Dec 10 2008
Slow Learners
One of the articles in the pile on my desk has a title that ends with these words: “About How Evolution Can Affect Whole Group.” The first three words deserve to stand on their own — Darwin Was Right.
Yes, Darwin was right about a lot of things. Most importantly, he was correct in concluding that evolution via natural selection was a powerful and most likely correct explanation of how life developed (and continues to) here on planet Earth of the Milky Way. (I’m not sure what goes on in other galaxies.)
Sadly, today I was steered to an online poll (thanks Pharyngula!) about President Bush and beliefs about evolution. It’s no backwater hack-fest. The poll is on AOL News and has had over 200,000 respondents thus far. Check out this disturbing stat:
Which explanation about the origins of life on Earth do you believe in?
Creationism 47%
Evolution 35%
Intelligent design 12%
None of the above 6%
We’ve got some slow learners out there in our society.
As for evolution affecting whole groups, the new research finding relates,
Evolutionary biologists at McGill University have discovered molecular signals that can maintain social harmony in ants by putting constraints on their fertility. Dr. Ehab Abouheif, of McGill’s Department of Biology, and post-doctoral researcher, Dr. Abderrahman Khila, have discovered how evolution has tinkered with the genes of colonizing insects like ants to keep them from fighting amongst themselves over who gets to reproduce.
While genes may be “selfish,” apparently ants are not. So to speak.
The final two paragraphs are telling. I wish those whose “three Rs” consist of reeding, righting, and religion could study and learn a fraction of what Darwin helped teach us.
The existence of sterile castes of ants tormented Charles Darwin as he was formulating his Theory of Natural Selection, and he described them as the “one special difficulty, which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to my theory.” If adaptive evolution unfolds by differential survival of individuals, how can individuals incapable of passing on their genes possibly evolve and persist?
Darwin proposed that in the case of ant societies natural selection applies not only to the individual, because the individual would never benefit by cutting its own reproduction, but also to the family or group. This study supports Darwin’s prescient ideas, and provides a molecular measure of how an entire colony can be viewed as a single or “superorganism.”
Then again, maybe God done it is a better answer. Not.
[...] fact, as Andrew at The Evolving Mind points out, there’s a whole AOL network full of these folks. Keep trying people, you’ll find the true nature of reality eventually, right? [...]