The scramble for Darwin’s successor

When the current Darwinians retire, who will replace them?

The various new proposals include punctuated equilibrium, neutral evolution, evolutionary developmental biology, self-organization, epigenetic inheritance, and natural genetic engineering. Big claims are made for each of these variants and other versions of blind evolution. But in the end those claims — while undoubtedly believed sincerely by their proponents — have little more substance than a bluff. Each has serious shortcomings as a substitute for foresight and planning with a purpose…

We must applaud the search for a replacement to neo-Darwinism. Despite all the grand claims, it has failed to explain the origin of new form. But if origins biology’s quest for answers is to be guided by evidence rather than by a dogmatic rule, we would do well to have both material and intelligent causes in our investigative toolkit. Marcos Eberlin, “Game of Thrones: As Darwinism Dissolves, Top Evolutionists Scramble for a Successor” at Evolution News and Science Today:

Many of the new ideas are quite interesting but, to the extent that they are all committed to the view that there is no design in nature, none of them will prove very satisfactory in the long run.

Also, it remains to be seen whether the quest to find the new Darwin will attract the brightest lights in the world today. Honestly… why should it?

Marcos Eberlin is the author of Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose.

See also: Jerry Coyne is already mad at Marcos Eberlin

and

Marcos Eberlin shouldn’t exist You’d never guess from his career that thinking the universe shows evidence of design would ruin science. How did he escape Darwin’s thugs?

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