How Obvious is Darwin's Theory?

[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?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

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

[Darius871]

Looking at my bus stop every morning I have to think Darwin was way off base.

[Zkribbler]

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.

[Nostromo]

Re: How Obvious is Darwin's Theory?

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?

Like Rufus pointed out, Alfred Russell Wallace discovered the theory of evolution at about the same time as Darwin. IIRC, Wallace sent his paper to Darwin and this pushed him to finally have The Origin of Species published. Cases of simultaneous discoveries are fairly common in the history of science: calculus (Newton and Leibniz), relativity (Einstein, Poincaré), the discovery of Neptune (Le Verrier and Adams)

The basic ideas underlying Darwin's theory are simple enough. You could say that any naturalist who had read Malthus could have discovered it. But I'm not so sure. I don't think it was obvious at the time.

[Jon Miller]

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

JM

[SlowwHand]

[Agathon]

Re: How Obvious is Darwin's Theory?

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.

[Nostromo]

Yep, Darwin didn't discover evolution, he uncovered one of the mechanisms that explains it: natural selection.

[Docfeelgood]

But fish having sex with retarded monkeys?

[germanos]

Re: How Obvious is Darwin's Theory?

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?

Originally posted by Arthur Schopenhauer
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

[Verto]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
...We ugly Morlocks, who do all the work...

Who are you calling a Morlock

[Dry]

Re: How Obvious is Darwin's Theory?

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?

As said before, Darwin is not the father of evolution idea, he is the father of the first accepted, scientific evolution theory.
Don't forget that before Darwin, came Lamarck who put forward this idea of evolution, according to 'natural laws'. Lamarck however did not identified clearly/correctly those laws (the idea that giraffes have a long necks is because they stretch it all day is Lamarckism, not darwinism).

[Whaleboy]

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.

[Perfection]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
I would make a distinction between Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism here, the latter coming after the discovery of DNA by Francis & Crick.

Neo-Darwinism (by both the proper and common usages) came about before the discovery of DNA and was brought about because of mendelism

Originally posted by Whaleboy
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.

That's stupid, before Gagarin everyone knew the world was around, and before Mendel the acceptance of evolution among the biological community was extremely high.