Wednesday, February 01, 2006

 

Evolution: Where Darwin meets Lamarck? Discussion Forum

'Evolution - Where Darwin meets Lamarck?' places an emphasis on concepts and discoveries consistent with the possible existence of testable internal evolutionary mechanisms and alternative (non-creationist) explanations for 'problem areas' of conventional evolutionary theory.

In their paper "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm" Gould and Lewontin briefly described the European concept of Bauplan ('bodyplan') which, in its 'strong' form, speculates:

"But the important steps of evolution, the construction of the Bauplan itself and the transition between Baupläne, must involve some other unknown, and perhaps 'internal,' mechanism."

An internal mechanism cannot be 'mystical' simply because, if one exists, then it would be testable. This suggests the concept ought to evoke no greater uncertainty than appropriate to the words of Einstein:

"If we knew what we were doing, we wouldn't call it research, would we?".

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