Although the theory of evolution is widely accepted in science,
whether it comes to biology, medicine or psychology, public opinion
still holds some prejudices and imprecisions related to this
process. These are mainly caused by philosophical and religious
views of the world, but sometimes it amounts to an inaccurate
teaching of the theory of evolution or reflecting it in the media.
On the one hand, the cause may be the ignorance, but on the other
hand, there are certain misunderstandings. Some of it will be
discussed next.
The importance of eliminating these incorrect concepts is
particularly relevant in the context of the relationship of
evolution with religion, whether Christianity, Islam or other
faiths. Often, the dialogue between those approaches - the
Darwinian scientific and faith - is hindered by the way people
understand certain mechanisms and implications of the evolutionary
theory.
I think a better understanding of the theory of evolution will
result in a more open dialogue and create a climate leading to
further discussion.
Given this context and especially due to the celebration of
Darwin bicentenary last year and the 150th anniversary of the
publication of "On the Origin of Species", British Council and
other partners, including "Science Newspaper" are organizing a
public debate on the relationship of the theory of evolution and
religion.
The debate is made known through a website - www.darwindebate.ro - where
you can learn further details about the event and the theory of
evolution.
One of the most subtle misunderstandings about evolution relates
to how individuals see the world in general and biological
individuals in particular.
Starting with Plato and Pythagoras, people considered that things
can be grouped into classes or types. So there is the class of
clouds, the class of trees, the class of chairs etc. Each such
group is defined by a number of features. Those features constitute
basically the essence of that class, and the essence of each class
is constant.
Christianity is influenced by essentialist conceptions: God
created classes of things, including the species which remained
unchanged until today. Differences between members of a class were
considered irrelevant. A cat is always a cat: whether large or
small, white or stained, dead or alive, it is part of the "idea" or
class cats. The essence is ideal.
In 1859 Darwin proposed a new kind of thinking about living
beings. The living world does not contain essences, types, he said,
but contains populations of individuals who differ among
themselves. There are no ideal bacteria or cuttlefish. There are
individuals with common characteristics, yet clear distinctions.
When we read in a textbook about a particular animal or plant, we
are usually reading about the common features. We are therefore
tempted to think of it in an essentialist fashion. In fact, such
descriptions are quite didactic and simplistic and could not
capture the whole variety of individuals in natural biological
populations. It is therefore relatively easy to consider the usual
or the average, as ideal for that category of living things.
Findings in genetics confirmed populationist thinking and explained
the variability in the populations of living world.
150 years following Darwin's publication, the populationist
approach was not yet fully accepted by certain scientists or the
public opinion, but it is precisely that approach that led to great
progress in understanding the living world and the mechanisms
governing the changes in the living world.
Understanding the evolution theory is made easier by using a
populationist approach. As populations are made of variable
individuals, we can easily imagine that, for example, some
individuals in a population of wolves sheltered near people camps,
and that their descendants became gradually the dogs of nowadays.
An essentialist thinking implies that the wolf and dog have totally
different essences and can not convert from one to other. Or, an
essentialist would state that a wolf female would give birth to a
dog, which is, of course, false.
So, next time someone asks questions such as "What was at the
beginning, the egg or the chicken?", one can present a dish of
populationist thinking by saying that it does not make sense since
it simply implies the existence of classes or essences: chickens
and eggs. Biological beings do not relate to this thinking. There
is no key difference between an embryo and an adult; one is slowly
turning into the other. It is merely a change over time!