1. evolvingthoughts
  2. The Macroevolution FAQ updated

The Macroevolution FAQ updated

By evolvingthoughts on September 16, 2006.

Some of you may know I am a contributor to the Talkorigins.org Archive (hey, it's written down the page, to the left, OK? No it's not. It's written on my homepage. Oops). My contributions have been done over the better part of a decade, and obviously as I learn more, I have to revise them. I have just finished, with the assistance of Mike Hopkins who did the actual work of making my words safe for the Internet, a major revision of the Macroevolution FAQ.

I originally did this because people were saying that "macroevolution" and "microevolution" were terms invented by creationists. This might have surprised the leading figures of 20thC evolutionary biology like Dobzhansky and Simpson, who used the terms all the time.

Then I got interested in the "macroevolution = microevolution" debate, which is both a scientific claim and a philosophical one. So now there's philosophy in that FAQ, about reduction and where to draw the line.

My friend and occasional sparring partner Larry Moran thinks I am misrepresenting some aspects of the debate, so I encourage you to go to his essay on Macroevolution here for a corrective. It's rather nice - I think he's wrong and he thinks I'm wrong and we both think we can rationally convince the other. Academic optimism...

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Ahem. Good article and FAQ but I am still waiting for a single observation of macro-evolution. waiting... waiting...

sigh.

z.

By s. zeilenga (not verified) on 17 Sep 2006 #permalink

Didn't know this site, was glad to see it. I've put your FAQ into the Wikipedia 'macroevolution' article as an external reference if you don't mind (you can delete it, anyway). Thanks, incze.

incze, that's fine. I note that the article lacks much detail on things like species sorting and selection, extinction rates, and phylogenetic analysis, though. If I ever get time, I may add to it.

For those who care, I have a paper coming out in Biology and Philosophy soonish, entitled "The dimensions, modes and definitions of species and speciation" which addresses some of this obliquely. Those who want the ms version can email me.

A minor quibble - 'macrophage' tends to refer to a white blood cell that eats nasty microorganisms, rather than a cell that is larger than normal, per se.

Thanks. That's been pointed out in the newsgroup, and I'll modify it. Funny that it took from 1997 to now for someone to point that mistake out, though...