Why Evolution is True
Memes that support the Theory of Evolution
32 memes in this schema
Human Brain is "Conserved"
evolution conserves things that work. We have a conserved brain, with different ages for its different parts—in effect lizard at back and bottom, mammal in the middle, human at the front and top. Lizard brain to breathe and sleep, mammal brain to form packs, human brain to think it over
Evolutionary Origins are Not so Fanciful
If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human race.
How Can You be a Creationist Farmer?
It always seems amazing to me that evolutionists pay so little attention to this kind of thing, and that cotton growers are having to deal with these pests in the very states whose legislatures are so hostile to the theory of evolution. Because it is the evolution itself they are struggling against in their fields…
The Species Missing from Islands
Native Missing Plants Land mammals Birds Reptiles Insects and other Amphibians arthropods (e.g., spiders) Freshwater fish [...] Further, when you look at the type of insects and plants native to oceanic islands, they are from groups that are the best colonizers. Most of the insects are small, precisely those that…
"Natural" Classification of Species as Evidence for Evolution
Actually, the nested arrangement of life was recognized long before Darwin. Starting with the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in , biologists began classifying animals and plants, discovering that they consistently fell into what was called a “natural” classification. Strikingly, different biologists came up with…
Convergent Evolution in Mammals and Marsupials
The most famous example of different species filling similar roles involves the marsupial mammals, now found mainly in Australia (the Virginia opossum is a familiar exception), and placental mammals, which predominate elsewhere in the world. The two groups show important anatomical differences, most notably in their…
Evolution Remodels the Old into New
...evolutionary change, even of a major sort, nearly always involves remodeling the old into the new. The legs of land animals are variations on the stout limbs of ancestral fish. The tiny middle ear bones of mammals are remodeled jawbones of their reptilian ancestors. The wings of birds were fashioned from the legs…
Mammals Produce Useless Yolks
Vestigial genes can go hand in hand with vestigial structures. We mammals evolved from reptilian ancestors that laid eggs. With the exceptions of the “monotremes” (the order of mammals that includes the Australian spiny anteater and duck-billed platypus), mammals have dispensed with egg-laying, and mothers nourish…
Elephants Don't Need an Explanation
A great deal of the universe does not need any explanation. Elephants, for instance. Once molecules have learnt to compete and to create other molecules in their own image, elephants, and things resembling elephants, will in due course be found roaming around the countryside ... Some of the things resembling elephants…
Evolution Means God is "Meager"
The resources of the Deity cannot be so meagre, that, in order to create a human being endowed with reason, he must change a monkey into a man.
Effect of Human Brain Size on Labor and Bipedalism
The real obstetrical dilemma came long after Lucy and her colleagues became extinct, when there was a sudden upsurge in brain expansion. About 1.5 million years ago, die adult hominid brain went from the Australopithecine size of 400 cubic centimeters to 750 cubic centimeters in a species called Homo habilis, the…
Evolution Versus Engineering
What's the difference between evolution and engineering? Engineering is the designing of a whole out of parts suited to their individual purposes. Evolution is the process of tiny incremental changes, each making some small or large improvement in the ability of the thing to survive and reproduce. A good engineer…
DNA as an Archive of the Past
Each individual's genome, in any one generation, will be a sample from the species database. Different species will have different databases because of their different ancestral worlds. The database in the gene pool of camels will encode information about deserts and how to survive in them. The DNA in mole gene pools…
Skeletal Similarities in Mammals
What a piece of work is the mammalian skeleton. I don't mean it is beautiful in itself, although I think it is. I mean the fact that we can talk about 'the' mammalian skeleton at all: the fact that such a complicatedly interlocking thing is so gloriously different across the mammals, in all its parts, while…
The Idiotic Design of the Eye
Hermann von Helmholtz, the great nineteenthcentury German scientist (you could call him a physicist, but his contributions to biology and psychology were greater), said, of the eye: 'If an optician wanted to sell me an instrument which had all these defects, I should think myself quite justified in blaming his…
The laryngeal nerve's haphazard course through the body
A favourite example, ever since it was pointed out to me by Professor J. D. Currey when he tutored me as an undergraduate, is the recurrent laryngeal nerve.* It is a branch of one of the cranial nerves, those nerves that lead directly from the brain rather than from the spinal cord. One of the cranial nerves, the…
Transforming Species Through Mathematics
In 1917 the great Scottish zoologist D'Arcy Thompson wrote a book called On Growth and Form, in the last chapter of which he introduced his famous 'method of transformations'. * He would draw an animal on graph paper, and then he would distort the graph paper in a mathematically specifiable way and show that the form…
Animals Evolved onto the Land and Took the Ocean With them
If you go back far enough, everything lived in the sea - watery, salty alma mater of all life. At various points in evolutionary history, enterprising individuals from many different animal groups moved out on to the land, sometimes eventually to the most parched deserts, taking their own private sea water with them…
Antibiotics Evolve Bacteria in the Gut
New antibiotics have been coming out at frequent intervals since then, and bacteria have evolved resistance to just about every one of them. Nowadays, the most ominous example is MRSA (methycillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), which has succeeded in making many hospitals positively dangerous places to visit…
Dog Breeding and Evolution
Another familiar example is the sculpting of the wolf, Canis lupus, into the two hundred or so breeds of dog, Canis familiaris, that are recognized as separate by the UK Kennel Club, and the larger number of breeds that are genetically isolated from one another by the apartheid-like rules of pedigree breeding…
Guppies Evolve Their Spots in Experimentation
Guppies are popular freshwater aquarium fish. As with the pheasants we met in Chapter 3, the males are more brightly coloured than the females, and aquarists have bred them to become even brighter. Endler studied wild guppies (Poecilia reticulata) living in mountain streams in Trinidad, Tobago and Venezuela. He…
Missing Links Make Defining Species Possible
As we trace the ancestry of modern Homo sapiens backwards, there must come a time when the difference from living people is sufficiently great to deserve a different specific name, say Homo ergaster. Yet, every step of the way, individuals were presumably sufficiently similar to their parents and their children to be…
The Evolution of Whales from Land to Sea
Whales were long an enigma, but recently our knowledge of whale evolution has become rather rich. Molecular genetic evidence (see Chapter 10 for the nature of this kind of evidence) shows that the closest living cousins of whales are hippos, then pigs, then ruminants. Even more surprisingly, the molecular evidence…
Theory of Evolution Predicts the Existence of a Species
Both Darwin and his co-discoverer of natural selection, Wallace, called attention to an amazing orchid from Madagascar, Angraecum sesquipedale (see colour page 4), and both men made the same remarkable prediction, which was later triumphantly vindicated. This orchid has tubular nectaries that reach down more than 11…
We Recapitulate Evolution in Nine Months
Evolution sceptic: Professor Haldane, even given the billions of years that you say were available for evolution, I simply cannot believe it is possible to go from a single cell to a complicated human body, with its trillions of cells organized into bones and muscles and nerves, a heart that pumps without ceasing for…
The Waist-to-Hip Ratio
Why does the waist-to-hip ratio matter? Singh observes that a "gynoid" fat distribution—more fat on the hips, less on the torso—is necessary for the hormonal changes associated with female fertility. An "android" fat distribution-—fat on the belly, thin hips—is associated with the symptoms of male disabilities such as…
Hummingbirds are Proof of the Cost of Sex
If sex had no cost, hummingbirds would not exist. Hummingbirds eat nectar, which is produced by flowers to lure pollinating insects and birds. Nectar is a pure gift by the plant of its hard-won sugar to the hummingbird, a gift given only because the hummingbird will then carry pollen to another plant. To have sex with…
Reproduction is the Most Important Evolutionary Trait
Those strains that reproduce persist; those that do not reproduce die out. The ability to reproduce is what makes living things different from rocks. Besides, there is nothing inconsistent with free will or even chastity in this view of life. Human beings, I believe, thrive according to their ability to take…
The Immune System VS Viruses
The immune system consists of white blood cells that come in about 10 million different types. Each type has a protein lock on it called an "antibody," which corresponds to a key carried by a bacterium called an "antigen." If a key enters that lock, the white cell starts multiplying ferociously in order to produce an…
Biblical Account of Human Origins
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from…
Cancer is an Early Form of Life on Earth
The genes of cellular cooperation that evolved with multicellularity about a billion years ago are the same genes that malfunction to cause cancer. We hypothesize that cancer is an atavistic condition that occurs when genetic or epigenetic malfunction unlocks an ancient 'toolkit' of pre-existing adaptations…
Campbell's Rule of Design Through Evolution
We should think of it like this - evolutionary theory describes how design is created by the competition between replicators. Genes are one example of a replicator and memes another. The general theory of evolution must apply to both of them, but the specific details of how each replicator works may be quite…