John M. Lynch
Barrett, the Honors College,
and
School of Life Sciences

A “total suspension of
judgement is here our
only reasonable
resource.”
Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion (1779)

1858 was not “marked by
any of those striking
discoveries which at once
revolutionize, so to
speak, the department of
science on which they
bear.”
Presidential Address,
Linnaean Society

\"When the ideas advanced
by me in this volume, or
when analogous views on
the origin of species are
generally admitted, we can
dimly foresee that there
will be a considerable
revolution in natural
history\"

“You are the greatest
Revolutionist in natural
history this century, if
not of all centuries.”
Letter to CD, 21st Nov „59

The detection of intelligent
design “is so unambiguous
and so significant that it must
be ranked as one of the
greatest achievements in the
history of science. The
discovery rivals those of
Newton & Einstein, Lavoisier &
Schrödinger, Pasteur &
Darwin.”
Darwin‟s Black Box, 1996, p. 233.

What was before?

What happened?

What was after?

How quickly did the

change happen?
Where was there a

revolution?

Mechanism
Pathway
Fact

“[C]hange in the properties of populations of organisms or
groups of such populations, over the course of generations …
Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces
everything from slight changes in the proportions of different
forms of a gene within a population, such as the alleles that
determine the different human blood types, to the alterations
that led from the earliest organisms to dinosaurs, bees,
snapdragons, and humans.”
Douglas J. Futuyma (1998) Evolutionary Biology 3rd ed., p.4

ORGANIC LIFE beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing

Limited
Variation
Speciation
due to
Environment

If there are variations, and

If these are inherited, and

If one variant is more suited to

some task that the others, and
If that task directly affects

survival and therefore
reproduction,
Then selection will result in

evolutionary change over time
If the selective pressure is

applied over time.

Two essays: On Upon Single Vision with Two

Eyes; The Other on Dew…and An Account of a
Female of the White Race…Part of Whose Skin
Resembles That of a Negro…By the Late W.C.
Wells…with a Memoir of His Life, Written by
Himself.
Darwin wrote “In this paper he [Wells] distinctly

recognizes the principle of natural selection, and
this is the first recognition which has been
indicated…” (4th edition, 1866)

Appendix to Naval

Timber and
Arboriculture
Claims priority in

1860 letter to
Gardeners Chronicle
Darwin

acknowledges this.

“An Attempt to Classify the

„Varieties‟ of Animals, with
Observations on the Marked
Seasonal and Other Changes
Which Naturally Take Place in
Various British Species, and
Which Do Not Constitute
Varieties“ Magazine of
Natural History
Natural selection working to

preserve type and essence,
i.e. selection as a negative
force.

Not in originating

natural selection
But in seeing what

natural selection was
potentially capable of
doing

Instinct
Classification Fossil Record
Natural
Selection
Embryology Morphology
Geographic
Distribution

1837 Notebooks on Transmutation
1842 Pencil Sketch
Private
1844 Essay
Natural Selection
1856
1858 Linnean Society paper
Public
Origin of Species
1859

Origin of Species
1859
1870‟s Rise of Neo-Lamarckianism
1899 Bumpus‟ evidence for nat. seln.
1900 Re-discovery of Mendel
1930‟s “The Modern Synthesis”
Crick & Watson‟s Nature paper
1953
The “Genetic Revolution”

“Descent with
modification through
natural selection”
 Transmutation of Species
 „Struggle‟ with biosphere
& other organisms
 A theory of heredity
 Natural Selection
 Sexual Selection

We have a professional
discipline and an
entirely convincing,
naturalistic explanation
of the design-like
appearance of the
natural world.

Natural
Selection
Economy of
Tree Thinking
Nature
Gradual Genealogical
Change Classification
Darwin
Biogeographic
Coevolution
Distribution
Sexual Selective
Selection Extinction
Deep Time

Tree Thinking

7mya 6mya 5mya 4mya 3mya 2mya 1mya Now
Kenyanthropus
Homo erectus
platyops
Homo ergaster
“Archaic”
A. garhi Homo
Homo
rudolfensis
sapiens
Ardipithecus
Ardipithecus Australopithecus
ramidus
kadabba afarensis
Sahelanthropus
tchadensis Homo
habilis
Modern
Humans
Australopithecus
anamensis
Australopithecus
Orrorin africanus
tugenesis
Paranthropus
robustus
Neandertals
Paranthropus
aethiopicus
Paranthropus
boisei

“Darwin had the luck to
please everybody with
an axe to grind.”
Back to Methuselah 1921

“The growth of a large
business is merely the
survival of the fittest …
This is not an evil
tendency in business. It
is merely the working
out of a law of nature
and a law of God.”
John D. Rockefeller, jr.

2008 - 2009

“[H]elp students understand, analyze,
critique, and review in an objective manner
the scientific strengths and scientific
weaknesses of existing scientific theories”
http://www.oklascience.org/

“Evolution had become respectable.
No revolution took place, no
pyrotechnics, just a quiet change at
the top – a palace coup. Society
would never be the same.”
James Moore

“All changed,
changed
utterly:
A terrible
beauty is born.”