DARWIN WAS WRONG

… on some things

Imagine that you are a biology student, you arrive at your office and the evolution professor lets loose that, yes, Darwin was not right.

Without a justification as to why he was wrong, that phrase from a university professor of evolution could be enough to launch anti-Darwinist or creationist speeches anywhere in the world.

Darwin, and his theory of the evolution of species, would perfect the logo of the struggle of science against retrograde creationist thinking and anti-science, for us students of the third year of biology, even if we knew that, if Darwin had had access to genetic studies, his works were made much richer and more in-depth with regard to evolution and phylogenetics, not that their studies in themselves were no longer deep enough. But this is where the first problem is found.

The Origin of Species was published 10 years before the discovery of DNA, before the publication of Gregor Mendel’s studies in his trials with his peas.

Darwin was right in saying that natural selection led to evolution, however that is not the only way that evolution works. Mutations, Migration, Natural Selection and Genetic Drift form what is known to us as Evolutionary Forces ~ or four horsemen of the apocalypse ~ that can act on a population.

Today it’s known that the Natural Selection proposed by Darwin does not act on small populations, so how can we explain the evolution over time in these populations?

These Four Horsemen of the Evolutionary Apocalypse act in different ways under populations, either by alterations in the DNA strands or chromosomes (Mutation) that make me, you and Elon Musk so different (except for money); for the fragmentation of a population of, for example, monkeys that began to be reproductively isolated from another population of the same species after a city was built on top of a forest, dividing it into two forest islands with extremely different environments between them (Deriva Genética ); the migration of populations to territories where they end up meeting individuals of the same species that were previously reproductively isolated because they are in different parts of the planet Earth; and Darwin’s selection, in which in a population, those who end up being more adapted to the environment and its physical and geographical changes, survive and pass on their genes.

Darwin was unaware of the evolution of the way we know it today, an interdisciplinary subject that involves not only natural history but paleontology, but studies of embryology, ecology, physiology and genetics.

Without knowing these details, when saying “hey, Darwin was wrong!”, The ignorance of anti-science may even try to take for himself the speech of a university professor who wanted to draw the attention of his students, and say that, in more than 150 of “The Origin of Species”, many things have been reconsidered and updated, however, Darwin remains a logo on the front against anti-science and creationism, which shows us, on the other hand, that evolution is much more than Darwinism itself , pointed out by creationists out of date in 150 years (actually much more), as the main weapon of science against the Divine Creation.

However, it’s also worth remembering that in more than 150 of the publication of the Origin of species, works have increasingly reinforced the theory of evolution, adding or reviewing the concepts proposed by Darwin. Darwinism is somewhat outdated, not that it’s in complete disuse, and that’s why that professor shouted that he was wrong, because his work doesn’t explain evolution, even by far, as a whole.