study of various plants and animal species around
the world led him to conclude that plants and animals are not fixed and
unchanging. Instead, all species are related through common ancestry,
and they all change over time. Which could only mean that the world
and all its species could not have all been created at one time. He
brought home a bat skeleton, and noted that the bones in the bat's wing
looked very much like the bones in a human hand. When he looked at
chimpanzees and apes, he saw the same thing he saw in his studies of
mostly extinct species. He brought back fossils showing that horses
had adapted from earlier species of similar animals that were no bigger
than dogs. Basically the fossils in every case showed they were
earlier versions of something, showing how nature adapted and refined
those earlier versions, until the latest and most complete model
arrived. Apes were earlier models. Homo sapiens are later models.
Darwin came back from his journey convinced that all living things are
connected, and that human beings are not alien to this world, but are
rather completely part of a natural evolutionary process. The exhibit
displays Darwin's extensive insect and fossil collections, as well as
his original writings, and it even re-creates his study, where he
wrote "Origin of the Species" Darwin's findings were so radical that
he kept them secret for 21 years after his five year sea journey. His
ideas were blasphemous and in the conservative religious England of
that era, he feared for the safety of himself and his family if his
writings got out prematurely. It wasn't until he was much older, and
had taken ill and knew he could not responsibly take his secret to his
grave, that Darwin finally started publishing his work.
The exhibit has testimonials by numerous scientists and others. The
curator of the AMNH explains in a video that the entire museum, and the
other great natural history museums, are set up based on Darwin's idea,
that we are all connected with a common heritage. Other scientists
point out that Darwin's theories have stood the test of time, they have
not been disproved, despite many attempts. Darwin's ideas have not
been proven false, they have over and over again been proven correct.
Sadly, Darwin had to live with the consequences of his ideas. Darwin's
daughter died while still a child, and his wife brought herself to
believe their daughter was in heaven. Darwin could not ever believe
that himself though, as much as he wanted to, because his own theories
showed that the world was not created, the world evolved, and is still
evolving.
Anyway, the Darwin exhibit "Charles Darwin: For 21 years he kept his
theory secret" is at the American Museum of Natural History through May
29th, and it is quite the experience. I recommend that any of you who
can or will get to NYC at any time this spring make a special attempt
to see this.
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| 62 responses total. |
rcurl
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response 1 of 62:
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Jan 18 02:47 UTC 2006 |
My comments on the exhibit are in oldagora, item 10, response 883. I'll
add here that you can read the main posters in the exhibit at
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/
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bhelliom
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response 2 of 62:
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Jan 18 08:20 UTC 2006 |
Darwin was right, huh? Does that mean you'll soon be a victim of
Natural Selection? :p
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happyboy
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response 3 of 62:
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Jan 18 09:58 UTC 2006 |
r0 tldr
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klg
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response 4 of 62:
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Jan 18 12:02 UTC 2006 |
Do they have the fossilized remains of the Democratic Party on exhibit
there?
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bhelliom
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response 5 of 62:
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Jan 18 13:38 UTC 2006 |
They sure do, right next to the Republican Party's integrity.
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richard
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response 6 of 62:
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Jan 18 15:23 UTC 2006 |
re #2 evolution happens slowly, over millions of years. are we still
evolving? logic would say that we are. the human body is more advanced, more
adapted than it was, say 200 years ago. People are bigger, stronger, with
more advanced brains now.
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rcurl
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response 7 of 62:
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Jan 18 15:28 UTC 2006 |
Can you cite the evidence for that from the evolutionary literature?
People are certainly bigger and stronger, at least in some places, but I
thought that was mostly due to better nutrition. I would not be very
surprised by some demonstration of a little read genomic change in
adaptation, but I can't recall any evidence for it.
But, in any case, yes, we are all *subject to* natural selection. (Being
"victims" is a value judgement - evolutionary theory does not indulge in
value judgements.)
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klg
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response 8 of 62:
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Jan 18 17:24 UTC 2006 |
Richard
How is "natural selection" making humans bigger, stronger, and smarter
while science and technology are now enabling more people who are
smaller, weaker, and less smart survive to reproduce?
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tod
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response 9 of 62:
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Jan 18 18:05 UTC 2006 |
re #8
Alzheimer's is the Grim Reaper's way of saying "payback is a bitch"
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richard
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response 10 of 62:
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Jan 18 18:21 UTC 2006 |
re #7 I said logic tells us evolution is still ongoing. We see change all
around us, and if we are connected to the world, as cells to a body, and the
world is changing constantly, then logically we must be changing too. The
process takes so many millions of years that we mostly just don't notice.
Our appendixes were once useful body parts in a lower evolutionary stage.
We no longer need our appendixes, however the fact that we still have them
is proof we evolved. We adapted to our environment, we invented clothes, we
don't need body hair much anymore. We therefore adapted to where we no longer
grow as much body hair in our current versions as we did as lower life forms.
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tod
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response 11 of 62:
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Jan 18 18:29 UTC 2006 |
You assume we don't need our appendix but its quite possible we do need it
but are unable to understand its function. We don't understand the human body
entirely because if we did then there wouldn't be HIV, cancer, and a slew of
other nasty ailments.
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bhelliom
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response 12 of 62:
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Jan 18 18:53 UTC 2006 |
Just because you can function without it, doesn't mean you don't need
it.
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rcurl
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response 13 of 62:
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Jan 18 19:22 UTC 2006 |
I'll bet the appendix has no adaptational advantage to our species. There
can be many (apparently) useless vestigal organs resulting from the
natural selection process. An example are the vestigal hind limbs of some
whales. Of course, the presence of the genes for vestigal organs could in
the future be diverted to some other purposes, like some elements of the
jaw bones of early reptiles have been diverted to inner ear organs in
modern mammals.
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marcvh
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response 14 of 62:
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Jan 18 19:31 UTC 2006 |
Re #12: Um, ok, so what does "you don't need it" mean then?
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jep
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response 15 of 62:
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Jan 18 19:42 UTC 2006 |
re resp:14: You could live without your tongue. Maybe you couldn't
live as well. You'd lose most of your sense of taste/smell, and it
would be difficult to chew your food. You couldn't talk as well. You
would have to adapt a great deal to the loss. But you could live that
way.
Your appendix has less obvious functionality. A lot of people live
without them, and no one knows if there is any way in which their lives
are impeded.
By contrast, your heart has more obvious functionality. There are no
known cases of anyone surviving for any period of time at all without
one.
So, one might say that one doesn't need the appendix, has use for the
tongue, and absolutely needs the heart. There are varying degrees of
need.
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klg
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response 16 of 62:
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Jan 18 20:16 UTC 2006 |
Would any reasonable scientist say that "evolution" can be observed in
real time (with the possible exception of fast-breeding insects)?
Richard is confusing mutation with evolution.
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bhelliom
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response 17 of 62:
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Jan 18 20:23 UTC 2006 |
resp:15 - Well, said, jep.
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jep
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response 18 of 62:
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Jan 18 21:58 UTC 2006 |
Thanks, Sylvia!
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richard
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response 19 of 62:
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Jan 18 22:53 UTC 2006 |
why do we have two kidneys when we only need one? Isn't it possible that at
a lower stage of evolution, living in a different world and climate, that our
predecessors experienced larger degrees of kidney failure and needed two
kidneys?
the second kidney and the appendix are body parts we no longer need, from
earlier models.'
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edina
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response 20 of 62:
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Jan 18 22:55 UTC 2006 |
Until that one fails.
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aruba
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response 21 of 62:
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Jan 18 23:07 UTC 2006 |
Re #0: It sounds like an interesting exhibit. A few points, though:
Lots of people who came before Darwin believed that species evolved from
other species. THinking of that idea wasn't Darwin's great contribution.
What was his, though, was the idea of natural selection: that some members
of a species, for whatever reason, are occasionally born with attributes
which give them an advantage over their peers. These organsms are therefore
more likely to prosper and reproduce. When this process is repeated over
enough generations, an old species can beget a new one.
So it wasn't the idea of evolution that Darwin contributed, it was an
explanation of the mechanism for how it might come about.
Darwin didn't publish his work because he was worried about taking it to
his grave. He was a careful man, and had put off publishing for a long
time because he knew it would be controversial, and he wanted to have as
much evidence accumulated as possible before going public.
The thing that pushed him to publish was that someone else had the same
idea, and was about to publish first. That was Alfred Wallace, who was a
self-educated outsider to the club of upper-class naturalists in England.
Wallace made his living acquiring specimens of various species around the
world, and sending them back to Europe for study. He was a working-class
guy who lived something of a vagabond existence, riding on tram steamers
and spending large amounts of time being sick of various tropical
diseases.
The interesting and surprising thing to me is always that no one came up
with the idea of natural selection before Darwin and Wallace did. It just
seems so obvious now, in hindsight. A large number of species had already
been catalogued by the early 19th century, and of course people had
noticed similarities between species and postulated that they somehow
evolved from one another. But no one could explain how that happened.
Darwin apparently got the idea from his discoveries on the Beagle and from
reading about how human institutions evolved. After drawing the analogy,
he spent years carefully amassing evidence for it.
Wallace, on the other hand, didn't have leisure time to spend like that,
because he had to travel around, gathering specimens to make a living.
And he didn't have scientific training. So how did he come up with the
idea? You would think, since scientists back in England had access to
specimens he and other people were sending back, that they would have as
good a chance as he would to deduce something from them.
Now here's the interesting part: because Wallace collected specimens for
money, he of course collected more than one of each specimen. In fact he
collected lots of them. And that allowed him to notice that there were in
fact variations among representatives of the same species - something one
wouldn't see if one was only looking at *one* specimen, as no doubt most
of the scientists in England were. So there's an answer for why no one
thought of natural selection before: most people didn't appreciate the
variety that could occur within one species, and so it didn't occur to
them that maybe some members of a species would have a survival advantage
over others, and this process repeated would lead to new species.
Wallace, on the other hand, had great examples of variety right in front
of him. In fact, he no doubt thought about it a lot, since he had to
decide which specimens were worth sending back. And this eventually led
him to understand natural selection.
Fortunately for Darwin, Wallace and he had corresponded before, and
Wallace had a great respect for him. Wallace sent Darwin his article
about natural selection, and asked for his opinion on this idea he was
about to publish. Darwin turned white, no doubt, upon reading the
article. Shortly thereafter, through some questionable dealings, a joint
result of both Darwin and Wallace, together, was what acually appeared.
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marcvh
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response 22 of 62:
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Jan 18 23:08 UTC 2006 |
Redundancy is a pretty clear advantage, as is load-balancing.
The appendix is, of course, a lot less clear. If there is some life
function which is impaired by its removal, apparently it's not a very
important one or somebody would have noticed by now. I suppose it could
be something undetectable; maybe the appendix is where the soul is
housed, so anybody who has had it removed doesn't get to go to heaven.
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