Proving evolution?

[Jehanne]

Yes, I Googled it (but, I knew exactly what I was after):

Evolution is change in the genetic composition of populations. In nature, individuals reproduce, die, and move among populations, leading to changes in the population frequency of the alleles they carry.

PNAS -- Allele frequency dynamics in a pedigreed natural population

[The Grand Nudger]

That's not even the theory of evolution.  Inheritance with variation is genetics.  Mendel worked that one out.  Still a useful example.  Let's say that inheritance with variation is not the way anything works - we would still be searching for why parents children are similar, but not identical.  That's the observation that a theory or hypothesis attempts to explain.

Yes, that is the theory of evolution.  No, that's not what Mendel worked out.  And now, you've worn out your welcome with bullshit defenses.

........?

Bullshit defenses of what?  That is not the theory of evolution, which is called modern snyth - which does include but is not fully described by genetics, which mendel did work out.  Now, we could possibly bicker over whether it was just or only mendel...just as we could note that there were people other than darwin working on ns - which is also included in evolutionary theory.  However, none of that will change the fact that what you described is not the theory of evolution, nor will it change the fact that a scientific theory is an explanation for a thing, and not the thing itself.  That theories can and have been wrong, but the observations they were meant to explain survive their abandonment.

That theory is supported by a pile of successful multi-disciplinary theories and factual observations - the bit another poster mentioned about a rabbit, for example..coming from geology and physics.  Modern synth is so strong, as a matter of interest, that finding an animal in "the wrong place" would cause us (and has caused us) to reconsider our knowledge of the geology of an area, or the physics of a dating method, before it would cause us to reconsider whether environmental circumstances can exert selective pressures on population genetics.  If the whole bit, from top to bottom, biology to geology to physics were all wrong..we would still be in search of some explanation for the changes we can directly observe in life, and for the evidence of those changes we also find in the fossil record (and, not for nothing..for pretty much every other observed thing as well - hence the theory's moniker as the most well supported of all scientific theories). We might...then... as some creationist nuts do, contend that these changes occur because gods speak them into being, and because gods want them to be that way. That is evolution by magic and artificial selection, as opposed to evolution by genetics and natural selection.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'll just leave this here:

"The term Darwinism was used for the evolutionary ideas of others, including Spencer's "survival of the fittest" as free-market progress, and Ernst Haeckel's polygenistic ideas of human development."

[Belacqua]

That's not even the theory of evolution.  Inheritance with variation is genetics.  Mendel worked that one out.  Still a useful example.  Let's say that inheritance with variation is not the way anything works - we would still be searching for why parents children are similar, but not identical.  That's the observation that a theory or hypothesis attempts to explain.

Yes, that is the theory of evolution.  No, that's not what Mendel worked out.  And now, you've worn out your welcome with bullshit defenses.

I stand corrected.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The moden neo-Darwinian paradigm has made testable predictions over the last century, some of which have been verified; as a scientific model and description of life, it is eminently falsifiable, but, to date, not a single reversal in the fossil record has been found.  To claim that evolution can someday be disproven is to claim that we will all awake someday to discover that Science has, finally, discovered the Earth to be flat.  While theoretically possible, such is vastly, vastly improbable.

Yes, that is the theory of evolution.  No, that's not what Mendel worked out.  And now, you've worn out your welcome with bullshit defenses.

I think when people talk about the "theory of evolution" today, they include natural selection as a key part of this.

Mendel didn't know about this. Darwin figured it out.

Actually, Mendel knew a great deal about Darwin and his theory of natural selection.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-019-0289-9

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Wasn't there a letter from Darwin to Mendel, found in Mendel's desk after he died. Unopen?

[Jehanne]

Wasn't there a letter from Darwin to Mendel, found in Mendel's desk after he died. Unopen?

Other way around, but, Darwin never read Mendel''s letter.

[Mister Agenda]

Any given theory -of- evolution may, at least potentially, end up being proven false..but it would not be possible to prove that evolution were false..because life does, in fact, change.

That sounds like an equivocation.

Any given theory -of- gravity may, at least potentially, end up being proven false..but it would not be possible to prove that gravity were false.

Does this also sound like an equivocation? I think Nudger made a reasonably clear distinction between the theory of evolution and evolution.

[Angrboda]

That sounds like an equivocation.

Any given theory -of- gravity may, at least potentially, end up being proven false..but it would not be possible to prove that gravity were false.

Does this also sound like an equivocation? I think Nudger made a reasonably clear distinction between the theory of evolution and evolution.

The term biological evolution is using 'evolution' in a more limited sense than the sense in which evolution simply means 'change'. They are two distinct meanings/senses, thus using one to comment on the other is an equivocation.

To use your example term, it would be akin to saying, "The theory of gravity is false because gravity means a matter having great weight and the theory of gravity has no defined weight."

[Angrboda]

Any given theory -of- gravity may, at least potentially, end up being proven false..but it would not be possible to prove that gravity were false.

Does this also sound like an equivocation? I think Nudger made a reasonably clear distinction between the theory of evolution and evolution.

The term biological evolution is using 'evolution' in a more limited sense than the sense in which evolution simply means 'change'.  They are two distinct meanings/senses, thus using one to comment on the other is an equivocation.

To use your example term, it would be akin to saying, "The theory of gravity is false because gravity means a matter having great weight and the theory of gravity has no defined weight."

A clearer explanation would be thus: Evolution in the field of biology refers to the change in alleles in populations of biological organisms. Evolution in the sense that Nudger used it the second time simply means change, but not of a specific type. All organisms are undergoing change all the time, but the change which biology terms evolution is not occurring all the time, as changes in alleles in populations only occur at the birth / conception of a new organism. Thus the two meanings of evolution are distinct and Nudger was using two different definitions of change in the same comparison.