Evolution. (If they’re mutually exclusive at least.)
This document is an index.
There is overwhelming, coherent evidence for evolution, across several disciplines, including
- biology (obviously)
- geology, geo/physics
- stratigraphy
- paleontology
- anthropology
- chemistry
- genetics/DNA/chromosomes
- climate
- ice-ages
- radiometric/carbon dating
- plate tectonics / continental drift
- meteor impacts
Evidence which already paints a picture of what we call biological evolution. There’s cross-disciplinary convergence. There’s no particular single observation made by someone at a specific time, that rounds up or justifies evolution by itself. By now it’s not “evolution or not”, it’s about the details. Biological evolution occurs via sufficient survivability for propagation.
| “ | It is naïve to suppose that the acceptance of evolution theory depends upon the evidence of a number of so-called “proofs”; it depends rather upon the fact that the evolutionary theory permeates and supports every branch of biological science, such as the notion of the roundness of the earth underlies all geodesy and all cosmological theories on which the shape of the earth has a bearing. Thus anti-evolutionism is of the same stature as flat-earthism. — Peter Medawar (1915-1987); The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought (1999) » Evolution (page 293); Alan Bullock, Stephen Trombley (editors) |
Pluto was discovered in 1930, and takes about 250 years to orbit the Sun (a bit longer than human lifespans). Is this in dispute? We haven’t been able to put planets into Solar orbits and experiment with them.
One problem with “supernatural magic” is that it could be raised to explain (literally) anything, and therefore explains nothing. A bit like an inexplicable dead end, that we might as well replace with “don’t know”. Quoting Gregory Bateson (1904-1980), a “difference that makes no difference” is a good analogy.
| “ | no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than [what] it endeavours to establish — An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) by David Hume (1711-1776) |
When was a scientific theory later replaced with a supernatural explanation…?
Some evidence:
⇒ Lines of evidence: The science of evolution
Understanding Evolution; University of California, Berkeley
Organisms with a short lifespan are easier for us to examine in real-time. It doesn’t take as long, in comparison to human lifespan. And evolution has been observed in a variety of different ways by this team alone:
⇒ The E. coli Long-term Experimental Evolution Project
Richard E Lenski; Michigan State University
⇒ Fossil fuel
Wikipedia article
| “ | Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms, containing energy originating in ancient photosynthesis. The age of the organisms and their resulting fossil fuels is typically millions of years, and sometimes exceeds 650 million years. |
⇒ Species and Speciation in Phylogenetic Systematics, with Examples from the North American Fish Fauna
E O Wiley, Richard L Mayden; Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden; 1985
⇒ Principles of Evolution – Microevolution and Macroevolution
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis; Apr 2000
⇒ Section 3.2. Primary Structure: Amino Acids Are Linked by Peptide Bonds to Form Polypeptide Chains
Jeremy M Berg, John L Tymoczko, Lubert Stryer; Biochemistry (5th edition); 2002
⇒ Invasive honeysuckle opens door for new hybrid insect species
Dietmar Schwarz; Penn State University; Jul 2005
⇒ Lizards Undergo Rapid Evolution After Introduction To A New Home
University Of Massachusetts, Amherst, via ScienceDaily; Apr 2008
⇒ Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab
Bob Holmes; New Scientist; Jun 2008
⇒ 12 Elegant Examples of Evolution
Brandon Keim; Nature via WIRED; Dec 2008
⇒ Natural Selection: Uncovering Mechanisms of Evolutionary Adaptation to Infectious Disease
Pardis C Sabeti; Nature; 2008
⇒ Scientists Create a Form of Pre-Life → see abiogenesis
Brandon Keim; WIRED; Jun 2009
⇒ The secondary contact phase of allopatric speciation in Darwin’s finches
Peter R Grant, B Rosemary Grant; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University; Sep 2009
⇒ Evolution rampant: house mice on Madeira
R J Berry; Department of Biology, University College London; Oct 2009
⇒ Physiological and life history strategies of a fossil large mammal in a resource-limited environment
Meike Köhler, Salvador Moyà-Solà; PNAS; Oct 2009
⇒ Birth of New Species Witnessed by Scientists
Brandon Keim; WIRED; Nov 2009
⇒ An Evolutionary Perspective on Amino Acids
Ana Gutiérrez-Preciado, Hector Romero, Mariana Peimbert; Nature; 2010
⇒ Evolution in an RNA World
Gerald F Joyce; NIH, PMC; Jun 2010
⇒ Origins and Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance
Julian Davies, Dorothy Davies; American Society for Microbiology; Sep 2010
⇒ Evolution in Action: Lizard Moving From Eggs to Live Birth
Brian Handwerk; National Geographic; Sep 2010
⇒ Bird, meet cousin alligator
Alvin Powell; Harvard Gazette; Nov 2010
⇒ Of cats and men: old genes give embryos an hourglass figure
Matthew Cobb; Why Evolution Is True; Dec 2010
⇒ Volvox, Chlamydomonas, and the Evolution of Multicellularity
Stephen M Miller; Nature; 2010
⇒ 8 Examples of Evolution in Action
Listverse; Nov 2011
⇒ Evolution: Watching Speciation Occur | Observations
Christie Wilcox; Scientific American; Dec 2011
⇒ Experimental evolution of multicellularity
William C Ratcliff, R Ford Denison, Mark Borrello, Michael Travisano; PNAS; Jan 2012
⇒ Multicellular Life Evolves in Laboratory
Brandon Keim; WIRED; Jan 2012
⇒ The embryonic origins of erythropoiesis in mammals
Margaret H Baron, Joan Isern, Stuart T Fraser; Blood Journal; May 2012
⇒ 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution
Douglas Theobald; May 2013
⇒ The Continuing Evolution of Genes
Carl Zimmer; The New York Times; Apr 2014
⇒ Three Pieces of Evidence That Prove Evolution is a Fact
Futurism; Jul 2014
⇒ Origin of the Eukaryotic cell: Part II – Cytoskeleton, membranes, and beyond
John Hewitt; Phys.org; Dec 2014
⇒ How Did Multicellular Life Evolve?
Charles Q Choi; Astrobiology Magazine; Feb 2015
⇒ Small fish species evolved rapidly following 1964 Alaska earthquake
University of Oregon; ScienceDaily; Dec 2015
⇒ The unique mosquito that lives in the London Underground
Katie Silver; BBC Earth; Mar 2016
⇒ Proof of Evolution That You Can Find on Your Own Body
BEC Crew; ScienceAlert; Mar 2016
⇒ New tree of life doesn’t look as you’d imagine
Eleanor Imster; EarthSky; Apr 2016
⇒ Watching Evolution Happen in Two Lifetimes
Rosemary and Peter Grant via Emily Singer; Quanta Magazine; Sep 2016
⇒ ▶ Watch antibiotic resistance evolve
2m:2s youtube; Science News; Sep 2016
⇒ ▶ The Evolution of Bacteria on a “Mega-Plate” Petri Dish (Kishony Lab)
1m:54s youtube; Harvard Medical School; Sep 2016
⇒ Genetic mutations that drive antibiotic resistance in bacteria
James E Gomez, Benjamin B Kaufmann-Malaga, Carl N Wivagg, […], Deborah T Hung; ScienceDaily; Feb 2017
⇒ These fish are evolving right now to become land-dwellers
Alice Klein; New Scientist; Mar 2017
⇒ How Evolution Has Been Observed
Austin Cline; ThoughtCo; Mar 2017
⇒ Rapid hybrid speciation in Darwin’s finches
Sangeet Lamichhaney, Fan Han, […], Peter R Grant; Science; Nov 2017
⇒ Sue is the largest, best preserved and most complete T-Rex fossil ever found
Stefan A; Dec 2017
⇒ Montreal biologist resolves Darwin’s unanswered question: Why do some ants become soldiers?
Minaz Kerawala; CBC News; Oct 2018
⇒ The first vertebrates on Earth arose in shallow coastal waters
Carolyn Gramling; Science News; Oct 2018
⇒ De novo origins of multicellularity in response to predation
Matthew D Herron, Joshua M. Borin, […], William C Ratcliff; Scientific Reports (Nature); Feb 2019
⇒ Scientists Have Witnessed a Single-Celled Algae Evolve Into a Multicellular Organism
Fiona Macdonald; ScienceAlert; Feb 2019
⇒ Scientists create a ‘lifelike’ material that has metabolism and can self-reproduce
Paul Ratner; Big Think; Apr 2019
⇒ An extinct bird species has evolved back into existence, study says
Sophie Lewis; CBS News; May 2019
⇒ Evolution of Whales Animation
Smithsonian Institution; Jun 2019
⇒ Pluripotency: ‘Butterfly effect’ discovered
Rosa María Marión, Juan J Montero, …, Maria A Blasco; ScienceDaily; Aug 2019
⇒ In a first, fossil dinosaur feathers found near the South Pole
John Pickrell; National Geographic; Nov 2019
⇒ Scientists create first ‘living robots’ in major breakthrough
Andrew Griffin; The Independent; Jan 2020
Don’t read “proof” as “guaranteed error-free deductive certainty” here (餌), some do, but the context is different:
⇒ Five Proofs of Evolution
Richard Peacock; Evolution FAQ
⇒ Evolution » Evidence for Evolution
Shlomiya Bar-Yam; New England Complex Systems Institute
Among populations of gendered lifeforms, there’s typically a discrete biological threshold where specimens either can, or cannot, have offspring. Such groups, capable of breeding, might then be considered a “species” (according to some older, simplistic definitions). However, these thresholds can be somewhat fluid, as exemplified by ring species, horses and donkeys, among others. Ring species exemplify a “continuum” of related species, some of which can have offspring, others not, and run contrary to how creationists attempt to classify by “kinds”:
⇒ Ring species
Wikipedia article
⇒ Ring Species: Unusual Demonstrations of Speciation
Darren E Irwin; American Institute of Biological Sciences; Aug 2002
⇒ Speciation by Distance in a Ring Species
Darren E Irwin, Staffan Bensch, Jessica H Irwin, Trevor D Price; Science AAAS; Jan 2005
⇒ Evolution and Stability of Ring Species
A B Martins, M A M de Aguiar, Yaneer Bar-Yam; New England Complex Systems Institute; Mar 2013
Horses (64 chromosomes) and donkeys (62 chromosomes) are different species. However, a female horse and a male donkey can nonetheless have offspring, a mule (commonly infertile, 63 chromosomes). Similarly, a male horse and a female donkey can have offspring, a hinney (sterile, 63 chromosomes). These are large mammals, and represent a rather small part of what might otherwise be ring species.
In a small part of a ring species, x and y can have offspring (⇒ same “kind”), and y and z can have offspring (⇒ same “kind”). All the same “kind” (transitive relation). But x and z cannot have offspring (⇒ not the same “kind”). ⚡ Therefore “kind” is incoherent.
⇒ Viruses and Evolution
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
⇒ Endogenous Retroviruses – Frequently Asked Questions
Barry Desborough
⇒ Evidence for the Evolutionary Model » Three Layers of Endogenous Retroviral Evidence for the Evolutionary Model (also has a response to Ray Comfort)
| “ | the corroboratory patterns of distribution, mutation, and LTR-LTR discontinuity are solely explicable by the evolutionary model |
⇒ Playing with Wildfire: 5 Amazing Adaptations of Pyrophytic Plants
Melissa Petruzzello; Britannica
⇒ Examples of Speciation
YourDictionary entry (for the impatient reader)
Transitional fossils:
⇒ Transitional Fossils Are Not Rare
Steve Newton; National Center for Science Education; Sep 2008
⇒ List of transitional fossils
Wikipedia article
⇒ Hints of oldest fossil life found in Greenland rocks
Carolyn Gramling; Science AAAS; Aug 2016
⇒ Newly Discovered Fossil Bird Fills in Gap Between Dinosaurs and Modern Fliers
Riley Black; Smithsonian; Nov 2019
In the sense used by some evolution-deniers, all species can be thought of as “transitional”, subject to change. The difference is that some species went extinct faster/slower than others. Some a lot faster/slower, some not (yet at least). By far the majority of species have gone extinct (see below). Fossil fuels (see above) are transformed ancient life forms.
Without the complete “continuum”, say, in fossil form, there will inevitably be “missing links”, some of which have become fossil fuels. (Here “continuum” is not contrasted with Gould’s punctuated equilibrium.) What might we realistically expect? Demanding the entire, detailed history of life on the planet, does not seem like a reasonable expectation/standard.
Humans:
⇒ Human evolution
Wikipedia article
⇒ The Human Story – The Genographic Project
National Geographic
⇒ Journal of Human Evolution
Mike Plavcan, David M Alba
⇒ Karyotype » History of karyotype studies
Wikipedia article
| “ | Human chromosome 2 is now known to be a result of an end-to-end fusion of two ancestral ape chromosomes. |
⇒ The origin of man: a chromosomal pictorial legacy
J Yunis, O Prakash; Science; Mar 1982
⇒ Dating of the human-ape splitting by a molecular clock of mitochondrial DNA
Masami Hasegawa, Hirohisa Kishino, Taka-aki Yano; Journal of Molecular Evolution; Oct 1985
⇒ Evidence for an ancestral alphoid domain on the long arm of human chromosome 2
Rosamaria Avarello, Antonio Pedicini, […], Marco Fraccaro; Human Genetics; Oct 1991
⇒ Origin of human chromosome 2: an ancestral telomere-telomere fusion.
J W IJdo, A Baldini, […], R A Wells; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Oct 1991
⇒ Toward a Phylogenetic Classification of Primates Based on DNA Evidence Complemented by Fossil Evidence
Morris Goodman, Calvin A Porter, […], Colin P Groves; ScienceDirect/Elsevier; Jun 1998
⇒ Divergent Patterns of Recent Retroviral Integrations in the Human and Chimpanzee Genomes: Probable Transmissions between Other Primates and Chimpanzees
Patric Jern, Göran O Sperber, Jonas Blomberg; Journal of Virology; Jan 2006
⇒ Divergent Patterns of Recent Retroviral Integrations in the Human and Chimpanzee Genomes: Probable Transmissions between Other Primates and Chimpanzees
Patric Jern, Göran O Sperber, Jonas Blomberg; Journal of Virology; Feb 2006
⇒ Discovery of novel genes could unlock mystery of what makes us uniquely human
David G Knowles, Aoife McLysaght; CSHL; Sep 2009
⇒ Examining the flawed human body (review of book by John Avise)
UCI News; Feb 2010
⇒ Macroevolution: Examples from the Primate World
Paul Sesink Clee, Mary Katherine Gonder; Nature; 2012
⇒ The First Primates
Dennis O’Neil; Palomar College; 2012
⇒ The bonobo genome compared with the chimpanzee and human genomes
Kay Prüfer, Kasper Munch, Ines Hellmann, …, Svante Pääbo; Nature; Jun 2012
⇒ Native American populations descend from three key migrations
Andres Ruiz-Linares, David Reich; UCL; Jul 2012
⇒ Human Chromosome 2 is a fusion of two ancestral chromosomes
Alec MacAndrew; Feb 2013
⇒ Interbreeding With Neanderthals
Carl Zimmer; Discover Magazine; Mar 2013
- Book: The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates
Frans de Waal
Mar 2014
⇒ Evolution of early Homo: An integrated biological perspective
Susan C Antón, Richard Potts, Leslie C Aiello; Science AAAS; Jul 2014
⇒ Tiny Genetic Differences between Humans and Other Primates Pervade the Genome
Kate Wong; Scientific American; Sep 2014
⇒ Eight thousand years of natural selection in Europe
Iain Mathieson, Iosif Lazaridis, […], David Reich; bioRxiv; Mar 2015
⇒ The Adaptive Change of HLA-DRB1 Allele Frequencies Caused by Natural Selection in a Mongolian Population That Migrated to the South of China
Hao Sun, Zhaoqing Yang, …, Xiaoqin Huang; Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College; Jul 2015
⇒ Humans are nowhere near as special as we like to think
Melissa Hogenboom; BBC; Jul 2015
⇒ Human evolution was shaped by interbreeding
Melissa Hogenboom; BBC; Oct 2015
⇒ How the introduction of farming changed the human genome
Harvard Medical School; ScienceDaily; Nov 2015
⇒ Introduction to Human Evolution
The Smithsonian Institution; Feb 2016
⇒ Humans are still evolving—and we can watch it happen
Elizabeth Pennisi; Science AAAS; May 2016
⇒ 7 strange and surprising ways that humans have recently evolved
Sean Kane, Meghan Bartels; Business Insider; Aug 2016
⇒ Unprecedented study of Aboriginal Australians points to one shared Out of Africa migration for modern humans
Tom Kirk; University of Cambridge; Sep 2016
⇒ Bacteria and Humans Have Been Swapping DNA for Millennia
Kelly Robinson, Julie Dunning Hotopp; The Scientist Magazine®; Oct 2016
⇒ How evolution has equipped our hands with five fingers
Yacine Kherdjemil, Robert L Lalonde, …, Marie Kmita; Université de Montréal; Jan 2017
⇒ Monkeys Make Stone “Tools” That Bear a Striking Resemblance to Early Human Artifacts
Kate Wong; Scientific American; Jan 2017
⇒ The Widespread Appearance of Neanderthal DNA: Africans Have It Too
Clyde Winters; Ancient Origins; Aug 2017
⇒ Large-scale Study of Genetic Data Shows Humans Still Evolving
Columbia News; Sep 2017
⇒ Why these Amish live longer and healthier: an internal ‘fountain of youth’ – Genetic mutation in extended Amish family in Indiana protects against aging and increases longevity (ironically?)
la Paul; Northwestern Now; Nov 2017
⇒ Ancient Viruses Are Buried in Your DNA
Carl Zimmer; The New York Times; Oct 2017
⇒ Improved ape genome assemblies provide new insights into human evolution
University of Washington Health Sciences; Jun 2018
⇒ Why Grandmothers May Hold The Key To Human Evolution
John Poole; NPR; Jun 2018
⇒ The story of human evolution has just been rewritten (again)
Abigail Beall; WIRED UK; Jul 2018
| “ | The evolution of human populations in Africa was multi-regional. Our ancestry was multi-ethnic. And the evolution of our material culture was, well, multi-cultural. — Eleanor Scerri |
⇒ Mum’s a Neanderthal, Dad’s a Denisovan: First discovery of an ancient-human hybrid
Matthew Warren; Nature; Aug 2018
⇒ Seven Million Years of Human Evolution
Kambiz Kamrani; Anthropology.net; Dec 2018
⇒ ▶ Neanderthal groups more closely related than we thought
12m:09s youtube; PBS; Jun 2019
⇒ Genes underscore five psychiatric disorders
Neuroscience News; Jul 2019
⇒ Humans Interbred with Four Extinct Hominin Species, Research Finds
Breaking Science News; Jul 2019
⇒ Neanderthal groups more closely related than we thought
Dyani Lewis; Cosmos; Jun 2019
The hypothetical male, Y-chromosomal Adam, may have lived in East Africa, say, 250,000 years ago. The hypothetical female, Mitochondrial Eve, may have lived in East Africa, say, 135,000 years ago. The two were not contemporary. There’s considerable uncertainty of the ranges per se, which may go back 600,000 or 80,000 years. Genetic bottleneck’ing (and inbreeding) means extinction if it goes too narrow (the vast majority of all species ever having walked the Earth has gone extinct).
More across disciplines:
⇒ Bird Biogeography (BIO 554/754, Ornithology)
Gary Ritchison; Eastern Kentucky University
⇒ Digital Evolution
Bill O’Neill; Public Library of Science; Oct 2003
⇒ Australian tropical savannas through time
Savanna Explorer; Dec 2007
⇒ Phylogeography of West Nile Virus: from the Cradle of Evolution in Africa to Eurasia, Australia, and the Americas
Fiona J May, C Todd Davis, […], Alan D T Barrett; Journal of Virology; Dec 2010
⇒ Evolution of the intercontinental disjunctions in six continents in the Ampelopsis clade of the grape family (Vitaceae)
Ze-Long Nie, Hang Sun, […], Jun Wen; BMC Evolutionary Biology, BioMed Central; Feb 2012
⇒ The linking of plate tectonics and evolutionary divergence
Matthew J Phillips, Timothy J Page, […], Jonathan M Waters; Elsevier; Jul 2013
⇒ Evolution: Convergent and Divergent
Plant Life
⇒ Biogeography: An Ecological and Evolutionary Approach
C Barry Cox, Peter D Moore, Richard Ladle; Mar 2016
⇒ Seeing Emergent Physics Behind Evolution
Nigel Goldenfeld via Jordana Cepelewicz; Quanta Magazine; Aug 2017
⇒ New Egyptian dinosaur reveals ancient link between Africa and Europe
Ohio University; ScienceDaily; Jan 2018
Extinction:
The majority, by far, of all species that’s ever lived on planet Earth, have gone extinct. And, unfortunately, we’re now in a 6th major extinction event (the Holocene/Anthropocene mass extinction). 😦
- Extinction
Wikipedia article - The Great Dying
NASA - Holocene extinction
Wikipedia article
Bio atavisms:
Atavisms and their genetic/DNA re-activation can connect markedly different stages in an organism’s evolutionary history. Such traits cross boundaries of species, and can, together with other evidence (such as fossils), shed light on the history of life on the planet.
⇒ Atavism
Wikipedia article
⇒ Two examples of atavism from Rearrangement of chromatin domains in cancer and development
Yegor S Vassetzky, Alan Hair, Sergey V Razin; Journal of Cellular Biochemistry; Jan 2000
⇒ Mutant Chicken Grows Alligatorlike Teeth
David Biello; Scientific American; Feb 2006
⇒ A Curriculum Vitae of Teeth: Evolution, Generation, Regeneration
Despina S Koussoulakou, Lukas H Margaritis, Stauros L Koussoulakos; University of Athens, Faculty of Biology, Department of Cell Biology and Biophysics, Athens, Greece; Nov 2008
⇒ Evolutionary and developmental origins of the vertebrate dentition
Ann Huysseune, Jean-Yves Sire, P Eckhard Witten; Journal of Anatomy; Apr 2009
⇒ Snake Heart
Ishmeet Walia, Harvinder S Arora, […], O H Frazier; Texas Heart Institute; 2010
⇒ How to Hatch a Dinosaur
Thomas Hayden; WIRED; Sep 2011
⇒ Intrinsic Hand Muscles of Primates with Special Reference to Human Trisomy Syndromes
Samuel Strong Dunlap; 2012
⇒ Chicken grows face of dinosaur
Melissa Hogenboom; BBC; May 2015
⇒ Evolutionary and topological properties of gene modules and driver mutations in a leukemia gene regulatory network
Anthony Szedlak, Nicholas Smith, […], Carlo Piermarocchi; Dec 2015
⇒ Scientists create chicken embryo with dinosaur legs in reverse evolution experiment
Alexander Vargas; ABC News; Mar 2016
⇒ How dinosaurs evolved into BIRDS: Scientists identify the key genes responsible for turning scales into feathers
Shivali Best; Daily Mail Online; Nov 2017
Irreducible complexity?
⇒ Dissecting Dembski’s “Complex Specified Information”
Thomas D Schneider; Dec 2008
⇒ Evolution of the Eye
Trevor D Lamb; Scientific American; Jul 2011
⇒ Irreducible Complexity
Alan R Rogers, University of Utah
| “ | All these examples suggest the same conclusion: there is no reliable way to identify systems that could not have evolved by natural selection. The argument from irreducible complexity is no more reliable now than it was in the days of Charles Pritchard. |
⇒ Irreducible complexity » In the Dover trial
Wikipedia article
| “ | We therefore find that Professor Behe’s claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large. |
Additional resources:
⇒ Evolution of Sexual Reproduction
Evolution of Sexual Reproduction; Biology Encyclopedia
⇒ Chromosome Fusion? A DNA Application: Hypothesis-Testing
Larry Flammer; ENSI, Indiana University; 2005
⇒ Robustness and evolvability: a paradox resolved
Andreas Wagner; University of Zürich; Oct 2007
| “ | Understanding the relationship between robustness and evolvability is key to understand how living things can withstand mutations, while producing ample variation that leads to evolutionary innovations. Mutational robustness and evolvability, a system’s ability to produce heritable variation, harbour a paradoxical tension. On one hand, high robustness implies low production of heritable phenotypic variation. On the other hand, both experimental and computational analyses of neutral networks indicate that robustness enhances evolvability. […] To resolve the tension, one must distinguish between robustness of a genotype and a phenotype. I confirm that genotype (sequence) robustness and evolvability share an antagonistic relationship. In stark contrast, phenotype (structure) robustness promotes structure evolvability. A consequence is that finite populations of sequences with a robust phenotype can access large amounts of phenotypic variation while spreading through a neutral network. Population-level processes and phenotypes rather than individual sequences are key to understand the relationship between robustness and evolvability. |
⇒ Epigenetic Inheritance and Its Role in Evolutionary Biology: Re-Evaluation and New Perspectives
Warren Burggren; Department of Biological Sciences, University of North Texas; May 2016
- Book: The Human Odyssey: Four Million Years of Human Evolution
Ian Tattersall
1993 - Book: Developmental Plasticity and Evolution
Mary Jane West-Eberhard
Feb 2003 - Book: Arrival of the Fittest: How Nature Innovates
Andreas Wager
Oct 2015 - Book: The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World – and Us
Richard O Prum
May 2017
Not controversial:
⇒ Level of support for evolution
Wikipedia article
| “ | The overwhelming majority of the scientific community accepts evolution as the dominant scientific theory of biological diversity. Nearly every scientific society, representing hundreds of thousands of scientists, has issued statements rejecting intelligent design and a petition supporting the teaching of evolutionary biology was endorsed by 72 US Nobel Prize winners. |
⇒ Acceptance of evolution by religious groups
Wikipedia article
⇒ Is Evolution a Theory or a Fact?
National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine
| “ | It is both. |
⇒ Affiliation of Christian Geologists Endorsement
National Center for Science Education
⇒ Project Steve 🙂
| “ | NCSE’s “Project Steve” is a tongue-in-cheek parody of a long-standing creationist tradition of amassing lists of “scientists who doubt evolution” or “scientists who dissent from Darwinism.” Creationists draw up these lists to try to convince the public that evolution is somehow being rejected by scientists, that it is a “theory in crisis.” Not everyone realizes that this claim is unfounded. |
National Center for Science Education
⇒ Falsifiability of evolution
RationalWiki article
⇒ The Christian Man’s Evolution: How Darwinism and Faith Can Coexist
Sally Lehrman; Scientific American; Nov 2008
⇒ Speciation and Macroevolution
Kelsey Luoma; Feb 2012
⇒ Pope Francis’s Remarks on Evolution Are Not That Controversial Among Roman Catholics
Taylor Wofford; Newsweek; Oct 2014
Education:
⇒ Evolution
WGBH/NOVA Science
⇒ Objections to evolution has a good discussion
Wikipedia article
⇒ Evolution: DNA and the Unity of Life
University of Utah Health Sciences
⇒ Appendicitis
Mayo Clinic
Appendicitis can cause much pain and death if untreated. Biological evolution is not teleological. Also cf vestigiality. A BMW has a modular design. If a carburetor fails, then a replacement is no big deal. If your heart fails, on the other hand, then you’re in serious trouble. Some day we (medical science) might be able to remedy this however, thereby “fixing” what could otherwise be called one of nature’s shortcomings.
⇒ Evolution and the Nature of Science
Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science; National Academy of Sciences; 1998
⇒ Evidence Supporting Biological Evolution
Science and Creationism; National Academy of Sciences; 1999
⇒ ▶ ace ventura-rhino birth – no, this is not what biologists have come to call evolution 😀
1m:02s youtube; Jason Downs; Nov 2006
⇒ The threat from creationism to the rational teaching of biology
Athel Cornish-bowden, María Luz Cárdenas; Laboratoire de Bioénérgétique et Ingénierie des Protéines, France; 2007
⇒ ▶ Micro vs. Macro Growth and the incredulity fallacy 🙂
3m:37s youtube; cdk007; Sep 2007
⇒ Evolution myths: Mutations can only destroy information
Michael Le Page; New Scientist; Apr 2008
⇒ Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions
Michael Le Page; New Scientist; Apr 2008
⇒ Creationist Propaganda – The Utterly Clueless
Dave; Nov 2010
⇒ Introduction to Geology
Taylor Perron, Oliver Jagoutz; MIT OpenCourseWare; 2013
⇒ Argumentation and fallacies in creationist writings against evolutionary theory
Petteri Nieminen, Anne-Mari Mustonen; BioMed Central; Apr 2014
⇒ There is No “Missing Link” in Evolution
Jolene Creighton; Futurism; May 2015
⇒ The Evolution Of Evolution – From Darwin To Modern Synthesis » Why arguing against Darwinian Evolution is pointless!
Alan Whistler; May 2016
⇒ There’s No Controversy: Let’s Stop Failing Our Children On Evolution
Barbara J King; College of William and Mary via NPR; Jul 2016
⇒ Debunking the creationist myth that mutations don’t produce new and useful information
The Logic of Science; Oct 2016
⇒ Evolution, Climate and Vaccines: Why Americans Deny Science
Stephanie Pappas; Live Science; Jan 2017
⇒ The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism (cart before the horse, fraudulent propaganda since 1825)
G R Morton; Jan 2017
⇒ What the Hard Lessons of Rubella Teach Us About a Zika Vaccine
Meredith Wadman; Time; Feb 2017
⇒ Creationism’s Propaganda Assault on Deep Time and Evolution
Donald U Wise; Jan 2018
⇒ Creationist Propaganda – The Utterly Clueless
Dave Gamble; Skeptical Science; Sep 2018
⇒ Do all gene mutations affect health and development?
Genetics Home Reference – NIH; Jan 2020
Further applications:
⇒ Applications of evolution
Wikipedia article
| “ | Wider biology Artificial selection Medicine Computer science |
⇒ The great opportunity: Evolutionary applications to medicine and public health
Randolph M Nesse, Stephen C Stearns; Evolutionary Applications, National Institutes of Health; Feb 2008
⇒ How Cancer Shapes Evolution and How Evolution Shapes Cancer
Matias Casás-Selves, James DeGregori; Springer; Dec 2011
Sample results:
- Open Tree of Life (regularly updated)
- Tree of Life
- OneZoom Tree of Life Explorer
- Life Through Deep Time
- Map of Life
- Ensembl Genome Browser
- Discover Life
⇒ The Tree of Life: Tangled Roots and Sexy Shoots
Chris King; Jan 2017
We can confidently say there were no Precambrian rabbits and no Jurassic humans. There are rabbits and humans now, which hence must have come about since then.
- Try to form a coherent model of all known evidence. Including the various disciplines. What do you see? Homo sapiens suddenly appearing one day?
- And what do you think the subject matter experts see? Those having studied this stuff in detail? (FYI that’s a leading question.)
Example behaviors of some animals:
⇒ Altruism (biology)
Wikipedia
⇒ Monkeys Have Morals After All
Scribol; Feb 2009
⇒ Thinking Like a Chimpanzee
Jon Cohen; Smithsonian Magazine; Sep 2010
⇒ ▶ The Dog Who Knows 1,000 Words | CUTE ANIMALS (Episode 5)
3m:52s youtube; ABC News; Feb 2011
⇒ Moral behavior in animals
Frans de Waal; 16m:52s TED talk; Nov 2011
⇒ ▶ Crow Intelligence – Multi-Step Tool Action Test, not just trial-error — actual reasoning
3m:07s youtube; Jul 2012
⇒ Chimpanzees are forcing us to redefine what it means to be human
Gus Lubin; Business Insider; Jan 2017
⇒ ▶ Spy Monkey Mistaken for Dead Baby and Mourned by Troop | BBC Earth
1m:26s youtube; BBC Earth; Jan 2017
Background philosophy:
⇒ Evolution and Philosophy
John S Wilkins
| “ | My conclusion is that evolution, especially the modern theories, is science at its best, and when it and the nature of science are considered realistically, evolution is not lacking from a philosophical perspective. |
⇒ Creationism
Michael Ruse; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
| “ | Popularity does not imply truth. Scientifically Creationism is worthless, philosophically it is confused, and theologically it is blinkered beyond repair. The same is true of its offspring, Intelligent Design Theory. But do not underestimate its social and political power. |
⇒ “Creation Science” vs Evolution Theory, or Science vs Mythology
Charles Hlavac; PHILOSOPHY PATHWAYS Issue 96; Dec 2004
⇒ Intelligent Design Creationism: Fraudulent Science, Bad Philosophy.
Donald E Simanek; Feb 2006
⇒ DNA : When Is A Code Not A Code ?
Patrick Lockerby; Jul 2009
⇒ Intelligent Design versus Evolution
Nathan Aviezer; Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal, National Institutes of Health; Jul 2010
| “ | ID is an example of a “god-of-the-gaps” argument |
⇒ Argument from poor design
Wikipedia article
It’s worth noting that evolution is not particularly teleological. The likes of debilitating migraines, schizophrenia (incidentally), epilepsy, depression, infant epidermolysis bullosa, crippling birth defects, polymelia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, dementia, vestigiality, teratoma, malocclusion (including animals), delusions, etc, hardly suggest intelligent design, but, in the larger context, a rather indifferent collection of changes, while maintaining sufficiently survivability to propagate (for the time being).
⇒ ‘Get your facts right’: Creationist Ken Ham flips out after paper claims no dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark 😀
Brad Reed; Raw Story; Jan 2017
Theist creationism versus biological evolution is no longer a “fair” question. Some overall history of our neck of the woods (inflation, expansion of the universe), the celestial mechanics (not geocentrism), the age of the planet (not exactly a few thousand years), the shape of the planet (not flat), the history of life on the planet (what you’re currently reading), all this stuff can be discovered and pieced together in some detail regardless and independently of whatever religious myths and tales. We’re not the centerpiece of the universe. Biological evolution is a de facto scientific result. Maintaining creationism means aligning with evolution, the vice versa is not the case.
Abiogenesis
… is a different topic, and not as established as evolution. However, evolution does suggest abiogenesis. In time, it’s commonly expected to be shown that abiogenesis could have occurred in the wild on our planet a few billion years ago.
⇒ The “classic” Miller-Urey experiment
Wikipedia article
⇒ First Cells (elementary introduction)
CK-12 Foundation
There are gray areas between what’s considered alive and non-living organic mass. Bacteria, for example, can reproduce autonomously and metabolize, and are considered alive (though they do not have civil rights 🙂 ). Viruses, on the other hand, cannot, and are typically considered non-living. Sperm-cells are not quite independently living, and their status are matters of definition, but they have things in common with both bacteria and viruses, they move and metabolize (like bacteria), they carry DNA which will only be used in reproduction after having fertilized an egg (somewhat akin to viral infection). Organic chemistry studies them all, and down to simpler organic mass, such as gasoline (benzene), which obviously is not considered alive.
⇒ Viruses
Khan Academy
⇒ Synthesis of Adenosine Triphosphate Under Possible Primitive Earth Conditions
Cyril Ponnamperuma, Carl Sagan, Ruth Mariner; Nature; 1963
⇒ Experimental retracement of the origins of a protocell
Sidney W Fox, Peter R Bahn, […], Bi Yu; Mar 1995
⇒ Visually Retracing the Emergence of the Evolvable Protocell
Randall Grubbs, Sidney W Fox, Aristotel Pappelis, John Bozzola, Peter R Bahn; 1998
⇒ The Path from the RNA World
Anthony M Poole, Daniel C Jeffares, David Penny; Jan 1998
⇒ The Origin of Life (biology course)
Purdue School of Science, Indiana University; Apr 2001
⇒ The RNA World and the Origins of Life
Bruce Alberts, Alexander Johnson, […], James D Watson; 2002
⇒ Jump-Starting a Cellular World: Investigating the Origin of Life, from Soup to Networks
Richard Robinson; Public Library of Science; Nov 2005
⇒ Mineral Surface Directed Membrane Assembly
Martin M Hanczyc, Sheref S Mansy, Jack W Szostak; Springer; Apr 2006
⇒ Origins of Life on Earth
David A Kring; Nov 2006
⇒ Lost City Pumps Life-essential Chemicals At Rates Unseen At Typical Deep Ocean Hydrothermal Vents
University of Washington; Feb 2008
⇒ My Scientific Discussions of Evolution for the Pope and His Scientists
Sheldon Gottlieb, Sidney W Fox; Aug 2008
⇒ Life on Earth
Alonso Ricardo, Jack W Szostak; Scientific American; Sep 2009
⇒ How life evolved: 10 steps to the first cells
Nick Lane, Michael Le Page; New Scientist; Oct 2009
⇒ All Species Evolved From Single Cell, Study Finds
Ker Than; National Geographic; May 2010
| “ | Creationism called “absolutely horrible hypothesis”—statistically speaking. |
⇒ Deep Sea Bonanza IV: Abiogenesis at Hydrothermal Vents
Marc Srour; Teaching Biology; May 2010
⇒ Scientist Craig Venter creates life for first time in laboratory sparking debate about ‘playing god’
Richard Alleyne; The Telegraph; May 2010
⇒ Biologists create self-replicating RNA molecule
Michael Marshall; New Scientist; Apr 2011
⇒ The line between life and not-life
Martin Hanczyc; TED Talk; May 2011
⇒ Making matter come alive
Lee Cronin; TED Talk; Jul 2011
⇒ First life: The search for the first replicator
Michael Marshall; New Scientist; Aug 2011
⇒ Meteorites Reveal Another Way to Make Life’s Components
Bill Steigerwald; NASA; 2012
⇒ ▶ The Origin of Life – Abiogenesis by Dr. Jack Szostak
9m:59s youtube; IvanderHaisley; Jan 2012
⇒ Synthetic DNA Created, Evolves on Its Own
Christine Dell’Amore; National Geographic; Apr 2012
⇒ DNA could have existed long before life itself
Michael Marshall; New Scientist; Aug 2012
⇒ The origin of life: what we know, what we can know and what we will never know
Addy Pross, Robert Pascal; Royal Society Publishing; Mar 2013
This fellow is testing out a newer path of research; per se it remains rather speculative:
⇒ A New Physics Theory of Life
Jeremy England via Natalie Wolchover; Quanta Magazine; Jan 2014
⇒ Scientists just took a major step toward making life from scratch
Arielle Duhaime-Ross; The Verge; Mar 2014
⇒ Spark of life: Metabolism appears in lab without cells
Linda Geddes; New Scientist; Apr 2014
⇒ Entropy-driven formation of large icosahedral colloidal clusters by spherical confinement
Bart de Nijs, Simone Dussi, […], Marjolein Dijkstra; Nature; Apr 2014
⇒ Common origins of RNA, protein and lipid precursors in a cyanosulfidic protometabolism
Bhavesh H Patel, Claudia Percivalle, […], John D Sutherland; Nature; Oct 2014
⇒ ▶ Energy at the origin of life — Nick Lane — How Life on Earth Began event
31m:24s youtube; New Scientist; Jan 2015
⇒ Researchers may have solved origin-of-life conundrum
Robert F Service; Science AAAS; Mar 2015
⇒ Chemists claim to have solved riddle of how life began on Earth
Bob Yirka; Cambridge via Phys.org; Mar 2015
⇒ Dissipative adaptation in driven self-assembly
Bart de Nijs, Simone Dussi, […], Jeremy L England; Nature; Jun 2015
⇒ New evidence emerges on the origins of life
University of North Carolina Health Care via Phys.org; Jun 2015
⇒ 7 Theories on the Origin of Life
Charles Q Choi; Live Science; Mar 2016
⇒ Decimetre-scale multicellular eukaryotes from the 1.56-billion-year-old Gaoyuzhuang Formation in North China (China)
Shixing Zhu, Maoyan Zhu, […], Huan Liu; Nature; May 2016
⇒ ▶ Origin of Life – How Life Started on Earth
49m:53s youtube; Cosmology Today; Jun 2016
⇒ Hints of oldest fossil life found in Greenland rocks (Greenland)
Carolyn Gramling; Science AAAS; Aug 2016
⇒ Scientists find evidence for alternate theory of how life arose
The Scripps Research Institute via Phys.org; Sep 2016
⇒ The secret of how life on Earth began
Michael Marshall; Oct 2016; BBC
⇒ Researchers Find That Ribose, The ‘R’ in RNA, Could Form Naturally in Space
Josh Hrala; ScienceAlert; Apr 2016
⇒ Evidence for early life in Earth’s oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates (Canada)
Matthew S Dodd, Dominic Papineau, […], Crispin T S Little; Nature; Mar 2017
⇒ Chemical nature of the 3.4 Ga Strelley Pool microfossils (Australia)
J Alleon, S Bernard, […], F Robert; Geochemical Perspectives Letters; Aug 2018
⇒ Lab-made primordial soup yields RNA bases
Davide Castelvecchi; Nature; Oct 2019
⇒ First detection of sugars in meteorites gives clues to origin of life
Bill Steigerwald, Nancy Jones; NASA via Phys.org; Nov 2019
If abiogenesis was proven impossible, then there’d no point, even in principle, ever trying to research it. You don’t see anyone looking for, say, a triangular square circle that tastes red and looks salty, orbiting the Moon. Abiogenesis may not be the most common area of research, but it is active, as evidenced above.
If some all-powerful being(s) were experimenting with us (and the universe), with the only limitation being logically possible worlds for example, then there’d be no particular reason why we should trust any findings at all.
aniara 