File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_1998/nietzsche.9804, message 119


Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 09:57:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: callihan-AT-callihan.seanet.com (Steven E. Callihan)
Subject: Re: Reluctant remarks on evolution


Kelly Timothy Lynch wrote:

[...]
>At times people seem to speak of the fossil record
>almost as if it were a well organized, complete record
>put together by some great archivist for our convenience.
>This is very misleading, to say the least.  When, for
>example, Darwin admitted he saw little or no evidence
>of transitional types in the fossil record (to back up
>his hypothesis of gradual evolution), as John so kindly
>and triumphantly informed us, this proves next to
>nothing. Actually, the "fossil record" available in his
>time was so very incomplete, full of gaps, just a few
>random finds, it would have been truly amazing to have
>found much evidence.  In fact, today we do have a
>number of examples of "transitional types" in the
>development of some forms of life in the fossil record,
>which is not to say that we have nice, neat, complete
>records, say every 10,000 or perhaps 100,000 years of
>the development of some species.  We do the best
>we can in trying to reconstruct the past with the poor
>record available, and we always hope for new finds
>that may help us fill in gaps, perhaps even change
>our view..........
[...]

Just a quick, hopefully relevant, aside:

"Darwin stressed the almost total ignorance in his time of the nature of
hereditary transmission and mutation, and he himself pointed to the
sparseness of the geological record as a problem for the theory (although he
also said he would produce the transitional fossils when his opponents
showed him all the intermediate forms between wild dogs and greyhounds, say,
or bulldogs)." (Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, _Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors_,
p. 59.)

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=A6 Steven E. Callihan            =A6 "It is the stillest words that bring  =A6
=A6                               =A6 on the storm. Thoughts that come on   =A6
=A6                               =A6 doves' feet guide the world."         =A6
=A6 URL: http://www.callihan.com/ =A6 -F. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra,=A6
=A6 E-Mail: callihan-AT-callihan.com =A6 II, "The Stillest Hour"               =A6
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