Jayjay

In a certain infamous message board a creationist complained that evolutionists have deliberately dubbed the theories about star formation as "stellar evolution" to lump it together with biological evolution. As if biologists were some sort of secret society running the whole scientific community... anyway, this got me thinking, which of the uses for "evolution" (which originally meant something more generic, I suppose) was coined first; stellar or biological? Did Darwin use the word evolution? Lamarck? Since how long have astronomers talked about stellar evolution?

pz

Oh, yes. Didn't they tell you? We biologists are in charge. Darwin used the word "evolve" only once in the Origin. It had had long currency in natural history, although I don't know who used it first. The thing is, though, that the word isn't quite right. It means a progressive unfolding, and in that sense, it is actually far more appropriately used by the astronomers than the biologists!

There's no conspiracy, it's just the use of a good word that happens to be a close approximation to the phenomenon being observed -- just as photographers and botanists both use the term "blooming" without any intent to confuse.

RBH

In the fire service, "evolution" has for a looong time meant "perform a task of a particular functional kind." We do ladder evolutions, interior fire attack evolutions, ventilation evolutions, water movement evolutions, and so on. Are we doomed to Hell for that? If so, we'll REALLY be in a position to put the wet stuff on the red stuff!

RBH

Lobstrosity

Quantum mechanics has "time evolution"...damn evil evolutionists invading our quantum realm!

Minnesota

From http://www.etymonline.com/e3etym.htm

"evolve - 1641, "to unfold, open out, expand," from L. evolvere "unroll," from ex- "out" + volvere "to roll." Evolution (1622), originally "unrolling of a book," used in the modern scientific sense first by Scot. geologist Charles Lyell, 1832. Charles Darwin used the word only once, in the closing paragraph of "The Origin of Species" (1859), and preferred descent with modification, in part because evolution already had been used in the 18c. homunculus theory of embryological development, in part because it carried a sense of "progress" not found in Darwin's idea. But Victorian belief in progress prevailed (along with brevity), and Herbert Spencer and other biologists popularized evolution."

SLD

Theories of Stellar evolution came into being in the 20th century long after biological evolution.

SLD

The Lone Ranger

As pz and Minnesota have pointed out, "evolve" means (or more precisely, meant) "to unfold."

Darwin never used the term "evolution" in Origin of Species, since it suggested a fixed, inevitable and utterly predictable progression of changes over time, something that biological "evolution" definitely is not. He used the far more descriptive phrase "descent with modification."

The final paragraph of the Origin of Species reads, in part:

Here, Darwin is likening the process of "descent with modification" with the law of gravity that guides planetary movements. In other words, he's saying that, given what he has already described about the processes that cause natural selection, "descent with modification" is a predictable -- indeed, an inevitable -- result.

In this sense only is biological "evolution" an inevitable and completely predictable process, and it's telling that this is the only time that Darwin uses the term "evolve" in the Origin of Species.

***

Stellar evolution, by contrast, is completely predictable. Given a star's mass and chemical composition, it's a (relatively) simple application of physical laws to predict exactly how it will behave during its "lifetime." Accordingly, evolution is a far more applicable term for what stars do than for what populations of living organisms do.

Cheers,

Michael

Advocatus Diaboli

Where where where??? I need new creationist fodder.

Secular Pinoy

This thread gives me a feeling of deja vu...

• Is Stellar evolution a load of old bollocks?