How do you define the word Evolution?

See my reply to Dredge, Message 424 by CRR, posted 23-04-2017 5:17 PM

A theory that attempts to explain the origin of species without explaining the origin of the first species is incomplete.I think Darwin got a lot right in his book. However he fell into error when he extrapolated beyond the evidence.

Here's one example of a secular trained geologist who made the switch to YEC.Dr Ron Neller - creation.comThere's a longer interview here http://www.creationmagazine.com/...on/2017_volume_39_issue_1

I've read Dobzhansky's paper
Nothing in Biology Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution
Author(s): Theodosius Dobzhansky
Source: The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Mar., 1973), pp. 125-129It was written 40 years ago so we shouldn't be too critical of it.
It mis-characterizes YEC's as believing in special creation for each species and fixity of species which does not represent current thinking. This invalidates about 1/2 the paper. His comments about the universal genetic code, cytochrome C, human gill slits, and some bad theology, make it rather out of date.His title "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution" is wrong. A lot in biology makes perfect sense without evolution. E.g. the physical adaptations of the giraffe to cope with its height are functional requirements; while variations in the genetic code don't make sense in the light of evolution.I also note this quote supporting abiogenesis and universal common ancestry.
"They suggest that life arose from inanimate matter only once and that all organisms, no matter
how diverse in other respects, conserve the basic features of the primordial life. (It is also possible
that there were several, or even many, origins of life; if so, the progeny of only one of them has survived
and inherited the earth.)"

Unless of course God actually did it, in which case excluding the possibility before examining the evidence is intellectual laziness and materialistic conceit.

"Dredge confesses that his understanding of the definition of speciation was flawed."Don't worry, Dredge, Even Mayr's Biological Species Concept has its problems as the following Wikipedia article shows. Like Linnaeus, Darwin was using a morphological species concept rather than Mayr's Biological Species Concept. Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species:No one definition has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes the unknown element of a distinct act of creation. Species - WikipediaNot only can hybrids form between recognised species, they can form cross genera, although as far as I know, only genera within the one family. This actually is consistent with the idea that the kinds from the Ark have subdivided into sub-groups that we have later classified as different genera and species.

I've made a summary of all definitions offered so far. For brevity I've edited a few while trying to retain the meaning. If the author thinks I've made a mistake I will revise as necessary. Have I missed any?
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@Percy 2 (and @deerbreh 3)
Darwin's definition:
The change in species over time due to descent with modification and natural selection.
More modern definition:
The change over time of the genetic makeup of species through natural selection operating on accumulated genetic variation and mutations.@arachnophilia 4
the variation in frequency of heritable features in a population between generations.@AK-7 5
Changes in the makeup of a population through hereditary attributes which allow that population to survive in a given environment.@nwr 7
In a biological context - common descent and change over time between generations.@Minnemooseus 8
Changes in the environment, caused by the interactions of the components of the environment.@Cal 9
Change in a population over time as the result of differential competitive success among imperfect replicators.@bkelly 10
When a descendant's inheritable characteristics differ from those of its parent(s). This includes when a trait changes from dominant to recessive or the reverse.@U can call me Cookie 11
It is change in allele frequencies between successive generations, sometimes leading to phenotypic change. Nb. Natural selection is not the only mechanism (eg. sexual selection, genetic drift also apply).@New Cat's Eye 12
Biological evolution is a change in an allele frequency of a population.@Ben! 13
Evolution is change over time due to some interaction.
In biological evolution, the units of analysis is usually a species, with change due to mutation and the interaction of species with environment which must allow them to continue to reproduce (i.e. natural selection)
But not all biological evolution has these units of analysis, and other things that may usefull be called evolution have different units of analysis.@Lammy 18
Evolution is a drastic physical change in many individuals of a population or species within one or two generations resulting in the birth of a new population or species and the extinction of the parent population or species by some unknown or unidentifiable mechanism.@EZscience 24
Evolution is simply a character change in a population over time.
*Biological* evolution requires that this change have an underlying, heritable (genetic) basis.@dwise 58
Basically, biological evolution is the total sum of what happens when populations of living organisms do what living organisms naturally do.
Consume resources to survive long enough to reproduce.
Produce the next generation who are very similar to the previous generation, yet slightly different.
Those who survive long enough to reproduce then generate the next generation who are very similar to them yet slightly different.
Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.@RAZD 67
The Theory of Evolution (ToE), stated in simple terms, is that the mechanism of anagensis, and the mechanism of cladogenesis, are sufficient to explain the diversity of life as we know it, from the fossil record, from the genetic record, from the historic record, and from everyday record of the life we observe in the world all around us.
anagenesis - The process of lineal change within species is sometimes called phyletic speciation
cladogenesis - involves the division of a parent population into two or more reproductively isolated daughter populations@Dr Adequate 80
Heritable changes in a population.@CRR 87
Evolution is the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself arose naturally from an inorganic form.@Davidjay 97
Luck and Chance@Tangle 101
CHANCE and SELECTION.@Dredge 119
the theory that complex life as we know it today evolved from less complex life - a single-cell organism, to be exact@jar 282
Evolution is simply change over time. The Theory of Evolution is the explanation for the reality of change over time seen.@Pressie 377
After all of this, I gathered that the word evolution means change over time.

You're not wrong about that, Dredge. The theory of evolution does include the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) unless the person you're talking to doesn't want that. See Evolution - Wikipedia

Perhaps part of the problem is that there is a difference between the definition word Evolution as used in Biology and the definition of the Theory of Evolution.

And that's why we can have definitions ranging from@Pressie 377
After all of this, I gathered that the word evolution means change over time.to@CRR 87
Evolution is the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself arose naturally from an inorganic form.and they are all correct in some sense and all wrong in some sense. Hence the confusion.I think it suits some people to leave it that way then they can say "Behold the Peppered Moth! That is an example of evolution. Hence we have proved that humans evolved from apes which evolved from LUCA."

So, PaulK, where's your definition?

I agree, Taq, universal common ancestry is inseparable from both Darwin's theory of evolution and the modern synthesis. E.g. Theodosius Dobzhansky concedes that there could have been more than one original form of life but that only one survived as the universal common ancestor. Charles Darwin was building on the tree of life idea that preceded him and published by Erasmus Darwin.Common ancestry is a core of the definitions given by both Kerkut and Coyne that I previously quoted.Dredge is right. There is more than one definition of the theory of evolution. This leads to people claiming evolution has been proved when they are only talking about minor changes in allele frequencies, not even speciation let alone common ancestry.

Dredge, the lack of correlation between phenotype complexity and genome size is known as the C-Value Paradox. This has not been resolved yet but remember we are still learning about the genome. The ENCODE results were published in 2003 and there has been a lot of progress since then but there's still a long way to go. There is still no satisfactory evolutionary explanation for the c-value so we will probably have to wait for more research.Like you I believe that eventually we will find that a human contains more genetic information than an amoeba.[edit] This is probably an issue that is peripheral to the thread topic and should be addressed elsewhere.Edited by CRR, : No reason given.

In a 2007 PNAS paper, Robert Hazen and colleagues, including Szostak, mathematically defined functional information as follows:I(Ex) = -log2[M(Ex)/N] Equation (1)where,N = total number of possible configurations or sequences (both functional and non-functional),M(Ex) = total number of configurations or sequences that satisfy the functional requirements,I(Ex) = functional information (the number of bits necessary and sufficient to specify a given function). Entropy = Information Mistake Kirk Durston gives examples in the linked article.

Kirk Durston gives examples in the linked article.