{"id":1289,"date":"2013-08-10T10:24:32","date_gmt":"2013-08-10T15:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/?p=1289"},"modified":"2013-08-10T10:24:32","modified_gmt":"2013-08-10T15:24:32","slug":"darwins-doubt-chapter-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/2013\/08\/10\/darwins-doubt-chapter-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Darwin’s Doubt – Chapter 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few pages into chapter 1 of\u00a0Darwin’s Doubt<\/em> and I have little to complain about. \u00a0It’s almost shocking how good Meyer’s description of Darwin’s actual work is. \u00a0Of course, we now know that Darwin’s work was just the initial ideas that got a storm of data and concepts moving. \u00a0Indeed, some scientists think we’ve already moved beyond<\/a> the modern evolution synthesis (sometimes called neodarwinism).<\/p>\n

As always, any direct discussion of Darwin himself is pretty much a waste of breath. \u00a0Darwin dies over 130 years ago and\u00a0The Origin of the Species<\/em> was published over 150 years ago. \u00a0To say that this work is out of date is an understatement. \u00a0This is roughly equivalent to accusing Alan Turing of being wrong about computers because you can’t get Windows 8 to install correctly.<\/p>\n

Here, I think, we get to Meyer’s big concern.<\/p>\n

Despite the scope of his synthesis, there was one set of facts that troubled Darwin – something he conceded his theory couldn’t adequately explain, at least t present. \u00a0Darwin was puzzled by a pattern in the fossil record that seemed to document the geologically sudden appearance of animal life in a remote period of geologic history, a period that was commonly called the Silurian, but later came to be known as the Cambrian.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, a minor, but seemingly important quibble. \u00a0The Silurian time period<\/a> was did not become known as the Cambrian time period<\/a>. \u00a0Curiously, doing a search for this concept, I\u00a0only<\/strong> find this concept in creationist sources. \u00a0When using sources that I consider legitimate talk about the subject they describe it as Adam Sedgwick<\/a>\u00a0describing the Cambrian strata and Roderick Murchison<\/a>\u00a0describing the Silurian. \u00a0Unfortunately,\u00a0\u00a0both described a section of (somewhat unusual strata) in Wales as being in their respective time period.<\/p>\n

The end result was that the time period<\/a> of overlap between Sedgwick’s Cambrian and Murchison’s’ Silurian was renamed “Ordovician”. \u00a0There was never a time when the Silurian later became the Cambrian.<\/p>\n

The “Cambrian Explosion<\/a>” is generally listed as taking place 542 million years ago. \u00a0This is the very earliest portion of the Cambrian and was never named the Silurian.<\/p>\n

I find this uniquely disturbing in someone who claims to be a scientific historian. \u00a0Like his earlier gaff with Rosalind Franklin and DNA (which, is correct in one book, but not in this one) it’s problematic.<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s a very minor thing and I’ll leave it to you to decide if I’m making mountains out of molehills here. \u00a0But it seems to me that this is a pattern. \u00a0A pattern of sloppy research designed to mislead people who aren’t so familiar with a subject that they can spot these kinds of errors. \u00a0I can spot these kinds of errors, indeed it’s part of my day job to do things like this.<\/p>\n

Now, I must say that this is (I hope) historical context. \u00a0Because if Meyer tries to make the argument that because Darwin didn’t know about all the fossils prior to the Cambrian, that evolution is therefore wrong… well… that’s just stupid. \u00a0I’ll refer back to the Alan Turing\/Windows 8 analogy.<\/p>\n

Evolution has advanced far beyond what Darwin even dreamed was possible… and that includes Pre-Cambrian paleontology. \u00a0Any discussion of evolutionary theory that is about science can effectively ignore Darwin. \u00a0Yes, I said that. \u00a0Darwin started the ball rolling and it was an awe inspiring contribution to science (that at least one other person had also figured out). \u00a0But it was just the beginning, in the same way that ENIAC<\/a>\u00a0got the ball rolling with general purpose, electronic computers. \u00a0But we can’t exactly run Crysis<\/a> on ENIAC now can we?<\/p>\n

So, I really hope that Meyer isn’t going there. \u00a0As we get deeper into this thing, I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunity for me to describe all the Pre-Cambrian (and Precambrian) fossils and explain why we don’t expect to have a lot of them. \u00a0I am looking forward to Meyer explaining that to the readers of this book.<\/p>\n

Our next installment will talk about Louis Agassiz (Harvard) and this supposed “insuperable difficulty for Darwin’s theory”.<\/p>\n

As aside, at the point in history of which we are talking about, I would consider Darwin’s work a hypothesis at best. \u00a0It’s not a scientific theory until there is a great deal of evidence to support it. \u00a0Which is one problem that ID proponents have. \u00a0There is so much supporting data and information for evolution that it’s essentially impossible for it to be fundamentally wrong in the way that ID proponents wish it to be. \u00a0More than later.<\/p>\n

The rest of the series<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few pages into chapter 1 of\u00a0Darwin’s Doubt and I have little to complain about. \u00a0It’s almost shocking how good…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,24,8,6],"tags":[523,287,520,521,522],"class_list":["post-1289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-creationism","category-evolution","category-science","tag-cambrian","tag-cambrian-explosion","tag-darwin","tag-sedgwick","tag-silurian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}