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John Wilkins is an eternal student, who thinks philosophy of biology is at least as interesting as politics or sport and twice as important. He has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and a position as a Sessional Lecturer at the University of Queensland, in Australia. After a varied career, involving factories, gardening, civil service, publishing, graphics, public relations but not, unfortunately for the CV, driving a truck, John finally completed his thesis on species concepts in 2004, which he has worked into two books.
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« History of evolution | Main | I've been LOL'd!!1 »
Getting rid of "Darwinism"
Category: Evolution • History • Philosophy of Science
Posted on: July 16, 2008 8:54 AM, by John S. Wilkins
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Comments
Can we also dump Copernicanism while we're about it?
Posted by: Thony C. | July 16, 2008 10:09 AM
I disagree that the problem with the "-ism" is that it suggests a finality to Darwins arguments,that he was the "beginning and end of evolutionary biology".
The term is not one usually used by scientists,its being propagated by Creationists,the DI and their ilk,and just represents their particular Goebbels-esque tendency to create "isms" to devalue certain theories by turning them into an -ism,Darwinist,Evulutionist etc.....
Posted by: clinteas | July 16, 2008 10:31 AM
I'm relatively sure that Einsteinism needs to go, too, as well as ismism.
Posted by: Ian | July 16, 2008 11:59 AM
Ulrich Kutschera of the University of Kassel has suggested introducing the term "Darwin-Wallace principle of natural selection" (Nature 453:27, 2008).
Posted by: James F | July 16, 2008 2:02 PM
I'm sure in German that's one word, too.
Posted by: AntiquatedTory | July 16, 2008 8:07 PM
Let's see: Der Darwinische-WallaceischeSatzdernatürlicheAuslese...
How do Germans breathe, anyway?
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | July 16, 2008 8:17 PM
What's that line from E. B. White? Something like "She dove into the sea of her sentence, and finally emerged, panting, on the other side, with her verb in her teeth."
(He probably used fewer commas. :))
Posted by: RBH | July 17, 2008 2:56 AM
Durch ihren Arschloch natuerlich!
Posted by: Thony C. | July 17, 2008 3:14 AM
*sigh*
Everyone's a comedian!
Posted by: James F | July 17, 2008 2:20 PM
For values of E. B. White that equal S. L. Clemens, anyway.
"Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth."
Posted by: Owlmirror | July 17, 2008 2:24 PM
Units are often called for names of discoverers: Ohms, Volts, Newtons, Einsteins, etc. Does anyone use the evolutionary unit, the Darwin? A Darwin is a 1% change in the gene pool of a population over one generation.
Posted by: Jim Thomerson | July 17, 2008 4:19 PM
"Does anyone use the evolutionary unit, the Darwin? A Darwin is a 1% change in the gene pool of a population over one generation.
I think they should refer to a kilodarwin as a "gould".
(Incidentally, there seem to be different definitions of what a darwin is floating around, or are they equivalent and I just not understanding? (very, very possible).
Posted by: Dan S. | July 19, 2008 10:18 PM
According to Wikipedia a darwin is an e-fold amount of change over one million years, and was devised by J. B. S. Haldane. I think it is flawed because it assumes that rates of change are commensurable across the evolutionary tree in absolute terms, and this is a mistake.
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | July 19, 2008 10:29 PM