[fuesquemill]

Didn't Huxley actually push Darwin to publish before another scientist (Wallace?) published the same ideas first?

[iceleliewBync]

Originally posted by Darius871
Looking at my bus stop every morning I have to think Darwin was way off base. Actually, you're seeing what H.G. Wells predicted in The Time Machine. Humans are evolving into two distrinct species. We ugly Morlocks, who do all the work. And beautiful, useless Eloi, like Paris Hilton and Birttany Spears.

[xqdrocherz]

Most theories other than General Relativity were discovered by multiple people close together in time.

JM

[thomaskkk]

Originally posted by VetLegion
I've been thinking about evolution a lot lately and I can't decide about one thing: how "difficult" was Darwin's discovery? If he had not made it, would someone else have made it 20, 30, 50 years later? The idea of evolution goes back as far as Empedocles. The idea that there were strctured family trees of living things goes back as far as Aristotle. The idea that there had to be some commonality among different living things comes from that. Evolution is simply one explanation of this division of life into kinds. Aristotle had no evidence for evolution, so he believed in a static structure theory.

Darwin simply did all the hard work necessary to justify believing in evolution. As mentioned, that Wallace guy was doing it at the same time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russell_Wallace

Evolution was inevitable, since it is obviously the best explanation.

[Jambjanatan]

But fish having sex with retarded monkeys?

[TXmjLW9b]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
...We ugly Morlocks, who do all the work... Who are you calling a Morlock

[Tyncneiff]

I would make a distinction between Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism here, the latter coming after the discovery of DNA by Francis & Crick. This describes the actual mechanism that relates a gene to a phenotype... it was kind of like sending men into space to finally prove, once and for all, that the Earth is round.

As for how obvious the theory is, well as Agathon said the "ingredients" of the idea were not new. I suspect the ancients needed to get away from an essentialist world view in order to think in terms of evolution. Of course, the obvious thing when you look at a complex natural system is to infer a designer, using the same logic as "my flint axe had a designer, so must the universe". This is partly why I compare evolution to heliocentrism so much; to believe that the world was designed requires an abstract form of geocentrism - my self/family/society/country/species/planet is at the centre of the universe.

[mtvlover571]

[seawolferr]

I'm not saying understanding the biochemistry of genetics doesn't help our understanding of evolution; it most certainly does. It's just that evolutionary theory in the form we understand it today (modern synthesis) and with a very high degree of proof existed prior to the understanding of genetic biochemistry.

[eskimosik]

The real question is - did the theory evolve spontaneously, or was it created by God and put into the heads of men?

[Bondjrno]

Originally posted by Docfeelgood
But fish having sex with retarded monkeys? That would explain the taste.

[Kitdowstyhodo]

Originally posted by Theben
Brittany is a couple of $$ away redneck trailerdom. Yes, but she's useless. She may have been born of Morlock parents, but she's a mutant Eloi.

[vaalmerruutel]

meermonkey