EAST LANSING, Mich. — If Charles Darwin were alive today, he would
be shaking his head and asking, "Why is everybody always picking on
me?"
One Michigan State University professor has heard enough. Danita
Brandt, paleontologist and coordinator of MSU's Darwin Discovery
Days, half jests, "It's time to get off Chuck's back!"
The latest incarnation of how Darwin's work is misconstrued came
when a political candidate questioned why we don't see apes evolving
today. The counter argument was that evolution takes a long time.
Stating that evolution is a myth is off the mark. And the rebuttal
is off-base, too, because time isn't the issue, said Brandt, a
professor of geological sciences.
"Darwin did not say that humans evolved from apes," she said. "His
theory of descent explains that humans and other primates share a
common ancestor and are therefore more closely related to each other
than they are to groups like reptiles or fish."
Brandt acknowledges that the last common ancestor of humans and apes
must have been ape-like. (She's quick to point out, though, that it
must have been human-like, too.) The evolutionary lineage that
produced that common ancestor split with one branch leading to the
genus "Homo," and the other leading elsewhere.
"Humans are humans and apes are apes; there's no transmogrifying one
into another," Brandt said with a smile. "That train left the
station 7 million years ago when the last ancestor common to humans
and chimps climbed down from the trees and took up knitting."
And while we're at it, let's clear up some other misconceptions:
• Darwin did not invent the idea of evolution. Naturalists hundreds
of years before Chuck considered the possibility that species change
over time.
• Chuck did not coin the phrase, "Survival of the fittest." That
honor goes to economist Herbert Spencer. Darwin did, however, use
Spencer's popular phrase in later editions of "The Origin of Species
by Means of Natural Selection."
• Darwin was a spiritual person. In fact he once studied to be a
minister. He did have his doubts, though, that humans could ever
know whether God exists. Darwin wrote in a letter, "I have never
been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God. I
think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not
always, that an agnostic would be more correct description of my
state of mind."
It is interesting that when the topic is debated, cynics attack the
man rather than the concept, Brandt noted. If Darwin had not
published his observations of evolution, someone else certainly
would have. (In fact, Alfred Russell Wallace's paper on natural
selection was read at the same scientific meeting where Darwin's
iconic work was presented.)
"Darwin is to evolution as Newton is to gravity," she said. "But
attacking Newton's writings does not affect the reality of gravity,
and disparaging Chuck's work does not negate the fact of evolution." |