What better occasion than Darwin Day, which is celebrated every February 12 (Darwin was born on February 12, 1809), a tradition that began in England and in the United States since Charles’s death and then became international, to deny commonplaces on evolutionism. Darwin himself provided that there would be a couple of generation so that the theory of evolution was understood (not by the scientific community, but at a popular level), and this point I would say that it was too optimistic. Since it is always mentioned disproportionate.
1) First of all the term “evolution”, regularly misrepresented. In “The origin of the species”, the book that exposed the theory that changed the history of humanity forever, “transformation” is used. But above all “evolved” does not mean what we mean in common language. Same thing in the misunderstanding of social Darwinism and the dominance of the strongest, the result of the ramshackle philosophical adaptation of Herbert Spencer (the one that read Hitler, so to speak). To survive is in fact “the most suitable”, which has nothing to do with the force. The dinosaurs were strong, but not suitable for surviving on a land made uninhabitable by the asteroid that hit it 68 million years ago. The toporagni, from which the first primates from which we descend, descend more suitable, among others. If there was a nuclear apocalypse to survive, the Tardigradi would undoubtedly be, but also the cockroaches. So each organism has evolved to the same degree if it has come so far.
2) “Eh, but it’s a theory” you can still say today. Think that at the time of Darwin the fossils were missing, genetics was missing (an error of Darwin: not to read Mendel), there was no precise dating of the earth, and during the life of Darwin there were great discussions on his theory he put All under discussion. He was oscillating, in the conception of time, for a few million years (already a lot, before it was believed that the land was six thousand years old) to less than a hundred, and the time was still too little because the natural selection process took place from an ancestor In common unicellular. Darwin has not lived enough to see all the tests that have come, from the dating of the earth (four and a half billion years) to that of the various Fossils of Hominids to the dinosaurs up to the first cyanobacteria. No tile out of place in the puzzle. Until the DNA and its sequencing has cut the bull’s head, or rather the hard head of its opponents. All modern biology is based on Darwinian evolution today.
3) How many times do you hear “We descend from the monkeys”. Darwin never said it, he never wrote it, and would not be compatible with evolution, and today’s biologist would laugh about feeling that we descend from the monkeys. Each animal has a common ancestor with any other. The common ancestor between a man and a chimpanzee, for example our closest cousin with whom we share 99% of the DNA, lived five million years ago. After that the species divided, and not only in two branches (I go back to point 4). Not on the other, the great anthropomorphic monkeys currently living are five: Orango, Gorilla, Chimpanzé, Bonobo and Man. We do not descend from the monkeys, we are monkeys. Which in turn descend from other bodies (see mental experiment of point 5).
4) Still in school books there is a design that you will have good in mind: a chimpanzee that follows a swallowing hairy man who follows a man a little less hairy with the club that follows us, erected and without hair and with a leopard skin to cover us, to represent the line of evolution of the hominids. Well, it’s very wrong. The chimpanzee lives with us, it was not he who became Homo sapiens. From the intended in common with the chimpanzee, in those five million years, many species of hominids branched off, with several of which we have even lived up. If you graphically represent the passage of these five million years it would be a very intrica bush, not that linear drawing. Telmo Pievani, among our most important philosophers of science, has only repeated it for decades in every conference. Eliminate that drawing from school books. To give you an example: do you know the Neandertal man? It is not our ancestor. He lived in the middle Paleolithic, like us, between two hundred thousand and thirty thousand years ago. Among other things, with the Neandertal we also mate, given that each of us has about 3% of Neandertilian DNA. There is also a test to find out how much Neandertal is in you if you care.
5) Richard Dawkins In his book “Reality is magical” (published by Mondadori) A mental experiment is invented that I propose to you. Take your photo, then overlap your father, then that of your grandfather, then that of your great -grandfather, and imagine going on like this (as Dawkins says “you can continue even before the photograph was invented: after all it is an ideal experiment ») Up to build a pile of 185 million photos. Well, who would you expect to see in the 185milionesima photo? Your 185milionesima ancestor, certainly, but with which appearance? A hominide? No, your 185milionesima ancestor (yours and many other species) was a fish. Ditto your 185 millionth ancestor (otherwise they could not mate).
6) the missing ring, another refrain. Precisely for the above mental experiment, there is no missing ring for the simple fact that all the fossils of hominids found or are the same or are different, because they have separated by hundreds of thousands of years. But no ring of the chain contradicts the previous one.
7) The book that changed human history and biology“The origin of the species”, came out in its first edition on November 24, 1859. But much earlier Darwin, still young, had an enlightenment, and on board on the Beagle, in 1836, on his Block Notes, wrote “I Think “And under he made a sketch, a sort of stylized tree, which started from a common ancestor and branched off like a spider web with broken branches (all extinct species) and branches that were still divided.
It is the most important sketch in the history of science. Literary curiosity: one of the greatest Italian writers made it tattooed on the forearm. But I don’t tell you the tattoo artist who did it to me, it would be free advertising, and I paid the tattoo and also dear.