Dispute all day if you wish, but I see at least 3 instances where Darwinian evolution is specifically qualified by natural selection in your quotes. No matter.
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Precisely the reason one might avoid using the overly-broad, blanket, and non-specific term “evolution”, no?
Essentially, the same things Coyne defends using the term for… Clarity, accuracy, brevity, honor to its discoverer… But I have no particular fondness for the term if it is truly unclear.
Well, in fairiness, it was someone else that reminded me that Dawkins et al used the term. My first observation was that it was used in rather prestigious academic settings; Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, UCLA, etc… I mean, Harvard currently has a class on “understanding Darwinism”. I have a hard time seeing the claim that the terminology is limited to a few anti-religious provocateurs.
But I’m still baffled by the claim that this is a categorically “wrong” use. It was always quite right and acceptable use, at least until recent years, apparently. When did this change, exactly? “less-than-updated”? Surely any “update” in this terminology must be a rather recent development, no? It seems to have been used quite happily and uncontroversially by proponents of the theory in recent years, this really is the first time I’m hearing any controversy about it. When, exactly, did all this change?
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This much I do concede … there is indeed a wide use and application of that word that does allow for much generality and imprecision … and yes … mischief when it is bandied about with ideological motivations. My own solution to this then is to refer to it as “biological evolution” when I wish to communicate about common descent of life from some original life form. As such, this is still a broad enough term to include the theory as Darwin understood and developed it in his time as well as what it still is today.
As to the history of when or how it was outdated, I am happy to accept the word of practitioners here who are professionally knowledgeable of the field and (I have good reason to believe) are less ideologically driven in their use of it than such as Dawkins.
Darwin’s understandings of the mechanisms involved were crude compared to what we know today. Since genomics didn’t even exist yet in his time, much less with all the advances it has had with the whole DNA revolution, it does make sense to me that Darwin truly did have a 30,000 ft view of the thing with no virtually access to the mechanistic details that would have to wait. His overall speculations were mostly right (but with significant refinements and additions necessary) for as far as they could go. So I suppose that is why there can even remain confusion among some about how much difference there is in today’s understandings from Darwin’s own. Thanks to your own challenges here, those who know most have been elaborating on what some of those necessary changes have been. I’m happy to learn from their answers, and your own challenges that provoke the educational response.
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thoughts are very much appreciated, as always. I can’t speak for Dawkins himself, but his use of the term Darwinian never seemed to me to be particularly polemical or ideological, simply descriptive. he is certainly ideological and polemical enough in many ways, but I just don’t see it here. But even with Jerry Coyne, who often is as polemical and ideological as they come… when he specifically outlined his reasons for using the term, there certainly didn’t seem to me anything particularly ideological about such. Maybe you can tell me if you saw such, but I certainly am not seeing anything so ideological, unless we are including in his “ideology” a perhaps overzealous desire to maintain an honorific status for Charles Darwin and his unique scientific contribution?
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From the Discovery Institute:
The theory of evolution makes no comment on whether life has meaning and purpose. None.
People are calling it Darwinian evolution, not Dawkinsian evolution.
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If you go to a biology symposium, and in that context a poster features a discussion on evolution, with that term not defined further, what are the chances anyone will be confused that Larmarkism, or cosmological evolution, is the topic? Generally, if the lecture is focused on anything other than some aspect of a modern update to the neo Darwinian framework of the theory, that is when qualifiers might be expected. So the term is not overly-broad; it communicates - the reader simply and accurately understands what the writer intended to convey.
Now Coyne and Dawkins are on a mission, and if Darwin invokes provocative baggage to some creationists, that is a double bonus in their minds. But it’s not quite right to narrow the reference to evolution by broadening the definition of Darwinism, and even the subsequent neo Darwinism does not really capture the full picture of a modern understanding of population genetics.
Now it is still a somewhat free country, so one can use Darwinism, or atheistic Darwinism, or evil atheistic amoral eugenics Darwinism, if you please. It is just nothing warns of an incoming, “if people evolved from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys”, like a new poster leading with “why do Darwinists>>>>”
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Descriptive of what? What do you think Darwinian evolution is, and what do you think the modern theory of evolution includes?
Read any of these articles:
https://answersingenesis.org/search/?refinement=&language=en&q=darwinism
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How then do you distinguish the terms Darwinian (evolution) and Darwinism?
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This is a really good point, Eric, and it deserves a much broader discussion.
Unfortunately, there is a history here. Proponents of capitalized Intelligent Design have spilled a whole lotta ink in the cause of refuting the explanatory capability of “Darwinian evolution.” ID proponents have deemed “irreducible complexity” to be beyond the capabilities of mutation + drift + recombination + cooperation + natural selection. Thus the argument that natural selection could be a way for God’s invisible hand to steer biological processes has typically fallen on deaf ID proponent ears.
With a little extra time, I could point to many discussions on this very forum where ID proponents have vehemently dismissed natural selection as a teleological component.
If you could think of a way to sway ID proponents toward your perspective, you would do a lot to bring reconciliation between the two camps (EC and ID) that both believe in intelligent design.
Best,
Chris
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In the latest podcast NT Wright used it…
You make no consideration about the relationship between Science and Philosophy and Science and Theology. Even if the “theory” does not make any comment, Dawkins and Dennett and others who are the most prominent advocates of Evolution have made many of them, so it is a valid topic of discussion.
If on the first page of the Selfish Gene Dawkins declares that The Origin of the Species is the most important book about the nature of humanity ever, then he if no other opened the debate, which should be a discussion.
Dawkins & Co. are claiming to be carrying the banner of Darwinism. Dawkins claims that the Selfish Dene is an extension of the4 Survival of the Fittest. He is probably right because Dawkins has modeled his ideology after that understanding of evolution.
Now things are changing. New ideas are being expressed among scientists about Natural Selection. Some people say these are new ideas, while it seems that Dawkins & Co want to say the Selfish Gene still reigns. BioLogos seems to stand with Dawkins for some reason. I do not for scientific and other reasons. .
I typically use a dictionary…
Darwinian evolution or Darwinism?
I don’t remember but I guess to me those are one in the same and so it could be either one. I imagine if I asked 100 people if they believed in either one they would respond roughly the same.
In scientific contexts, I occasionally hear or see references to Darwinian evolution, meaning specifically evolution driven by natural selection. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard ‘Darwinism’ used for any purpose. In any case, it doesn’t strike me as the most important thing to argue about.
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It kind of reminds me of when someone complained about the phrases evolutionary creationism, theistic evolution, theist evolutionist and so on.
In the end it’s not really that big of a deal. The majority of people will understand what you’re saying with very little confusion which is the whole point of language. It’s less confusing then every knew slang word from a popular song a year that becomes somewhat semi normal common language.
What then does your “go-to” dictionary say that distinguishes them?
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My perspective as a layperson with zero educational credentials… when I hear Darwinian Evolution I figure it’s an argument against old positions. Trying to keep up with the debate is hard not knowing the official name of the new position. Evo-Devo?
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There is no difference. But Darwinian alone as an adjective implies more than evolution but as a noun it is an accepter of Huxley’s 1860 Darwinism noun.
Darwinian evolution is redundant phraseology unless one is discussing the evolution of evolution; Darwin’s 1859 definition which precludes the units of heredity, even so Darwinism is a better term. As in all discourse, usage is correct, but some usage is more Orwellianly correct than others. The key is elegance.
I was originally just using the term “Darwinian evolution”, myself… but then I found this… now this is an apposite defense of using the term “Darwinism”…!!
When Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, he produced a major shift in scientists’ understanding of biology. Darwin proposed a specific mechanism for the gradual change of species. That mechanism was called natural selection. The theory of evolution by natural selection was called Darwinism, although modern Darwinism also acknowledges the possibility of other types of evolutionary selection. To have the theory of evolution so strongly attached to Darwin’s name may seem to imply the idea of a cult that slavishly follows the work of a single scientist. That is most certainly not the case. The modern theory of evolution has contributions from many independent scientists from the last 150 years and has become the absolute core of biology.
When Darwin proposed the mechanism of natural selection, he did not understand the details of how a species’ naturally selected traits could be inherited by its offspring. Fortunately, Gregor Mendel’s research in genetics was already underway. By breeding pea plants, Mendel discovered the precise method by which traits are inherited.1 Although neither Mendel nor Darwin lived to see Mendelian genetics integrated with Darwinian natural selection, the synthesis of these two theories — which more recently includes the discovery of the chemical nature of the gene and the development of the science of molecular biology — is called Neo-Darwinism, or The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. The theory, however, is more often referred to simply as Darwinism.