Re: an educational/legislative concern in WA -Forwarded

Moorad Alexanian (alexanian@UNCWIL.EDU)
Thu, 29 Jan 1998 10:00:35 -0500 (EST)

At 03:08 PM 1/28/98 -0500, Ted Davis wrote:
>To ASA members:
>
>The following message, which reached me from History of Science Society
>channels, will interest many, I suspect.
>
>I mainly agree with the suggestion toward the end, about clearly delineating
>evolution from athestic interpretations of same, but have not yet decided
>whether I will comment on it in HSS circles.

> "A MESSAGE FROM THE WASHINGTON STATE LEGISLATURE
>
> This textbook discusses evolution, a controversial
> theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for
> the origin of living things, such as plants, animals, and
> humans.
> No one was present when life first appeared on earth.
> Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be
> considered as theory, not fact.
> The word "evolution" may refer to many types of change.
> Evolution describes changes that occur within a species.
> (White moths, for example, may "evolve" into gray moths.) This
> process is microevolution, which can be observed and described
> as fact. Evolution may also refer to the change of one living
> thing to another, such as reptiles into birds. This process,
> called macroevolution, has never been observed and should be
> considered a theory. Evolution also refers to the unproven
> belief that random, undirected forces produced a world of
> living things.
> There are many unanswered questions about the origin of
> life which are not mentioned in your textbook, including:
> - Why did the major groups of animals suddenly appear in the
> fossil record (known as the "Cambrian Explosion")?
> - Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in
> the fossil record for a long time?
> - Why do major groups of plants and animals have no
> transitional forms in the fossil record?
> - How did you and all living things come to possess such a
> complete and complex set of "Instructions" for building a
> living body?
> Study hard and keep an open mind. Someday, you may
> contribute to the theories of how living things appeared on
> earth."
>

Dear Friends,

I am a mere physicist, and a theorist at that, but here are my comments:

1) "This process, called macroevolution, has never been observed and should
be considered a theory." Is somewhat ambiguous. Perhaps stating that it has
not been experimentally observed, e.g., the evolution of reptiles into birds
has not been achieved in the lab. Experiments to me always indicates facts
attained in the laboratory. I would not call evolution a theory but a
working assumption since it cannot be experimentally tested nor
experimentally deduced.

2) I would emphasize the deep philosophical/theological issues involved by
indicating what science is and what it is not.

Moorad