Scientific Community Is Virtually Unanimous In Its Acceptance of Evolution
By Bryce Hand
This letter was featured on the Readers' Page of the Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper, March 23, 2005.
To the Editor:
Your front-page feature, "Evolution of creationism: CNY schools tread lightly" (March 15), correctly reports that there is controversy about evolution. What your article failed to make clear is that the controversy is not a scientific one.
Scientists realized long ago that organisms have evolved (and continue to evolve) through time, and that the fundamental mechanisms driving evolution are much as Charles Darwin proposed nearly 150 years ago.
Darwin observed that members of any species differ from one another (otherwise we wouldn't be able to recognize individuals) and he knew that much of that variation is heritable (which is why we have family resemblances).
Furthermore, it was obvious that individuals with characteristics most favoring survival and reproduction (stronger shells, keener eyesight, better camouflage, attractiveness to potential mates) should have the best chance of surviving and reproducing. The inevitable result is that some combinations of characteristics are more likely than others to be passed on to future generations.
This means the population's average qualities must change through time; in other words, the species evolves.
There is nothing mystical in any of this. When breeders choose which studs and dams to mate, the effect is to pass on the heritable characteristics that most please the breeder (leanness, flavor, friendliness, coat color, ear length).
By selecting for qualities we like, we have produced our many breeds of cattle from an extinct bison-like animal (the aurochs) that lived in Europe a few thousand years ago. Similarly, all dogs (from dachshunds to Dobermans) are descended from gray wolves that interacted with our Stone Age ancestors. And similar histories can be traced for other domesticated animals, as well as for crops.
The only difference between artificial breeding and Darwin's natural selection is that in natural selection, it's the environment (the real world, if you like) that does the selecting. Natural selection may be slower and messier than human ("artificial") selection, but there's no denying it occurs, and its long-term effect is the same.
The astonishing changes resulting from human-guided evolution happened within a mere few thousand years. Nature has had far longer: more than 3.5 billion years since the first microbial fossils we know of. (Remember that a billion is a thousand-thousand times a thousand!)
As clear as the fossil record is, however, it's not the only evidence documenting evolution. The scientific community is virtually unanimous in its acceptance of evolution, not because scientists somehow agreed in advance that they wanted to promote it, but because a diverse and truly astounding mountain of evidence supports it.
Yes, there is controversy surrounding evolution, but only among nonscientists. Those who reject evolution present no arguments scientists haven't heard (and adequately countered) again and again, and have no special knowledge that scientists have overlooked.
Bryce M. Hand
Emeritus Professor of Geology,
Syracuse University
Syracuse
