Evolution Concepts Expanded

What is Evolution? --- generally: change though time

• Darwin: Strong principles of inheritance, with variation and selection by resource limitations (fitness) MUST result in evolution
• Blackmore: replicators, with variations and selection MUST evolve
• conservation (inheritance), innovation (variation), selection => evolution

What is a specie?

• At one time it was simply a taxonomic device for classification - human pattern matching of phenotypes
• With clade diagrams and "evolution", as well as far more subtle distinctions it tended towards
• "critters that don't breed in the wild and/or create viable offspring"
• with the gray scale of "viable offspring" (greenish warbler example) the above criteria do not apply
• (or more accurately, the viability of offspring is not transitive as the window shifts east or west)

What is Science? -- science provides a methodical way to rationally explain

• Sir Francis Bacon introduces "empiricism" -- hypotheses must be tested in the real world, multiple times to establish a viable theory
• (empirical method then involves developing useful, testable hypotheses, and one or more ways to test to confirm this)
• Karl Popper is the advocate of falsifiablity as a requirement for testability
• Some delightful observations from Brother Guy Consolmagno, Vatican astronomer in his book: God's Mechanics
• "Science is successful only as a way of approaching the truth asymptotically, ... getting closer and closer without every quite fully arriving there."
• "each bit of truth must be consistent with all others bits. It should be supported by many different lines of evidence..."