rynner2 said:Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective...
Surely that should be Evangelical Christian perspective...
rynner2 said:Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective...
Shipping timetables debunk Darwin plagiarism accusations
http://www.nature.com/news/shipping-tim ... ons-1.9613
Evidence challenges claims that Charles Darwin stole ideas from Alfred Russel Wallace.
Philip Ball 12 December 2011
Charles Darwin was not a plagiarist, say two researchers who aim to refute the idea that Darwin revised his own theory of evolution to fit in with one proposed by fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace.
The accusation has received little support from serious historians of Darwin’s life and work, who say that Darwin and Wallace came up with the theory of evolution by natural selection independently at more or less the same time. But it has proved hard to dispel, thanks to some vociferous advocates of Wallace’s primacy.
Alfred Russel Wallace (left) and Charles Darwin (right) came up with the theory of evolution by natural selection independently at more or less the same time.
SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
In 1858, Darwin received a letter from Wallace, written on the island of Ternate in Indonesia. It included an essay in which Wallace described a theory of evolution that he had developed, which he asked Darwin to pass on to noted geologist Charles Lyell. Darwin's accusers claim that he waited two weeks to do so, lying about the date of receipt to give himself time to revise his own ideas in the light of Wallace’s.
The most extreme accusation came in a 2008 book, The Darwin Conspiracy: Origins of a Scientific Crime by Roy Davies, a former documentary-maker for the BBC. “Ideas contained in Wallace’s Ternate paper were plagiarised by Charles Darwin”, wrote Davies, who called this “a deliberate and iniquitous case of intellectual theft, deceit and lies”.
But after inspecting historical shipping records, John van Wyhe and Kees Rookmaaker, curators of the Darwin Online and Wallace Online archives, and historians of science at the National University of Singapore, claim that Wallace’s letter and essay could not in fact have arrived sooner than 18 June, the very day that Darwin wrote to Lyell that he had received it. They published their results this month in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society1.
Striking coincidence
Darwin had begun work on the text that became On the Origin of Species in the early 1840s, but had dallied over it. In his letter to Lyell, he rued his own dilatoriness. “I never saw a more striking coincidence,” he said. “If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract!”
At the urging of Lyell and botanist Joseph Hooker — but not without misgivings about whether it was honourable — Darwin wrote up his own views on evolution in a paper was presented alongside Wallace's at the Linnean Society, a biological society in London, on 1 July. On the Origin of Species was published in 1859.
To clear Darwin of the accusations against him, van Wyhe and Rookmaaker have painstakingly retraced the path of Wallace's letter from Indonesia to England. Using sailing schedules of mail boats, they indicate that the letter could not have left Ternate sooner than about 5 April 1858. It was shipped through Jakarta, Singapore and Sri Lanka, and then carried overland from Suez to Alexandria. “We found that Wallace’s essay travelled across Egypt on camels,” says van Wyhe. “It’s a rather charming image to think of this essay that will change the world swaying on the back of a camel for two days.”
The researchers say that the letter then passed by boat through Gibraltar to Southampton in England, arriving on 16 June. It was taken by train to London and arrived at Darwin’s house outside London on the morning of 18 June.
Conspiracy theory
The dispute about attribution would probably have mystified Darwin and Wallace, who remained respectful towards each other throughout their lives. And most modern researchers are dismissive of the claims. “I'm not sure there really ever has been a controversy over this within the history-of-science community,” says John Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, who has written extensively on cultural responses to evolutionary theory. He says that the claims of plagiarism “have had marginal, if any, influence — the evidence has failed to convince most readers”.
But van Wyhe says that “these conspiracy stories are very widely believed. Thousands of people have heard that something fishy happened between Darwin and Wallace. I hear these stories very often when I give popular lectures.”
James Lennox, a historian of science at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, says that although the latest work undermines the conspiracy theory, he doesn’t think it will neutralize it. “For a variety of different motives, there will, I fear, always be people who see it as their mission to attack Darwin's character as a way of undermining his remarkable scientific achievements,” he says.
Journal name:
Nature
DOI:
doi:10.1038/nature.2011.9613
References
1.Van Wyhe, J. & Rookmaaker, K. Biol. J. Linnean Soc. 105, 249–252 (2012).
rjmrjmrjm said:rynner2 said:Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective...
Surely that should be Evangelical Christian perspective...
rynner2 said:Hunting the lost Beagle
By Jeremy Grange
Producer, Hunting the Beagle
A muddy river bank in the flat, watery landscape of southern Essex may seem an unlikely place to find one of the most important ships in scientific history.
But a combination of painstaking detective work and archaeology have convinced maritime historian Dr Robert Prescott that the banks of the River Roach near the village of Paglesham are the last resting place of HMS Beagle.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7819991.stm
Lost Charles Darwin fossils rediscovered in cabinet
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16578330
The fossil plants are polished into thin, translucent sheets
Continue reading the main story
Related Stories
Island holds Darwin's best-kept secret
A "treasure trove" of fossils - including some collected by Charles Darwin - has been re-discovered in an old cabinet.
The fossils, lost for some 165 years, were found by chance in the vaults of the British Geological Survey HQ near Keyworth, UK.
They have now been photographed and are available to the public through a new online museum exhibit released today.
The find was made by the palaeontologist Dr Howard Falcon-Lang.
Dr Falcon-Lang, who is based in the department of earth sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, spotted some drawers in a cabinet marked "unregistered fossil plants".
"Inside the drawer were hundreds of beautiful glass slides made by polishing fossil plants into thin translucent sheets," Dr Falcon-Lang explained.
"This process allows them to be studied under the microscope. Almost the first slide I picked up was labelled 'C. Darwin Esq'."
The item turned out to be a piece of fossil wood collected by Darwin during his famous Voyage of the Beagle in 1834. This was the expedition on which he first started to develop his theory of evolution.
In the course of his visit to Chiloe Island, Chile, Darwin encountered "many fragments of black lignite and silicified and pyritous wood, often embedded close together".
He had these shipped back to England where they were cut and ground into thin sections.
Joseph Hooker failed to number the specimens before embarking on an expedition to the Himalayas
Joseph Hooker, a botanist and a close friend of Darwin, was responsible for assembling the "lost" collection while he briefly worked for the British Geological Survey in 1846.
The fossils became "lost" because Hooker failed to number them in the formal specimen register before setting out on an expedition to the Himalayas.
The collection was moved several times and gradually became forgotten.
Dr John Ludden, executive director of the Geological Survey said: "This is quite a remarkable discovery. It really makes one wonder what else might be hiding in our collections."
Researchers solve Darwin's copycat evolution puzzle
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17446349
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
Hoverflies are harmless but have evolved to look like wasps to avoid being eaten by birds
Related Stories
Lost Darwin fossils rediscovered
Island holds Darwin's best-kept secret
Are modern humans still evolving?
It is a clever trick if you can pull it off - mimic another, more dangerous animal and so avoid being eaten.
Many insects try it, but it has been a long standing puzzle why some of the worst mimics in Nature can still seem to escape becoming a meal.
Now, Canadian scientists tell Nature journal they can answer that one.
Larger animals, they say, make for more substantial meals, and so their mimicry needs to be spot on. For small prey, a great performance is not so essential.
"Mimicry of harmless species pretending to be dangerous ones in order to avoid being eaten is one of the best celebrated examples of the outcome of evolution by natural selection," says Professor Tom Sherratt, of Carleton University in Ottawa, who led the research.
"Good examples of mimicry are highlighted in biology text books, but many mimics are poor and their emergence remains something of a puzzle."
Mimicry is common among plants and animals.
Species of snakes, spiders and butterflies have all evolved to look like other species to ward off predators. But one of the great mysteries in biology is that most of this copy-cat behaviour is not very good, and bad impersonators seem just as abundant as the good ones.
A simplistic interpretation of Darwin's theory of natural selection would suggest that it would be better for all mimics to closely resemble the species they are trying to impersonate.
One explanation for why some might not achieve this is the "eye of the beholder" theory.
Continue reading the main story
Darwinian discord
Listen to the sound of a wasp, followed by a hoverfly trying to sound like a wasp.
Darwinian selection would suggest that over time, hoverflies that sounded most like wasps would be preferentially selected until a species emerged that sounded very nearly, if not exactly, like the creature it was trying to impersonate.
In contrast, lineages that were poor mimics would all be eaten and die out.
The new Canadian research suggests why this hasn't happened.
This states that although the mimicking species aren't convincing to humans, they do fool their predators whose senses are quite different to ours.
Darwinian selection would suggest that over time the hoverflies that sounded most like wasps would be preferentially selected until a species emerged that sounded very nearly, if not exactly, like the creature it was trying to impersonate.
In contrast, the species that were poor mimics would all be eaten and die out.
The new Canadian research suggests why this hasn't happened.
Another theory is that poor mimics are an amalgamation of unappetising species and so, although they don't resemble any one of them to a predator, they do represent the worst possible combination.
To probe the conundrum further, researchers at Carleton University studied 81 different species of hoverfly, which to varying degrees mimic bees and wasps.
Hoverflies are harmless flies and yet many have evolved a resemblance to wasps and bees to avoid being eaten by birds.
Some species of hoverfly look very close to the bees and wasps they are supposed to resemble, and other species only bear a passing resemblance.
The team began by quantifying how close each species was to the bee or wasp it was trying to impersonate.
They did this by showing photographs to people and asking them to give each species a score out of 10.
A moth that looks like a wasp. Mimicry has evolved in many animal and plant species
The team then combined these results with an objective score obtained by comparing measurements of the body parts of each species and their bee or wasp counterpart to obtain an overall score for similarity.
The scientists found that the larger the hoverfly species, the closer it resembled the emulated wasp or bee. They also found that the smaller species were not very good mimics at all.
"If you are a small hoverfly then birds are not going to be very interested in you," Prof Sherratt explained.
"You are a relatively unprofitable meal and so the selection on mimicry is relatively weak.
"All you need to do is vaguely look like a wasp, and a bird will be sufficiently deterred to leave you alone because it's just not worth taking the risk if it turned you were a wasp because the benefit is that much smaller.
"But if you are a nice fat juicy hoverfly, you are a substantial meal to a bird, and in those cases you might experience even stronger selection to resemble something like a wasp or bee and therefore gain protection from predators."
Not the father of evolution of course, but of a theory of natural selection. It's pedantic, I know, but it annoys me people think by attacking Darwin they can eradicate evolution, even though by the time of Darwin and Wallace a theory to explain the mechanism of evolution had become necessary.The father of evolution tested his theory as he sat watching plants and animals from his window
Excellent!The sound of science ..
Awesome.Excellent!
That seems a fair analogy:He wasnt the first anymore than Columbus was.
Even his grandfather Erasmus Darwin got in on the idea, one of the key things though was the amount of evidence that Darwin had collected on his voyage on The Beagle.Was Darwin first? Kind of depends
Source: The Harvard Gazette
Date: 5 March, 2020
Charles Darwin’s original edition of “On the Origin of Species” didn’t include citations, a preface, or other acknowledgement that others’ thoughts may have laid the groundwork for his famed 1859 revolutionary book on his evolutionary ideas.
Then the letters started, as William “Ned” Friedman, Arnold Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, described recently.
Within a month, a stream of correspondence began, pointing out that others had had thoughts on the topic well before 1859. They came from famed scientists and thinkers of the time such as Joseph Hooker, Charles Naudin, Baden Powell, Robert Chambers, and Herbert Spencer. He even got a letter a year before publication, from Alfred Russel Wallace, containing a manuscript that so mirrored Darwin’s ideas that it spurred his friends into action to establish the primacy of Darwin’s theories and jolted Darwin himself into a writing frenzy from which the landmark book emerged.
For the second edition of “On the Origin of Species,” Friedman said, Darwin added a preface recognizing the many authors — 37 from the U.S. and Europe — whose writings on evolution preceded his own, but even that didn’t prove enough. As Darwin’s fame grew, so did the number of those who claimed to have thought of evolution — or at least about it — years before.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/03/was-charles-darwin-first-kind-of-depends/
I find it very interesting that there are several different blood types ...
Did Darwin have any comments on blood type evolution?
Then there is the theory of evolution which is full of holes and can never be proven. It's a one off event that can never be reproduced so it cannot be classed as a science or even a theory. A valid theory is, according to science, something that can be reproduced anywhere. Evolution, it can't even be experimented on. It cannot be verified either. Yet people with many letters after their names having spent years studying this and that do so as if they are the authority and because they state evolution is a fact, many accept it just because that person said so. That is not science, it is speculation.
Kesavaross, I guess that you are not speaking of Darwin's theory of evolution here ? Because this theory comes from observation and can easily be tested (and quite successfully so). For instance, if you put a mix of diverse bacteria in a controlled environment, for instance an oxygen-less environment, only the bacteria who can survive without oxygen will survive. Therefore, after a while, the population of bacteria will have "evolved" and be composed of anaerobic bacteria. ...
Evolution. The bacteria thing you mentioned, they must have already had that potency to start with otherwise they'd all be dead, if that's the right word. (Somehow 'dead bacteria' doesn't sound right.)