>AC>Note also the following fallacy of equivocation in Miller s definition of
>>Evolution: evolution: process by which modern organisms have
>>descended from ancient organisms; any change in the relative
>>frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population. [page 29]
KO>I fail to see how this is a "fallacy of equivocation". Miller is not using
>two different definitions simultaneously, but has split a longer, more
>detailed definition into two separate parts. Miller's definition of
>evolution would thus be a process by which modern organisms have descended
>from ancient organisms through changes in the relative frequencies of alleles
>in the gene pool of a population. The first part of the definition describes
>the result of evolution, while the second part describes the fundamental
>mechanism. There is no equivocation here.
[...]
To see the "equivocation", substitute the definition in some well-known
claims of evolutionists.
For example:
"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution"
(Dobzhansky T., American Biology Teacher, Vol. 35, March 1973),
becomes:
"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of...change in the
relative frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population"
Or:
"Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines
of thought must follow...' (de Chardin T., "The Phenomenon of Man",
Collins/Fontana: London, 1959, p241)
becomes:
"change in the relative frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a
population... is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines
of thought must follow...."
And perhaps the best, from Julian Huxley's speech at the 1959 Darwin
Centennial in Chicago:
"This centennial celebration is one of the first occasions on which it has
been frankly faced that...all reality is a single process of evolution. "(Huxley
J., "The Humanist Frame", in "Essays of a Humanist", [1964], Penguin
Books: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1969, reprint, p78)
becomes:
"This centennial celebration is one of the first occasions on which it has
been frankly faced that...all reality is a single process of...change in the
relative frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population."!
Steve
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"...we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual
adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more
entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that
the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing
that it does not." (Eldredge N., "Time Frames: The Rethinking of
Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria", Simon &
Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p144).
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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