But two events in the 20th century vitiated his grand designer-less design. The development of magnification revealed the teaming complexity of microbiology, rendering the visual appearance of morphological similarity irrelevant. To a Darwinian originalist, the photoreceptor cell might, by the complexifying adaptations of experience, evolve into a pinhole-camera eye; to the a 20th-century microbiologist, this is as absurd as the creator-less evolution of a Harley into a Prius.
But Charles might find equal distress in neo-Darwinism, which displaced the logical (but untrue) adaptations of Lamarck with the random failures of Medelian genetics. Where the former had explained the modification of species as congruous with the changes wrought by physical forces on insensate matter, the Mendelian system enshrined the opposite: the systematic resistance of species to change outside a limited range of characteristics. Larmarck's hyposthesis assisted Darwin's vision; that of Mendel and Huxley retarded it.
The "weaknesses" and "holes" in evolution have turned out to be fleeting. They tend to last only until researchers turn their attention to them. The blood clotting cascade was supposed to defy evolutionary explanation, and then it was explained. The same is true for the flagellum, and most of the other "problems for evolution". Given this track record, any argument that depends on some phenomenon resisting explanation is not one I'd want to rely on.
But I'd love to know one thing. Does Mr. Nadler believe life arose and developed in defiance of natural law? If so, he's left the realm of science.
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