Re: Wave bu-bye to evolution ! bu-bye! bu-bye!.....

"Walter Bushell" <proto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:proto-991D1E.23194510032009@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <W9KdnX0kEYGidSvUnZ2dnUVZ8hKWnZ2d@xxxxxx>,
"Mike Dworetsky" <platinum198@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The last time a physicist gave an evolution advocate a bad moment of
doubt
was when Lord Kelvin used physics to show that Darwin must have been
wrong
about the great antiquity of the Earth. Unfortunately for Kelvin (whose
mathematical treatment was otherwise spot on) he had omitted the
existence
of radioactivity, nuclear fusion, etc from his calculations.

A natural mistake on his part, of course--these phenomena had not been
discovered when he did that work. Once these discoveries were made and
their implications digested and incorporated in physics and geophysics,
the
physicists joined the "old Earth" consensus.

And he had the geologist also disagreeing. One of the few fights won by
the softer sciences.


Indeed. Darwin was very well informed of current (19th C.) geological data
and reasoning about age, etc. He knew that evolution as observed needed at
least several hundred million years, and that was what geology provided.

As I recall, the books he had on the Beagle included Lyell's _Principles of
Geology_.

--
Mike Dworetsky

(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)

.

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