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At 17:28 23/06/2005, William Katzman wrote:
>1) Do you believe that Darwinian Evolution teaches that life itself evolved
>out of proteins

It seems to me that the 'e-word' has three main meanings as it is currently 
used, plus a forgotten meaning.

1. It has a strictly biological meaning as Martin Weiss said:

>The Theory of Evolution does not speak to the origin of life; just how 
>life evolved.

That was the position Darwin himself adopted in 'The Origin of Species'. 
The concept of some kind of natural selection in early molecular evolution 
(proteins or whatever) is still helpful given chemical systems that can 
replicate with small 'errors'. But this is a grey area. Principally it is 
about the implications of natural selection within biology.

2. Wikipedia says: "Evolution generally refers to any process of change 
over time".

We commonly see the word 'evolution' used in the context of cosmology and 
astronomy. Stars, galaxies, planetary systems, planets are all said to 
'evolve'. The universe itself, we are often told, has 'evolved'. In 
biological, Darwinian terms this is utter nonsense of course. But use of 
the word in this sense has become a normal part of our language.

3. There is also an emotionally charged philosophical meaning that is 
harder to pin down but powerfully influential. As soon as a life-form or a 
star-system is said to have 'evolved', there is immediately a perception 
that something negative is being implied about religion. It is easy for 
non-religious people to shrug this off, but it is very definitely part of 
the perceived meaning of the word to the general public.

How else can we explain the astonishing hostility of most militant 
creationists towards Big Bang cosmology, despite the fact that it suggests 
that the universe once unaccountably burst out of dark nothingness in a 
blaze of light? As a Christian, I find Big Bang hostility strange and very 
revealing. The problem for such people seems to be that the universe 
subsequently 'evolved'. Through 'natural' processes...

4. The fourth, forgotten meaning is supremely ironic. Nowadays nobody 
remembers that the original meaning of the word 'evolution' was pretty 
close to 'intelligent design'. The Latin root suggests the rolling out of a 
scroll with something already written on it. The word had been associated 
with a kind of Russian-doll theory of life, where we are born with our 
future, miniature, children preformed inside us, with their children 
pre-formed inside them... Only requiring time for the plan to unfold...

This was the slightly religious resonance which seems to have led Darwin to 
include the word 'evolved' in the final, carefully worded sentence of The 
Origin, after carefully avoiding its use elsewhere. He never used the word 
'evolution' because at that time it had an emotionally charged 
philosophical meaning equal and opposite to meaning 3. It strongly implied 
the sense of a shadowy something unfolding. Not at all helpful in 
explaining the concept of natural selection, but useful, he must have felt, 
for the closing sentence. Having specifically acknowledged...

"...life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the 
Creator into a few forms or into one; ..."

Then Darwin deliberately makes his one and only reference to the e-word, 
after comparing his principle of 'transmutation' with Newton's gravity 
which had once similarly provoked needless religious opposition from those 
whose concept of God was too small for them to accept 'natural processes' 
moving the planets.

"...and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed 
law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and 
most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

People like Herbert Spencer picked up and ran with the emotionally charged 
word 'evolution' in preference to Darwin's neutral and precise 
'transmutation' and the rest is history.

Such is the confusion, etymologically and emotionally, now surrounding the 
e-word that any decent PR company would surely advise us salespeople to 
simply exchange it for another word...! How about 'transmutation'...?


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Give people facts and you feed their minds for an hour.
Awaken curiosity and they feed their own minds for a lifetime.
*
Ian Russell  

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