Re: [asa] Darwin only biological evolution?

On Mon, 12 Jan 2009, Gregory Arago wrote:

> Does Gordon have any evidence to back up the following statement?:
> "each of these has a theory that was developed mostly independently of the others, and it is difficult to find major features that all of them have in common beyond that they involve evolution."
>  
> For example, was Herbert Spencer's evolutionary theory 'developed mostly independently' of Darwin's or do they somehow overlap and borrow from each other? Or how about Karl Marx's?
>  
> I would contend that 'change-over-time' is a major feature common to them all; that to take away 'change' is to be left with no evolution. Would anyone on the ASA list disagree with this?

I was thinking more of topics related to natural sciences rather than the
social sciences. Obviously what I said doesn't apply to Herbert Spencer. I
did deliberately include the word "mostly", which was meant to apply to
individual evolutionary theories in the natural sciences. I also said
that, of course, they all had evolution in common, which is supposedly
synonymous with change-over-time.

Gregory, can you tell me how astronomers depend on Darwin in deducing the
history of the universe?

Gordon Brown (ASA member)

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Received on Mon Jan 12 11:14:10 2009