echidna

Actually it’s only about the wording, but I suspect it’s misleading, and I believe it's counter-productive to solving much of the confusion from Creationists and Intelligent Designers. I only have the weakest of groundings in the biology sciences, so forgive any technical transgressions. But to me biology uses metaphorical words and then (a little unfairly) complains when they are interpreted literally.

(All definitions selected from dictionary.com)

Evolve : To develop or achieve gradually, to work (something) out; devise

As a self-confessed former Intelligent Design follower, I find that the very word “evolve” implies a goal-oriented process, or a controlled process to achieve a specified end.

Latin evolvere, to unroll

Even the etymology can imply a plan being revealed.

Another commonly coined scientific term,

Adapt : To make suitable to or fit for a specific use or situation.

Even our science teachers teach that if conditions change, a species will adapt to its environment. Now for a person to adapt to their environment is entirely possible from a Intelligent Design perspective, since the person will use their own intelligence to adapt, similarly to a lesser extent, other animals.

I then find it then quite intuitive to follow the same process when looking at the DNA of the species. However DNA has no demonstrated intelligence of its own.

Is it simplistically true to say that in a sense the DNA doesn’t change or adapt at all ? More a case that DNA incompatible with the new environment dies, while DNA compatible will survive.

There is an implication that if I had been born with a third arm, it will be for the purpose of scratching my nose while I’m lifting 2 slabs of beer. But in reality of course, the generation of a third arm would have no purpose whatsoever. It is up to me to find uses for it. If it works, my progeny will progress with it and if they don’t then the 2-armed species continues.

In fact, SciAm a month or 3 ago ran an article suggested the replacement of “adapt” with “exapt”. We do not evolve “towards” any goal, we evolve “out of” random mutations which we might find purposes for.

While I was clearly not educated in Creationism, I think in retrospect that my biology teaching implied Intelligent Design. So with such poor choices of the commonly used words, to me it’s little wonder that so much confusion abounds. Is it just me who finds some of the terminology somewhat ambiguous ?

P.S. Still slightly agnostic on the ID matter BTW We engineers can sniff a designer anywhere, even a bad one & we'd never accept that blind luck was any substitute for a half-decent design engineer.

liquid

ARRRRRGHHHHHH!!!!!!

As an aerospace engineer myself this drives me up the wall. I spend ages trying to correct the myth that engineers are a) not scientific and b) all IDers. So I'd thank you not to go around bad-mouthing the rest of us.

I could rave on and on and on, but I hope you get my point.

tronvillain

I think it was Gould who invented the term exaptation and it was quite a lot longer ago than a few months.

Anyway, let's look at exactly what <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=evolve" target="_blank">Dictionary.com</a> says:

I see you chose to ignore the intransitive verb for some reason. Looking at the entry, support for your position seems lacking, especially since the word is seldom used in ways like "“the schemes he evolved to line his purse." Even that appears to be a special case, where something is worked out or devised by gradual change.

Now, you claim that "even the etymology can imply a plan being revealed" but I'm not sure how you reached this conclusion. After all, the Latin evolvere, to unroll does not imply that someone is doing the unrolling or that it is a plan that is being unrolled. Perhaps you are used to unrolling blueprints or something and you make the connection easily, but that doesn't mean the rest of us do.

Now, let's see what Dictionary.com has to say about the word adapt:
Again, you've ignored the intransitive verb, which is the sense in which a species could be said to adapt to its environment. In this case, the first definition would apply to natural selection and mutation.

Finally, echidna said:
Well, no one is asking you to accept that. While "blind luck" can be said to apply to mutation, selection provides a direction for evolution. Oh, and it isn't much of a substitute - it appears to require a lot of time and a lot of waste to create design without a designer.

[ April 03, 2002: Message edited by: tronvillain ]</p>

DRFseven

Just give it time and it will probably come to mean "to change" to you, too.

MeBeMe

My problem with evolution is that I didn't evolve to look like Brad Pitt, have the charm of Trent in "Swingers", and have the basketball skill of Michael Jordan (before he came back).

LianaLi

Anyone else besides me see the process of evolution, and natural selection as a really, really bad version of the lottery?

-Liana

Coragyps

Liana - based on my winnings to date, I would say that good ol' Lotto Texas is a pretty crappy version too.

echidna

Quite so tron, I should have stressed the word “selected” in my reference to dictionay.com, however the point is simply that I found some of the secondary school terminology and biology teaching to be ambiguous.

Maybe I should have been more inquisitive in High School, but I don’t find my selections to be particularly uncommon understandings.

Even selecting from the intransitive, evolve can mean “develop” and even the example drawn is typically towards one of increased order and improvement. “Develop” in itself has a mass of interpretations, many of them consistent with an ID framework.

Naturally there are definitions consistent with Evolution, but that isn’t the point. The point was to offer an explanation as to why many people follow ID, not necessarily from religious indoctrination or utter stupidity, but also from honest misunderstanding and lack of clarity in some secular secondary school teaching (from 20 years ago).

My apologies liquid, my closing provocative paragraph was more a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of my own reluctant but inevitable change of mind. Allow me to rephrase “a few of us engineers”.

tronvillain

While my point is that there is not a problem with the words evolve or adapt. There may have been misunderstanding, but I don't think the words are the real problem.

pseudobug

I see....

I think you found the reason for that above, echidna--lack of inquisitiveness. In actuality, inquisitiveness may not be the proper word. I think lack of a proclivity towards science, or certain fields of science, may be appropriate for some. For others, another field draws their interest or laziness and/or stupidity haunts them throughout their life. However, there is no problem amongst biologists with the vocabulary we use. It is so tight, in fact, that scientists all over the world have no problem understanding the meanings of our vocabulary.

The problem is that most people are lazy and think they know what someone is talking about in a field that is totally foreign to them. Those that are not lazy are, perhaps, arrogant and presume their field has "the answers"--ie your "God=designer concept"--for evolution when what they know about biology in general, and evolution in particular, could be written upon the head of a pin. This is likely a very typical attitude amongst engineers as it is, I'm quite sure, quite appealing to their egos to know that God is "one of them".

Perhaps you should have been more inquisitive in high school. Or perhaps you were following your innate proclivities towards engineering. I don't know nor do I care that much. I do know that is not uncommon to find folks such as yourself siding with the "goddidit" brigade of ID'ers and fundie thumpers.

The scientific evidence supporting evolution is-- quite simply put--overwhelming. In contrast, the evidence for a "intelligent designer" is, in fact, non-existent and untestable using the scientific method.

So, you have a choice, echidna. You can hang out here and join in on the discussions and continue your education in a different field or you can play semantic games.

My guess is that some of the very knowledgable posters here will quickly grow tired of the latter if it is your choice.