The theory of Natural Selection, as written in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was possibly the greatest contribution to science. The theory of evolution had long existed prior to this but it was the exceptional way of coupling observation with explanation that led to the advancement of our understanding this part of biology. Unfortunately, after almost 155 years since its publication it is still incredibly misunderstood and misrepresented. I am constantly reminded of this when I talk to friends about science. It is far too common for people to question the validity of many aspects of science, but none more common than evolution. The issue here is not the questioning of science but rather the feeling that people have are entitled to say they do not believe or the theory doesnt make sense when they have made no effort to learn about what they are disagreeing with, or the basic concepts which support the theory. We as humans often pride ourselves on our intellect and regard ourselves as being special compared to other animals. If this is a position one wishes to take we owe it to our claims that we utilise these special reasoning abilities and learn what we can. Do not hold an opinion you are not entitled to, earn it through pursuing understanding, using critical thinking and constant self criticism of ones own beliefs. And at all times, encourage others to question you. I recently had a few questions from a good friend and I hope the conversation motivates some of you to read a little more or at least question what you know and why you know it. Why are we not still evolving from monkeys? We never did evolve from monkeys. It has never been stated in scientific literature that we did. This is a misrepresentation of the science by people who have a vested interest in falsifying evolution. The diversity which exists today within the human race is an example of evolution which has occurred in groups of people who have found themselves in isolation. Think of races of humans being compared to breeds of dogs. We are all the same species however have distinctly different phenotypical characteristics. If we kept them apart long enough in different environments they would soon to be found to be remarkably different. Let that go on long enough and you have different species. What were we before we were humans? What were you before a teenager or after a child. When did you become one and stop being the other. The genetic tree of Homo sapiens is available online. Homo erectus, Homo habilis and Australopithecus are all suspected to be ancestors. Humans on average live, due to technology, far longer than we ever did (minus the nontypical examples in the bible). This makes witnessing evolution very difficult as the rate of change is so slow. For us to consider 100 small changes that would occur in humans might mean 10-100 generations per change. At 20 years a generation, we are looking at 20,000-200,000 years needed to witness this. Household dogs are my preferred example. All dogs we have today were originally from 1line of wolf which was originally domesticated - this is a well-documented fact. In 10,000 years we now have many breeds of dogs. This is all because we played the role of the major selection factor in the environment. In a similar way to which children who could stand upright being chosen by the environment due to them being better at running from predators or getting food, we have dogs which have thicker coats or shorter bodies being chosen from a group of dogs to continually breed together. Imagine that blue eyed people you are incredibly short have a special gene interaction which makes them immune to a dangerous virus, just because by chance that little variation makes the virus unable to duplicate in the host. Well for 1,000 years no one comes in contact with the virus so everyone with brown eyes can survive just like blue eyed people, but then they get exposure to the virus, so everyone with brown eyes dies due to them having that weakness, except for people who have brown eyes, blonde hair and are really tall – this combination of genes also has a survival advantage against the virus. Now you have two very different groups of people. We can further consider that these two groups of people are unable to have children together due to an incompatibility of the chromosomes. In today’s terminology this would be viewed as two different ‘species. They exist not because no-one else has existed as well but because something caused the others to die out. This happens, people with sickle cell anaemia have resistance to Malaria, and there are people who have defective immune systems who cannot get HIV. Luckily today, when people get sick we use technology to keep them alive but it does limit the process of natural selection. We cannot enjoy the fact that we have, as a species, worked hard to stop lots of people from dying and then point out evolution hasnt happened in humans for the past 10000 years. I must note, I am not a biologist and am not trying to pretend that I know much about anything. This is a simple explanation from a simple person with a simple understanding.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 01:20:12 +0000
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