Monday, March 02, 2009

Darwin was not really wrong

I briefly mentioned (here) a recent New Scientist article whereby they disparaged Darwin's conceptualisation of life as having a single origin that diversified and branched out as a tree.

They emphasised the ways in which that metaphor of evolution steady direction and branching didn't really hold, ultimately laying the material under the banner "Darwin was wrong".

There is much meaty discussion in the various issues they raised. But they overplayed the theme: wrong is too strong a word for what is really some fuzziness on the margins.

I will note some of the issues at a later date; meanwhile, more recently someone wrote to New Scientist to make exactly the same point. The writer is much more vociferous than me; here's a link to that letter. Original article here.

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