Here is the content of a post I just made at
http://groups.google.com/group/panbiog?hl=enon my experience of DarwinDays in IthacA(SOME good links within):
quote:
I have just come from a presentation by President Emeritus Dr. Frank Rhodes on Charles Darwin”
Just a moment...
and Dr Rhodes referred to this Times article in which the author refers to “killing” Darwin. Despite Croizat’s dislike for Darwin it seems a bit extreme even for a Croizatist to desire Darwin killed so that evolution can live. Rhodes said “his influence is huge”
In fact the celebration of Darwin at Ithaca Darwin Days
Just a moment...
is providing me with a valuable perspective from which to situate my own point of view.
Although Dr. Rhodes could not say that Mayr’s reference to Darwin anticipating the notion of strong group selection in “The Descent of Man” (when I asked him directly) was as Mayr contends in “What makes biology unique?,” he did point out that Darwin came late, after Huxley, to the issues (sex dimorphism?) as contained in “The Descent of Man.”
It is not the “ killing” of Darwin that historical biogeography needs but rather a process of investigating nature that goes into the nonequilibrial state of populations with larger numbers than needed for equilibrium but because of the dominance of the Fisherian (not Darwinian) view in Anglo-biology departments little headway seems possible in these environments.
What Dr. Rhodes DID assert in his talk (I understand all of these presentations will eventually be available on-line
Just a moment...
within the next week)
was that Paley’s “contrivance” BECAME natural selection and variation.
He also indirectly indicated that igneous intrusions FROM BELOW ( not from ABOVE as in a Flood(Neptunist/Catastrophist(Jameson 1774-1854) Scenario) dictated Darwin’s view of topography later modified by his observations around and in South America.
In one of Darwin’s papers on display
Charles Darwin: After the Origin
he speaks of bones given him in South America which were presented as having come from giants. Darwin also in his letters back to Henslow indicated (”as far as my knowledge goes’) was with respect to Saurian forms. Darwin seems to have thought he found an intermediate between Crotalous and Vipera.
Very interestingly in the only page of handwriting on display from the Origin
"Charles Darwin: After the Origin
Is that famous passage
“We have in this chapter discussed some of the difficulties and objections which may be urged against my theory. Many of them are very grave; but I think that in the discussion light has been thrown on several facts, which on the theory of independent acts of creation are utterly obscure . . . We are far too ignorant, in almost every case, to be enabled to assert that any part or organ is so unimportant for the welfare of a species, that modifications in its structure could not have been slowly accumulated by means of natural selection.”
Interestingly the part of the page where independent acts creation is supposed to lie is not there and there is something about organs at the same time and same function, as I start to be able to read Darwin’s handwriting. Look for yourself. Picture attached.
Neither Warren Almon, director of PRI and former student of Gould, nor the head Librarian could find the correct correspondence between the text presented in the exhibit and Darwin’s writing. Perhaps it is simply on a different page.
It would be just too easy if this was not the case because then one could relate Darwin’s notion of special creation to histogeny rather than dispersal. Croizat’s denunciation of Darwin’s biogeography would stand and it may eventually appear that competition with Wallace caused Darwin to go over the line. I will check into this and let you all know (there is a birthday party for Charles at PRI Saturday) because if it really was all this simple the coining of “vicariant” time by me may not really be that absurd after all, as at another talk (“Evolution and the Life Sciences” ) it was pointed out that genetic analysis can discriminate populations of humans on both sides of the Alps but that this has geographical vision provided by genetics has NO biological meaning. That would be where a philosophy of vicariant time might emerge. I don’t know.
I was able to see from Darwin’s text where his notion of “distance” comes from. Specifically in the text it says “we are too ignorant” and Darwin later adds “far”. I guess it all depends on what we know.
Sincerely,
Brad McFall
THE TIMES, article, referred to at the google group and at Darwin Days was
Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live
Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live - The New York Times
Edited by Brad McFall, : extra "not" removed
™ Version 4.2
