Friday 2 January 2009

Evolution is the Key to Understanding the Price of Fish



Scientific American suggests that Darwin has a lot to say about the price of fish.


Joel Kontinen

The Thou Shalt Not Doubt Darwin issue of Scientific American (January 2009) provides intriguing insights into evolution. Its editorial, “A Theory for Everyman” praises the work of Charles Darwin.

The editors lament that Darwin has not reached the superstar status of Albert Einstein, although, as they state, quoting Evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.”

But you can always blame Darwin skeptics for the poor treatment the man has received: “Darwin’s failure to achieve icon status is the legacy of creationists and neocreationists and of the distortion of his ideas by the eugenics movement a century ago.”

Thanks, Scientific American. I appreciate your admission. However, far from being a distortion, the eugenics movement was a natural corollary of Darwinism. Darwin himself believed that some human “races” were less evolved than others. He states this clearly in his book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).

Scientific American also postulates that Darwin’s theory explains the price of fish. They have obviously forgotten that he did not discover natural selection, a concept that might have something to say about scaly creatures. Edward Blyth (1810-1873), a well-known zoologist and chemist, wrote about it decades before Darwin.

But according to the evolutionist view, only Darwin has the perspicacity to predict the price of fish. So if you’re not sure how much a freshly caught cod costs, just take a look into The Origins of Species.


Source

The Editors of Scientific American. 2009. A Theory for Everyman. Scientific American 300:1, 18. (January 2009). (The Internet version is entitled Why Everyone Should Learn the Theory of Evolution. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-everyone-should-learn-evolution&sc=WR_20081216.)