After his 5-year round-the-world trip on the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin published what was probably the most important scientific thesis of the 19th century, On The Origin of Species. In it, his theory of natural selection and the evolution of animals grew to become one of the most controversial topics in science and philosophy. Even today the theory is frequently debated, and it plays a large role in the disagreements about religion and science, or to be more precise, disagreements between Creationists and Darwinists. But how has evolution theory itself evolved since the release of Darwin’s monumental book?
Mendel and Scopes
In 1865, a little known Czech monk called Gregor Mendel published his own research on inheritance amongst pea plants. His findings were strikingly similar to Darwin’s, but were not recognised to be of any significance until well into the 20th century. Mendel found that the peas he studied passed down genetic information when they reproduced, opening up the possibility of selective breeding. If favourable peas were made to reproduce, then over generations the size and quality of the resultant pea plants could be improved. Mendel asserted, like Darwin, that this process must have gone on in nature to lead to more complex organisms.
In 1925 the famous Scopes Monkey Trial took place, prosecuting a biology teacher for teaching high school students about evolution in a creationist town in Tennessee. The trial spurred the beginnings of the continuous feud between Christianity and science, and has been well documented in various films, plays and satires. It gave Darwin’s theory more publicity than it had ever had before, albeit mostly negative.
Discovery of DNA
The breakthrough discovery of DNA in 1953 opened up a wide range of scientific possibility involving the occurrence of evolution on a molecular level. Scientists made links between the carrying of biological code through genes and the concept of natural selection, and this strengthened the credibility of the theory of evolution immensely. Genetic analysis has gone on to prove how evolution can occur constructively rather than destructively, and that it can even take place over a small, measurable time-scale. It has been speculated that even humans have evolved slightly over the last few thousand years.
Fossil records have also proved important to the progress of evolutionary study. The discovery of fossils, while challenging Christian views about the age of the world, has conversely given them a reason to be suspicious of evolution, as there has been minimal evidence of evolution taking place between major fossil periods.
As Stephen Jay Gould said, “The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils …”. Evolutionists continue to strive for significant evolution evidence amongst fossils, which would add a necessary amount of weight to the theory. For this reason the field of genetics has been particularly relied upon; DNA still has more secrets to unveil.
Richard Dawkins
Perhaps the most famous biologist cum philosopher alive today is Richard Dawkins, who has had the "evolution baton" passed on to him almost directly from Darwin. His works The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker have expanded natural selection from a philosophical point of view, and have provided answers to several “holes” in the theory. Dawkins particularly stresses how evolution is cumulative, occurring in small probable steps rather than large leaps of faith.
Michael Behe has suggested that certain organic structures (such as the human eye) have the property of irreducible complexity, that is, they cannot work without all the relevant parts in place, but that these parts evolving at the same time is hugely improbable. Dawkins refuted this view by describing how the eye can indeed evolve without each element existing, adding that 50% vision or even 1% vision is better than nothing, and is therefore more likely to be successfully reproduced.
These elaborations that Dawkins has made upon Darwin’s original theory have kept evolutionists safe from philosophical criticism from a number of possible angles. And they currently form the bulk of the most recent advances in the theory. Evolution has had its fair share of religious criticism and it seems that the debate will go on, but whatever the next step in the process may be, it is sure to be an equally significant one. At what point will it be impossible to argue against evolution, only time will tell.
Sources
- "The Evolving Post-Darwin Evolution" - Rev Tony Breeden, Defending Genesis blog (January 21, 2010)
- "Darwin's Living Legacy" - Gary Stix, Scientific American (December 15, 2008)
- Dawkins, Richard (1986). The Blind Watchmaker. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
- Dawkins, Richard (1976). The Selfish Gene. New York City: Oxford University Press.
- Darwin, Charles (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, London: John Murray.
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