Darwinian Evolution is an idea that springs from biology but has greatly impacted other areas of thought such as the social sciences, public policy, and some aspects are considered in cosmology. Because of its widespread influence I believe that it’s a good Idea to take a look evolutions scientific validity.
First of all I would like to clarify that evolution does not necessarily mandate a change in species. Evolution is a process occurring on a long continuum and an organism can fall into any particular place on that continuum over time. Also, to say that any particular creature is “more evolved†than another is meaningless. There is no ultimate goal that evolution is striving to achieve; it’s simply a process by which organisms that are best matched to their environment will survive and pass on their genes. These gene recombinations and mutations have, over many millions of years, resulted in organisms we call bears that have fur and other organisms we call giraffes that have long necks. Each of which is particularly suited to their environments (and just lucky enough to have had their genes passed down through the generations).
There are two key methods through which evolution takes place: genetic drift and natural selection. Most biologists like to state that genetic drift is the most random process. An organism can wantonly mate throughout its society and spread its genetic material - which will later be recombined with other genetic material - with arbitrary mutations occurring here and there sometimes. Thus the organisms DNA will “drift†through the environment by chance.
On the other hand, scientists like to point out that natural selection is not random at all and offers an element of predictability. For instance, let’s say that a snake is born with albinism. In the jungle it would be highly unlikely that this snake would survive because predators would easily be able to distinguish it from its environment. We would reasonably be able to predict that albino snakes will be targeted by predators and eventually most of the genes that cause albinism will be weeded out due to natural selection.
Once again, environment plays a key role. Now let’s assume that a volcano has erupted nearby and tossed white ashes all over this area of the jungle. Suddenly the white snakes have the advantage – now the darker colored snakes will be easy prey for predators. Assuming this happens over a long enough period, the albino snakes will find it easier to survive and pass along their genetic material therefore eventually becoming the more dominate type of snake.
From what we have seen of evolution so far, it is obvious that an organism’s chance for survival cannot be separated from the environment that it lives in. Because of this, evolution is tied not only into the organism itself, but also its surroundings – whether they are living or not. This is very significant and leads me to two problems:
The first problem is that evolution is extremely limited in its capacity to predict. The example of the albino snake is not farfetched. Many of those of you reading this probably remember the same thing happened with the peppered moth in Great Britain. It was perfectly logical to presume that a white snake had little chance of survival in a jungle – until we changed the environment. Natural selection would only allow us to predict up to a point. Predictability further falters when we factor in not only the environmental changes but the mutations and random recombination of the genes themselves. Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist and paleontologist, has argued that because of the happenstance nature of evolution, if we were to go back in time and re-run evolution all over again, we would not recognize life on earth anymore. The fact that evolutionary changes happen over such a long period of time makes the limited-scope predictability of natural selection virtually useless.
The second problem is that everything can be explained through evolution. The philosopher Karl Popper is well noted for his stance that in order for a theory or proposition to be considered scientific it must be falsifiable. In other words, the core tenets of the theory must be logically testable and verifiable to be either true or false. Einstein’s theory of Relativity contains predictions and testable hypotheses that have been backed up through trials and experiments that have resulted in adding further validity to his ideas on the nature of light, gravity, and time. To contrast this, let’s look at evolution’s falsifiability. First of all, if an environmental change takes place, we can say that any effect on the organism (either negative or positive) is due to a concurrent change in its environment. If the environment holds steady, we can say that any changes in the organism are due to genetic drift and/or natural selection. No matter what happens, it is still considered evolution.
So, in order for a theory to be considered scientific it must offer predictability and falsifiability. Judging from the evidence so far, evolution does not present either of these. So what is evolution?
There is one cornerstone of human thought that also does not necessitate the need for scientific verification: religion.
Does evolution fit the definition of religion more so than it does the definition of scientific theory?
Just food for thought.
