The end of Darwinism

7/16/2008 | 3:08 PM | Evolved Rationalist

Whenever creationists rant about how their latest piece of pseudo-scientific thinking has overthrown 'Darwinism' and rant about how I am an evil, Nazi-supporting 'Darwinist', I often link to a post titled 'I am not a Darwinist'. Most creationists don't seem to get it, as seen in a (deliberate?) comment by Dave Scot about me being a 'Darwinist' on another post where I explicitly state that I am not a Darwinist.

However, what irritates me to no end is when people on our side use the term 'Darwinist' and 'Darwinism', thus playing right into the creationists' hands. (Yes, Dawkins, Dennett et al. I mean you.)

Although this point has been done to death on this site, it is worth mentioning again and again and again (Christislord12, Creationist and Murf - pay attention before sounding like jackasses!).

Olivia Judson puts it nicely:

I’d like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false narrowness to the field of modern evolutionary biology, as though it was the brainchild of a single person 150 years ago, rather than a vast, complex and evolving subject to which many other great figures have contributed. (The science would be in a sorry state if one man 150 years ago had, in fact, discovered everything there was to say.) Obsessively focusing on Darwin, perpetually asking whether he was right about this or that, implies that the discovery of something he didn’t think of or know about somehow undermines or threatens the whole enterprise of evolutionary biology today.

Darwin was an amazing man, and the principal founder of evolutionary biology. But his was the first major statement on the subject, not the last. Calling evolutionary biology “Darwinism,” and evolution by natural selection “Darwinian” evolution, is like calling aeronautical engineering “Wrightism,” and fixed-wing aircraft “Wrightian” planes, after those pioneers of fixed-wing flight, the Wright brothers. The best tribute we could give Darwin is to call him the founder — and leave it at that.

Posted in Evolution, Science |