Theory on evolution. Evolution theory. General characteristics of evidence for the evolution of the organic world
The only author from whom the idea of a gradual change of organisms can be found was Plato. In his dialogue "The State" he put forward the infamous proposal: to improve the breed of people by selecting the best representatives. Without a doubt, this proposal was based on the well-known fact of the selection of producers in animal husbandry. In the modern era, the unwarranted application of these ideas to human society has developed into the doctrine of eugenics, which underlies the racial politics of the Third Reich.
Medieval and Renaissance
With level rise scientific knowledge after the "ages of darkness" of the early Middle Ages, evolutionary ideas again begin to slip in the writings of scientists, theologians and philosophers. Albert the Great first noted the spontaneous variability of plants, leading to the emergence of new species. The examples once given by Theophrastus he characterized as transmutation one kind to another. The term itself was apparently taken by him from alchemy. In the 16th century, fossil organisms were rediscovered, but only by the end of the 17th century did the idea that this was not a “game of nature”, not stones in the form of bones or shells, but the remains of ancient animals and plants, finally captured the minds. In the work of the year "Noah's Ark, Its Shape and Capacity", Johann Buteo gave calculations that showed that the ark could not contain all kinds of known animals. In the year Bernard Palissy arranged an exhibition of fossils in Paris, where he first compared them with living ones. In the year he published in print the idea that since everything in nature is "in eternal transmutation", many fossil remains of fish and mollusks belong to extinct types.
Evolutionary ideas of modern times
As we can see, the matter did not go beyond the expression of disparate ideas about the variability of species. This same trend continued with the advent of the New Age. So Francis Bacon, the politician and philosopher, suggested that species could change, accumulating the "errors of nature". This thesis again, as in the case of Empedocles, echoes the principle of natural selection, but there is not yet a word about the general theory. Oddly enough, but the first book on evolution can be considered a treatise by Matthew Hale (Eng. Matthew Hale) "The Primitive Origination of Mankind Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature". This may seem strange just because Hale himself was not a naturalist and even a philosopher, he was a lawyer, theologian and financier, and wrote his treatise during a forced vacation on his estate. In it, he wrote that one should not assume that all species were created in their modern form, on the contrary, only archetypes were created, and all the diversity of life developed from them under the influence of numerous circumstances. Hale also anticipates many of the controversies about chance that have arisen since the establishment of Darwinism. In the same treatise, the term "evolution" in the biological sense is mentioned for the first time.
Ideas of limited evolutionism like those of Hale arose constantly, and can be found in the writings of John Ray, Robert Hooke, Gottfried Leibniz, and even in the later work of Carl Linnaeus. They are expressed more clearly by Georges Louis Buffon. Observing the precipitation from the water, he came to the conclusion that 6 thousand years, which were assigned to the history of the Earth by natural theology, are not enough for the formation of sedimentary rocks. The age of the Earth calculated by Buffon was 75 thousand years. Describing the species of animals and plants, Buffon noted that along with useful features, they also have those to which it is impossible to attribute any utility. This again contradicted natural theology, which held that every hair on an animal's body was created for its benefit, or for man's benefit. Buffon came to the conclusion that this contradiction can be eliminated by accepting the creation of only a general plan, which varies in specific incarnations. Having applied Leibniz's "law of continuity" to taxonomy, he spoke out in a year against the existence of discrete species, considering species to be the fruit of the fantasy of taxonomists (this can be seen as the origins of his ongoing polemic with Linnaeus and the antipathy of these scientists to each other).
Lamarck's theory
The move to combine transformist and systematic approaches was made by the naturalist and philosopher Jean Baptiste Lamarck. As a proponent of species change and a deist, he recognized the Creator and believed that the Supreme Creator created only matter and nature; all other inanimate and living objects arose from matter under the influence of nature. Lamarck emphasized that "all living bodies come from one another, and not by successive development from previous embryos." Thus, he opposed the concept of preformism as autogenetic, and his follower Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844) defended the idea of the unity of the body plan of animals of various types. Lamarck's evolutionary ideas are most fully set forth in the Philosophy of Zoology (1809), although Lamarck formulated many of his evolutionary theory in introductory lectures to the course of zoology as early as 1800-1802. Lamarck believed that the steps of evolution do not lie in a straight line, as follows from the "ladder of beings" of the Swiss natural philosopher C. Bonnet, but have many branches and deviations at the level of species and genera. This performance set the stage for future family trees. Lamarck proposed the very term "biology" in its modern sense. However, the zoological works of Lamarck, the creator of the first evolutionary doctrine, contained many factual inaccuracies and speculative constructions, which is especially evident when comparing his works with the works of his contemporary, rival and critic, the creator of comparative anatomy and paleontology, Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Lamarck believed that the driving factor of evolution could be the "exercise" or "non-exercise" of the organs, depending on the adequate direct influence of the environment. A certain naivety of Lamarck's and Saint-Hilaire's arguments contributed greatly to the anti-evolutionary reaction to the transformism of the early 19th century, and provoked criticism from the creationist Georges Cuvier and his school, absolutely reasoned from the factual side of the issue.
catastrophism and transformism
Cuvier's ideal was Linnaeus. Cuvier divided animals into four "branches", each of which is characterized by a common body plan. For these "branches", his follower A. Blainville proposed the concept of type, which fully corresponded to the "branches" of Cuvier. A phylum is not just the highest taxon in the animal kingdom. There are no and cannot be transitional forms between the four distinguished types of animals. All animals belonging to the same type are characterized by a common structural plan. This most important position of Cuvier is extremely significant even today. Although the number of types has significantly exceeded the figure 4, all biologists who speak about the type proceed from the fundamental idea that gives a lot of trouble to the propagandists of gradualism (gradualism) in evolution - the idea of the isolation of the plans of the structure of each of the types. Cuvier fully accepted the Linnaean hierarchy of the system and built his system in the form of a branching tree. But it was not a genealogical tree, but a tree of similarity of organisms. As rightly noted by A.A. Borisyak, "having built a system on ... a comprehensive account of the similarities and differences of organisms, he thereby opened the door for the evolutionary doctrine against which he fought." Cuvier's system was apparently the first system of organic nature in which modern forms were considered side by side with fossils. Cuvier is rightfully considered a significant figure in the development of paleontology, biostratigraphy and historical geology as sciences. Theoretical basis to highlight the boundaries between the layers was Cuvier's idea of the catastrophic extinctions of fauna and flora at the boundaries of periods and epochs. He also developed the doctrine of correlations (italics by N.N. Vorontsova), thanks to which he restored the appearance of the skull as a whole, the skeleton as a whole, and, finally, gave a reconstruction of the external appearance of a fossil animal. His contribution to stratigraphy, together with Cuvier, was made by his French colleague paleontologist and geologist A. Brongniard (1770-1847), and, independently of them, by the English surveyor and mining engineer William Smith (1769-1839). The term of the doctrine of the form of organisms - morphology - was introduced into the biological science of Goethe, and the doctrine itself arose at the end of the 18th century. For the creationists of that time, the concept of the unity of the structural plan meant a search for the similarity, but not the relationship, of organisms. The task of comparative anatomy was seen as an attempt to understand according to what plan the Supreme Being created all the variety of animals that we observe on Earth. Evolutionary classics call this period of development of biology "idealistic morphology". This trend was also developed by an opponent of transformism, the English anatomist and paleontologist Richard Owen (1804-1892). By the way, it was he who proposed to apply the now known analogy or homology to structures that perform similar functions, depending on whether the compared animals belong to the same structural plan, or to different ones (to the same type of animal or to different types).
Evolutionists - contemporaries of Darwin
The English arborist Patrick Matthew (1790-1874) in 1831 published a monograph "Ship timber and tree planting". The phenomenon of uneven growth of trees of the same age, the selective death of some and the survival of others have long been known to foresters. Matthew suggested that selection not only ensures the survival of the fittest trees, but can also lead to changes in species in the course of historical development. Thus, the struggle for existence and natural selection were known to him. At the same time, he believed that the acceleration of the evolutionary process depends on the will of the organism (Lamarckism). The principle of the struggle for existence coexisted with Matthew with the recognition of the existence of catastrophes: after revolutions, a few primitive forms survive; in the absence of competition after the revolution, the evolutionary process proceeds rapidly. Matthew's evolutionary ideas went unnoticed for three decades. But in 1868, after the publication of On the Origin of Species, he published his evolutionary pages. After that, Darwin got acquainted with the works of his predecessor and noted the merits of Matthew in a historical review of the 3rd edition of his work.
Charles Lyell (1797-1875) is a major figure of his time. He brought back to life the concept of actualism (“Basic Principles of Geology”, 1830-1833), which comes from ancient authors, as well as from such significant personalities in human history as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Lomonosov (1711-1765), James Hutton (England, Hutton, 1726-1797) and, finally, Lamarck. Lyell's acceptance of the concept of knowing the past through the study of the present meant the creation of the first integral theory of the evolution of the face of the Earth. The English philosopher and historian of science William Whewell (1794-1866) in 1832 put forward the term uniformitarianism in relation to the assessment of Lyell's theory. Lyell spoke of the invariability of the action of geological factors in time. Uniformism was the complete antithesis of Cuvier's catastrophism. “Lyell's teaching now prevails just as much,” wrote the anthropologist and evolutionist I. Ranke, “as Cuvier's teaching once dominated. At the same time, it is often forgotten that the doctrine of catastrophes could hardly have given a satisfactory schematic explanation of geological facts for so long in the eyes of the best researchers and thinkers, if it had not been based on a certain amount of positive observations. Here, too, the truth lies between the extremes of theory. As modern biologists admit, “Cuvier's catastrophism was a necessary stage in the development of historical geology and paleontology. Without catastrophism, the development of biostratigraphy would hardly have gone so fast.”
The Scotsman Robert Chambers (1802-1871), a book publisher and popularizer of science, published in London Traces of the Natural History of Creation (1844), in which he anonymously propagated the ideas of Lamarck, talked about the duration of the evolutionary process and about evolutionary development from simply organized ancestors to more complex forms . The book was designed for a wide readership and over 10 years it went through 10 editions with a circulation of at least 15 thousand copies (which in itself is impressive for that time). Controversy erupted around the book by an anonymous author. Always very restrained and cautious, Darwin stood aloof from the discussion that unfolded in England, but he carefully watched how criticism of particular inaccuracies turned into a criticism of the very idea of \u200b\u200bvariability of species, so as not to repeat such errors. Chambers, after the publication of Darwin's book, immediately joined the ranks of supporters of the new doctrine.
In the 20th century, they remembered Edward Blyth (1810-1873), an English zoologist and explorer of the Australian fauna. In 1835 and 1837 he published two articles in the English Journal of Natural History in which he said that in conditions of fierce competition and a lack of resources, only the strongest had chances to leave offspring.
Thus, even before the publication of the famous work, the whole course of the development of natural science had already prepared the ground for the perception of the doctrine of the variability of species and selection.
Proceedings of Darwin
A new stage in the development of evolutionary theory came in 1859 as a result of the publication of Charles Darwin's seminal work The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favorable Races in the Struggle for Life. According to Darwin, the main driving force behind evolution is natural selection. Selection, acting on individuals, allows those organisms that are better adapted to life in a given environment to survive and leave offspring. The action of selection leads to the breakup of species into parts - daughter species, which, in turn, diverge over time to genera, families, and all larger taxa.
With his usual honesty, Darwin pointed out those who had directly pushed him to write and publish the doctrine of evolution (apparently, Darwin was not too interested in the history of science, since in the first edition of On the Origin of Species he did not mention his immediate predecessors: Wells, Matthew, Blite). Lyell and, to a lesser extent, Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) had a direct influence on Darwin in the process of creating the work, with his geometric progression of numbers from the demographic work An Essay on the Law of Population (1798). And, it can be said, Darwin was "forced" to publish his work by a young English zoologist and biogeographer Alfred Wallace (1823-1913), sending him a manuscript in which, independently of Darwin, he sets out the ideas of the theory of natural selection. At the same time, Wallace knew that Darwin was working on evolutionary doctrine, for the latter himself wrote to him about this in a letter dated May 1, 1857: “This summer it will be 20 years (!) Since I started my first notebook on the question of how and in what way species and varieties differ from each other. Now I am preparing my work for publication... but I do not intend to publish it earlier than in two years... Indeed, it is impossible (in the framework of a letter) to state my views on the causes and methods of changes in the state of nature; but step by step I came to a clear and distinct idea - true or false, this must be judged by others; because, alas! - the most unshakable confidence of the author of the theory that he is right is in no way a guarantee of its truth! Darwin's sanity can be seen here, as well as the gentlemanly attitude of the two scientists towards each other, which is clearly seen when analyzing the correspondence between them. Darwin, having received the article on June 18, 1858, wanted to submit it to the press, keeping silent about his work, and only at the insistence of his friends wrote a “brief extract” from his work and presented these two works to the judgment of the Linnean Society.
Darwin fully accepted the idea of gradual development from Lyell and, one might say, was a uniformitarian. The question may arise: if everything was known before Darwin, then what is his merit, why did his work cause such a resonance? But Darwin did what his predecessors failed to do. First, he gave his work a very topical title that was "on everyone's lips." The public had a burning interest precisely in "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life." It is difficult to recall another book in the history of world natural science, the title of which would equally clearly reflect its essence. Perhaps Darwin had seen the title pages or the titles of his predecessors' works, but simply had no desire to get acquainted with them. We can only guess how the public would have reacted if Matthew had thought to release his evolutionary views under the title "The possibility of plant species changing over time through survival (selection) of the fittest." But, as we know, "The ship's construction timber ..." did not attract attention.
Secondly, and most importantly, Darwin was able to explain to his contemporaries the reasons for the variability of species on the basis of his observations. He rejected as untenable the notion of "exercise" or "non-exercise" of organs and turned to the facts of breeding new breeds of animals and plant varieties by people - to artificial selection. He showed that the indefinite variability of organisms (mutations) is inherited and can become the beginning of a new breed or variety, if it is useful to man. Transferring these data to wild species, Darwin noted that only those changes that are beneficial to the species for successful competition with others can be preserved in nature, and spoke of the struggle for existence and natural selection, to which he attributed an important, but not the only role of the driving force of evolution. Darwin not only gave theoretical calculations of natural selection, but also showed on the basis of actual material the evolution of species in space, with geographic isolation (finches) and, from the standpoint of strict logic, explained the mechanisms of divergent evolution. He also introduced the public to the fossil forms of giant sloths and armadillos, which could be seen as evolution over time. Darwin also allowed for the possibility of long-term preservation of a certain average species norm in the process of evolution by eliminating any deviant variants (for example, sparrows that survived after a storm had an average wing length), which was later called stasigenesis. Darwin was able to prove to everyone the reality of the variability of species in nature, therefore, thanks to his work, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe strict constancy of species came to naught. It was pointless for the statics and fixists to continue to persist in their positions.
Development of Darwin's ideas
As a true follower of gradualism, Darwin was concerned that the absence of transitional forms could be the collapse of his theory, and attributed this lack to the incompleteness of the geological record. Darwin was also worried about the idea of "dissolving" a newly acquired trait in a number of generations, with subsequent crossing with ordinary, unaltered individuals. He wrote that this objection, along with breaks in the geological record, is one of the most serious for his theory.
Darwin and his contemporaries did not know that in 1865 the Austro-Czech naturalist abbot Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) discovered the laws of heredity, according to which the hereditary trait does not “dissolve” in a number of generations, but passes (in case of recessiveness) into a heterozygous state and can be propagated in a population environment.
In support of Darwin, scientists such as the American botanist Aza Gray (1810-1888) began to come out; Alfred Wallace, Thomas Henry Huxley (Huxley; 1825-1895) - in England; the classic of comparative anatomy Karl Gegenbaur (1826-1903), Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), zoologist Fritz Müller (1821-1897) - in Germany. No less distinguished scientists criticize Darwin's ideas: Darwin's teacher, professor of geology Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873), the famous paleontologist Richard Owen, a major zoologist, paleontologist and geologist Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), German professor Heinrich Georg Bronn (1800-1873). 1862).
An interesting fact is that it was Bronn who translated Darwin’s book into German, who did not share his views, but who believes that the new idea has the right to exist (modern evolutionist and popularizer N.N. Vorontsov pays tribute to Bronn in this as a true scientist). Considering the views of another opponent of Darwin - Agassiz, we note that this scientist spoke about the importance of combining the methods of embryology, anatomy and paleontology to determine the position of a species or other taxon in the classification scheme. In this way, the species gets its place in the natural order of the universe. It was curious to know that Haeckel, an ardent supporter of Darwin, widely promotes the triad postulated by Agassiz, the “method of triple parallelism” already applied to the idea of kinship, and it, warmed up by Haeckel’s personal enthusiasm, captures contemporaries. All zoologists, anatomists, embryologists, and paleontologists who are anything like serious begin to build entire forests of phylogenetic trees. With the light hand of Haeckel, it spreads as the only possible idea of monophyly - origin from one ancestor, which reigned supreme over the minds of scientists in the middle of the 20th century. Modern evolutionists, based on the study of the method of reproduction of the Rhodophycea algae, which is different from all other eukaryotes (fixed and male and female gametes, the absence of a cell center and any flagellar formations), speak of at least two independently formed ancestors of plants. At the same time, they found out that “The emergence of the mitotic apparatus occurred independently at least twice: in the ancestors of the kingdoms of fungi and animals, on the one hand, and in the sub-kingdoms of true algae (except for Rhodophycea) and higher plants, on the other” (exact quote, p. 319) . Thus, the origin of life is recognized not from one proto-organism, but at least from three. In any case, it is noted that already “no other scheme, like the proposed one, can turn out to be monophyletic” (ibid.). The theory of symbiogenesis, which explains the appearance of lichens (combination of algae and fungus) also led scientists to polyphyly (origin from several unrelated organisms) (p. 318). And this is the most important achievement of the theory. In addition, recent research suggests that they are finding more and more examples showing "the prevalence of paraphilia and in the origin of relatively closely related taxa." For example, in the “subfamily of African tree mice Dendromurinae: the genus Deomys is molecularly close to the true Murinae mice, and the genus Steatomys is close in DNA structure to the giant mice of the subfamily Cricetomyinae. At the same time, the morphological similarity of Deomys and Steatomys is undoubted, which indicates the paraphyletic origin of Dendromurinae. Therefore, the phylogenetic classification needs to be revised, based not only on external similarity, but also on the structure of the genetic material (p. 376). The experimental biologist and theorist August Weismann (1834-1914) spoke in a fairly clear form about the cell nucleus as the carrier of heredity. Regardless of Mendel, he came to the most important conclusion about the discreteness of hereditary units. Mendel was so ahead of his time that his work remained virtually unknown for 35 years. Weismann's ideas (sometime after 1863) became the property of a wide range of biologists, a subject for discussion. The most fascinating pages of the origin of the doctrine of chromosomes, the emergence of cytogenetics, the creation of T.G. Morgan of the chromosome theory of heredity in 1912-1916. – all this was strongly stimulated by August Weismann. Investigating the embryonic development of sea urchins, he proposed to distinguish between two forms of cell division - equatorial and reduction, i.e. approached the discovery of meiosis - the most important stage of combinative variability and the sexual process. But Weisman could not avoid some speculation in his ideas about the mechanism of heredity transmission. He thought that the entire set of discrete factors - "determinants" - have only cells of the so-called. "germ line". Some determinants get into some of the cells of the "soma" (body), others - others. Differences in the sets of determinants explain the specialization of soma cells. So, we see that, having correctly predicted the existence of meiosis, Weismann was mistaken in predicting the fate of the distribution of genes. He also extended the principle of selection to competition between cells, and since cells are carriers of certain determinants, he spoke of their struggle with each other. The most modern concepts of "selfish DNA", "selfish gene", developed at the turn of the 70s and 80s. 20th century in many respects have something in common with the Weismann competition of determinants. Weisman emphasized that the "germ plasm" is isolated from the cells of the soma of the whole organism, and therefore spoke of the impossibility of inheriting the characteristics acquired by the body (soma) under the influence of the environment. But many Darwinists accepted this idea of Lamarck. Weisman's harsh criticism of this concept caused a negative attitude towards him and his theory, and then to the study of chromosomes in general, from orthodox Darwinists (those who recognized selection as the only factor in evolution).
The rediscovery of Mendel's laws took place in 1900 in three different countries: Holland (Hugo de Vries 1848-1935), Germany (Karl Erich Correns 1864-1933) and Austria (Erich von Tschermak 1871-1962), which simultaneously discovered Mendel's forgotten work. In 1902, Walter Sutton (Seton, 1876-1916) gave a cytological justification for Mendelism: diploid and haploid sets, homologous chromosomes, the conjugation process during meiosis, the prediction of the linkage of genes located on the same chromosome, the concept of dominance and recessiveness, as well as allelic genes - all this was demonstrated on cytological preparations, based on the exact calculations of Mendeleev's algebra, and very different from hypothetical family trees, from the style of naturalistic Darwinism of the 19th century. The mutational theory of de Vries (1901-1903) was not accepted not only by the conservatism of orthodox Darwinists, but also by the fact that on other plant species, researchers were unable to obtain the wide range of variability achieved by him on Oenothera lamarkiana (it is now known that evening primrose is a polymorphic species , which has chromosomal translocations, some of which are heterozygous, while homozygotes are lethal.De Vries chose a very successful object for obtaining mutations and at the same time not entirely successful, since in his case it was necessary to extend the results achieved to other plant species). De Vries and his Russian predecessor, the botanist Sergei Ivanovich Korzhinsky (1861-1900), who wrote in 1899 (Petersburg) about sudden spasmodic "heterogeneous" deviations, thought that the possibility of the manifestation of macromutations rejected Darwin's theory. At the dawn of the formation of genetics, many concepts were expressed, according to which evolution did not depend on the external environment. The Dutch botanist Jan Paulus Lotsi (1867-1931), who wrote the book Evolution by Hybridization, also came under criticism from the Darwinists, where he rightly drew attention to the role of hybridization in plant speciation.
If in the middle of the 18th century the contradiction between transformism (continuous change) and the discreteness of taxonomic units of taxonomy seemed insurmountable, then in the 19th century it was thought that gradualistic trees built on the basis of kinship came into conflict with the discreteness of hereditary material. Evolution by visually distinguishable large mutations could not be accepted by the gradualism of the Darwinists.
Trust in mutations and their role in shaping the variability of a species was restored by Thomas Gent Morgan (1886-1945) when this American embryologist and zoologist turned to genetic research in 1910 and eventually settled on the famous Drosophila. Probably, one should not be surprised that 20-30 years after the events described, it was population geneticists who came to evolution not through macromutations (which began to be recognized as unlikely), but through a steady and gradual change in the frequencies of allelic genes in populations. Since macroevolution by that time seemed to be an indisputable continuation of the studied phenomena of microevolution, gradualness began to seem an inseparable feature of the evolutionary process. There was a return to Leibniz's "law of continuity" at a new level, and in the first half of the 20th century a synthesis of evolution and genetics could take place. Once again, once-opposite concepts have united. (names, conclusions of evolutionists and chronology of events are taken from Nikolay Nikolaevich Vorontsov, "Development of evolutionary ideas in biology, 1999)
Recall that in the light of the latest biological ideas put forward from the positions of materialism, now again there is a distance from the law of continuity, now not genetics, but the evolutionists themselves. The famous S.J. Gould raised the issue of punctualism (punctuated equilibrium), as opposed to generally accepted gradualism, in order to explain the reasons for the already obvious picture of the absence of transitional forms among fossils, i.e. the impossibility of building a truly continuous line of kinship from the origins to the present. There is always a break in the geological record.
Modern theories of biological evolution
Synthetic theory of evolution
The synthetic theory in its current form was formed as a result of rethinking a number of provisions of classical Darwinism from the standpoint of genetics at the beginning of the 20th century. After the rediscovery of Mendel's laws (in 1901), the evidence of the discrete nature of heredity, and especially after the creation of theoretical population genetics by the works of R. Fisher (-), J. B. S. Haldane, Jr. (), S. Wright ( ; ), the teaching Darwin acquired a solid genetic foundation.
Neutral theory of molecular evolution
The theory of neutral evolution does not dispute the decisive role of natural selection in the development of life on Earth. The discussion is about the proportion of mutations that have an adaptive value. Most biologists accept a number of results of the theory of neutral evolution, although they do not share some of the strong statements originally made by M. Kimura.
Epigenetic theory of evolution
The main provisions of the epigenetic theory of evolution were formulated in the th year by M. A. Shishkin on the basis of the ideas of I. I. Schmalhausen and K. H. Waddington. As the main substrate of natural selection, the theory considers a holistic phenotype, and selection not only fixes beneficial changes, but also takes part in their creation. The fundamental influence on heredity is exerted not by the genome, but by the epigenetic system (ES) - a set of factors affecting ontogenesis. From ancestors to descendants, the general organization of ES is transmitted, which forms the organism in the course of its individual development, and selection leads to the stabilization of a number of successive ontogenies, eliminating deviations from the norm (morphoses) and forming a stable development trajectory (creod). Evolution, according to ETE, consists in the transformation of one creod into another under the perturbing influence of the environment. In response to the perturbation, the ES destabilizes, as a result of which the development of organisms along deviating paths of development becomes possible, and multiple morphoses arise. Some of these morphoses receive a selective advantage, and over the course of subsequent generations, their ES develops a new stable development trajectory, a new creod is formed.
Ecosystem theory of evolution
This term is understood as a system of ideas and approaches to the study of evolution, focusing on the features and patterns of evolution of ecosystems at various levels - biocenoses, biomes and the biosphere as a whole, and not taxa (species, families, classes, etc.). The provisions of the ecosystem theory of evolution are based on two postulates:
- Naturalness and discreteness of ecosystems. An ecosystem is a real-life (and not isolated for the convenience of the researcher) object, which is a system of interacting biological and non-biological (eg soil, water) objects territorially and functionally delimited from other similar objects. The boundaries between ecosystems are clear enough to speak about the independent evolution of neighboring objects.
- The decisive role of ecosystem interactions in determining the rate and direction of population evolution. Evolution is seen as a process of creating and filling ecological niches or licenses.
The ecosystem theory of evolution operates with such terms as coherent and incoherent evolution, ecosystem crises of various levels. The modern ecosystem theory of evolution is based mainly on the works of Soviet and Russian evolutionists: V. A. Krasilov, S. M. Razumovsky, A. G. Ponomarenko, V. V. Zherikhin and others.
Evolutionary doctrine and religion
Although in modern biology there are many unclear questions about the mechanisms of evolution, the vast majority of biologists do not doubt the existence biological evolution as a phenomenon. However, some believers of a number of religions find some provisions of evolutionary biology contrary to their religious beliefs, in particular, the dogma of the creation of the world by God. In this regard, in a part of society, almost from the moment of the birth of evolutionary biology, there has been a certain opposition to this teaching from the religious side (see creationism), which at some times and in some countries has reached criminal sanctions for teaching evolutionary doctrine (which caused, for example, the scandalous well-known "monkey process" in the USA in g.).
It should be noted that the accusations of atheism and the denial of religion, cited by some opponents of evolutionary doctrine, are based to a certain extent on a misunderstanding of the nature of scientific knowledge: in science, no theory, including the theory of biological evolution, can either confirm or deny the existence of such otherworldly subjects, like God (if only because God, when creating living nature, could use evolution, as the theological doctrine of "theistic evolution" claims).
On the other hand, the theory of evolution, being a scientific theory, considers the biological world as part of the material world and relies on its natural and self-sufficient, that is, its natural origin, which is therefore alien to any otherworldly or divine intervention; alien for the reason that the growth of scientific knowledge, penetrating into the previously incomprehensible and explainable only by the activity of otherworldly forces, somehow beats the soil from religion (when explaining the essence of the phenomenon, the need for a religious explanation disappears, because there is a convincing natural explanation). In this regard, evolutionary teaching can be aimed at denying the existence of extranatural forces, or rather their interference in the process of development of the living world, which one way or another suggests religious systems.
Efforts to oppose evolutionary biology to religious anthropology are also mistaken. From the point of view of the methodology of science, the popular thesis "man descended from apes" is only an oversimplification (see reductionism) of one of the conclusions of evolutionary biology (about the place of man as a biological species on the phylogenetic tree of living nature), if only because the concept of “man” is ambiguous: man as a subject of physical anthropology is by no means identical to man as a subject of philosophical anthropology, and to reduce philosophical anthropology to the physical is incorrect.
Many believers of different religions do not find evolutionary teachings contrary to their faith. The theory of biological evolution (along with many other sciences - from astrophysics to geology and radiochemistry) contradicts only the literal reading of the sacred texts that tell about the creation of the world, and for some believers this is the reason for the rejection of almost all conclusions natural sciences who study the past of the material world (literalist creationism).
Among believers who profess the doctrine of literal creationism, there are a number of scientists who are trying to find scientific evidence for their doctrine (the so-called "scientific creationism"). However, the scientific community disputes the validity of this evidence.
Literature
- Berg L. S. Nomogenesis, or Evolution based on regularities. - Petersburg: State Publishing House, 1922. - 306 p.
- Kordyum V. A. Evolution and the biosphere. - K.: Naukova Dumka, 1982. - 264 p.
- Krasilov V. A. Unsolved problems of the theory of evolution. - Vladivostok: DVNTs AN SSSR, 1986. - S. 140.
- Lima de Faria A. Evolution without selection: Autoevolution of form and function: Per. from English. - M.: Mir, 1991. - S. 455.
- Nazarov V.I. Evolution not according to Darwin: Changing the evolutionary model. Tutorial. Ed. 2nd, corrected .. - M .: Publishing house LKI, 2007. - 520 p.
- Tchaikovsky Yu.V. The science of life development. Experience of the theory of evolution. - M.: Association of scientific publications KMK, 2006. - 712 p.
- Golubovsky M. D. Non-canonical legacy changes // Nature. - 2001. - No. 8. - S. 3–9.
- Meyen S.V. The path to a new synthesis, or where do homologous series lead? // Knowledge is power. - 1972. - № 8.
The overwhelming majority of sayings placed in this collection belong to the most ardent defenders of the theory of evolution. But therein lies the strength of the book. The foundations of evolutionist strongholds are unlikely to be shaken by statements from the mouths of creationist scientists. But even in court, exculpatory testimony given by a hostile witness is considered the most important. Therefore, the remarks of an evolutionary paleontologist who admits to the absence of intermediate forms, or an evolutionary biologist who doubts the mechanism of mutations/selection, are very significant (especially if these statements are given accurately and without distortion), even if the author otherwise sings the hymns of evolution. We look forward to the widest possible use of this publication.
Editor.
Creation Science Foundation Ltd, 1990.
Today, many believe that the debate about the origin of life is between the scientific views of evolution and the religious views of creation. Is it really?
Prior to the publication of his book, Darwin stated:
1. The future book will puzzle you greatly; it, unfortunately, will be too hypothetical. Most likely, it will only serve to streamline the facts, although I myself think that I have found an approximate explanation for the origin of species. But, alas, how often - almost always - the author convinces himself of the truth of his own dogmas.
Charles Darwin, 1858, from a letter to a colleague on the final chapters of On the Origin of Species. Quoted in John Lofton's Journal, The Washington Times, 8 February 1984.
Is the theory of evolution scientific?
2. In essence, the theory of evolution has become a kind of scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it, and many are ready to "squeeze" their observations into its framework.
H.S. Lipson, Royal Physical Society, Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, UK. A physicist looks at evolution. Physics Bulletin, vol. 31, 1980, p.138.
Evolution - fact or belief?
3. The theory of evolution is the core of biology; thus biology is in the strange position of being a science based on an unproven theory. So is it science or religion? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus akin to belief in purposeful creation - each concept is believed to be true by those who believe in it, but neither has been proven to this day.
L. Harrison Matthews, Royal Physical Society. Preface to Darwin's On the Origin of Species. J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London, 1971, p.xi.
4. We have to admit that, contrary to popular belief, the theory of the random occurrence of life under the influence of natural conditions, based on facts, and not on faith, has simply not yet been written.
Hubert P. Yockey, Army Radiation Station, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, USA. A calculation of the probability of spontaneous biogenesis by information theory. Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol.67, 1977, p.396.
Can evolution be observed?
5. Evolution - at least in the sense in which Darwin spoke of it - cannot be traced during the lifetime of one observer.
Dr. David B. Kitts, Zoology, Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA. Paleontology and evolutionary theory. Evolution, vol.28, September 1974, p.466.
Can evolution be tested?
6. It is easy to make up stories about how one form of life turned into another, and find reasons why one or another stage won in natural selection. But these stories are not science, because there is no way to test them.
Personal letter (10 April 1979) from Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London, to Luther D. Sunderland. Quoted from: Luther D. Sunderland. Darwin's Enigma, Master Books, San Diego, USA, 1984, p119.
7. Our theory of evolution cannot be refuted by any observations - any observations can be "squeezed" into its framework. The theory of evolution is thus "beyond empirical science", although this does not necessarily mean that it is wrong. Nobody can think of a way to test it. Conclusions - unfounded or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out under the most simplified conditions - have acquired a prevalence far from corresponding to their value. They have become part of the evolutionary dogma that we have absorbed in the process of learning.
Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Biology, Stanford University and L. Charles Birch, Professor of Biology, University of Sydney. Evolutionary history and population biology. Nature, vol.214, 22 April 1967, p.352.
8. Evolutionary events are unique, inimitable and irreversible. It is just as impossible to transform a land vertebrate into a fish as it is to reverse the transformation. The application of experimental verification methods to such unique historical processes is strictly limited, primarily because the duration of these processes is much longer than the life of the experimenter. It is from this impossibility of verification that the anti-evolutionists start, demanding evidence that they can generously accept as satisfactory.
Theodosius Dobzhansky, former professor of zoology and biology, Rockefeller University. On methods of evolutionary biology and anthropology, Part 1, biology. American Scientist, vol. 45 (5), December 1957, p. 388.
Is evolution supported by facts?
Darwin wrote:
9. I am sure that in this book there will hardly be at least one point to which it is impossible to pick up facts that would lead to directly opposite conclusions than the facts found by me. The true result can only be obtained by careful calculation and comparison of facts and arguments, both "for" and "against". And this is still impossible.
Charles Darwin, 1859. Preface to The Origin of Species, p.2. Cit. also in "John Lofton's Journal", The Washington Times, 8 February 1984.
What do the facts prove?
10. Biologists are simply naive when they talk about experiments designed to test the theory of evolution. She is unverifiable. Scientists will now and then stumble upon facts that contradict their predictions. These facts will invariably be ignored, and their discoverers will undoubtedly be deprived of further research subsidies.
Professor Whitten, Genetics, University of Melbourne, Australia. 1980 Assembly Week address.
What do the facts say?
11. Facts do not "speak for themselves" at all; they are read in the light of theory. Creative thought, in both art and science, directs change of mind. Science is the quintessence of human activity, and not a mechanical, robotic accumulation of objective information, driven by the laws of logic to irrefutable conclusions.
Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University. The validation of continental drift. In: Ever Since Darwin, Burnett Books, 1978, pp.161-162.
12. From time to time, scientists stumble upon facts that seem about to reveal one of the greatest mysteries of science. Such discoveries are very rare. When they occur, the whole brotherhood of scientists becomes extremely delighted.
But strong feelings are not the best barometer scientific credibility. Science, as Adam Smith remarked, should be "the greatest antidote to enthusiasm." Explanations for the extinction of the dinosaurs are a wonderful indicator that science is based on more than just facts. There is a much more important aspect - the interpretation of these facts.
Dr. Robert Jastrow, physicist, director of the Space Research Institute, USA. The dinosaur massacre. Omega Science Digest, March/April 1984, p.23.
Evolution: fact or belief?
13. After many futile attempts, science found itself in a very delicate situation: having postulated the theory of the origin of species, it could not prove it. Reproaching theologians for relying on myths and miracles, science itself found itself in the unenviable position of creating its own mythology, namely: if, as a result of prolonged efforts, it cannot be proved that something is happening now, it means that it happened in the primitive past.
Dr. Lauren Eisley, anthropology. The secret of life. In: The Immense Journey, Random House, New York, 1957, p.199.
What did Darwin accomplish?
14. In essence, Darwin's theory anticipated his knowledge - he put forward a new promising theory, but the limited stock of knowledge did not allow him to convince himself and others of its correctness. He could neither accept his theory himself nor prove it to others. Darwin simply did not know enough about the areas of natural history on which his theory could be based.
Dr. Barry Gale, History of Science, Darwin College, UK. In: Evolution Without Evidence. Quoted in John Lofton's Journal, The Washington Times, 8 February 1984.
Has anything changed?
15. I know that the data - at least in paleoanthropology - remain so few and scattered that their interpretation is very strongly influenced by theory. In the past, theories clearly reflected not real data, but ideological trends.
Dr. David Pilbeam Physical Anthropology, Yale University, USA, Rearranging our family tree. Human Nature, June 1978, p.45.
Hence…
16. Here is one of the reasons why I began to lean towards an anti-evolutionary, or, better, non-evolutionary point of view: last year I suddenly realized that until now for twenty years I had only thought that I was working on the theory of evolution . I woke up one fine morning, and it was as if I was on fire: after all, I have been working on this for twenty years, and I still don’t know anything about it! It's terrible when you realize that you've been led by the nose for so long. One of the two - either something is wrong with me, or with the theory of evolution. But I know that everything is fine with me! So for the past few weeks, I've been asking all sorts of people and groups a very simple question: Can you tell something about evolution - anything, as long as it's actually true?
I asked this question in the geology department of the Natural History Museum. Silence was my answer. I tried it out with participants in a seminar on evolutionary morphology at the University of Chicago, a very representative body of evolutionists, and again the answer was only a long silence, until finally someone said, "I know one thing: this should be banned from teaching in schools."
Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London. Keynote address at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, 5 November 1981.
Did the theory of evolution help?
... scientists?
17. Darwin's On the Origin of Species I find extremely unsatisfactory: it says nothing about the origin of species; it is written very superficially, and contains a special chapter on "Difficulties in Theory"; it includes a lot of reasoning about why there is no evidence of natural selection in the fossil record...
…As a scientist, I am not enthusiastic about these ideas. But it seems to me unworthy of a scientist to reject a theory only because of his own prejudice.
H. Lipson, Royal Physical Society, Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, UK. origin of species. Letters, New Scientist, 14 May 1981, p. 452.
18. No doubt the opening of the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Salford, was Dr. John Duran, a young lecturer at University College, Swansea. Delivering a lecture on Darwin to the largest audience of the entire week of the convention, Duran put forward a stunning theory - Darwin's explanation of the origin of man through evolution has become a modern myth, a brake on science and social progress ...
Duran concluded that the secular myth of evolution had a "destructive effect on scientific research" and led to "distortions, fruitless disputes, and gigantic abuses in science."
Dr. John Durant, Surnsey University College, Wales. Quoted from: "How evolution became a scientific myth". New Scientist, September 1980, p.765.
19. Evolution - a fairy tale for adults. This theory contributed nothing to the progress of science. She is useless.
Professor Louis Bounoure, former president of the Biological Society of Strasbourg, director of the Strasbourg Zoological Museum, former director of the French National Center scientific research. Quoted from Advocate, 8 March 1984, p.17.
20. Scientists who claim that evolution is a fact life, great scammers, and their stories are perhaps the greatest hoax of all time. We don't have an iota of evidence to explain evolution.
Dr. T.N. Tahmisian, Atomic Energy Commission, USA, in The Fresno Bee, August 20, 1959. Quoted in N.J. Mitchell, Evolution and the Emperor's New Clothes, Roydon publications, UK, 1983.
... philosophers?
21. Personally, I am sure that the theory of evolution, and especially the widespread use that it has received, will be presented in future history textbooks as the greatest anecdote. Our posterity will admire the incredible credulity with which such a dubious and unproven hypothesis was accepted.
Malcolm Muggeridge, world famous journalist and philosopher. Pascal Readings, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Is the theory of the creation of the world really unscientific?
22. The attitude to species as "natural genera" is in perfect agreement with the views of the creationists of the pre-Darwinian era. Louis Agassiz even argued that childbirth is the thoughts of the Lord, embodied in such a way as to make us understand His greatness and His message. Species, Agassiz wrote, "are created by the Divine Mind as categories of His way of thinking." But how could division organic world to discrete things be justified by the theory of evolution, which proclaimed senseless change to be a fundamental fact of nature?
Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University. "A quahog is a quahog." Natural History, vol. LXXXVIII (7), August-September, 1979, p. 18.
23. If living matter arose not because of the interaction of atoms, natural forces and radiation, how then? There is another theory - rather unpopular these days - based on the ideas of Lamarck: if the body needs improvement, then it will develop it, and then pass it on to descendants. However, I think we should go even further and agree that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know this is anathema to physicists, myself included, but we shouldn't deny a theory supported by experimental evidence, even if we don't like it.
H.S. Lipson, Royal Physical Society, Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, UK. A physicist looks at evolution. Physics Bulletin, vol. 31, 1980, p. 138.
Creation ex nihilo?
24. In 1973, I came to the conclusion that our universe was really suddenly created from nothing (ex nihilo), and this is a consequence of known physical laws. This assumption struck people: some as absurd, others as charming, and others as both at the same time.
The novelty of the scientific theory of creation ex nihilo is quite obvious, because for many years science has inspired us that someone cannot create something from nothing.
Edward P.Tryon, Professor of Physics, New York University, USA. What made the world? New Scientist, March 8, 1984, p.14.
Blind chance or intelligent design?
25. The more incredible it is statistically, the less we believe that everything happened by chance. The obvious alternative to chance is the thinking Designer.
Dr. Richard Dawkins, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, UK. The necessity of Darwinism, New Scientist, vol. 94, 15 April 1982, p. 130.
But is it all that difficult...?
26. But let's drop the illusions. If today we turn to situations in which the analogies with the natural sciences are especially impressive, even if we find processes in biological systems that are far from equilibrium, still our research will remain far beyond the ability to explain such an incredible complexity of the simplest organisms.
Ilya Prigogine, Professor, Director of the Department of Physics, University of Brussels. Can thermodynamics explain biological order? Impact of Science on Society, vol.23(3), 1973, p. 178.
27. And three pounds of brain in a Man is the most complex and highly organized device in the Universe, as far as we know.
Dr. Isaac Asimov, biochemist, former professor at Boston University School of Medicine, world-renowned writer. In the game of energy and thermodynamics you can't even break even. Smithsonian Institute Journal, June 1970, p. 10.
So?
28. Since we see, however, that the probability of a random origin of life is so negligible that it reduces the whole concept of randomness to absurdity, it is reasonable to think that favorable physical properties, on which life depends, arose intentionally ...
Thus, it becomes almost inevitable to assume that the level of our mind only essentially reflects the higher mind that gave birth to us - up to the idea of God.
Sir Fred Hoyle, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, and Chandra Wick-ramasinghe, Professor of Astronomy and Applied Mathematics, University College Cardiff. Convergence to God. In: Evolution from Space, J.M. Dent & Sons, London, 1981 pp. 141, 144.
29. I have always said that reasoning about the origin of life leads to a dead end, because even the simplest of living organisms is too complex to be understood within the extremely primitive chemistry that scientists use to explain the inexplicable things that happened billions of years ago. God is incomprehensible by such naive thinking.
Ernst Chain, world famous biochemist. Quoted from R.W. Clark in The Life of Ernst Chain: Penicillin and Beyond, Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1985, p. 148.
Do fossils support evolution?
In 1850 Darwin wrote:
30. Why then do we not find all these intermediate links in every geological formation and every stratum? Geology by no means presents us with such a complete successive chain of organisms. And this is probably the most obvious and serious objection that can be raised against our theory. The explanation for this, I believe, lies in the extreme imperfection of geological data.
Charles Darwin. Origin of species. Chapter X, On the imperfection of geological data. J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London, 1971, pp. 292-293.
Ho 120 years later!
31. Since the time of Darwin, 120 years have passed, and our knowledge of the fossil record has greatly expanded. But despite the fact that we now know a quarter of a million fossil species, the situation has not changed significantly. Information about evolution is still surprisingly scarce, and. ironically, we now have even fewer examples of evolutionary transformation than we had under Darwin. I mean, some classic Darwinian examples of changes in the fossil sequence. as, in particular, the evolution of the horse in North America, now, with more accurate information, must be discarded or revised - what, with little data, looked like a nice simple progression, now turned out to be much more complex and much less consistent. So Darwin's problem has by no means ceased to be such in the past 120 years. And while chronology shows change, natural selection is far from the most logical explanation for it. Also the great extinctions of, say, dinosaurs and trilobites are still a mystery.
Dr. David M. Raup, Geology Consultant, Department of the Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Conflicts between Darwin and paleontology. Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol.50(l), January 1979, p.25.
32. Darwin's theory of natural selection has always been closely linked to the study of fossils, and it is probably assumed by many that fossils constitute a very important piece of general evidence in favor of Darwin's interpretation of the origin of life. Unfortunately, this is not entirely true.
Dr. David M. Raup, Geology Consultant, Department of the Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Conflicts between Darwin and paleontology. Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol.50(l), January 1979, p.22.
33. It is significant that almost all the stories about evolution that I heard as a student - from Truman's Ostrea / Gryphaea to Carruthers' Zaphrentis delanouei - have now been refuted. In the same way, my own experience of more than twenty years of unsuccessful search for the evolutionary relationships of the Mesozoic Brachiopod proves their complete inconsistency.
Dr. Derek V .Ager, Department of Geology and Oceanography, University College Swansea, UK. The nature of the fossil record. Proceedings of the Geologists" Association, vol.87(2), 1976, p.132.
34. Lack of fossil evidence for intermediate stages between major changes in body structure; the fact that we are often unable - even in imagination - to reproduce these functional gaps - this is the most burning problem of the idea of progressive evolution.
Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University. Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging? Paleobiology, vol.6(1), January 1980, p.127.
So what links of evolution are "lost"?
Are there transitional forms?
35. ... I completely agree with your remark about the lack of illustrations of evolutionary intermediate forms in my book. If I knew at least one of them (living or petrified), I would certainly include it in the book. You believe that the artist can depict these forms, but where does he get the information from? I don’t have it, and if we trust the artist’s intuition, where will we lead the reader?
I wrote this book four years ago. If I were writing it now, it would be completely different. I believe in the concept of gradualism, not so much because of the authority of Darwin, but because my understanding of genetics requires it. But it's still hard to argue with Gould and the staff of the American Museum when they talk about the absence of transitional fossils. As a paleontologist, I am very concerned with the philosophical problem of identifying antecedent forms in fossils. You ask me to at least "show a photograph of the fossil from which all kinds of organisms originated." I will tell you frankly: there is not a single fossil about which this could be said with certainty.
Personal letter (10 April 1979) from Dr. Colin Patterson, Chief Paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London, to Luther D. Sunderland. Quoted from: Luther D . Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma, Master Books, San Diego, USA, 1984, p.89.
36. All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains extremely few intermediate forms; the transitions between the main groups are typically spasmodic.
Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University. The return of hopeful monsters. Natural History, vol.LXXXVJ(6), p.24.
37. Up until 1859, the most irritating characteristic of the fossil record has been its sheer imperfection. For evolutionists, this imperfection is most unfortunate, because it prevents the construction of a clear scheme of the evolution of organisms, requiring an infinite number of "lost links". Consistent groups of species with overlapping morphologies can be found among the fossils, arranged in descending order in time. The same can be said about many groups of genera, and even families. However, above the family level, in most cases it is impossible to find irrefutable paleontological evidence for the existence of morphological intermediates between different taxa. Generally, this lack of evidence is considered by opponents of the theory of organic evolution to be the main shortcoming of this theory. In other words, the failure of the fossil record to provide "missing links" is taken as irrefutable evidence of the theory's failure.
Dr. Arthur J. Boucot, Professor of Geology, Oregon State University, USA, In: Evolution and Extinction Rate Controls, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1975, p. 196.
38. The extreme rarity of intermediates in fossils remains the trade secret of paleontologists. The evolutionary trees that grow in our textbooks have data only at the tips of the branches and at the ramifications; the rest is conjecture, albeit plausible, but not supported by fossil evidence. However, Darwin was so in love with gradualism that, denying indisputable facts, he completely opposed his whole theory to them:
“Geological data are extremely imperfect. This largely explains the fact that we cannot find intermediate links that would connect extinct and existing forms of life together through completed successive steps. Anyone who rejects such a view of the essence of geological data will, accordingly, reject my whole theory.
Darwinian reasoning is to this day a pet ploy of paleontologists in the face of the discouraging fact that the data show us so little evolution. In revealing the cultural and methodological roots of gradualism (similar to all general theories), I am in no way trying to question its potential value. I just want to emphasize that he was never "observed in stone."
Paleontologists have paid dearly for adhering to Darwin's argument. We imagined ourselves to be the only true researchers of natural history, although, in order to preserve our beloved idea of evolution through natural selection, we admit that the data we have obtained are so bad that we have never seen the very process that we are supposed to study.
Stephen Jay Gould, professor of geology and paleontology. Harvard University. Evolution's erratic race. Natural History, vol.LXXXVI(5), May 1977, p.14.
39. Despite all the assurances that paleontology allows you to "see" evolution, it presents evolutionists with very annoying problems, the main of which are "gaps" in the fossil record. Interspecies intermediates are required to prove evolution, and paleontology provides none. Thus, gaps appear to be a normal occurrence in the annals.
Dr. David B. Kitts, Zoology, School of Geology and Geophysics, Department of History of Science, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA. Paleontology and evolutionary theory. Evolution, vol.28, September 1974, p.467.
40. In spite of the examples given, it remains true that every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera and families, as well as almost all categories above the level of families, appear suddenly in the fossil record, and do not constitute a step-by-step, complete sequence with all intermediate stages.
Dr. George Gay lord Simpson, Vertebrate Paleontology, Former Professor, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Professor of Geology, University of Arizona, Tucson. In: The Major Feattires of Evolution, Columbia University Press, New York, 1953, p.360.
41. The fossil record known to us shows the sudden emergence of most taxa. They almost never appear as a result of a chain of almost imperceptible changes in previous taxa, which, as Darwin believed, is characteristic of evolution. Chains of two or more temporally related species are known, but even at this level, most species appear without known intermediate ancestors; the appearance of really long, completely completed sequences of numerous species is extremely rare. At the genus level, more or less successful sequences (not necessarily represented by populations directly involved in the transition from one genus to another) are more familiar, and may be longer than the known sequences of species. The emergence of a new genus in the annals is, as a rule, even more sudden than the emergence of a new species: the “gaps” increase, so that the newly appearing genus is usually morphologically clearly separated from the majority of known genera similar to it. The higher the step in the hierarchy of categories, the more universal and more essential this regularity becomes. Gaps between known species are occasional and often minor. The gaps between known orders, classes, phyla are systematic and almost always significant.
Dr. George Gaylord Simpson, Vertebrate Paleontology, Former Professor, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Professor of Geology, University of Arizona, Tucson. The history of life. In: The Evolution of Life, Sol Tax (editor), Vol. 1 of Evolution After Darwin, The University of Chicago Centennial, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1960, p. 149.
Are "gaps" in the fossil record real?
42. But how good is the geological data? I have already said that the traditional paleontological view of evolution leaned in favor of incremental change. The fossil record, paleontologists say, is too incomplete to be taken seriously. And, they continue, it is impossible to prove a gap. However, it can be proved, especially if the gap really took place. If there is a break in the data, it should be possible to trace how it came about. The trouble with the gaps is that if they really were random, as Darwin claimed, then in a hundred and fifty years of research they would have been “closed” long ago. However, the white spots did not disappear. They keep gaping. Some scientists explain this by saying that the missing links simply did not survive. What these scientists forget is that even if there is only one chance in a million that only one individual of the entire population survives in fossils, then given that the species lives 5-15 million years, we would still have to find in fossils from 5 up to 15 representatives of these populations. In fact, the trouble is most likely that we cannot find and describe the necessary material. References to gaps and poor preservation are nothing more than excuses. We just need to take a closer look at exactly what the data says.
Prof. J. B. Waterhouse, Department of Geology, University of Queensland, Brisbane. Inaugural Lecture, 1980.
How is it with family trees?
43. The evolutionary trees that grow in our textbooks have data only at the tips of the branches and at the ramifications; the rest is conjecture, albeit plausible, but not supported by fossil evidence.
Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University. Evolution's erratic race. Natural History, vol. LXXXVI (5), May 1977, p 14.
Fossils and evolution - a vicious circle
44. Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not at all prove the Darwinian theory of evolution, because it is this theory (there are several) that we, in fact, use to interpret the fossil record. Thus, by claiming that these data support this theory, we form a vicious circle of evidence.
Dr. Ronald R. West, paleontology and geology, professor of paleobiology, University of Kansas. Paleoecology and uniformitarianism. Compass, vol.45, May 1968, p.216.
Is there evidence for an evolutionary origin of...
…plants?
45. The facts obtained as a result of the study of fossilized plants are extremely important, since they have greatly influenced ideas about phylogeny and evolution. Scientists have long hoped that extinct plants would certainly reveal some of the stages that existing groups of plants went through in the development process. However, now we can safely say that these hopes were not justified, although paleobotanical research has been carried out for more than a hundred years. We are still unable to trace the phylogenetic history of even one group of modern plants from beginning to end.
Chester A. Arnold, Professor of Botany, Head of the Division of Plant Fossils, University of Michigan. An Introduction to Paleobotany, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1947, p.7.
46. The theory of evolution is not just a theory of the origin of species, but also the only explanation for the fact that organisms can be classified according to the hierarchy of natural kinship. A lot of data from biology, biogeography and paleontology can be cited in favor of the theory of evolution; but I still think that, bias aside, the evidence from the study of petrified plants is in favor of the theory of creation. If another explanation for the hierarchical system of classification is found, it will sound the death knell for the theory of evolution. Can you imagine that the orchid, duckweed and palm tree came from a single ancestor, and where is the basis for such an assumption? The evolutionist should have an answer ready, but I'm afraid most of them will remain silent...
Textbook authors lead us by the nose. They show ever more complex plants - algae, mosses, fungi, and so on (the examples are randomly chosen in favor of one theory or another), supposedly showing us evolution. If the plant world consisted only of these "learning" types of standard botany, the star of the theory of evolution might not have risen. These textbooks are based on countries with a temperate climate.
The point, of course, is that there are thousands and thousands of plants, mostly tropical, that are not considered at all by general botany, but they are the building blocks from which the taxonomist built his temple of evolution, so what else should we worship?
E. J. G. Corner, Professor of Tropical Botany, University of Cambridge. evolution. In: Contemporary Botanical Thought, Anna M .Macleod and L .S. Cobley (editors), Oliver and Boyd, for the Botanical Society of Edinburg, UK, 1961, p.97.
…fish?
47. The data of geology by no means provide evidence of the origin of fish, and as soon as the first fish-like fossils appear in sedimentary rocks, cyclotomes (or agnata), elasmobranchiomorphs and bony fish are not only already clearly clearly distinguished from each other, but are represented by so many different, often of special types, which suggests itself the conclusion: each of these groups has already managed to reach an advanced age.
J. R. Norman (I. R. Norman), curator of the department of zoology. British Museum of Natural History. Classification and pedigrees: fossils. In: History of Fishes, Dr.P.H.Greenwood (editor), third edition, British Museum of Natural History, London, 1975, p.343.
... amphibians?
48. ... none of the known fish is considered the direct ancestor of the first land vertebrates. Most of them existed after the first amphibians, and those that appeared before did not see progress in developing the rigid limbs and ribs characteristic of primitive tetrapods ...
Since the fossil material does not provide evidence for other aspects of the transition from fish to tetrapods, paleontologists were forced to rant about how limbs and breathing apparatus adapted to breathing on land developed ...
Barbara J. Stahl, St. Ansel's College, USA. In: Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1974, pp.148, 195.
... birds?
49. The conclusion about the [evolutionary] origin of birds is highly speculative. There is no fossil evidence showing the stages of this remarkable transition from reptiles to birds.
W.E. Swinton, British Museum of Natural History, London. The Origin of Birds, Chapter 1. In: Biology and Comparative Physiology of Birds, A.J. Marshall (editor), vol.1, Academic Press, New York, 1960, p.l.
50. It is easy to imagine how feathers, once appeared, began to acquire additional functions. But how they developed initially, especially from reptile scales, is beyond understanding ...
This problem was shelved not because interest in it faded, but because of lack of evidence. No structure has been found in the fossils that would be an intermediate form between a scale and a feather, and modern researchers refuse to build a theory on speculation alone ...
Based on the complex structure of the feather, it can be assumed that its development from reptile scales would require an incredibly long time and a number of transitional forms. However, the fossil record does not support these assumptions.
Barbara J. Stahl, St. Anselm College, USA. In: Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1974, pp. 349, 350.
…mammals?
51. Every mammal-like reptile species discovered appears suddenly in the fossil record, without immediate ancestor species. After a while, they just as suddenly disappear, leaving no direct descendant species, although we usually find somewhat similar species that have replaced them.
Tom Kemp (Tot Kemp), consultant on the zoological collections of the Museum of Oxford University, England. The reptiles that became mammals. New Scientist, vol.92, 4 March 1982, p.583.
52. The [evolutionary) transition to the first mammals, which probably occurred in only one, at most two genealogies, still remains a mystery.
Roger Lewin. Bones of mammals" ancestors fleshed out. Science, vol.212, 26 June 1981, p.1492.
53. Due to the nature of fossil evidence, paleontologists have had to reconstruct the first two-thirds of mammalian history based largely on tooth morphology.
Barbara J. Stahl, St. Anselm College, USA. In: Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1974, p.401.
…particularly horses?
54. Moreover, even in very slowly developing sequences, for example, in the famous horse series, decisive changes occur in a sharp jump, without transitional stages: for example, the appearance and further changes of one middle finger as opposed to two middle ones during the development of artiodactyl, or a sudden change in the four-fingered legs on three-toed with the dominance of the third ray.
Richard B. Goldschmidt, Professor of Genetics and Cytology, University of California. Evolution, as viewed by one geneticist. American Scientist, vol. 40, January 1952, p. 97.
55. The family tree of a horse is beautiful and consistent only in textbooks. In reality, however, according to research, it consists of three parts, of which only the last can be described as including horses. The forms that make up the first part are as little like horses as modern hyraxes. Recreating the entire Cenozoic tree of the horse is thus very artificial, since it consists of non-equivalent parts and therefore cannot be considered as a complete chain of changes.
Prof. Heribert Nilsson. Syntetische Artbildung. Verlag C WE Gleerup, Lund, Sweden, 1954, pp. 551-552
56. It would be dishonest, speaking of the significance of the theory of evolution, to omit the evolution of the horse. The evolution of the horse is one of the cornerstones in the teaching of evolutionary doctrine, although the story really depends a lot on who tells it and when it was told. Therefore, it is quite possible to discuss the evolution of the story itself about the evolution of the horse ...
Prof. G.A. Kerkut, Department of Physiology and Biochemistry, University of Southampton. In: Implications of Evolution, Pergamon Press, London, 1960, pp.144-145.
So, in 1979...
57. What I mean is that some classic Darwinian examples of changes in the fossil sequence, like the evolution of the horse in North America, now, with better information, need to be discarded or revised - what, with little data, looked like nice simple progression, now it was much more complex and much less consistent.
Dr. David M. Raup, Geology Consultant, Department of the Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Conflicts between Darwin and paleontology. Field Museum of Natural History Bulltin, vot.50(l), January 1979, p.25.
Where did primates come from?
58. Despite new findings, the time and place of the origin of primates is still shrouded in mystery.
Elwin L. Simons, Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, USA; editor of Nuclear Physics. The origin and radiation of the primates. Annals New York Academy of Sciences, voL167, 1969, p.319.
59. ...the transition from insectivores to primates is not supported by fossil evidence. Information about this transition is based only on the observation of currently existing forms.
A.J. Kelso, Professor of Physical Anthropology, University of Colorado. Origin and evolution of the primates. In: Physical Anthropology, J.B. Lippincott, New York, second edition, 1974, p.142.
And the man?
Do people evolve?
60. We do not evolve even slowly. Not in any practical area. It makes no sense to assume that our brains are growing or our toes are getting shorter. We are what we are.
Stephen J. Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University. Speech in October 1983, op. Quoted from John Lofton's Journal, The Washington Times, 8 February 1984.
61. Without any prior explanation, he stated that evolution stopped, not because we have reached perfection, but because we have moved away from this process two million years ago.
Ronald Strahan, former Senior Scientist and Director, Tarong Zoological Park, Sydney; honorary secretary of ANZAAS; now at the Australian Museum, Sydney. Cit. Quoted from Northern Territory News, 14 September 1983, p.2.
Has humanity evolved before?
62. Among the staggering number of fossils of early hominoids, are there any whose morphology definitely points to them as human ancestors? If we take into account the factor of genetic variability, the answer is clear - no.
Dr. Robert B. Eckhardt, Human Genetics and Anthropology, Professor of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, USA. Population genetics and human origins. Scientific American, vol.226(l), January 1872, p.94.
63. In recent years, some authors have published popular books on the origins of man, based on subjective conjecture rather than real facts. At the moment, science cannot provide us with a complete answer to the question of the origin of man, but scientific methods are leading us closer to the truth ...
As recent geological evidence emerges - for example, the discovery in East Africa of clear remains of Homo in the same early fossils as Australopithecus (both massive and graceful types) - again raises the question of the direct relationship of the latter to human evolution. So, we are forced to admit that we do not have a clear picture of human evolution ...
Dr. Robert Martin, Senior Fellow, Society of Zoologists, London. Foreword and article Man is not an onion. New Scientist, 4 August 1977, pp. 283, 285.
64. For example, no scientist can logically substantiate the assumption that a person, not being involved in any act of supernatural creation, evolved from some kind of ape-like creature in a very short - by geological standards - period of time, without leaving any there were no fossil traces of this transformation.
As I have already mentioned, those scientists who dealt with primate fossils were not famous for the restraint of conclusions in their logical constructions. Their conclusions are so striking that the question naturally arises: in general, did science spend the night here?
Lord Solly Zuckerman, MD, PhD (anatomy). In: Beyond the Ivory Tower, Taplinger Pub. Co., New York, 1970, p.64.
65. Modern great apes seem to have appeared out of nowhere. They have no past, no fossil history. And origin modern man- erect, hairless, tool-producing, with a large brain - to be honest, the same mystery.
Dr. Lyall Watson, anthropologist. The water people. Science Digest, vol.90, May 1982, p.44.
But what about the fossil ape man?
66. Joining in a critical analysis of the structure of the skulls of habilis, he added that the skull of "Lucy" is so fragmentary that most of it is "a fantasy of plaster"; therefore, it is impossible to say with certainty to which species it belonged.
Comments by Richard Leakey, Director of the National Museum of Kenya. The Weekend Australian, 7-8 May 1983, Magazine, p.3.
Are australopithecines (such as "Lucy") intermediate between apes and humans?
67. In any case, even if preliminary studies show that these fossils are similar to humans, or at least represent a cross between human bones and the bones of African anthropoids, further study of the remains convinces us that such a view is very far from the truth. These bones are clearly different from both human and monkey bones much more than the first and second from each other. Australopithecus is unique...
... In many respects, various australopithecines differ from both humans and African great apes much more than humans and monkeys from each other. The basis of this statement was the fact that even those researchers who were skeptical about it, now found these differences - after applying the latest techniques and research methods, independent of the generally accepted approach to the problem ...
…IN this case the latest information also comes from scientific laboratories, and not from those who discovered the remains of australopithecines.
Dr. Charles E. Oxnard, Former Professor of Anatomy and Biology, University of Southern California; currently Professor of Human Anatomy and Biology, University of Western Australia. In: Fossils, Teeth and Sex - New Perspectives on Human Evolution, University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 1987, p.227.
[Editor's note: Oxnard's findings regarding Australopithecus are supported by the research of Professor Lord Zuckerman, anatomist (see op. 64). Creationists have been criticized for citing Zuckerman's findings, as his work preceded the 1974 discovery of Australopithecus afarensis (the famous "Lucy"). The above quote from Oxnard (1987) is a fitting response to critics].
68. The entire collection of hominid remains available today would easily fit on a billiard table. However, it gave rise to a whole science due to two factors that inflate its real significance to unprecedented proportions. First, these fossils hint at the origin of the animal most important to man - himself. And secondly, the number of these bones is so negligible, and the samples themselves are so fragmentary, that it is easier to talk about what is missing than about what is available. Hence the incredible amount of literature on the subject. Very few fossils allow one, irrefutable conclusion about their evolutionary significance. Most involve multiple interpretations. Various scientific authorities are free to highlight various features and attach importance to them, often highlighting the shape of the alleged missing links. The differences between these interpretations are so obscure and humane that they depend more on the concepts of opponents than on fossil evidence. Moreover, since this meager collection replenished extremely slowly, the long periods of time from find to find allowed researchers to form a clear opinion about what should be found next. Zinjanthropus boisei is a worthy example of this phenomenon. Ever since Darwin's time, when it was thought that fossils, intermediate links between modern man and his extinct ancestors, were the most compelling evidence for evolution, prejudice has dragged all the evidence in the study of human fossils by the nose.
John Reader, photojournalist, author of "Missing Links", Whatever happened to Zinjanthropus? New Scientist, March 26, 1981, p.802.
Where does the evidence for evolution come from?
69. ... not being a paleontologist, I do not want to cast a shadow of contempt on them at all; but if you had to spend your whole life collecting bones, finding now a tiny part of the skull, now a small piece of the jaw, how great is the temptation to exaggerate the significance of these fragments ...
Dr. Greg Kirby, Senior Lecturer in Population Biology, Flinders University, Adelaide. From a speech on evolution delivered at a meeting of the Association of Biology Teachers (South Australia) in 1976.
70. A 5-million-year-old piece of bone that everyone thought was the clavicle of a humanoid creature is, in fact, nothing more than part of a dolphin's rib. An anthropologist from the University of California, Berkeley came to this conclusion.
Dr. Tim White believes that the discovery of this blunder could provide an impetus to reconsider the theory of when exactly human ancestors moved away from the ape line. He compares this case to two other egregious shenanigans committed by fossil hunters: Hesperopithecus, a fossilized pig tooth that has been presented as evidence of early man in North America; and Eoanthropus, or "Piltdown Man" - the jaw of an orangutan and the skull of a modern man, declared "the oldest Englishman" ... The problem with many anthropologists is that they are so eager to find a hominid bone. that any piece of bone becomes it.
Dr. Tim White, Anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley. Quoted from: Ian Anderson "Hominoid collarbone exposed as dolphin's rib", New Scientist, 28 April 1983, p. 199.
71. I mean the legends about how things have changed over time. How dinosaurs died out, how mammals evolved, where man came from. But for me it is more than just fairy tales. All this is the result of an orientation towards cladistics. Because, as it turns out (or at least it seems to me), everything that can be known about the history of life on Earth, we learn from the systematics, from the systems and groups that can be found in nature. Everything else is fairy tales and legends of various kinds. We have access to the top of the tree, but the tree itself is theoretical; and people who pretend to know everything about this tree, about what happened to it, how its branches and shoots grew, it seems to me, they tell fairy tales.
Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London. BBC interview March 4, 1982 Patterson is a leading proponent of the new science of cladistics.
Is evolution possible?
What do mutations (genetic changes) give?
72. Some modern biologists talk about evolution whenever they encounter a mutation. They unequivocally support the following syllogism: mutations are the only evolutionary changes; all living beings are subject to mutations; therefore, all living beings evolve.
This logical scheme, however, is unacceptable: first, its main premise is neither obvious nor universal; secondly, her conclusions do not correspond to the facts. No matter how numerous mutations are, they do not lead to evolution.
Let's add: it is easy to object that mutations have no evolutionary significance, since they are limited by natural selection. Lethal mutations (changes for the worse) lead to complete extinction, while others remain as alleles. The appearance of a person gives many examples of this: eye color, auricle shape, dermatoglyphics, hair color and texture, skin pigmentation. Mutants exist in all populations, from bacteria to humans. And there can be no doubt about this. But for evolutionists, the point is something else: that mutations are not related to evolution.
Pierre-Paul Grasse, University of Paris, former President of the French Academy of Sciences. In: Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, 1977, p.88.
73. Despite these conceptual problems with natural selection as an evaluative principle, the most serious shortcomings in neo-Darwinism relate to its productive aspect. Random variation, which provides the raw material for natural selection, cannot be regarded as a producing factor either from a theoretical or comparative point of view. They do not provide an understanding of the creative, transformative nature of evolution and the related problem of origin.
Jeffrey S. Wicken, Department of Biochemistry, Burend College, Pennsylvania State University, USA. The generation of complexity in evolution: a thermidynamic and information-theoretical discussion. Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol.77, April 1979, ppMl-352.
74. It is hard to believe in the timely appearance of mutations, which allowed animals and plants to obtain the necessary properties. However, Darwin's theory goes even further: every plant, every animal will require thousands and thousands of successful, favorable changes. Thus, miracles are elevated to the rank of law: events of an infinitely small degree of probability cannot fail to occur.
Pierre-Paul Grasse, University of Paris, former President of the French Academy of Sciences. In: Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, 1977, p.103.
Philosophy of evolution
75. We all know that many evolutionary discoveries are nothing more than the mental research of individual paleontologists. One bookworm can do much more than millions of years of genetic change.
Dr. Derek V .Ager, Department of Geology and Oceanography, University College, Swansea, UK. The nature of the fossil record. Proceedings of the Geologists" Assocoation, vol. 87(2), 1976, p. 132.
And in the meantime...
76. I have cited several opinions of biologists holding prominent academic positions. There are many other critical views of orthodox doctrine, both expressed and unspoken, and their number is constantly growing. But although this criticism has already broken more than one hole in the wall, the citadel still stands - mainly, as mentioned above, because no one is able to offer a satisfactory alternative theory. The history of science shows that a well-established theory can survive many attacks, turning into a knot of contradictions, which corresponds to the fourth phase of the historical cycle - Crisis and doubt, and yet it will be supported by scientific and public circles until it collapses completely and a new one begins. cycle.
But this is not yet foreseen. Meanwhile, the enlightened public continues to believe that Darwin gave the answers to all questions with his magic formula: random mutations plus natural selection. They don't know that random mutations are completely irrelevant as an argument and that natural selection is a tautology.
Arthur Koestler. In: Janus: A Summing Up, Random House, New York, 1978, pp. 184-185).
On the question of natural selection
("Survival of the Fittest")
77. There is no doubt that natural selection is a working system. This has been repeatedly confirmed by experiments. There is no doubt that natural selection is working. The whole question is whether the formation of new species occurs as a result of it. No one has ever obtained a new species by natural selection, no one has even come close to it, and most of the recent debate in neo-Darwinism is about just that: how a new species comes into being. Here, natural selection is forgotten, and certain random mechanisms are introduced.
Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London. BBC cladistics interview 4 March 1982.
Darwin suspected...
78. Suppose that the eye, with its most complex systems - change of focus at different distances; capturing different amounts of light; correction of spherical and chromatic aberrations - such a complex mechanism was formed as a result of natural selection. Frankly, this idea seems completely absurd to me.
Charles Darwin. Origin of species. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd, London, 1971, p.176.
And time has confirmed
79. Gradual evolutionary changes by natural selection occur so slowly within existing species that they cannot be considered as the main manifestations of evolution.
Steven M. Stanley, Department of Earth and Planetary Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA. A theory of evolution above the species level. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, vol.72(2), February 1975, p.646.
80. In other words, natural selection throughout its course does not improve the chances of a species to survive, but only keeps it "in a rut", or enables it to adapt to a constantly changing external environment.
Richard C. Lewontin, professor of zoology, University of Chicago, editor of the American Naturalist. adaptation. Scientific American, vol.239(3), September 1978 p. 159.
81. The role attributed to natural selection in the emergence of fitness has no solid evidence. Paleontology (as in the case of the transformation of the jawbones of the reptile theriodont) provides no evidence; direct observations of hereditary adaptations do not exist (except for the aforementioned bacteria and insects that adapt to viruses and drugs). Formation of the eye, inner ear, whales and cetaceans, etc. by adaptation seems quite impossible.
Pierre-Paul Grasse, University of Paris; former president of the French Academy of Sciences. In: Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press New York 1977, p.770.
82. The whole essence of Darwinism in one single phrase: natural selection is the driving force behind evolutionary change. No one denies that natural selection plays a major role in the destruction of less fit individuals. But Darwin's theory requires that he also produce the fittest.
Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University. The return of hopeful monsters. Natural History, vol. LXXXV1(6), June-July 1977, p.28.
Even for the spotted moth...
83. Experiments have demonstrated the effect of predators on the survival of dark and normal spotted moths in clean and smoke-polluted environments. These experiments perfectly demonstrated natural selection - the survival of the fittest - in action, but they did not show evolutionary development, because no matter how different the populations were in their light, intermediate or dark color, they were all Bistort betularia from beginning to end.
L. Harrison Matthews, Royal Physical Society. Preface to The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd, London, 1971, p.xi.
So…
84. Instead of evidence for the gradual development of life, geologists - both Darwinian and modern - find highly irregular or fragmentary data, namely: species appear in the fossils suddenly, change little or not at all over the period of their existence, and then just as suddenly disappear. And it is not always obvious (in fact, it is not at all obvious) that the ancestors are worse adapted than the descendants. In other words, it is very difficult to find a biological improvement.
David M. Raup, Geological Consultant, Department of the Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Conflicts between Darwin and paleontology. Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol.50(l), January 1979, p.23.
85. Francisco Ayala, a central figure in the Modern Synthesis discussion in the United States, graciously admitted: "We did not intend to predict the stability of population genetics, but now, thanks to paleontological data, I am confident that small changes do not accumulate at all."
Dr. Francisco Ayala, Professor of Genetics, University of California. Commentary on Darwin's evolutionary (progressive) theory. Quoted from: Roger Lewin. Evolutionary theory under fire. Science, vol.210(4472), 21 November 1980, p.884.
What if there was enough time?
In 1954, they thought so:
86. The important thing is that if the emergence of life belongs to the category of phenomena that occur at least once, then time is on its side. Incredible as we may consider this event or any of its stages, over a sufficient period of time it could have happened at least once. And for life as we know it, with its ability to grow and reproduce, once is enough.
Time is the true hero of this scenario. The time we are dealing with is on the order of two billion years. What is considered impossible on the basis of human experience, in this case, makes no sense. Over such a huge period, the “impossible” becomes possible, the possible becomes probable, and the probable becomes mdash; almost natural. Time itself works wonders, you just need to wait.
George Wald, former professor of biology, Harvard University. The origin of life. Scientific American, vol.191(2), August 1954, p.48.
In 1978 they already said:
87. There is no reliable information based solely on observations of the Sun, said Dr. Eddy, that the Sun is 4.5-5 billion years old. Personally, I assume that the Sun is indeed 4.5 billion years old. However, I also suspect that with the emergence of new, unexpected results to the contrary, and some time of intensive recalculations and theoretical substantiations, we may come to the value of the age of the Earth and the Sun, which Bishop Ussher gives. I don't think we have enough astronomically observable evidence to contradict this.
Dr. John A. Eddy (astrogeophysics), astronomer at the High Altitude Observatory, Boulder, Colorado. Quoted from: R.G. Kazman, It’s about time: 4.5 billion years (Speech at a symposium at Louisiana State University). Geotimes, vol.23, September 1978, p. 18.
Can the small changes that we observe, even over a sufficiently long period of time, lead to real evolutionary progress?
88. The main question of the Chicago conference was the question of whether the mechanisms that ensure microevolution can be extrapolated to the phenomenon of macroevolution. Not without the risk of offending some of the participants in the meeting, the answer can be formulated clearly and clearly - no.
Roger Lewin. Evolutionary theory under fire. Science, vol.210(4472), 21 November 1980, p.883.
Where did life come from?
89. Prebiotic broth is easy to get. But how to explain how this mixture of organic molecules, including amino acids and organic nucleotide constituents, developed into a self-reproducing organism? Although the evidence we have received allows us to draw certain conclusions, I have to point out that all attempts to recreate this evolutionary process are too speculative.
Dr. Leslie Orgel, biochemist, Salk Institute, California. Darwinism at the very beginning of life. New Scientist, April 15, 1982, p. 150.
90. One way or another, the transition from a macromolecule to a cell is a leap of fantastic proportions, lying beyond the limits of a hypothesis that can be tested. In this area, everything will be just a guess. The available facts do not give grounds to assert that cells originated on this planet.*
We do not mean to say that some paraphysical forces are at work. We only emphasize the fact that there is no scientific evidence for this. Physicists have learned to get away from the question of when time began and when matter was created, leaving it in the framework of outright demagogy. The origin of the particles that precede the cell is probably in the same category of the unknowable.
* Claiming that life originated somewhere in the universe and then was somehow transported to Earth only brings us back to the starting point, because then the question again arises of how exactly life arose where it managed to arise in the first place.
David E. Green, Enzyme Research Institute, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA; and Robert F. Goldberger, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. Molecular Insights into the Living Processes, Academic Press, New York, 1967, pp.406-407.
So…
91. For some biologists, biogenesis is a matter of faith. Having believed in biogenesis, the scientist chooses exactly the system that suits him personally; real evidence of what exactly happened is not taken into account.
Professor G.A.Kerkut, Department of Physiology and Biochemistry, University of Southampton. In: Implications of Evolution, Pergamon Press, London, 1960, p.150.
What is the likelihood of evolution?
92. Probability that higher forms life arose in this way, comparable to the likelihood that a tornado, sweeping a garbage dump, can simultaneously assemble a Boeing 747 from picked up materials.
Sir Fred Hoyle, English astronomer, professor of astronomy at the University of Cambridge. Quoted from: Hoyle on Evolution. Nature, vol.294, 12 November 1981, p.105.
On the origin of genes...
93. The origin of the genetic code is the narrowest point in the question of the origin of life. And in order to achieve significant progress here, grandiose theoretical or experimental discoveries may be needed.
Dr. Leslie Orgel, biochemist, Salk Institute, California. Darwinism at the very beginning of life. New Scientist, April 15, 1982, p.151. 94. For the evolution of the genetic mechanism, there are no laboratory models: here you can endlessly rant, brushing aside uncomfortable facts ...
We can only imagine what actually happened, and imagination is not the best helper here.
Dr. Richard E. Dickerson, Physical Chemistry, Professor at the California Institute of Technology. Chemical evolution and the origin of life. Scientific American, vol. 239(3), September 1978, pp. 77, 78.
Hence…
95. To insist, especially with Olympian certainty, that life arose absolutely by chance and developed in the same way is an unreasonable assumption, which I personally consider to be incorrect and inconsistent with the facts.
Pierre-Paul Grasse, University of Paris, former President of the French Academy of Sciences. In: Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, 1977, p. 107.
But the world is old, isn't it?
96. The estimated age of the globe, judging by the degree of radioactive decay of uranium and thorium, is about 4.5 billion years. But the lifetime of this “statement” may turn out to be short, since it is not so easy to reveal the secrets of nature. In recent years, a stunning discovery has been made - it turns out that the rate of radioactive decay is not so constant as it was previously thought, and, moreover, is subject to the influences of the external environment.
This may mean that the atomic clock was rebuilt as a result of some worldwide catastrophe, and the events that ended the Mesozoic era could not have occurred 65 million years ago, but within the age and memory of mankind.
Frederic B. Jueneman Secular catastrophism. Industrial Research and Development, June 1982, p.21.
97. The reliability of all the above methods for measuring the age of the Earth, its various layers and fossils, is debatable, since the rates of measured processes could vary greatly from each other throughout Earth's history. The method that was supposed to be the most reliable way to determine the absolute age of rocks is the radiometric method ...
Obviously, the radiometric technique may not be the absolute method of dating, as it has been proclaimed. The age of the same geological layer, measured by different radiometric methods, often varies within hundreds of millions of years. There is no absolutely accurate long-term radiological clock. The inherent inaccuracy of radiometric dating methods worries geologists and evolutionists.
William D. Stansfield, PhD (animal science), professor of biology, California Polytechnic State University. In: The Science of Evolution, Macmillan, New York, 1977, pp. 82, 84.
But don't potassium-argon (K/Ag) and uranium-lead (U/Pb) methods complement each other?
98. Conventional interpretation of C/Ag age data typically discards values that are too high or too low compared to the rest of the group, or to other existing data such as the geochronological scale. The gap between the rejected and accepted data is arbitrarily attributed to the excess or loss of argon,
E. Heisshu (AMayatsu), Department of Geophysics, University of Western Ontario, Canada. K/Ar isochron age of the North Mountain Basalt, Nova Scotia. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, vol.16, 1979, p.974.
99. Thus, if someone believes that the obtained value of age in specific example contrary to the established facts of geology, he must remember about geological processes that can cause anomalies, or about changes in the argon content of minerals.
Professor LF Evernden, Department of Geology, University of California, Berkeley, USA and John R. Richards, School of Geosciences, National University of Australia, Canberra. Potassium-argon ages in eastern Australia. Journal of the Geological Society of Australia, vol.9(l), 1962, p.3.
And isn't the rubidium-strontium method (Rb/Sr) the most reliable?
100. These results show that even entire rock systems can be exposed during metamorphism and their isotopic systems can change in such a way that it becomes impossible to determine their geological age.
Prof. Gunter Faure, Department of Geology, Ohio University, Columbus, USA and Prof. James L. Powell, Department of Geology, Oberlin College, Ohio, USA. In: Strontium Isotope Geology, Springer-Verlag, Berlin and New York, 1972, p. 102.
101. One of the important conclusions of the mantle isochron model is that the crystallization age determined from volcanic rocks by the Rb/Sr method can be many hundreds of millions of years older than the real age. This problem is more serious for younger rocks, and there are well documented examples in the literature of inconsistencies between stratigraphic and Rb/Sr ages.
Dr. C.Brooks, Professor of Geology, University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Dr. D.E.James, Member of the Board of Geophysics and Geochemistry, Carnegie Institution, Washington, USA; Dr. S.R. Hart, Professor of Geochemistry, Department of Earth and Planetary Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA. Ancient lithosphe-re: its role in young continental volcanism. science, vol. 193, 17 September 1976, p.1093.
What data is published in scientific journals?
102. In most cases, the 'fit dataset' data is considered correct and published. The same data that do not match them are rarely published, inconsistencies are not explained.
Dr. Richard L. Mauger, Professor of Geology, University of East Carolina, USA. K/Ar ages of biotites from tuffs in Eocene rocks of the Green River, Washakie, and Uni-ta Basins, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. Contributions to Geology, University of Wyoming, vol.15(1), 1977, p.37. 103. Much remains unclear in determining the isotopic age; and the realization that in many cases the isotopic age does not match the geological age has unfortunately contributed to the development of skepticism among a number of geologists.
Peter E. Brown and John A. Miller. Interpretation of isotopic ages in orogenic belts. In: Time and Place in Orogeny, Geological Society of London Special Publication, No.3, 1969, p. 137.
And carbon-14...?
104. A distinctive feature of the research is that modern mollusk shells from river sediments are not only deficient in C compared to marine mollusks, as noted by Keith, but also extremely low in C14 compared to modern wood, which gives incorrect values for their radiocarbon age in ranging from 1010 to 2300 years.
M.L.Keith and G.M.Anderson, Department of Geochemistry and Mineralogy, University of Pennsylvania, USA. Radiocarbon dating: fictitious results with mollusk shells. Science, vol. 141, 16 August 1963, pp. 634-635.
105. Radiocarbon analysis of samples of mummified seals from southern Victoria Land showed an age ranging from 615 to 4600 years. However, the activity of carbon-14 in Antarctic sea waters is much lower than generally accepted world standards. Thus, radiocarbon dating of marine organisms shows an age greater than the true, but the difference between these values is unknown and inconsistent. Therefore, the data obtained by the radiocarbon method of studying the mummified remains of seals cannot be considered true. For example, the radiocarbon age of a Lake Bonney seal that died a few weeks ago was determined to be 615±100 years, while a freshly killed seal at McMurdo was 1300 years old.
Wakefield Dort, Jr., Department of Geology, University of Kansas. Mummified seals of southern Victoria Land. Antarctic Journal (Washington), vol.6, September-October 1971, p.211.
106. The low (only 3.3 ± 0.2%) carbon-14 content (corresponding to an age of 27,000 years) measured in the shells of modern snails Melanoides tuberculatis living in underground springs of southern Nevada can be explained by the precipitation of dissolved CO3, with which the shells were in carbon equilibrium. [Ed.: In other words, these living snails "died" 27,000 years ago.]
Dr. Alan C. Riggs former member United States Geological Survey, currently an associate at the University of Washington, Seattle. Major carbon-14 deficiency in modern snail shells from southern Nevada springs. Science, vol.224, April 6, 1984, p.58.
107. In the light of what is known about the radiocarbon method and the method of its application, it is very striking that many authors manage to cite results convenient for themselves as "proof" of their own views ...
The radiocarbon method miraculously did not collapse on its own shaky foundation and is now struggling to maintain balance. The possibility of anomalous contamination and ancient changes in carbon-14 levels are consistently ignored by those who base their system of evidence on the results obtained by this method.
In the old days, experts claimed that they were "not sure if there is even one significant discrepancy" in the data obtained in different laboratories when studying the same sample. These enthusiasts go on to say, incredible as it may seem, that they "do not see any significant inconsistencies." However, a discrepancy of 15,000 years for a single soil sample is just a significant discrepancy! And how can huge discrepancies between data from different laboratories be called "insignificant" if the overestimation of the standard margin of error associated with any and every date is based on them?
Why do geologists and archaeologists still spend their meager funds on expensive radiocarbon studies? They do this because random dates have proven to be useful. While this method cannot be relied upon to produce unambiguously accurate results, the numbers impress people by saving them from the worry of overthinking. Looking just like exact calendar years, the numbers are somehow more appealing to both amateurs and professionals than complex stratigraphic correlations; besides, they are also easier to remember. Lab-determined "absolute" dates carry a lot of weight and are very useful in supporting weak arguments...
No matter how "useful" the radiocarbon method is considered, it is still not able to give accurate and reliable results. Its inconsistencies are great, the chronology is unreliable and relative, and the "generally accepted" dates are actually adjusted. "This all-too-blessed affair is nothing more than 13th-century alchemy, and the result depends on what kind of entertaining comics you prefer."
Robert E. Lee. Radiocarbon: ages in error. Anthropological Journal of Canada, vol.19(3), 1981, pp.9-29. Reprinted in Creation Research Society Quarterly, vol. 19(2), September 1982, pp.117-127.
108. Method C14 was discussed at a symposium on ancient history valley of the Nile. Our well-known American colleague Professor Brew briefly formulated the general attitude of archaeologists towards this method: “If the data obtained by the C14. support our theory, we introduce them into the text: if they don’t really contradict it - into the commentary: and if they don’t fit at all, we just omit it. Few archaeologists dealing with accurate chronology have escaped this application of this method; many still doubt whether it is worth using it without restrictions.
T.Save-Soderbergh, Institute of Egyptology and l.U.Olsson, Institute of Physics, Uppsala University, Sweden. C-14 dating and Egyptian chronology. In: Radiocarbon Variations and Absolute Chronology, Proceedings of the Twelfth Nobel Symposium, Ingrid U. Olsson (editor), Almqvist and Wikselt, Stockholm, and John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1970, p.35).
How to determine the age of rocks?
From the dogmas of 1949...
109. Since life evolved gradually, changing from epoch to epoch, the rocks of each geological period reflect the characteristic types of fossils that distinguish them from any other period. Conversely, each kind of fossil is an index or lead fossil for the corresponding geological epoch...
Over the past hundred years, paleontologists around the world have accumulated so much information on this subject that it is now as easy for a qualified specialist to determine the relative geological age of fossils as, for example, to determine the place of a page in a manuscript by numbering. Fossils, therefore, make it possible to recognize rocks of the same age in different parts of the Earth and, accordingly, to correlate events in the history of the Earth as a whole. They provide us with a chronology on which events are strung like pearls on a string.
Dr. Carl O. Dunbar (Geology), Professor Emeritus of Paleontology and Stratigraphy, Yale University; former editor of the American Journal of Science. In: Historical Geology, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1949, p.52.
110. Fossils give us the only chronometric scale acceptable in geological history for the stratigraphic classification of rocks and for the accurate dating of geological events. Due to the irreversibility of evolution, they are an accurate measure for determining the relative age of rocks and correlating them on a global scale.
O.H.Schinderwolf. Comments on some stratigraphic terms. American Journal of Science, vol.255, June 1957 p.395.
...and by the 1970s...
111. Some fossils are limited to a certain geological period. They are called fossils - indexes. Whenever a rock containing this type of fossil is found, its approximate age is set automatically...
This method is not entirely reliable. It happens that an organism that was considered extinct for a long time turns out to be existing. Such "living fossils" naturally cannot act as indexes, except perhaps in the wider time frame of their known existence.
Dr. William D. Stansfield, Animal Science, Professor of Biology, California Polytechnic University. In: The Science of Evolution, Macmillan Mew York, 1977, p.80.
...became obvious...
112. Clever laymen have long suspected a vicious circle in dating fossils through the age of rocks, and rocks through the age of fossils. Geologists, on the other hand, never bothered to search for a worthy answer - why explain if the work brings results? This is called stubborn pragmatism.
J.E.O'Rourke (J.E.O'Rourke). Pragmatism versus materialism in stratigraphy. American Journal of Science, vol.276, January 1976 p.47.
Dating does not go beyond the circle
113. It cannot be denied that, from a strictly philosophical point of view, geological reasoning is a vicious circle. The sequence of organisms is determined by studying their remains in rocks, and the relative age of rocks is determined from the deposits of the organisms they contain.
R.H. Rastall, Lecturer in Economic Geology, University of Cambridge. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1956, v.10, p. 168.
114. The spread of life cannot be witnessed; one can only guess about it. The vertical fossil sequence is thought to represent this process, as the rocks included in it are interpreted as a process. The rocks do date the fossils, but the deposits themselves date the rocks more accurately. Stratigraphy cannot get away from this type of argument if it insists on using the concept of time, because a vicious circle is inevitable in the production of time scales.
J.E.O'Rourke (J.E.O'Rourke). Pragmatism versus materialism in stratigraphy. American Journal of Science, vol.276, January 1976, p.53.
115. The point of view that the creation of a geological scale leads to a vicious circle has certain grounds.
Dr. David M. Raup, Geological Consultant, Department of the Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Geology and creationism. Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, vol.54(3), March 1983, p.21.
116. A problem arises: if we determine the age of rocks from fossils, then how can we immediately talk about examples of evolutionary changes over time in the fossil record?
Niles Eldredge, American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA. In: Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1985 (and William Heinemann Ltd, London, 1986), p.52.
Talk to the earth, and he will guide you ... ()
117. I've been working with recent graduate geologists for almost thirty years, and I keep telling them: forget all the theories you've been taught, just watch what really happens and record it.
A.C.M. Laing, Melbourne. "Letters to the Editor", The Australian Geologist, Newsletter no.48, 19 March 1984, p.7.
Examining fossils: is it possible to recognize
that the theory of evolution is wrong?
118. Paleontologists argue about the speed of evolution, about its various examples. But none of them - at least publicly - doubts the very fact of evolution. Their evidence for evolution does not depend on the fossil record at all.
Some paleontologists believe that animals evolved gradually, through an infinite number of intermediate states, from one form to another. Others believe that the study of fossils does not provide evidence for such gradual changes. In fact, they believe, this is what happened: some species of animals survived, practically unchanged over time, while others died out or changed very dramatically, passing into another form (forms). Thus, instead of the theory of gradual changes, they put forward the idea of "punctuated equilibrium". There is a dispute about specific historical examples of evolution; however, outsiders, listening to this dispute, conclude that the subject of discussion is the truth of evolution: did it occur at all?. This is a terrible mistake; it is based, in my opinion, on the false idea that fossils contain much of the evidence for evolution. In fact, evolution is proved by a completely separate set of arguments, and the current paleontological debate is not at all aimed at. evidence.
Mark Ridley, zoologist, University of Oxford. Who doubts evolution? New Scientist, voL90, 25 June 1981, p.830.
How important is fossil research to an evolutionist?
In 1960…
119. Although a comparative study of living animals and plants can provide very convincing evidence, fossils alone provide the only historical documentary evidence that life evolved from simpler forms to more and more complex ones.
Dr. Carl O. Dunbar, Geology, Professor Emeritus of Paleontology and Stratigraphy, Yale University; former editor of the American Journal of Science. In: Historical Geology, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, I960, p.47.
And over 20 years later...
120. In any case, no true evolutionist, be he a proponent of the theory of gradual change or "punctuated equilibrium", uses the fossil record as evidence for the theory of evolution as opposed to the theory of purposeful creation.
Mark Ridley, zoologist, University of Oxford. Who doubts evolution? New Scientist, vol.90, 25 June 1981, p.831.
How did this affect the theory of evolution? A new evolutionary theory has emerged - "Punctuated Equilibrium"!
121. The concept of "Punctuated Equilibrium" by Eldridge-Gould has been widely accepted by paleontologists. She attempts to explain the following paradox: within genera it is very difficult to find the gradual morphological changes predicted by Darwin; change occurs by the sudden appearance of new, well-differentiated species. Eldridge and Gould equate such appearances with speciation, although the details of these events have not been preserved. They suggest that change occurs rapidly (by geologic standards), in small peripheral populations. They believe that evolution is accelerated in such populations because they contain small, random samples of the parent population's gene pool (the founder effect) and thus can diverge rapidly - both by pure chance and because they can respond to local selection pressures. which may differ from the parent population Gradually, some of these divergent, peripheral populations respond to changing conditions environment(species selection) and then proliferate and spread rapidly in the fossil record.
The punctuated equilibrium model has become widespread, but not because it has a strong theoretical basis but because she had to resolve the dilemma. Beyond the obvious research problems inherent in the observations that stimulated the model, and apart from its inherent vicious circle (it could be argued that speciation occurs only after rapid phylum changes, and not vice versa), this model is currently more of a mixture of different explanations than a theory, and stands on unstable ground.
Robert E. Ricklefs, Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. Paleontologists confronting macroevolution. Science, vol.199, 6 January 1978, p.59.
122. Paleontologists (and evolutionary biologists in general) are known for their ability to fabricate plausible stories; but they often forget that plausible stories and truth are by no means the same thing.
Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University, Dr. David M. Raup, Consultant Geology, Department of the Museum of Natural History, Chicago, J. John Sepkoski Jr. ( J.John Sepkoski, Jr., Dept. of Geological Sciences, University of Rochester, New York, Thomas J.M. Schopf, Dept. of Geological Sciences, University of Chicago, and Daniel S. Bimherloff , Department of Biology, University of Florida, Talla Hussey. The shape of evolution: a comparison of real and random clades. Paleobiology, vol. 3(l), 1977, pp. 34-35.
Think about it!
123. On Pasteur's refutation of the idea of spontaneous generation of life. We present this story to aspiring biology students as a triumph of common sense over mysticism. In fact, it seems that things are different. The reasonable approach was to believe in spontaneous arising; the only alternative is belief in a single, primordial act of supernatural creation. There is no third. Therefore, a century ago, many scientists began to consider the belief in the spontaneous origin of life as a "philosophical necessity." The fact that now this necessity is not in price is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time. The majority of modern biologists, while watching with satisfaction the decline of the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, still does not want to accept an alternative point of view, believe in Purposeful Creation, and are left with nothing.
George Wald, former professor of biology, Harvard University. The origin of life. Scientific American, vol. 191(2), August 1954, p.46
124. The conclusion is inevitable that many scientists and technologists worship Darwin's theory only because it allegedly excludes the Creator from yet another sphere of material phenomena, and not at all because it builds a coherent paradigm of research canons in the sciences of life and the Earth.
Dr. Michael Walker, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Sydney. That have evolved or to have not? That is the question. Quadrant, October 1981, p.45.
125. I know what question has arisen in the minds of many who have read up to this point: “Does not science prove that there is no Creator?” That's just science does not prove it!
Dr. Paul A. Moody, Zoology, Professor Emeritus of Natural History and Zoology, University of Vermont. In: Introduction to Evolution, Harper and Row, New York, 2nd ed, 1962, p.513.
126. The code of honor that a naturalist who wants to understand the problem of evolution must learn is: to be true to the facts and to reject all dogmas and a priori ideas. Facts first, then theories. The only verdict that comes into force is the one that the court recognized as proven facts. Indeed, the best evolutionary research has been carried out by those biologists whose eyes were not blinded by doctrine, who considered the facts calmly, without trying them on one theory or another. Today our task is to destroy the myth of evolution as a simple, understandable, easily explainable phenomenon that is clearly revealed to us. Biologists should be encouraged by the thought that the interpretations and extrapolations presented by theorists as established truths are untenable. This deception is sometimes accidental, but only sometimes, because some people, due to their sectarianism, deliberately turn away from reality and refuse to admit the inconsistency, the falsity of their ideas.
Pierre-Paul Grasset, University of Paris, former president of the French Academy of Sciences. In: Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, 1977, p.8.
127. Scientists top level much of Wilberforce's critique of Darwin's theory is now recognized, as well as that of the geologist Adam Sedgwick, whose article was published in The Spectator in April 1860...
Darwin was concerned about the missing links in the fossil record. He had a presentiment that they were about to appear, but these links are missing to this day and, it seems, will never be found. What we should think about this is an open question; but even today conservative neo-Darwinist fanatics and unorthodox neo-Sedgwickians who consider themselves enlightened rationalists contemptuously reject evidence that is clear to everyone.
Prof. Sir Edmund R. Leach. From an address to the annual meeting (1981) of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Men, bishops and apes. Nature, vol.293, 3 September 1981, Pp.19, 20.
128. The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some creative idea, a manifestation of the finest aesthetic and mathematical developments, is irresistible. I, like most physicists, believe there is something behind it.
Paul Davies. The Christian perspective of a scientist. New Scientist, 2 June 1983, p.638.
129. ... For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth with unrighteousness. For what can be known about God is clear to them, because God has shown them; For His invisible, His eternal power and Divinity, from the creation of the world through the consideration of creations are visible, so that they are unanswerable. But how, having known God, they did not glorify Him as God, and did not give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts, and their inconceivable heart was darkened: calling themselves wise, they became foolish ...
Bible. Romans, chapter 1, verses 18-22.
130. ... For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Bible. Gospel of John, chapter 3, verse 16.
— idea system about the historical variability of the living, represented the pinnacle of transformism, was founded by the French scientist Jean Baptiste Lamarck (25) (1744-1829). The main provisions of this theory are set forth in the work "Philosophy of Zoology": organisms change under the influence of external and internal factors, species are unstable and turn into other species; in organisms there is a desire for improvement, on the way to which evolution occurs, changes in organisms acquired during life are inherited.
Lamarck was one of the first to attempt to develop a natural plant system. According to the degree of improvement of the flower and fruit, he divided them into tayomnoslyubny, one-lobed, incomplete, composite, one-petal, many-petalled.
The term "biology" first appeared during the period of intensive formation of science of the modern type - at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. It was introduced almost simultaneously, independently by four scientists: in 1797 p. - T. Roose, in 1800 - C. Burdaha and in 1802 - J. B. Lamarck and G. R. Treviranus.
Modern look on the theory of evolution is associated with the name of Charles Darwin (26) (1809-1882), his theory of natural selection, which he outlined in the work “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” published in 1859. According to Darwin, evolution occurs as a result of the interaction of three main biological factors: variability, heredity and natural selection. Variation provides material for evolutionary transformations, heredity fixes these changes, preserving them in descendants, and natural selection leaves only individuals with individual differences contribute to the survival of organisms. The constant accumulation of new features at a certain stage leads to the formation of a new species. It is the new species that are better adapted to life than their predecessors, capable of leaving a greater number of descendants, that gradually causes the old forms to be replaced by new ones. This is a doctrine in which the role driving force of evolution belongs to natural selection, is called Darwinism.
Further evolutionary theory developed, enriched with information from other sections of biology, supplemented them, creating new evolutionary directions. Evolutionary morphology, evolutionary paleontology and evolutionary embryology (from the Greek. Embryo - embryo) arose. The founders of the latter were Professor of the Novorossiysk University in Odessa Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (27) (1845-1916) and Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Director of the Sevastopol Biological Station in 1892-1901 pp. Alexander Onufrievich Kovalevsky (1840-1901).
In the XX century. on the basis of Darwinism and the achievements of other biological sciences, a synthetic theory of evolution arose, which combined Darwinism with the achievements of genetics. A significant contribution to its development was made by Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Ivan Ivanovich Shmalgauzen (28) (1884-1963) - the founder and director of the Institute of Zoology, today bears his name, as well as our compatriot Academician of the National Academy of CELA Feodosy Grigorievich Dobzhansky (29) (1900- 1975).
The final stage in the formation of evolutionary doctrine was the penetration of the ideas of Darwinism into biological systematics. This led to the creation of a natural system of organisms that is still in use today. Unlike artificial system Linnaeus, it is built on the principle of kinship of organisms: closely related species of animals are combined into the category "genus", close genera form the category "family", and closely related families - "series". The basis for determining the relationship of organisms are not single characters, but their complexes, as well as the features of the individual development of organisms and the data of evolutionary paleontology.
evolutionary doctrine
Evolutionary doctrine (theory of evolution)- science that studies historical development life: causes, patterns and mechanisms. Distinguish between micro and macro evolution.
microevolution- evolutionary processes at the population level, leading to the formation of new species.
macroevolution- evolution of supraspecific taxa, as a result of which larger systematic groups are formed. They are based on the same principles and mechanisms.
Development of evolutionary ideas
Heraclitus, Empidocles, Democritus, Lucretius, Hippocrates, Aristotle and other ancient philosophers formulated the first ideas about the development of wildlife.
Carl Linnaeus believed in the creation of nature by God and the constancy of species, but allowed the possibility of the emergence of new species by crossing or under the influence of environmental conditions. In the book “The System of Nature”, K. Linnaeus substantiated the species as a universal unit and the main form of existence of the living; he assigned a double designation to each species of animals and plants, where the noun is the name of the genus, the adjective is the name of the species (for example, Homo sapiens); described a huge number of plants and animals; developed the basic principles of taxonomy of plants and animals and created their first classification.
Jean Baptiste Lamarck created the first holistic evolutionary doctrine. In the work "Philosophy of Zoology" (1809), he singled out the main direction of the evolutionary process - the gradual complication of organization from lower to higher forms. He also developed a hypothesis about the natural origin of man from ape-like ancestors who switched to a terrestrial way of life. Lamarck considered the striving for perfection of organisms as the driving force behind evolution and claimed the inheritance of acquired traits. That is, the organs necessary in the new conditions develop as a result of exercise (the neck of a giraffe), and unnecessary organs atrophy due to lack of exercise (the eyes of a mole). However, Lamarck was unable to reveal the mechanisms of the evolutionary process. His hypothesis about the inheritance of acquired traits turned out to be untenable, and his statement about the internal desire of organisms for improvement was unscientific.
Charles Darwin created an evolutionary theory based on the concepts of the struggle for existence and natural selection. The prerequisites for the emergence of the teachings of Charles Darwin were the following: the accumulation by that time of rich material on paleontology, geography, geology, and biology; selection development; the successes of systematics; the emergence of cell theory; own observations of the scientist during the round-the-world voyage on the Beagle ship. Ch. Darwin outlined his evolutionary ideas in a number of works: “The Origin of Species through Natural Selection”, “Change of Domestic Animals and Cultivated Plants Under the Influence of Domestication”, “The Origin of Man and Sexual Selection”, etc.
Darwin's teaching boils down to this:
- each individual of a particular species has individuality (variability);
- personality traits (although not all) can be inherited (heredity);
- individuals produce more offspring than they survive to puberty and the beginning of reproduction, that is, in nature there is a struggle for existence;
- the advantage in the struggle for existence remains with the fittest individuals, who are more likely to leave behind offspring (natural selection);
- as a result of natural selection, there is a gradual complication of the levels of organization of life and the emergence of species.
Factors of evolution according to Ch. Darwin- This
- heredity,
- variability,
- struggle for existence,
- natural selection.
Heredity
- the ability of organisms to transmit their characteristics from generation to generation (features of structure, development, functions).
Variability
- the ability of organisms to acquire new traits.
Struggle for existence
- the whole complex of relationships between organisms and environmental conditions: with inanimate nature (abiotic factors) and with other organisms (biotic factors). The struggle for existence is not a "struggle" in the truest sense of the word, in fact it is a survival strategy and a way of existence of an organism. Distinguish between intraspecific struggle, interspecific struggle and struggle with adverse factors environment. Intraspecific struggle- struggle between individuals of the same population. It is always very stressful, as individuals of the same species need the same resources. Interspecies struggle- struggle between individuals of populations of different species. Occurs when species compete for the same resources, or when they are linked in predator-prey relationships. Struggle with unfavorable abiotic environmental factors especially manifested in the deterioration of environmental conditions; enhances intraspecific struggle. In the struggle for existence, individuals most adapted to given living conditions are identified. The struggle for existence leads to natural selection.
Natural selection- a process, as a result of which, predominantly individuals with hereditary changes that are useful under given conditions, survive and leave behind offspring.
All biological and many other natural sciences were rebuilt on the basis of Darwinism.
At present, the most widely accepted is synthetic theory of evolution (STE). Comparative characteristics of the main provisions of the evolutionary teachings of Charles Darwin and STE are given in the table.
Comparative characteristics of the main provisions of the evolutionary teachings of Ch. Darwin and the synthetic theory of evolution (STE)
| signs | evolutionary theory Ch. Darwin | Synthetic Theory of Evolution (STE) |
| Main results of evolution | 1) Increasing the adaptability of organisms to environmental conditions; 2) increasing the level of organization of living beings; 3) increase in the diversity of organisms | |
| Evolution unit | View | population |
| Factors of evolution | Heredity, variability, struggle for existence, natural selection | Mutational and combinative variability, population waves and genetic drift, isolation, natural selection |
| driving factor | Natural selection | |
| Interpretation of the term natural selection | Survival of the fittest and death of the less fit | Selective reproduction of genotypes |
| Forms of natural selection | Driving (and sexual as its variety) | Driving, stabilizing, disruptive |
The emergence of devices. Each adaptation is developed on the basis of hereditary variability in the process of struggle for existence and selection in a number of generations. Natural selection favors only expedient adaptations that help an organism survive and reproduce.
The adaptability of organisms to the environment is not absolute, but relative, since environmental conditions can change. Many facts serve as proof of this. For example, fish are perfectly adapted to aquatic habitats, but all these adaptations are completely unsuitable for other habitats. Night butterflies collect nectar from light flowers, clearly visible at night, but often fly into the fire and die.
Elementary Factors of Evolution- factors that change the frequency of alleles and genotypes in the population (the genetic structure of the population).
There are several main elementary factors of evolution:
mutation process;
population waves and genetic drift;
insulation;
natural selection.
Mutational and combinative variability.
mutation process leads to the emergence of new alleles (or genes) and their combinations as a result of mutations. As a result of a mutation, a gene can move from one allelic state to another (A → a) or change the gene in general (A → C). The mutation process, due to the randomness of mutations, does not have a direction and, without the participation of other evolutionary factors, cannot direct the change in the natural population. It only supplies the elementary evolutionary material for natural selection. Recessive mutations in the heterozygous state constitute a hidden reserve of variability, which can be used by natural selection when the conditions of existence change.
Combination variability occurs as a result of the formation in the offspring of new combinations of already existing genes inherited from parents. The sources of combinative variability are chromosome crossing (recombination), random segregation of homologous chromosomes during meiosis, and random combination of gametes during fertilization.
Population waves and genetic drift.
population waves(waves of life) - periodic and non-periodic fluctuations in the population size, both upward and downward. The causes of population waves can be periodic changes in environmental environmental factors (seasonal fluctuations in temperature, humidity, etc.), non-periodic changes (natural disasters), settlement of new territories by the species (accompanied by a sharp increase in numbers).
Population waves act as an evolutionary factor in small populations where gene drift is possible. Gene drift- random non-directional change in the frequencies of alleles and genotypes in populations. In small populations, the action of random processes leads to noticeable consequences. If the population is small in size, then as a result of random events, some individuals, regardless of their genetic constitution, may or may not leave offspring, as a result of which the frequencies of some alleles may change dramatically over one or several generations. Thus, with a sharp reduction in the population size (for example, due to seasonal fluctuations, a reduction in food resources, a fire, etc.), rare genotypes may be among the few remaining individuals. If in the future the number is restored due to these individuals, then this will lead to a random change in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of the population. Thus, population waves are the supplier of evolutionary material.
Insulation due to the emergence of various factors that prevent free crossing. Between the formed populations, the exchange of genetic information ceases, as a result of which the initial differences in the gene pools of these populations increase and become fixed. Isolated populations can undergo various evolutionary changes, gradually turning into different species.
Distinguish between spatial and biological isolation. Spatial (geographical) isolation associated with geographical obstacles (water barriers, mountains, deserts, etc.), and for sedentary populations and simply with great distances. biological isolation due to the impossibility of mating and fertilization (due to a change in the timing of reproduction, structure or other factors that prevent crossing), the death of zygotes (due to biochemical differences in gametes), the sterility of the offspring (as a result of impaired chromosome conjugation during gametogenesis).
The evolutionary significance of isolation is that it perpetuates and reinforces genetic differences between populations.
Natural selection. Changes in the frequencies of genes and genotypes caused by the factors of evolution discussed above are of a random, non-directional nature. The guiding factor of evolution is natural selection.
Natural selection- the process, as a result of which predominantly individuals with properties useful to the population survive and leave behind offspring.
Selection operates in populations; its objects are the phenotypes of individual individuals. However, selection by phenotypes is a selection of genotypes, since not traits, but genes are transmitted to offspring. As a result, in the population there is an increase in the relative number of individuals with a certain property or quality. Thus, natural selection is a process of differential (selective) reproduction of genotypes.
Not only properties that increase the likelihood of leaving offspring are subjected to selection, but also traits that are not directly related to reproduction. In a number of cases, selection can be aimed at creating mutual adaptations of species to each other (flowers of plants and insects visiting them). Also, signs can be created that are harmful to an individual, but ensure the survival of the species as a whole (a stinging bee dies, but attacking the enemy, it saves the family). On the whole, selection plays a creative role in nature, since from undirected hereditary changes those are fixed that can lead to the formation of new groups of individuals that are more perfect in the given conditions of existence.
There are three main forms of natural selection: stabilizing, moving and tearing (disruptive) (table).
Forms of natural selection
| Form | Characteristic | Examples |
| stabilizing | Aimed at the preservation of mutations leading to less variability in the average value of the trait. It operates under relatively constant environmental conditions, that is, as long as the conditions that led to the formation of a particular trait or property persist. | Preservation in insect pollinated plants of the size and shape of the flower, since the flowers must correspond to the size of the body of the pollinating insect. Conservation of relic species. |
| Moving | It is aimed at preserving mutations that change the average value of the trait. Occurs when environmental conditions change. The individuals of the population have some differences in genotype and phenotype, and with a long-term change in the external environment, a part of the individuals of the species with some deviations from the average norm may gain an advantage in life and reproduction. The variation curve shifts in the direction of adaptation to new conditions of existence. | The emergence of resistance to pesticides in insects and rodents, in microorganisms - to antibiotics. Darkening of the color of the birch moth (butterfly) in the developed industrial regions of England (industrial melanism). In these areas, the bark of trees becomes dark due to the disappearance of lichens sensitive to atmospheric pollution, and dark butterflies are less visible on tree trunks. |
| Tearing (disruptive) | Aimed at the preservation of mutations leading to the greatest deviation from the average value of the trait. Disruptive selection is manifested in the event that environmental conditions change in such a way that individuals with extreme deviations from the average norm acquire an advantage. As a result of tearing selection, polymorphism of the population is formed, that is, the presence of several groups that differ in some way. | With frequent strong winds, insects with either well-developed wings or rudimentary ones persist on oceanic islands. |
A Brief History of the Evolution of the Organic World
The age of the Earth is about 4.6 billion years. Life on Earth originated in the ocean more than 3.5 billion years ago.
Short story development of the organic world is presented in the table. The phylogeny of the main groups of organisms is shown in the figure.
The history of the development of life on Earth is studied by the fossil remains of organisms or traces of their vital activity. They are found in rocks of different ages.
The geochronological scale of the Earth's history is divided into eras and periods.
Geochronological scale and the history of the development of living organisms
| Era, age (in million years) | Period, duration (in million years) | Animal world | plant world | The most important aromorphoses |
| Cenozoic, 62–70 | Anthropogen, 1.5 | Modern animal world. Evolution and domination of man | Modern flora | Intensive development of the cerebral cortex; upright posture |
| Neogene, 23.0 Paleogene, 41±2 | Mammals, birds, insects dominate. The first primates appear (lemurs, tarsiers), later parapithecus and dryopithecus. Many groups of reptiles, cephalopods disappear | Flowering plants, especially herbaceous ones, are widely distributed; the flora of gymnosperms is reduced | ||
| Mesozoic, 240 | Chalk, 70 | Bony fish, first birds, and small mammals predominate; placental mammals and modern birds appear and spread; giant reptiles die out | Angiosperms appear and begin to dominate; ferns and gymnosperms are reduced | Emergence of flower and fruit. The appearance of the uterus |
| Yura, 60 | Giant reptiles, bony fish, insects, and cephalopods predominate; Archeopteryx appears; ancient cartilaginous fish die out | Modern gymnosperms dominate; ancient gymnosperms die out | ||
| Triassic, 35±5 | Amphibians, cephalopods, herbivorous and predatory reptiles predominate; bony fish, oviparous and marsupial mammals appear | Ancient gymnosperms predominate; modern gymnosperms appear; seed ferns are dying out | The appearance of a four-chambered heart; complete separation of arterial and venous blood flow; the appearance of warm-bloodedness; appearance of mammary glands | |
| Paleozoic, 570 | ||||
| Perm, 50±10 | Marine invertebrates, sharks dominate; reptiles and insects develop rapidly; there are animal-toothed and herbivorous reptiles; stegocephalians and trilobites are dying out | Rich flora of seed and herbaceous ferns; ancient gymnosperms appear; tree-like horsetails, club mosses and ferns die out | Pollen tube and seed formation | |
| Carbon, 65±10 | Amphibians, mollusks, sharks, lungfish dominate; winged forms of insects, spiders, scorpions appear and develop rapidly; the first reptiles appear; trilobites and stegocephals are noticeably reduced | Abundance of tree-like ferns forming "carboniferous forests"; seed ferns appear; psilophytes disappear | The appearance of internal fertilization; the appearance of dense egg shells; keratinization of the skin | |
| Devon 55 | Armored, molluscs, trilobites, corals prevail; lobe-finned, lungfish and ray-finned fish, stegocephals appear | Rich flora of psilophytes; mosses, ferns, mushrooms appear | The dismemberment of the body of plants into organs; transformation of fins into terrestrial limbs; the emergence of respiratory organs | |
| Silur, 35 | Rich fauna of trilobites, molluscs, crustaceans, corals; armored fish appear, the first terrestrial invertebrates (centipedes, scorpions, wingless insects) | Abundance of algae; plants come to land - psilophytes appear | Differentiation of the plant body into tissues; division of the animal body into sections; formation of jaws and limb girdles in vertebrates | |
| Ordovician, 55±10 Cambrian, 80±20 | Sponges, coelenterates, worms, echinoderms, trilobites predominate; jawless vertebrates (scutes), molluscs appear | Prosperity of all departments of algae | ||
| Proterozoic, 2600 | Protozoa are widespread; all types of invertebrates, echinoderms appear; primary chordates appear - subtype Cranial | Blue-green and green algae, bacteria are widespread; red algae appear | The emergence of bilateral symmetry | |
| Archeyskaya, 3500 | The emergence of life: prokaryotes (bacteria, blue-green algae), eukaryotes (protozoa), primitive multicellular organisms | The emergence of photosynthesis; the appearance of aerobic respiration; the emergence of eukaryotic cells; the appearance of the sexual process; emergence of multicellularity | ||
the doctrine of the development of living nature, developed by Ch. arr. Darenny. E. t. summarized the results of centuries-old breeding practice, the achievements of biology, geology and paleontology, and the observations of Darwin himself during his round-the-world trip. Ch. According to Darwin, the factors in the evolution of living beings are variability, heredity and selection (at home - artificial, in nature - natural). In the course of the struggle for existence, which takes place in changing environmental conditions, only the fittest survive from living beings and give offspring. Natural selection constantly improves the structure and functions of organisms, develops the adaptability of organisms to the environment. E. t. gave for the first time scientific explanation diversity of biological species, their origin, formed the basis of modern. biology. Together with the natural-science theories of Kant, J. Lamarck, and C. Lyell, E. t. contributed to the substantiation of the inconsistency of the metaphysical way of thinking. It also dealt a blow to idealistic views on living nature and was the natural-historical basis of the dialectical-materialist worldview. The further development of E. t. is associated with discoveries in genetics and molecular biology the mechanism of hereditary variability, with the study of species populations, the development of the biosphere, etc.
Great Definition
Incomplete definition ↓
EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
in b and o l o g and i) - a set of ideas about the mechanisms and patterns of historical. changes in the organic nature. Main aspects of life form structure, functioning and genesis. In turn, the genesis can be considered in two aspects - historical (evolution) and individual (ontogeny). Evolution is a very slow process, therefore, for early naturalists, it was found only indirectly, according to its results - as a known sequence of organic. forms, so-called. "ladder of creatures". The explanation of this sequence initially did not go beyond the ideas of creationism, although Otd. aspects of evolution. approach can be found already at the early stages of the development of biology. How scientific. theory of evolution. the doctrine took shape only in the 19th century with the establishment of Darwinism. The formation and development of E. t. is inseparable from the development of biology itself, primarily from the development of its basic system. concepts, as well as from the accumulation and systematization of empirical. material. Duration unity time. an element of living nature was considered an organism, to which only evolutions were distributed. representation. The accumulation of data on organisms contributed to the rapid development of taxonomy, which in turn led to the formation of the concept of a species as the main. systematic units. The study of the diversity of species culminated in the idea of a single pedigree, or phyletic., Organic tree. peace. Filetich. the picture of life was one of the first successes of evolution. ideas in biology. If the general contours of the phyletic The evolution of organisms became more and more distinct, but its mechanism and driving forces were completely unexplored. This gave rise to speculative concepts of evolution, of which Lamarck's theory was the most complete. According to Lamarck, the evolution of organisms is a two-pronged process: one type of evolution. changes are due to the action of internal (divine) forces, the other is the result of direct adaptation to the environment, the result of exercise and non-exercise of organs. Both of these ideas were based on virtually no facts, and Lamarck's theory did not receive support. But in itself, the understanding of evolution as a change in species has become quite definite. outlines, paving the way for Darwinism. Creating his E. t., Darwin relied on the generalization of a huge factual. describe the material. biology, geology, paleontology, breeding, etc. x-va and investigated primarily the process of variability. This allowed him to abandon the Lamarckian idea of direct adaptation and characterize the driving force of evolution as the interaction of heredity, variability and selection. Since the main controlling factor in the process of selection is the environment, the evolution of organisms was described by Darwin as the result of the interaction of the organism and the environment. This t. sp. became the core of materialism. understanding of evolution as a manifestations of internal and external forces of development. It was considered by the founders of Marxism as one of the decisive evidence in substantiating the dialectic. nature of development in nature. Darwin accepted the concept of a species, which had already become firmly established in biology, and spoke of evolution as the origin of species: actually adapting, changes in organisms, and divergence of species. However, the theory of the origin of species, as formulated by Darwin, only indicated Ch. factors of evolution and therefore gave only a general description of the process of evolution. The intimate aspects of this process, primarily the problems of heredity and variability, remained undiscovered. Therefore, in the subsequent development of biology, successes and failures in the study of heredity were directly reflected in E. t. a rare event that variability is built on the basis of small mutations). Further development of E. t. is connected first of all with successes of genetics, osn. steps have been taken since the rediscovery of Mendel's famous laws on the splitting of characters during crossing. Analysis of heredity and variability in modern. genetics significantly expanded the base of E. t. The next step in the development of ideas about the mechanisms of evolution is associated with the transition to research (along with the organism) of species populations and those processes that occur within the species. Due to intraspecific crossing, mutations that occur in some organisms spread in the population, recombine and form new combinations of traits; selection reinforces the most successful combinations in a given environment, and the proportion of the corresponding genes in the total gene pool of the species increases; when environmental conditions change, other genomes (combinations of inheritances, factors) may turn out to be favorable. Such processes are directly involved in the evolution. view transformations. Thus, genetics has shown that adaptive evolutions. changes are formed from undefined. changes only within the view. Accordingly, the idea of \u200b\u200b"species-centrism" arose, according to which the species is the main. unit of organic world and unit of evolution. Further development of evolution. representations led to the creation of the so-called. synthetic E. t. Inheriting the ideas of the classic. Darwinism, it continues to occupy the place of the central theoretical. designs in classical biology. Along with Ch. channel of evolution. ideas in organismal biology, in which the interaction of the organism and the environment is recognized as the leading factor, other directions existed and still exist. One of these concepts is vitalism, in the crust. time rejected by the vast majority of biologists. Dr. concepts that preserve a certain distribution can be divided into two opposite groups: such, according to Crimea, evolution in the main. features is made on the basis of internal. regularities (autogenesis, orthogenesis, nomogenesis, etc.), and such, according to Crimea, evolution entirely or in the main. features is performed on the basis of the direct impact of the environment on the body (exogenesis, the so-called theory of "assimilation of external conditions", etc.). Both of these approaches lead to errors: autogeneticists are usually forced to admit the possibility of pre-adaptation, i.e. adapt. changes that occur before the body enters the environment, in which these changes are beneficial to it; exogenetics, on the other hand, are forced to attribute to the organism some initial ability to change adequately to the environment. A special place is occupied by the group of evolutions. ideas originating from Lamarck and Spencer. Here, evolution is seen as a two-pronged process: it is considered to be based on non-adaptive changes (occurring regardless of the environment); for this main type of changes are superimposed adaptations due to the environment. It is believed that adaptive variability can be based on the selection mechanism, and non-adaptive changes, going in the direction of complexity, are due to unexplored, but quite material forces, for example. associated with the transition of the organism from a less probable to a more probable state (an increase in entropy). This t. sp. has been increasingly put forward in recent years, but the idea of spontaneous non-adaptive changes leading to the complexity of the organization is still little substantiated. To a certain extent, this direction is close to finalistic. structures, but free from their main. extremes are the ideas of the "final" of evolution. Classic biology can be regarded as biology at the basic organismal level, which has studied only the species among superorganismal systems. Modern biology has added to the number of its objects both communities of organisms and other ecological. systems - biogeocenoses and the biosphere as a whole. This led to the approval of the idea of a multi-level structure of wildlife. Thus, the problem of the origin and evolution of not only organisms and species, but also communities was posed. ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole. Thus, evolutionary approach, while fully retaining its significance in biology, requires new scales and conceptual forms of evolution for its development. thinking. This does not mean belittling Darwinism as a theory of the evolution of organisms and species. It's about looking for specifics. patterns inherent in each of the environmental. levels and not reducible to the selection process. Searches in this area turn out to be closely associated with the development of the study of objects as systems. Lit.: Berg L. S., Nomogenesis or evolution based on patterns, P., 1922; Bauer E.S., Theoretical. biology, M.–L., 1935; Lamarck J. B., Philosophy of Zoology, trans. from French, vols. 1–2, Moscow–Leningrad, 1935–37; Severtsov A. N., Morphological. laws of evolution, M.–L., 1939; Shmalgauzen II, Ways and patterns of evolution. process, M.–L., 1939; his own, The problem of adaptation in Darwin and anti-Darwinists, in the book: Philos. problems of modern biology, M.–L., 1966; Sukachev V. N., The idea of development in phytocenology, "Sov. Botany", 1942, No 1–3; Simpson J. G., Rates and forms of evolution, trans. from English, M., 1948; Darwin, C., On the Origin of Species, trans. from English, M., 1952; Livanov? ?., Ways of evolution of the animal world, M., 1955; Zavadsky K. M., Teaching about the form, L., 1961; Сuenot L., Invention et finalit? en biology, P., 1941; Vandel?., L'homme et l'?volution, P., 1949; Huxley, J., Evolution in action, N. Y., 1953; Bertalanffy L. von, Problems of life, N. Y., ; Lerner I. M., The genetic basis of selection, N. Y.–L., 1961; Grant V., The origin of adaptations, N. Y.–L., 1963; Stebbins G. L., Variation and evolution in plants, N. Y.–L., 1963; Dobzhansky Th., Genetics and the origin of species, 3 ?d., N. Y.–L.–; Mayr E., Animal species and evolution, Camb. (Mass.), 1965. K. Khailov. Sevastopol.
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