Down with Darwinism!

True. It should be left Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection. Darwin did not tell people how to live their lives, there is no Darwinism.

We also talk about experimentalism -- the religion of modern science, and not an obviously bad thing.

the ism isn't the issue. the cult of personality that might be perceived is a bigger point.

I make a point of drawing the word "Darwinism" out, deepening my voice and affecting a British accent, then following it with an evil laugh. Also, I refer to Creationists as "Mosesists". If they get huffy, it's "Paulites".

She's mistaking effect for cause. People worship a person, and that causes them to use his name like that. Others may imitate the cultish ones in their usage, but in either case, eliminating the use of the term doesn't change people's underlying views.

We do speak of the Newtonian universe, meaning that Newton's Principia (which united the work of Galileo, Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler, et al) was one of the great intellectual thresholds of human history. If you believe that the Origin of Species is an equivalent threshold (and I basically do) it wouldn't be wrong to talk about a Darwinian universe.

Christianists use the word "Darwinian" in a stupid way, but we shouldn't let them ruin a name for us.

One reason the "Darwinian" question is interesting is that no one is quite sure yet what, exactly, the significance of Darwin's work was. So if we're Darwinians, we still have to figure out what a Darwinian is. But figuring out the significance of the Origin of Species actually is an important question.

My theory is that Razib is a sucker for any lady PhD with big brown eyes who talks about sex.

john,

in philosophy and history the word 'darwinism' might have utility. but in contemporary discussions about scientific models, i don't think so. people talk about 'physics' or 'mechanics' or 'relativity' not 'newtonianism' or 'einsteinianism.' yes, those person-derived words do crop up, but secondarily.

I'm finding it hard to imagine a better descriptor than 'darwinian' for what Richard Michod calls 'darwinian dynamics'.

Lamarckism...Skinnerism...Mendelism...

The definition of Darwinism is a hot topic. Gould even starts out his Structure by discussing it, and disagreeing with the guy who is right on this - David Hull. Hull's notion is that these terms are proper names that apply to historically connected sequences, not classes of ideas that are shared by all and only Darwinians. So Huxley can be a saltationist and a Darwinian, while Lyell is a gradualist and not, simply in virtue of the social organisation of these folk.

I my view there is no essence to "Darwinian" and cognate terms, so it is better to leave it as a historical name. Michod's book, for example, deals with a subset of the things that have been called Darwinian, and predominantly with selection, which isn't even Darwin's original idea. If Darwin originated any evolutionary ideas, they are common descent and sexual selection, and I'm not sure about the latter.

Lamarckism...Skinnerism...Mendelism...

epigenetics, behaviorism and genetics.

It seems to me that the term "Darwinism" was coined by people who wanted to apply it in a philosophical manner ("social Darwinism") and has been popularized recently by the Creationist/ID crowd, as subtle way of equating it with other "isms" -- Communism, Fascism, Marxism, and so forth-- which are social theories, and to some degree, political positions. Making Evolution into an "ism" turns it, in the popular mind, from what is essentially a fact to something akin to an opinion which can be argued or refuted solely through rhetoric. This allows the Creationists to circumvent their fatal shortcoming-- lack of evidence-- and easily sell the whole thing as a "teach the controversy" battle of rival philosophical positions which sounds reasonable to the disinterested and uninformed public.

So I agree we should not be allow Evolution to be turned into an "ism" -- for no other reason than that we don't want it equated in the popular imagination with other "isms".

the ism isn't the issue. the cult of personality that might be perceived is a bigger point.

We do talk about (to give a wide range of physics examples)
- the Copernican Principle
- Planck's (or Newton's) Constant
- Curium
- The Carnot Engine
- The Schrodinger (Dirac, Maxwell, Schwinger-Dyson, Einstein...) Equation
- Hawking Radiation
- Feynman Diagrams
- Einstein summation
- The Bohr atom, radius

And so on and on. Scientists are clearly strongly motivated by the hope of fame and glory, and name lots of things after themselves or each other. I don't see that naming an exceedingly broad and deep framework after the man who first sketched it out is outside the range of things we attach scientists' names to. Why should creationists dictate our usage?

I don't see that naming an exceedingly broad and deep framework after the man who first sketched it out is outside the range of things we attach scientists' names to

aside from the copernican principle none of the examples are really of the same order as "darwinism." they're narrow concepts, like haldane's rule or the sewall wright effect. and the copernican principle is a more explicitly exclusive philosophical concept that darwinism.

Christianists use the word "Darwinian" in a stupid way,

Christianists? Then I propose the word "Darwinity"...

Actually we physicists do often use "newtonian mechanics", meaning non-quantum mechanics calculations. Of course the more common term in that case is "classical mechanics", but newtonian is usually used when one is talking specifically about directly using F=ma, as opposed to Lagrangian/hamiltonian mechanics. And of course the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian are always referred to as such. On the other hand, I don't think anyone refers to anything with einstonian.

So using the name of the person who invented it isn't necceserily about a cult of personality, sometimes it's just convention. As for this particular case, it seems the biologists are pretty clearly on the side that there's better words and we can retire this one ;P

It's not just Evolution. It's Evolution by Natural Selection.

The gravitational curvature tensor in GR that couples to Stress Energy is called the Einstein Tensor. Often called "Einstein" for short.

Element 99 is called Einsteinium (Es).

I've heard Einsteinian a lot as in "The Einsteinian Universe"

Also I've heard usages like, "Galilean relativity versus Einsteinian relativity."

Personally I've no objection to calling it "Darwinism".

But then I'd be perfectly happy calling it "Satanism" if that's what it takes to piss the superstitious primitives off.

Also don't forget Neo-Darwinian Synthesis.

I suppose you could call it "the modern evolutionary synthesis", but that is begging the question that it may be one day superceded by another "even more modern evolutionary synthesis" and then we'll have to go back to calling it neodarwinism.

Or perhaps, "the evolutionary synthesis formerly known as modern".