New Scientist - The Origin Of Species Summarised

[mosaix]

This week New Scientist includes a chapter-by-chapter summary of Darwin's On The Origin of Species:


This month marks the 150th anniversary of the most influential piece of popular science writing ever published.

A few years ago, New Scientist listed reading On The Origin of Species as one of the 100 things to do before you die. To do so is to experience the extraordinary sensation of having a scientific genius enter your mind to guide you through his most important theory.

Now we have asked the geneticist, evolutionary thinker and author Steve Jones to summarise and update the book for the 21st century - and, we hope, to inspire readers to experience Darwin's astounding, world-changing writing first-hand.


This summary can be read on-line at

On the Origin of Species, Revisited - New Scientist

Enjoy.

 

[Moonbat]

I did enjoy this, although they missed out a few chapters. What was really impressive is the way that Darwin's mistakes, small and insignificant as they might be, have been removed or disporved from the theory with advances in genetics and the like.

People say that evolution is no longer a theory, it is a law. In any system that has reproduction, random mutation and adaptive survival then Evolution arises as a natural law of the system.

In the same edition they spoke oft the LHC starting up again, can't wait to see some results. Well. That's a bit much. I wouldn't understand the results they get, so more accurately I can't wait to see a write up of the results.

 

[Chinook]

I just watched a news feed from PBS.org on the most recent research being done in this area. You can watch it here: /video.pbs.org/video/1327194805
It is a program that supports the claim that :

• H heidelbergensis > H. neanderthalensis
• H. heidelbergensis > H. rhodesiensis > H. sapiens idaltu > H sapiens sapiens

In other words, the consensus is tending toward Homo heidelbergensis being the common ancestor of Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens sapiens. Homo heidelbergensis lived from roughly 600,000 and 200,000 years ago.

The program continues to speculate that heidelbergensis could think, communicate, and even participate in "ritual" behavoiur.

A 100,000 year old jawbone including teeth was found (believed to be about 12 years old when he died) in Belgium and taken to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany). The institute employs technology exclusively refined for anthropological and archeological research.

I took a class in Anthropology in the early 90's, and I distinctly remember the instructor saying that proof of humans recording language (or just symbols) was around 40,000 years ago. That notion may now be changing.

 

[J-WO]

Shocking to see how many comments have had to be removed from the New Scientist article.

 

[mosaix]

Shocking to see how many comments have had to be removed from the New Scientist article.

I assume, maybe wrongly, that the removed comments were personal insults rather than reasoned debate on evolution. To that extent I am not shocked.

I think we are spoiled, on the Chrons, by the high level of reasonable debate and the low level of personal insult. In my experience it is exactly the other way around on most other internet fora.

 

[J-WO]

Moderators to thank for that, I guess.
Truth be told, I've never visited another internet forum in my life. I hear its a wilderness out there...