Perspectives on Evolution

[Astonished]

Evolution is one of the areas in science that bother me.  It's not that I don't believe in it-- in fact, I think evolution is a fundamental property of any system with complexity, bonded interactions, and time.

My problem is that when we talk about the evolution of a species, we are talking about a species as though it's a thing.  This strikes me as somewhat mythological: humans cannot evolve (except in a different sense intellectually perhaps), but what it means to be human is slowly shifting-- there's a kind of Archetypal Man who is changing over time, both genetically and memetically (if I can coin that term).


So what, exactly, is changing over time?  Nothing, in fact, is changing, at all, ever, in evolution, any more than colors change from red to blue in a rainbow.  Nothing is developed, and yet it obviously IS developed.

You probably need to do a bit more reading on the subject. You are aware there are six-fingered persons, yes? So if some kind of viral plague came along and wiped out most everyone but for the few that have six fingers, eventually after generations of breeding, the dominant trait will be six fingers. A singular mutation can thrive and make humans noticeably different from the current majority, and humans are always mutating. There are some crazy number of mutations within the genetic code for each human born compared to the parents that spawned them, even if those genes don't express themselves (I think they call it junk DNA or something...just one of the things that makes nonsense of intelligent design). There's nothing saying that those genes can't someday express themselves with the right combination of mutations and there's no way of knowing just what form that expression will take.

So we're seeing evolution in humans all the time. There's a family that has nigh-unbreakable bones, a child born with some kind of extreme muscularity, and a few others. Just because it's not more widespread doesn't mean it's any different than the stuff happening throughout evolutionary history, we just haven't had enough time to see full-blown species change to where they're not just unable to breed together when separated (like the fruit fly experiments) but becoming entirely different, unrecognizable species. No one's going to see anything that extreme in our short lifetimes but there's more than enough evidence even without fossils, and even if we didn't understand genetics, we'd still have heredity to go on. Also consider the lifespans of other creatures; they'd probably breed a lot more, have more offspring per birth cycle, live shorter so they'd make more room for the new generations, and have more pressure to get to breeding what with the pre-civilized world. We live a long time, breed more infrequently (at least nothing compared to back before vaccines) and don't abandon the deformed ones to die like I think I heard some wolves or something do with their ugly offspring.

Also, is this really a topic for the philosophy section? Maybe life sciences would be a better place for it.