Albatrossity2
Posts: 2780
Joined: Mar. 2007
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| Quote (Ftk @ July 09 2008,22:17) | | Dave, all drastic theories such as Darwin's go through a time of upheaval, but naturalists went nuts for this particular scenario because it excluded the designing aspect of life. Huxley, et. al. went ape shit over the theory. From what I understand, there were as many scientists supporting the theory as there were against it....even from the start. |
Per usual, what you understand (based on what, exactly?) is at odds with what really happened. Read some history. Darwin had many powerful foes in the sciences, including Richard Owen, Louis Agassiz, Wilhelm His, Rudolf Virchow etc. These men are famous now, and more famous then. These foes had lots of followers. They had powerful scientific arguments, unlike the IDCist of today. Without a genetic mechanism, Darwin's theory had a lot of holes. The "eclipse period" lasted until the end of the 19th century, or about 40 years after the publication of the Origin. Here are a couple of lines from a review of that linked book | Quote | | We tend to think of the monolithic triumph of Darwinism in the wake of the publication of _Origin_, but as Bowler shows the theory of Darwin was under assault by the end of the nineteenth century, before the rise of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. |
If you want to peruse the book, here is a link to a preview on google books.
| Quote (Ftk @ July 09 2008,22:17) | | When the hunt for transitionals went into high speed, there was no turning back. Hierarchy charts were based on "common descent" rather than merely charting "simliarities and differences". |
Again, a statement with no basis in fact. Paleontology was a side issue in terms of support or non-support for Darwin's theory. Transitional human fossils were not found until the end of the 19th century (Java Man in 1891 was the first). Throughout the late 19th century, competing claims between ontogenetic and phylogenetic perspectives were debated in lots of scientific fields. But, as mentioned before, science based on the flawed common design notion (e.g. His' theory of development) were found to be scientific dead ends. Phylogenetic approaches were productive. Eventually most scientists, even students of His, figured this out.
So your opinions, based as they usually are in nothing at all, suffer from comparison with the facts, both scientific and historic. Someone with a shred of intellectual curiosity would check those links; someone who really was seeking the truth would do the same. Those facts would change the opinion of any objective reader; but I suspect that you will carry your ignorant opinions to the grave.
Here's the bottom line, since I doubt you will read the links provided. Common descent and common design both provided frameworks for science in the late 19th century. Common design proved to be a scientific dead end, even before the rediscovery of genetics. Common descent proved to be a productive approach then, and continues to be productive today. So your assertion that "science would not have been hindered if the simliarities we observe in nature today had been considered part of the design paradigm rather than due to common descent" is wrong on the basis of both science and history.
If you have evidence to the contrary, let's hear it. If you only have your opinion, please keep it to yourself. We've heard it already, and you should be embarrassed by stating it again in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
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Flesh of the sky, child of the sky, the mind
Has been obligated from the beginning
To create an ordered universe
As the only possible proof of its own inheritance.
- Pattiann Rogers
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