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From: gjphw@iham1.UUCP (wyant)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: The Rock of Ages and the Ages of Rocks (Darwin)
Message-ID: <467@iham1.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Oct-85 17:44:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: iham1.467
Posted: Wed Oct 16 17:44:13 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Oct-85 00:22:18 EDT
References: <430@imsvax.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 31


   A brief comment concerning T. Holden's treatment of Darwinism:

>                ....Darwin based his  theory of  evolution on  this concept,
>           because the notion of CATASTROPHIC evolution, or macro-evolution,
>           had not occured to him.  He  believed that  huge time  spans were
>           needed  for  any  reasonable  theory  of  evolution, and that the
>           standard creationist theories of HIS  time  didn't  give  him any
>           more  than  the  6000  or  7000 years which Bishop Usher and like
>           minded folk believed in.

    According to S. Gould (of Punctuated Equilibria fame), Darwin was advised
 by T.H. Huxley not to make any mention about the time scales required to
 realize evolution.  Both a gradual or uniformitarian course and a catastrophic
 or sudden moments of evolution were considered.  Huxley felt that there wasn't
 sufficient evidence to decide which way evolution proceeded, and Darwin would
 be putting forth an unsupportable hypothesis by suggesting a time scale along
 with the driving mechanisms for evolution (natural selection, competition for
 food and reproduction).

    Darwin decided to publish by attaching gradualism and uniformity to
 evolution in part because such concepts (gradualism and uniformity) were
 firmly rooted in the culture and religion of the times.  The theory of
 evolution using punctuated equilibria would seem to be an updated and modified
 rendition of one possible evolutionary course that Darwin considered but then
 rejected.


                             Patrick Wyant
                             AT&T Bell Laboratories (Naperville, IL)
                             *!ihwld!gjphw