MrDarwin

Deb, I agree with you but with a couple of caveats. First, "macroevolution" is a term that I don't see used a whole lot in biology; second, there isn't a consensus among biologists on precisely what the term means. Creationists attach much more importance to the term (and as you note have their own definition for it).

A second caveat is that the term "macroevolution" as you use it, to mean any evolution above the species level (i.e., speciation), and which is probably the most widely used definition in biology textbooks today, is a relatively recent usage. In its original sense "macroevolution" meant something more similar to how creationists use it, meaning the origin of new "kinds" (or in biological terms the origins of higher taxa like phyla, classes, etc.).

In this sense, however, "macroevolution" is very much a misnomer; since only populations can actually evolve, the origin of higher taxa is something we can only recognize long after the fact, after lineages have radiated and diverged and accumulated numerous differences, along with massive extinction to eliminate "intermediates".

ex-robot

Thanks for the links. When I see it from creationists, they/I are usually thinking of fish to amphibian, dino to bird, reptile to mammal, etc. Honestly, I see the same thing when I have seen the majority of evolutionists use the term as well. They might term it differently, but it seems to be saying the exact same thing.

xr

ex-robot

Interesting points, Mr. D. This is located at <a href="http://www.icr.org/creationscientists.html" target="_blank">http://www.icr.org/creationscientists.html</a> in their faq.

It is part of the answer to question 5.

xr

Ergaster

Well, yes, I was referring to the current usage of the term. What you said in the second paragraph is more or less what I was trying to say (although obviously not very well) when I talked about the fact that new higher taxa can only arise via speciation (evolution at the population level). I used "species" instead of "populations" simply because a) most biologists do agree that species are real units in nature, and b) species are made up of at least one population.

I also know that there are some biologists who do think that there are some kinds of sorting mechanisms at work at the species level that do not occur at populational levels, that help account for the patterns we see. Gould is one of those. See, for instance:

<a href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/21/11904?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&aut hor1=Gould+sj&searchid=1017852808958_5382&stored_s earch=&FIRSTINDEX=0" target="_blank">Individuality and adaptation across levels of selection: How shall we name and generalize the unit of Darwinism?</a>

But yeah, it should be emphasized that the term is NOT used in the dichotomous sense in biology the way it is used by creationists, and that we should not accept their characterization of it. They really do seem to have difficulty with the notion that large-scale patterns can emerge from normal evolutionary processes.

Deb

[Edited by Oolon for formatting]

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