The Hump of the Camel

James Shapiro’s Huffington Post blog carries a eulogy to evolutionary biologist Carl Woese, who died in December. Chasing through links about him, I find that Woese spoke to the argument I made here, and quite likely originated it, in 2004. His overview of evolutionary theory for the twenty first century is well worth reading here. Continue reading →

It’s been pointed out that the concept of “Junk DNA” came not just from the observation of apparently non-coding genetic elements and their interpretation as “parasitic”, but from a theoretical prediction by the noted evolutionary biologist Susumu Ohno in 1972. Ohno said that in mammals, natural selection could only cope with a limited number of harmful mutations without being swamped, with deterioration and extinction as the result. He estimated that, given known rates of mutation, a maximum of 30,000 genes could be subject to selection. This makes intuitive sense – even under the best circumstances how could the environment select the best combination of hundreds of thousands of finely varying traits? It’s even rather astonishing that, in the real world of predation and harsh weather, as many as 30,000 independent variables could be under the control of natural selection. Continue reading →

Denyse O’Leary says something on Best Schools  that I too have been intrigued by for some time. Many (though not all) biologists hold to “universal descent from a single cell” as a dogma central to evolutionary theory.

That’s odd, because historically even Darwin, at the dawn of knowledge about early life, spoke of life “breathed into a few forms or into one”, really only implying that there has been divergence rather than stasis. Since then, apart from the opinion of those like Carl Woese that the superkingdoms of life represent separate origins, we have a large body of evidence about horizontal gene transfer and symbiotic events at key evolutionary points. Life has been so thoroughly mixed that some refer to a “web of life” and regard Darwin’s “tree” as no longer tenable. Continue reading →

The final part of Ted Davis’ s somewhat loosely-entitled series  Science and the Bible has appeared over at Biologos. It is really a summary calling for theological engagement with evolutionary science along the lines of Mark Noll’s 1994 book, Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. What was rather depressing was less the article itself than some early responses. Continue reading →

The Daily Telegraph today reports some criticism of David Attenborough’s new blockbuster series on Africa. It’s the old complaint about anthropomorphic treatment of animal life, in this case the heart-rending mood music and scene-cutting surrounding a mother elephant’s leaving the herd to stay with her dying calf until all life was gone.

Older readers (surely that’s all of us here!) will remember that the same criticism was levelled by serious naturalists about Walt Disney’s 1950s True Life Adventures, and not without justice: they were inspiring entertainment rather than scientific reportage. Similarly, it’s been noted that the American viewer, for other than dispassionate scientific reasons, appears historically to have insisted on lots of predation-scenes in his nature documentaries, to the extent that in the past at least, this has partly guided the BBC’s film-making priorities. So there is a long history of presenting nature as-edited-for-effect, rather than literally as-in-the-raw, the latter being usually far less dramatic and, therefore, less watchable over a TV dinner. Continue reading →

The Magician’s Twin is a new book about C S Lewis’s relationship to science, and to scientism in particular. It’s a good read. But it’s published by the Discovery Institute, so BioLogos felt the need to produce a series debunking it. Children, children.

In fact after an initial post met with a fair amount reasoned dissent, author David Williams significantly revised his planned series, and it became quite a useful discussion board for a time (until I lost my ability to post there and gave up following the thread – though I’m thankfully restored to grace!). But in response there has been some activity regarding C S Lewis on Uncommon Descent. Everyone wants a piece of Lewis, it appears – as others have pointed out during the conversation. Farbeit from me, therefore, to avoid staking my own claim. Continue reading →