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My Darwin, right or wrong?

By razib on June 7, 2009.

What Darwin said - and was he right?:

In this Darwin year many popular accounts of 'Darwinism' have appeared, but these seldom make a clear distinction among the different components of Darwin's theory of evolution. Many popularisations are simplified to the point of caricature, and presented in an absurdly uncritical way. I yield to few in my admiration for Darwin, but I do not think his memory is best served by oversimplifying his ideas or pretending that he was always right.

So I will attempt to identify the key propositions of 'Darwinism', with an assessment of their current standing. This will probably run to five or six posts, with propositions grouped under the headings:

The Pattern of Evolution
The Mechanisms of Evolution
Heredity
Speciation
Gradualism
Levels of Selection

Read the whole thing.

Tags
evolution
darwin
evolution

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Very nice synopsis of what Darwin said.

Very interesting that almost all positive characterizations of Darwin conveniently leave out his support for HBD (I'm talking in general, not in regards to this post). Darwin actually was so convinced of the existence of racial HBD that he concluded it wasn't even worth researching. Can you imagine a prominent, let's say Nobel Prize-winning scientist who made a similarly seminal discovery as Darwin did saying this today? Oh wait.