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Author: Mark Ridley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
Is evolution true? If so, what is the force that drives it? Can natural selection account for so complex an organ as the eye--or is Darwin's theory merely what an eminent nineteenth-century astronomer call 'the law of higgledy-piggledy'? Is molecular evolution a random process? What is the real relationship between the theory of evolution and biological classification? Why do living things appear to come to recognizable units called species, and how can one species split into two? Does evolution proceed gradually, or in jerks? What causes the grand patterns of change in the fossil record?
Author: Mark Ridley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
Is evolution true? If so, what is the force that drives it? Can natural selection account for so complex an organ as the eye--or is Darwin's theory merely what an eminent nineteenth-century astronomer call 'the law of higgledy-piggledy'? Is molecular evolution a random process? What is the real relationship between the theory of evolution and biological classification? Why do living things appear to come to recognizable units called species, and how can one species split into two? Does evolution proceed gradually, or in jerks? What causes the grand patterns of change in the fossil record?
Author: Jonathan Wells
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 159698533X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
Everything you were taught about evolution is wrong.
Author: Brian Charlesworth
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198804369
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169
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Book Description
This text is about the central role of evolution in shaping the nature and diversity of the living world. It describes the processes of natural selection, how adaptations arise, and how new species form, as well as summarizing the evidence for evolution
Author: Karl S. Rosengren
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199909180
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 487
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Book Description
A recent poll revealed that one in four Americans believe in both creationism and evolution, while another 41% believe that creationism is true and evolution is false. A minority (only 13%) believe only in evolution. Given the widespread resistance to the idea that humans and other animals have evolved and given the attention to the ongoing debate of what should be taught in public schools, issues related to the teaching and learning of evolution are quite timely. Evolution Challenges: Integrating Research and Practice in Teaching and Learning about Evolution goes beyond the science versus religion dispute to ask why evolution is so often rejected as a legitimate scientific fact, focusing on a wide range of cognitive, socio-cultural, and motivational factors that make concepts such as evolution difficult to grasp. The volume brings together researchers with diverse backgrounds in cognitive development and education to examine children's and adults' thinking, learning, and motivation, and how aspects of representational and symbolic knowledge influence learning about evolution. The book is organized around three main challenges inherent in teaching and learning evolutionary concepts: folk theories and conceptual biases, motivational and epistemological biases, and educational aspects in both formal and informal settings. Commentaries across the three main themes tie the book together thematically, and contributors provide ideas for future research and methods for improving the manner in which evolutionary concepts are conveyed in the classroom and in informal learning experiences. Evolution Challenges is a unique text that extends far beyond the traditional evolution debate and is an invaluable resource to researchers in cognitive development, science education and the philosophy of science, science teachers, and exhibit and curriculum developers.
Author: David J. Depew
Publisher: Bradford Books
ISBN: 9780262540834
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 588
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Book Description
Darwinism Evolving examines the Darwinian research tradition in evolutionary biology from its inception to its turbulent present, arguing that recent advances in modeling the nonlinear dynamics of complex systems may well catalyze the next major phase of Darwinian evolutionism. While Darwinism has successfully resisted reduction to physics, the authors point out that it has from the outset developed and applied its core explanatory concept, natural selection, by borrowing models from dynamics, a branch of physics. The recent development of complex systems dynamics may afford Darwinism yet another occasion to expand its explanatory power. Darwinism's use of dynamical models has received insufficient attention from biologists, historians, and philosophers who have concentrated instead on how evolutionary biology has maintained its autonomy from physics. Yet, as Depew and Weber observe, it is only by recovering Darwin's own relationship to Newtonian models of systems dynamics, and genetical Darwinism's relationship to statistical mechanics and probability theory, that insight can be gained into how Darwinism can successfully meet the challenges it is currently facing. Drawing on recent scholarship in the history of biology, Depew and Weber bring the dynamical perspective to bear on a number of important episodes in the history of the Darwinian research tradition: Darwin's "Newtonian" Darwinism, the rise of "developmentalist" evolutionary theories and the eclipse of Darwinism at the turn of the century, Darwinism's struggles to incorporate genetics, its eventual regeneration in the modern evolutionary synthesis, challenges to that synthesis that have been posed in recent decades by molecular genetics, and recent proposals for meeting those challenges. A Bradford Book
Author: Jeremy DeSilva
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069119114X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
"In 1859, Charles Darwin proposed a mechanism for biological evolution in his most famous work, On the Origin of Species. However, Origin makes little mention of humans. Despite this, Darwin thought deeply about humans and in 1871 published The Descent of Man, his influential and controversial book in which he applied evolutionary theory to humans and detailed his theory of sexual selection. February 2021 will mark the 150th anniversay of its publication. In [this book], twelve leading anthropologists, biologists, and journalists revisit The Descent. Following the same organization as the first edition of Descent --less the large section on sexual selection--each author reviews what Darwin wrote in Descent, comparing his words to what we now know"--
Author: Michael J. Behe
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062842684
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
The scientist who has been dubbed the “Father of Intelligent Design” and author of the groundbreaking book Darwin’s Black Box contends that recent scientific discoveries further disprove Darwinism and strengthen the case for an intelligent creator. In his controversial bestseller Darwin’s Black Box, biochemist Michael Behe challenged Darwin’s theory of evolution, arguing that science itself has proven that intelligent design is a better explanation for the origin of life. In Darwin Devolves, Behe advances his argument, presenting new research that offers a startling reconsideration of how Darwin’s mechanism works, weakening the theory’s validity even more. A system of natural selection acting on random mutation, evolution can help make something look and act differently. But evolution never creates something organically. Behe contends that Darwinism actually works by a process of devolution—damaging cells in DNA in order to create something new at the lowest biological levels. This is important, he makes clear, because it shows the Darwinian process cannot explain the creation of life itself. “A process that so easily tears down sophisticated machinery is not one which will build complex, functional systems,” he writes. In addition to disputing the methodology of Darwinism and how it conflicts with the concept of creation, Behe reveals that what makes Intelligent Design unique—and right—is that it acknowledges causation. Evolution proposes that organisms living today are descended with modification from organisms that lived in the distant past. But Intelligent Design goes a step further asking, what caused such astounding changes to take place? What is the reason or mechanism for evolution? For Behe, this is what makes Intelligent Design so important.
Author: Grant Ramsey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022640191X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
This illuminating volume explores the effects of chance on evolution, covering diverse perspectives from scientists, philosophers, and historians. The evolution of species, from single-celled organisms to multicellular animals and plants, is the result of a long and highly chancy history. But how profoundly has chance shaped life on earth? And what, precisely, do we mean by chance? Bringing together biologists, philosophers of science, and historians of science, Chance in Evolution is the first book to untangle the far-reaching effects of chance, contingency, and randomness on the evolution of life. The book begins by placing chance in historical context, starting with the ancients and moving through Darwin to contemporary biology. It documents the shifts in our understanding of chance as Darwin’s theory of evolution developed into the modern synthesis, and how the acceptance of chance in Darwinian theory affected theological resistance to it. Other chapters discuss how chance relates to the concepts of genetic drift, mutation, and parallel evolution—as well as recent work in paleobiology and the experimental evolution of microbes. By engaging in collaboration across biology, history, philosophy, and theology, this book offers a comprehensive overview both of the history of chance in evolution and of our current understanding of the impact of chance on life.
Author: Cornelius G. Hunter
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532688571
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
"Cornelius Hunter brilliantly supports his thesis that Darwinism is a mixture of metaphysical dogma and biased scientific observation, that at its core, evolution is about God, not science."--Phillip E. Johnson, author, Darwin on Trial"Biophysicist Cornelius Hunter argues perceptively that the main supporting pole of the Darwinian tent has always been a theological assertion: 'God wouldn't have done it that way.' Rather than demonstrating that evolution is capable of the wonders they attribute to it, Darwinists rely on a man-made version of God to argue that He never would have made life with the particular suite of features we observe. In lucid and engaging prose, Hunter shines a light on Darwinian theology, making plain what is too often obscured by technical jargon."--Michael J. Behe, Lehigh University"This wonderfully insightful book will prove pivotal in the current reassessment of Darwinian evolution. Darwinists argue that evolution has to be true because no self-respecting deity would have created life the way we find it. Hunter unmasks this theological mode of argumentation and argues convincingly that it is not merely incidental but indeed essential to how Darwinists justify evolution."--William A. Dembski, Baylor University"A fascinating study of a much overlooked aspect of the origins controversy."--Stephen C. Meyer, Whitworth College
Author: Jerry Fodor
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847651909
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 114
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Book Description
Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, a distinguished philosopher and scientist working in tandem, reveal major flaws at the heart of Darwinian evolutionary theory. They do not deny Darwin's status as an outstanding scientist but question the inferences he drew from his observations. Combining the results of cutting-edge work in experimental biology with crystal-clear philosophical argument they mount a devastating critique of the central tenets of Darwin's account of the origin of species. The logic underlying natural selection is the survival of the fittest under changing environmental pressure. This logic, they argue, is mistaken. They back up the claim with evidence of what actually happens in nature. This is a rare achievement - the short book that is likely to make a great deal of difference to a very large subject. What Darwin Got Wrong will be controversial. The authors' arguments will reverberate through the scientific world. At the very least they will transform the debate about evolution.
