Doubting Didymus

You are suggesting that wallace was a nice, calm tolerant non-bigot compared to Darwin? You are misled. Put down your Darwin biographies and read some more about wallace. I believe that at a few stages he even allowed his sexism to impede his science!

What you take offense to is simply the attitude of the time. Wallace was affected as badly as Darwin.

Do not judge people by todays standards, or you will never respect ANY historical figures.

Motorcycle Mama

There is a difference between ignorance and not accepting, with reason, the views of a consensus.
MM

Xixax

MM,

I take it you're not going to bother giving a short summary of their alternative to "Darwinian Evolution"?

You continue to say you don't accept it, for reason, but I am equally curious which it is you do accept.

Motorcycle Mama

Read the Origin of Species where Darwin cites previous research on evolution and note the reference to Matthews, as I said in a previous post. Also this statement would appear to be based on a careful and thorough reading of Lamarck's Zoological Philosophy, or baring that Brukhardt's The Spirit of the System: Lamarck and evolutionary theory.
MM

pz

True enough. However, you haven't given any good reasons, and some of your ideas are just plain wrong. That puts you on the side of ignorance, not reason, so far.

So let's see some rational justification, if you've got it.

Motorcycle Mama

It is, I believe, ergasterd in a response on this topic includes a web page address to SEED, an electronic journal from the University of Toronto. If you go to that web site and explore a bit you will find an article by Brooks. It is essentially a 2002 version of his book with Wiley. I would gladly send you the address but don't know it right off.
MM

Motorcycle Mama

OK. I gave a reference. But if you want a short summary, evolutionary change is an informational expression of the increasing entropy that is seen in the universe. The common expression of that increasing informational entropy is the increasing complexity that accrues with evolution. The driving force would seem to be the flow of energy down energy gradients with the accompanying transformation of matter that accompanies the flow. For those who argue that there have been evolutionar reductions the response is that even though there have been evolutionary reductions, they are part of branch systems which are more complex. Or, duckweed is a simple relative of skunk cabbage but the lineage consisting of skunk cabbage and duckweed is more complex, at a higher level of entropy, that a lineage consisting of skunk cabbage alone.
MM

Motorcycle Mama

This exchange has gotten sort of convoluted so I'm not sure what I'm to justify. If it's Darwin's not being the first with natural selection, see my previous posts on Patrick Matthew or read Eisley's Darwin's Mysterious Mr. X. If you want justification for Darwin's character then I offer the following. Darwin, in one of his journals, praised Lamarck for his courage in his evolutionary views. Later he vilified Lamarck. Darwin refused to defend Grant, who may well have introduced Darwin to evolutionary ideas, when Grant was criticized for those same evolutionary ideas, which Darwin himself held. When Lyell told Darwin he had improved on Lamrack's theory Darwin felt insulted. With each passing edition of the Origin Darwin watered down his theory until by the 6th edition, as one philosopher remarked, he had virtually gutted his theory of any meaning. Darwin, in the Origin, argued in one chapter that the results of natural selection, adaptations, could not be used to discover the products of evolution. I have taken these descriptions and added the interpretation that Darwin was a man more concerned with acceptance than understanding. If you don't like that interpretation then so be it.

I will cease there. If this is inadequate to satisfy you then I recommend, as I have already, to read G. Himmelfarb Darwin and the Darwian revolution.
MM

seanie

Entropy is a measure of disorder isn't it?

Isn't increasing complexity the antithesis of that? Complexity is highly ordered isn't it?

I'm not following this at all.

Corey Hammer

Entropy is the amount of energy unavailable for work, if I recall my thermodynamics correctly.