The Evolution of Evolution

The battle of science over emotion:

The fear of losing our starring role in the drama called life.

Creation

• God said – and then it happened.

• In Christianity this is done in seven days.

• The Bible contains two versions of creation.

• When Cain kills Able, he gets a bride from Nod, another people not part of the Judeo-Christian creation.

The puzzle of the creation stories is religion, not science.

• Anyone teaching Historical Geology is faced with students who have already concluded that creationism explains the history of the earth. One of the questions that perplexes me is how such students can conclude that their ethnic or religious group has the complete explanation of the origin of the earth and its life, when so many ethnic or religious groups have so many different accounts of those origins. Bruce Railsback, a geologist at the University of Georgia.

Shinto

• Of old, Heaven and Earth were not yet separated, and the In and Yo, not yet divided. They formed a chaotic mass like an egg which was of obscurely defined limits and contained germs.

   The purer and clearer part was thinly drawn out, and formed Heaven, while the heavier and grosser element settled down and became Earth.

   The finer element easily became a united body, but the consolidation of the heavy and gross element was accomplished with difficulty.

   Heaven was therefore formed first, and Earth was established subsequently.

African Creation

• Each of the nine animals plays its role by creating more creatures to populate the world.

• An African Cosmogony" tells of how the world was created through a powerful being named Bumba, who regurgitates the sun, moon, stars, and the first nine living creatures.

• Bumba also makes it clear that those whose behavior is detrimental to the community have no place in the community. For instance, Tsetse, lightning, is chased away for being a trouble-maker.

• Bumba sums up this sense of community by saying, "Behold these wonders. They belong to you." The earth is both the property and responsibility of every creature.

• Lastly, the respect each person should have for the dead is shown through the ants, created by Nyonye Ngana.

Indigenous Creation Stories

• The Navajo creation story involves three underworlds where important events happened to shape the Fourth World where we now live.

• The Lakota also has life begin beneath the earth and emerge through the hole we call Wind Cave.

• This is a theory - does that put it on equal status with Creation stories?

• A theory links scientific facts.• It tests the facts against a variety of

experiments and knowledge• A theory is one of sciences over arching

concepts and one of its strongest.

Two views from today’s churches• The geologic column

which is cited as physical evidence of evolution occurring in the past, is better explained as the result of a devastating global flood which happened 5,000 years ago. There is no reason not to believe that god created the universe, earth, plants, animals, and people just as described in the book of Genesis.

• Creation Science Website

• Today, fresh knowledge has led to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated… is in itself significant argument in favor of this theory.

• Pope John Paul II, 1996

Evolution’s evolution

• First we need to see connections between living things.

• Next we need to be able to measure change and accept adaptation.

• Then we have to accept that there has been extinction from a variety of causes

• Finally we have to have an earth old enough to allow for change.

Adaptations

• This is the key word in evolution. It implies that organisms change over time in relationship to changes in climate and biological pressures.

Rate of change

• Organisms that reproduce rapidly, evolve quicker. Fruit Flies provided the first really concrete measure of evolution because they can have multiple populations in a month.

• Insects adapt to insecticides so that populations of survivors produce offspring immune to the chemical and new ones must be produced.

• In the south the cotton booweevil was first controlled by DDT, now it is immune, that chemical was replaced and now we have insects immune to both, but we farmers still place both on their crops because they have no other options. This proof of adaptation and evolution has taken place in the strongest regional of anti-evolution sentiments.

Extinction• Since the beginning of life 99% of known

species have gone extinct.• In Jefferson’s time, extinction was a

concept that was not allowed by the church because it was considered an affront to god and implied that god had erred. They had two answers to the fossils – either they were placed here by the devil – or the animals were still living in some exotic and undiscovered part of South America or Africa – Doyle used this as the basis for his novel the Lost Continent.

Aristotle

• Each form had a stet position in a ladder of nature that reflected its degree of perfection.

• The bottom of the ladder had the inanimate, progressed to jelly fish and on up to humans.

• Nothing could move up the ladder.

ARISTOTLES LADDER• What is higher on the scale of being is of more

worth• Species on this scale are eternally fixed in their

place, and cannot evolve over time. • Further, the lower items are inorganic and the higher

are organic. The principle which gives internal organization to the higher or organic items on the scale of being is life, or what he calls the soul of the organism.

• Even the human soul is nothing but the organization of the body.

• Plants are the lowest forms of life on the scale, and their souls contain a nutritive element by which it preserves itself.

• Animals are above plants on the scale, and their souls contain an appetitive feature which allows them to have sensations, desires, and thus gives them the ability to move.

• The scale of being proceeds from animals to humans.

• The human soul shares the nutritive element with plants, and the appetitive element with animals, but also has a rational element which is distinctively our own.

Carl Von Linne – Linnaeus 1707-1778

• Father of Taxonomy. His system for naming, ranking, and classifying organisms is still in wide use today

A synopsis of Linnaeus System.• His religious beliefs led him to natural theology:

since God has created the world, it is possible to understand God's wisdom by studying His creation.

• Linnaeus's plant taxonomy was based solely on the number and arrangement of the reproductive organs

• The sexual basis of Linnaeus's plant classification was controversial in its day.

• Part of Linnaeus' innovation was the grouping of genera into higher taxa that were also based on shared similarities.

Linnaeus contribution to evolution• In his early years, Linnaeus believed that the species was

not only real, but unchangeable.• He abandoned the concept that species were fixed and

invariable, and suggested that some -- perhaps most -- species in a genus might have arisen after the creation of the world, through hybridization.

• Linnaeus noticed the struggle for survival -- he once called Nature a "butcher's block" and a "war of all against all". However, he considered struggle and competition necessary to maintain the balance of nature, part of the Divine Order.

• His book was banned by the church because of its sexually explicit imagery.

George Louis LeclercComte de Buffon

• 1707-1788 • Rejected divine plan• Believed variation could happen

within species• Recognized vestigial features

that no longer served a purpose.• Defined species – if by means

of copulation two animals can perpetuate themselves and their likeness they should be considered one species.

William Paley 1743 - 1805

• He rejected the early forms of evolution and proposed Natural Theology.

• His idea was that everything was deliberately designed and he used the eye as the center piece of his ideas. He felt that the eye along pointed to an intelligent creator.

• Because the design was perfect, Natural Theology rejected the idea that it could change.

Darwin took Paley’s course

• In order to pass the B.A. examination, it was, also, necessary to get up Paley's Evidences of Christianity, and his Moral Philosophy. . . The logic of this book and as I may add of his Natural Theology gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only part of the Academical Course which, as I then felt and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the education of my mind. I did not at that time trouble myself about Paley's premises; and taking these on trust I was charmed and convinced of the long line of argumentation. Charles Darwin. Autobiography

Fossils – the challenge to perception

Jefferson, who made wonderful discoveries of fossils wrote: Such is the economy of nature that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct.

In 1811 – Mary Anning, age 12 discovered the first ichthyosaurus. It was such a good fossil, that the argument against them did not stand up. So another idea was put forth – these creatures had lived in earlier creations – which had been wiped out.

The next debate was the age of the earth.

The debate once again was the struggle between science and

religion• Bishop Usher went through the Bible and

said that Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC at 9 AM was the day of creation.

• The law of superposition, Hutton’s basis for Geology, the fossil layers, and finally the radiometric aging allowed us to date the beginning of the earth at 4.6 BY

Ages of the seafloor rocks

Richard C. Owen 1804 – 1892

Comparative AnatomyOwen named “dinosaurs”

He compared teeth between dinosaurs and modern reptiles and announced that dinosaurs were more advanced.

Because Lamarck held that everything advanced towards perfection, Owen felt this backward movement in reptiles undermined evolution.

He tried to create a new theory and failed.

Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck 1744 - 1829

• He was the first to try and explain evolution.• Simple forms constant arise from the non-living and

gradually evolve to become more complex.• He felt that characteristics could be acquired during

life and then passed on to the next generation.• He would believe that giraffes, by stretching to

reach the leafs would pass this tendency on and the next generation would have a longer neck.

Charles Darwin’s first problem• Charles Darwin came from a

church oriented family. He had considered going in to the ministry at one point in his life.

• He knew the church would react negatively to his research and ideas and thus he waited 20 years to publish.

• The first nagging thought about questioning the concept of God as the complete creator of every detail was brought about by Parasites. He could accept quick, painless death, but he could not picture a benevolent god creating death by parasites.

The Beagle

• Darwin signed on to be the Naturalist on the Beagle – an unpaid companion to Captain Fitzroy, because status would not allow Fitzroy to socialize with his crew.

The voyage of discovery 1831- 1836

• The explorer Humboldt’s books had inspired Darwin to want to travel to South America.

• He read Lyell’s new book on geology on the trip.• The earthquake in Chile showed him the

dynamic earth.• The finches in Galapagos provided the biological

observation that established the basis for natural selection.

Darwin’s wake up call

• In 1858, 22 years after the Beagle, Darwin experimenting with barnacles, studying pigeons.

• The Lord Alfred Wallace sent him a publication to review. Working in SE Asia, Wallace had found the same thesis. Two independent researchers came to the same conclusion!!

Lord Alfred Wallace 1823 - 1913

• “Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly. To expect the world to receive a new truth, or even an old truth, without challenging it, is to look for one of those miracles which do not occur"

Darwin now had to publish and present his paper along with Wallace’s with very little public attention, until the church responded. Controversy gets the public’s attention.

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the

Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.Charles Darwin, M.A.,

• I have called this principle, by whicheach slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.

That many and grave objections may be advanced against the theory of descent with modification through natural selection, I do not deny. I have endeavoured to give to them their full force.

Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor.

Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions,

and, lastly, that there is a struggle for existence leading to the preservation of each profitable deviation of structure or instinct. The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed.

Did you know?Darwin used descent with modification.

The term Evolution was coined by the philosophy Herbert Spencer

and used by Thomas Huxley in his

defense of Darwin’s theory.

It meant:

A process of change in a certain direction.

Spence is also the man who coined:

Survival of the fittest!

Domestication – manipulated evolution

• Man does not actually produce variability; he only unintentionally exposes organic beings to new conditions of life, and then nature acts on the organisation, and causes variability. But man can and does select the variations given to him by nature, and thus accumulate them in any desired manner. He thus adapts animals and plants for his own benefit or pleasure.

• Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. • Of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind

to a far distant futurity• The greater number of species of each genus have left no descendants,

but have become utterly extinct. • The common and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger and

dominant groups, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. • The living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived

long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. • Natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all

corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.

O. C. Marsh work on horse FossilsThe most complete evolutionary history we have is with the horse.

O. C. Marsh, a contemporary of Darwin working in the US put together one of the first great collections of fossils in North America.

The result was an almost complete record from the earliest ancestors to days modern horse.

Chemical – Biological evolution

Evolution begins with the Genes

• allele = (n) a form of a gene which codes for one possible outcome of a phenotype

Three possible genotypes

• GENOTYPES Homozygous Dominant (YY) Heterozygous (Yy) Homozygous Recessive (yy)

• where  Y = the dominant allele for yellow &  y = the recessive allele for green

• RESULTING PHENOTYPE Yellow Yellow Green

Incomplete dominance

• GENOTYPES

• BB = Homozygous Black BW = Heterozygous WW = Homozygous White

• where  B = allele for black & W = allele for white

• RESULTING PHENOTYPE Black Fur Grey Fur White Fur

Co-dominance

• GENOTYPES

• BB = Homozygous Black BW = Heterozygous WW = Homozygous White

where  B = allele for black & W = allele for white

• RESULTING PHENOTYPE

Black Fur Black & White Fur White Fur

How does this work for us?Look at our blood types

• ALLELE IA IB i

• CODES FOR Type "A" Blood Type "B" Blood Type "O" Blood

Knowing what we do about alleles here are the various combinations with dominate, co-dominant and

recessive traits  • GENOTYPES

I(A)I(A) I(A)i

• I(B)I(B) I(B)i

• I(A)I(B)• ii

• RESULTING PHENOTYPES Type A Type A

• Type B Type B

• Type AB • Type O

How do we go from genetic variation to shifts in species?

• The alleles in the population will not change• They will continue to cycle through the population

in different combinations until:– Mutation changes a component.

• Mutations happen all the time, we know that there are micro-mutations in all genetics and DNA constantly through radiation, cosmic rays, etc. They do not manifest themselves until factors favor them.

The question is – where are the missing links?Critics are quick to say that if the species are related, there should be intermediate stages in the fossils and species.

Of course our hybrids demonstrate this in our pets and our agriculture and our gardens, but nature does not need that to demonstrate the process.

The success of transition and evolution can be seen in many smaller organisms.