Darwin Online

[Beagle]

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1947

LONDON: The original version of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was published online yesterday among a "treasure trove" of the scientist's papers, photographs and other documents.

Some 20,000 items contained in around 90,000 images were published on the Internet, according to a spokesman for Cambridge University in the U.K., the scholar's old academic home.

Chief among them was the first draft of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, produced in the 1840s, which eventually led to the publication of his most well-known work in 1859.

"This release makes his private papers, mountains of notes, experiments and research behind his world-changing publications available to the world for free," said John van Wyhe, the director of The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online project.

The complete works of Darwin is now available online. The link is at the bottom of this article.

[Minimalist]

In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species.

Sigh...if only the creationists would actually READ Darwin, instead of the cliff notes version they get from Hovind et al, they would understand that he was not concerned with the original emergence of life on earth.

[Beagle]

This article is saying about the same thing Min.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/lif ... tions.html

It will soon be 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin and 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species, arguably the most important book ever written. In it, Darwin outlined an idea that many still find shocking – that all life on Earth, including human life, evolved through natural selection.

Darwin presented compelling evidence for evolution in On the Origin and, since his time, the case has become overwhelming. Countless fossil discoveries allow us to trace the evolution of today's organisms from earlier forms. DNA sequencing has confirmed beyond any doubt that all living creatures share a common origin. Innumerable examples of evolution in action can be seen all around us, from the pollution-matching pepper moth to fast-changing viruses such as HIV and H5N1 bird flu. Evolution is as firmly established a scientific fact as the roundness of the Earth.

And yet despite an ever-growing mountain of evidence, most people around the world are not taught the truth about evolution, if they are taught about it at all. Even in the UK, the birthplace of Darwin with an educated and increasingly secular population, one recent poll suggests less than half the population accepts evolution.

[Ishtar]

Even in the UK, the birthplace of Darwin with an educated and increasingly secular population, one recent poll suggests less than half the population accepts evolution.

Well, speaking as a UK-er, perhaps could I suggest that what my fellow countrymen may be concerned about is the fact that:

1. The 'missing lnk' has never been found, and

2. What many people forget is that Darwin himself only ever referred to On the Origin of Species as a theory ....admittedly a theory that beats the hell out of creationism, but nevertheless, especially in the absence of the missing link, a theory.

(I know I'll get hammered for this. )

[Minimalist]

From Scientific American:

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

"Theory" here does not mean wild-ass guess.

[Ishtar]

The thing about the UK is, we have less of a pressing urgency to worry about whether the theory of evolution stands up as you Yanks do, as we don't have the same fundie problem. Now, if someone came up with a feasible theory that Mohammed didn't exist, and was just the mushroom-fuelled fantasy of some lonely Arab goat herders, we'd be right on to it!

I don't know if you've been to the UK lately, but what we've got going on here is Darwin in reverse. Great Neanderthal, thug-like creatures roam the streets after dark who wouldn't know the Origin of Species if it jumped up and bit them in bum.

However, those who do think about these things still point to the fact that the missing link still hasn't turned up...unless it's those guys roaming the streets.

[Minimalist]

I think he's occupying the White House.

[Ishtar]

[Digit]

The missing link Ish was postulated on the assumption that man developed from Apes, there is actually no reason to assume that at all. It's part of the baggage that we have had loaded onto us at school.
So ingrained was the idea that support for the idea was a well known set of images showing the ascent of the modern day horse from Eohippus to Equus. This lovely straight line of my childhood totally ignored the inconvenient fact that some of the supposed ancestors lived on different continents!
Man and the Apes may well have had a common ancestor, but whether we would be able to recognise it as such is perhaps questionable.

[Beagle]

The missing link Ish was postulated on the assumption that man developed from Apes, there is actually no reason to assume that at all.

You believe, don't you, that man is a member of the primate family?

[Digit]

Including or excluding politicians Beag.
Of course I do, but was the split as primates or earlier.
Apparantly we seperated from Chimps some 6 million years ago, I'm told. Does that mean that Chimps have remained unchanged for 6 million years and that we are, if you like, modified Chimps? Or does it mean that we and Chimps have a common ancestor?
If the former, there is no missing link. If the latter it could mean that Chimps seperated from a line of proto humans and became apelike whilst the human line continued to develop, if so, then again no missing link!

[rich]

There you go - chimps are the result of inbreeding of a proto-human line!

[Digit]

Having watched 'Planet of the Apes' I think I could be tempted by a pretty female Chimp Rich!

[Beagle]

Including or excluding politicians Beag.

I agree that man and chimps had a common ancestor. But there seems little doubt, that whatever that ancestor was, it was arboreal. We are still better adapted to live in trees than other animals, with our binocular vision and grasping hands, and more.

I think sometime this year, H. Habilis is going to be stripped of his Homo status and be demoted to an ape. I don't think he cares though.

[john]

Even in the UK, the birthplace of Darwin with an educated and increasingly secular population, one recent poll suggests less than half the population accepts evolution.

Well, speaking as a UK-er, perhaps could I suggest that what my fellow countrymen may be concerned about is the fact that:

1. The 'missing lnk' has never been found, and

2. What many people forget is that Darwin himself only ever referred to On the Origin of Species as a theory ....admittedly a theory that beats the hell out of creationism, but nevertheless, especially in the absence of the missing link, a theory.

(I know I'll get hammered for this. )

All -

I'll start off with a poem from Yeats:

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Now, what I'm going to suggest - and no, it is not a syllogism -

Is that we were, are, and will be, forever,

A "missing link"

To wit, what we were

Is not who we are,

And who we are,

Is not who we will be.

So, at any living, breathing point in the human record,

We are neither historical figures nor the future.

Once again, the bicameral is the flashpoint.

This is the reason the "missing link" has never been found,

Nor ever will be found.


hoka hey

john