Pet Peeve: describing evolution as intentional

It amazed me when I went to work in Montana that the bosses daughters said I was the first person they had met who believed in evolution. They believed it was a disproved theory. I don't know what the school teaches them, maybe they only believe what they are told in church.
 
Yesterday I saw someone with a t-shirt that said: Not intelligent enough to understand science? Try religion!

Actually the article is referring to nature documentaries and I'm pretty sure that I've often heard TV naturalists including some highly revered ones say things like "look at these powerful jaws, designed to crush bones" and so on. I'm going to have to look out for specific quotable examples now.
 
In fact, I have had conversations with research biologists who spoke of evolutionary adaptations in that way and asked them why they thought that this trait was developed so that the species could do this or that. Their responses were... well... nonsense
 
When I was at university I always avoid using the word ‘design’ until one day my tutor said that ‘evolutionary design’ was an acceptable term to use; after reading this thread I thought I’d dig out my copy of Henderson’s Dictionary of Biology and look to see if it included said term. I failed to find the dictionary but did find a copy of Steinbeck’s The Winter of Discontent which I had been looking for a couple of weeks ago. I’m now going to go and read it.
 
I have to agree with the sentiments. There's many a time one of my non-zoological friends has come to me after seeing a documentary, believing that some invertebrate instinctively knew how to evolve to best survive it's environment.

:p

Hix
 
Hix said:
I have to agree with the sentiments. There's many a time one of my non-zoological friends has come to me after seeing a documentary, believing that some invertebrate instinctively knew how to evolve to best survive it's environment.

:p

Hix
Click to expand...

"Yes! Yes! I know! Thorns will save me. I better get evolving on that."
 
Epigenetics anyone?

Seems, at least in some cases, inheritable genetic changes can occur in response to environmental change experienced by a single individual.

Very subtle though.....more to do with chemistry and physical parameters of the environment (temp, pH, chemical contamination) rather than 'giraffe tells offspring to grow a long neck because it can't reach the leaves'.....but maybe Lamarckian evolution does exist to a small degree???

Discuss! ;)
 
I just refer to them as adaptations which guards against any misconstrual of the term 'design', as if evolution were a strictly, or at least partially, directed process.
 
Hix said:
I have to agree with the sentiments. There's many a time one of my non-zoological friends has come to me after seeing a documentary, believing that some invertebrate instinctively knew how to evolve to best survive it's environment.

:p

Hix
Click to expand...

Looks like it really depends on country. In Russian school children are taught that (roughly) evolution is the result of the sequence of "random cases" combined with natural selection. When teachers talk about "aimed" or "directed" selection they always focus that it is just convenient common words but not a real thing, that this words just describe action/result of selection, and so on.
We also have in university the special course of methods of biology teaching in school, and this theme is always "well-marked", because it is the basic problem, the problem related to world view.

And I've never seen adult man who thought that species know what direction choose to evolution.
 
Of course you're right but if you're trying to explain evolution you have to use lots of examples and it's not sensible to repeat the mantra about random mutations increasing or decreasing the fitness of certain individuals and so on for each one. You have to do it for the first example and reprise it for the second, but I think it's allowable to discuss any further cases in more conversational language - before summing up carefully in the final coda.
After all, there are very respectable precedents: Darwin could have called his second book on evolution The Ascent of the Peacock as it describes his second 'big idea', sexual selection. Of course from the general evolutionary perspective it could equally have been titled The Ascent of the Dodo or the brown rat or Yersinia pestis or any other species. I am sure Darwin knew this, but he also knew that nice Mr Murray (his publisher) would only be able to sell a book called The Ascent of Man.

Alan
 
gentle lemur said:
Of course you're right but if you're trying to explain evolution you have to use lots of examples and it's not sensible to repeat the mantra about random mutations increasing or decreasing the fitness of certain individuals and so on for each one. You have to do it for the first example and reprise it for the second, but I think it's allowable to discuss any further cases in more conversational language - before summing up carefully in the final coda.
After all, there are very respectable precedents: Darwin could have called his second book on evolution The Ascent of the Peacock as it describes his second 'big idea', sexual selection. Of course from the general evolutionary perspective it could equally have been titled The Ascent of the Dodo or the brown rat or Yersinia pestis or any other species. I am sure Darwin knew this, but he also knew that nice Mr Murray (his publisher) would only be able to sell a book called The Ascent of Man.

Alan
Click to expand...

It's The Descent of Man, not The Ascent of Man.
 
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