Darwin was not a scientist, nor did he practice the scientific method. He was a med-school dropout turned amateur naturalist who attempted to reinterpret the entire history of biology on nothing more than a few minor variations between finches.
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And what a fucking excellent job he did of it.
Does it not strike you as being a bit stupid to use the internet to argue about a 200 year old dead guy? As if anything you could possibly say relating to Darwin at all could disprove modern theories regarding evolution in any way?
"He was a med-school dropout turned amateur naturalist"
And Einstein was a patent clerk turned amateur physicist, I suppose?
"attempted to reinterpret the entire history of biology on nothing more than a few minor variations between finches"
No, the Origin of Species is full of evidence for evolution, of which Darwin's finches are but one small part.
"GodGunsGuts"
...would appear to be three things you are trying to think with.
If true, it shows Darwin's discovery to be even more astounding than previously thought. It would also show that non-scientists and "amateurs" can grasp the concept that is beyond the limited understanding of freepers.
GodGunsGuts just shot himself in the foot the same one lodged in his lying mouth.
God is not a real being, so it is pointless worshiping him. God is the fatuous invention of rabid mammon-worshiping zealots. One might as well pay hommage to magical sky fairies rather then worship a psychotic supernatural entity. God doesn't even exist. The bible contains errors and is inconsistent. Evolution is a proven fact.
Darwin studied many subjects, although medicine (or at least surgery) did not appeal that greatly to him. He was a polymath who also published papers on geology, not a "dropout turned amateur naturalist". This breadth of interest was not uncommon in days when those of a certain background had sufficient money to support themselves independent of the need for a working career.
Just finches? You forgot about the variations amongst tortoises. And iguanas. And beetles.
Darwin was a leading barnacle systematist, discovered the first plant hormone and the cause of phototropism, explained the development of soil coupled with earthworm ecology, and was an excellent pollination biologist, and wrote intelligently on human psychology and animal husbandry.
You should really learn to read, GGG. That way your mom wouldn't have to type your interweb comments for you.
He was a med-school dropout turned amateur naturalist who attempted to reinterpret the entire history of biology on nothing more than a few minor variations between finches
And it worked!
Have you even read -any- Darwin?
Besides that, there wasn't really a big difference between amateur and professional naturalists at that time (not to mention he was actually a professional naturalist. . . if I recall he didn't pay to go on the Beagle). Amateur is not an insult anyway. There are lots of amateurs now that collect data pros find useful, but just don't have all the time and resources as individual scientists to collect as much as several dedicated volunteers can for them. Not to mention that even today one does not have to be professionally trained as a scientist to be one, though it does help in most cases.
And. We learn the scientific method as a rigid thing in high school, but it's not as rigid as it seems. Basically you start with lots of careful observations (which Darwin had, including but not limited to the finches) then you look at what kind of pattern you can see in it. You get an idea what the pattern could be and what kinds of observations you'd need to support AND disprove it. Then you go observe some more and see what you find out. That's really all there is to it.
And 2. He was not trying to rewrite the history of biology. That was written already. He was just observing and interpreting his observations, and it was NOT based only on the finches.
And 3. Those "minor" variations were the difference between life and death for most finches that had the wrong beak for a given point in the rain cycle. There were very likely physiological differences between the finches that would have been difficult for Darwin to observe with his knowledge and equipment at the time but would have made a difference to the birds' survival.
Why don't you try attacking some actual facts with some credible evidence?
@Zoo...actually, I believe his father paid for him. He certainly wasn't paid to go.
Arguably, Chuck D was more dilettantish than most...he was insanely rich and could afford to tinker around on his farm with earthworms and such. Although most scientists of his day (AR Wallace being a NOTABLE exception) were well-off from birth, they still needed to earn money in a way that Darwin never did. Even his friends Hooker and Lyell needed to be paid for their work.
However, none of this matters. Darwin's idea of natural selection is one of the most tested and most profoundly explanatory theories in the hsitory of science.
I wonder if this guy is even aware that Biologists ALREADY knew, by Darwin's time, that Evolution in SOME form had been happening for million, if not billions, of years.
Darwin merely proposed Natural Selection as the mechanism for this evolution.
W/ others...clearly evolutionary thought was established long before Darwin...this is a poem that his grandfather Erasmus Darwin wrote 7 years before his birth...
Long before that, Buffon championed the genealogical relationship that he thought was claer between humans and apes, "On pourra dire égalemant
que l’homme et le singe ont eu une origine commune comme le chevale et l’âne
” or “one could just as easily say that a man and a monkey share a common ancestor as a horse and a donkey
” Histoire Naturelle 3:383, 1749.
Here's the thing about science. It doesn't care if you're a PhD from Cambridge or a med-school dropout. As long as your theory proposes a testible mechanism that does a better job at explaining the evidence then the current one does, your theory will be published and accepted by the scientific method.
It's a good think scientists weren't concerned about rank and degrees the way the religious are when a certain patent clerk came up with a theory that revolutionized all of modern physics.
Let's assume for just a minute that what you've said isn't so much bullshit.
Let's assume that Darwin was incompotent as a scientist.
How do you explain the MOUNTAINS of work since then that has confirmed his work?
Oh dear! You forgot twenty years of painstaking research!
I'm sure it was just a silly mistake on your part, but do try to be careful. Its the sort of thing that will make people think you're an idiot, and we wouldn't want that, would we?
If I'm correct (which I am and you're not,) you have to have studied science in order to go to medical school. In fact, even the courses in medical school are mostly scientific. What do you think Medical School even is? Just a bunch of cats in white coats asking: "do you concur?" The very nature of him being in medical school is enough to illustrate he was a scientist.
I wondr how long it does take you to realize that it doesn´t matter how often you try to discredit Darwin.
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2009
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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