Talk:Misunderstandings about evolution

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[edit] NPOV

Is an article called "Misunderstandings of X" consistent with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view? I see no problem with correcting misunderstandings, but explicitly and directly listing them as "Misunderstandings", as opposed to as "contested minority points of view" or the like, seems a bit over the line. (I've also already explained why I think most of this stuff should simply be incorporated into the normal article text rather than being given its own section or article, but we can discuss that later.) -Silence 16:17, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

An editor of the Evolution article moved this fork here. The title is maybe a little off, but this stuff has already been hashed out before, and I'm removing the NPOV tag. You probably search out new articles to see if stuff is garbage, but this whole article has been edited about 10,000 times, and probably represents consensus. Orangemarlin 16:20, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
"Misunderstanding" and "misconception" are common pedagogical terms. While it is possible for people to take issue with certain knowledge, when taking issue with that knowledge is based on verifiable misconceptions or misunderstandings it is not Wikipedia's place to mitigate this concern. Having an article on misunderstandings of evolution is simply to elucidate and report the verifiable facts regarding what are common misunderstandings. "Contested minority points of view" are relevant in subjects where there is no consensus right answer. Science, math, and academic endeavors with strict evidentiary and consensus standards have verifiable and neutral misunderstandings about them. --ScienceApologist 16:22, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Um? It's been "hashed out before", Orangemarlin, but the result has been inadequate. I've discussed the contents of this article many times before, and other editors have agreed with me that it isn't sufficiently NPOV, so the consensus certainly isn't that it's adequate; rather, it's just the best that anyone's bothered to come up with so far. Now that the POVed section has been changed into a POVed article, this is the perfect opportunity to centralize and focus discussion about whether this topic is NPOV, and if it isn't, how best to relate the information in an NPOV fashion; pretending that everyone agrees that this is NPOV when many people don't is counterproductive. I do not "search out new articles to see if stuff is garbage", I've been an editor on the evolution article off and on for years; your assumption that I was simply jumping on a new article and was ignorant of its history and its past discussions is in error, and therefore the overly hasty removal of the NPOV tag was also in error. -Silence 18:51, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I have to agree with orangemarlin on this one. If there really was an NPOV problem with this text/section/article, it would have manifested itself on the evolution page. --ScienceApologist 18:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
It did manifest on the evolution page, quite regularly. It's just that no one's bothered to really tackle the issue head-on before now; now is the time to do so. You must be very new to that article, or have very selective memory, to believe that nobody's mentioned the POV problems of having a "misunderstandings" section:
Talk:Evolution#Evolution_article_as_a_soap_box
Talk:Evolution/Archive_20#Creating_a_new_article_for_Misunderstandings_About_Evolution
Talk:Evolution/Archive_19#.22Misunderstandings.22_NPOV_problems
Sheesh. -Silence 21:00, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Orangemarlin and ScienceApologist here. If you label something as a misunderstanding, it either is or it isn't. Where does a point of view come into this? If you feel that particular argument isn't given enough weight, by all means bring that up, but I don't think slapping a POV tag on the article and calling it a day is going to help. darkliight[πalk] 21:14, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Where did I suggest "calling it a day"? I suggested discussing the issue, rather than ignoring the problem altogether. As I said, we should work to present the information in a less biased manner, and discuss ideas to that effect; the hostile attitude to discussion here so far is remarkable, and an inauspicious start. In the interests of getting, I mentioned the section-turned-article at Wikipedia_talk:Neutral_point_of_view#Misunderstandings.3F not long ago, and have already gotten two concerned responses. -Silence 21:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Silence, after reading your user page, it looks like you and I sit on the same side of every issue about evolution, politics, and religion. Yet, when I read what your saying, you seem hostile and angry, just like one of the Creationists that jump into the fray. Honestly, I don't get your point. The way everyone is responding to you, I don't think they get it either. So we're either all pretty daft, or we're not getting it. Moreover, the three discussions you linked above all seem to be one-man rants. One of the conversations was a Creationist who was claiming that this was POV because we didn't give Creationism equal weight as a valid theory (which I am guessing would NEVER be your personal POV. So what gives? I'm confused. Orangemarlin 22:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
The fact that we agree on every issue shows that this is not a dispute over what we believe, but rather a dispute over Wikipedia policy. We should therefore keep it that way, and not insinuate motives or bad faith on anyone's part. I realize that editing evolution articles tends to predispose us to suspecting sinister creationist motives whenever anyone calls for "moderation" or "balance", so I understand why you'd be quick to jump on the addition of an NPOV tag here. However, our first concern should be to correctly interpret and apply Wikipedia's NPOV policy, not to push a POV (however righteous) at that policy's expense. Since several editors have endorsed this article, I will refrain from re-adding the NPOV tag at this point. However, I think it is an important discussion to be had nevertheless, partly for the precedent this will set if it is accepted; will we list unsupported and misunderstanding-based minority views regarding economics on "Misunderstandings about economics" someday? It's at the very least something we need to think carefully about. Also, at most one of the links I provided above in any way involved a "creationist", so what are you talking about? How are the conversations "one-man rants"? You should pay particular attention to the second link, where the idea of creating this article was proposed, discussed, and universally rejected. -Silence 22:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Answer to silence: a summary of projects with orangemarlin

I would suggest calling it Objections to Evolution, which is the name of a draft that expands on some of these points that Orangemarlin and I are working on. We would then just fold our rough draft into this one for a more complete and broader article.--Filll 21:29, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

A misunderstanding is not an objection. Either it's one or the other; what are you guys actually writing about? -Silence 21:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


Orangemarlin and I are the people mainly responsible for Evolution as theory and fact, the summary section of which you see in this article (and also in the controversy article). So we decided to take a crack at some of the other objections (some of which are based on misunderstandings like the "theory and fact" sections and article). Specifically, the draft right now address in abbreviated form:

  • 1.1 Evolution is just a theory not a fact
  • 1.2 Evolution is a religion, and creationism is a science
  • 1.3 Why not let the supernatural into science?
  • 1.4 There are a lot of scientists that disagree with evolution
  • 1.5 Evolution is atheism
  • 1.6 Support for evolution leads to social ills
  • 1.7 Evolution has never been observed

There is a draft of an extended version of 1.2 as well. A draft of a rewrite of 1.1 that is far more carefully done and has more references exists also. Section 1.3 is a bit short and probably needs more developing. Not sure if a longer article could or should exist. A longer version of 1.4 exists as a separate article right now as Support for evolution; it looks like it will survive its deletion hearing and be renamed as Opinions about evolution or something similar, but we will have to see. It will be expanded to include much more of the creationist/ID POV to make it more NPOV. Sections 1.5 and 1.6 are pretty short but I do not see a great need to expand them. Section 1.7 has really not been written very much yet and will mainly just touch on a few topics and then mainly link to Evidence for evolution. That is where it stands at the moment. Comments?--Filll 23:04, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, there is a draft of a longer article on falsifiability which is sort of an expansion of section 1.2, waiting for some more input from other editors who are busy at the moment. The longer falsifiability we have had quite a few comments on and is in a bit of a ragged state, but can be seen at Talk:Evolution/falsifiabilitydraft, and the stub that might turn into a longer version of 1.2 is in Talk:Evolution/evolutionreligiondraft. Obviously, we are not quite sure how to organize all this material. The Evolution as theory and fact was the first to sail out into WP. The Support for evolution was the second, and we probably didnt get enough community input first. I will not make that mistake again. So, that gives you more of an idea.--Filll 23:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Another draft which I have sitting around is a stub that lists the main court cases at Talk:Evolution/legalcases. Many of these have their own articles and are also included at Articles related to the creation-evolution controversy so i am not sure if I should just fold them into Articles related to the creation-evolution controversy, or if a separate article listing these and other cases would be worthwhile. I am glad to hear any comments or input since the legal stuff is important, but not really my main bag. I will note that my understanding is that the cases have left huge loopholes which are not widely understood. That is, it is not against the law to teach creationism in the science classrooms in public schools in the USA, it is illegal to require it to be taught however. I need to explore this to find more details, since this might be incorrect.--Filll 00:04, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

This might seem like a bit much, however I did an amateur survey (not yet complete) of the articles related to the creationism controversy and the version I have so far is at Talk:Evolution/controversyarticles. Stuff that is not in the very nice Articles related to the creation-evolution controversy will eventually be added in there rather than produce a separate list (I had not originally realized that a list existed). My impression is that there are a lot of articles on the creationist side, exploring their reasons, but the evolution side is mainly focused on science and not on the evolution side of the controversy. Many of these topics are not addressed in much detail. I do not mean to duplicate talkorigins or anything else; this is impossible. What I hope we can offer is a better organized and more current and slightly different encyclopedic survey of the main arguments used on both sides, with links to the sites that include the literally thousands of other arguments, since this is well beyond the scope of WP. The controversy has been around for a long time. It has aspects in other religions besides Christianity. It has been the subject of many court cases. And it is very important politically in the US, and some in other countries as well. So , I just thought it deserved more than a statement that "well no controversy exists because we all know that evolution is a fact". This is not helpful and does not help the reader of WP who wants to understand what the arguments are, who the players are, what the history is, etc.--Filll 23:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why is this fork in existence?

I'm really confused. We had a major war over the Support for evolution, and I'm not sure much different this fork is to that one. Could we merge the articles? Orangemarlin 16:28, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I think we can merge the articles. This article is forked because evolution was getting too large and this information was iteratively removed from the topic of evolution itself. If there is stuff in support for evolution you think belongs here, bring it over. --ScienceApologist 16:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I have pushed for this fork for months. It presents both sides. But then, I am biased. Orangemarlin and I have some more "misunderstandings" or objections to evolution that are of a slightly different character that could go in here so maybe the title is too narrow. I am not sure. Anyway, I applaud offloading the science article of evolution by putting the objection/misunderstanding discussion in a separate article.--Filll 16:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

As the evolution article has grown unwieldy, this is part of the normal process of splitting off sections as main articles, leaving a small summary style section. There's no need for it to be pov, as people often genuinely misunderstand wording or issues about evolution. The fact that many creationists base their claims on what scientists consider to be misunderstandings needs a brief mention, but it's not an absolute: for example, AiG may be quite a useful source for debunking some misunderstandings which they tell other creationists not to use. Wording does have to be carefully considered to achieve NPOV, but that should certainly be possible. .. dave souza, talk 00:36, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
This AiG link might prove useful: Arguments we think creationists should NOT use – note for example that they argue against using "evolution is just a theory"...... dave souza, talk 01:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


One can see what we did at Introduction to evolution in its very minimal section on objections to evolution for example.--Filll 00:38, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removing "Social and religious controversy"

A social/religious controversy may be based on misunderstandings, but it is not itself a misunderstanding, anymore than a war started by a misunderstanding would properly be included in a list of misunderstandings. I am going to re-add the section to the main evolution article, and work on trimming it down a bit so it doesn't bloat that page much. It's too noteworthy of a topic not to have a section on there anyway. -Silence 21:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok if you think so. What about an expanded version taking this material, adding to it similar material from the controversy article plus from the rough draft orangemarlin and I are working on ? So the controversy article would then be more on the details, history etc of the controversy, but not the points of controversy, misunderstanding, objection etc which could bein a long dedicated sister article. The reason for this is that there are many more misunderstandings/objections than this, and the controversy article is sort of bipolar, and already too long as well.--Filll 22:10, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Are you talking about the Creation-evolution controversy article? -Silence 22:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes. I get the impression, because of the similarity of this material, and the corresponding material in the Creation-evolution controversy article, that the Creation-evolution controversy article at one time was a fork off evolution. However, it has also grown fairly long, and has a lot of sort of dense text in it and is not that clear. --Filll 22:54, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Agree. That resolves problems on both pages. I'd suggest that this should still have a brief summary style section on the relationship of misunderstandings to the controversy, but it should be pointing to that as a main article and should not go into other aspects of controversy. .. dave souza, talk 00:40, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Do we really need a singular "misunderstandings" article?

The outline given by Filll above is an interesting potential article, and I'll give you time to finish on it, but in the interests of keeping our options open, here's another way we could present all those topics, without placing them under the unacademic and unneutral article title like "Misunderstandings". We could simply use the singular section at Evolution to give a brief overview of all these misunderstandings (I provided, free of charge, an example of an especially brief overview exactly of this sort, which could be expanded if necessary: see Evolution#Misunderstandings), and then, rather than providing a singular disorganized and ill-conceived article on "Misunderstandings" for the daughter article, we could provide a whole set of different articles for each of the different misunderstandings.

For example, our sections on "Speciation", "Entropy and life", and "Information" are very short, and could probably simply be listed in near-complete form in Evolution, while daughter articles like Speciation and Entropy and life can easily serve for any details we wish to add on these misunderstandings. Likewise, we already have the daughter article Evolution as theory and fact for "Distinctions between theory and fact". So, as an alternative to your singular "Misunderstandings" article, how about something like:

1.1 - We already have an article for this, Evolution as theory and fact.
1.2 - A more neutral and informative article title to discuss this under would be Evolution and religion.
1.3 - As above, Evolution and religion (or more generally Science and religion, really).
1.4 - This can be discussed under Teach the Controversy, since there's a specific campaign devoted to it.
1.5 - Again, Evolution and religion. I think a more common argument, though, is "Evolution leads to atheism" or "Evolution leads to materialism".
1.6 - As we've gone down the list, we've gotten more and more into the area of the Creation-evolution controversy, rather than actual misunderstandings of the science of evolution. These are best categorized as criticisms of evolution or the scientific philosophy; the fact that they're baseless criticisms doesn't make it fair to simply describe them as "misunderstandings", when they're more misunderstandings of fundamental philosophical and social concepts than of specific facts about the science of evolution.
1.7 - This should be discussed at Speciation (for the claim about speciation) and Macroevolution (for the claim about macroevolution).

This would resolve both actual and potential NPOV issues with a "Misunderstandings" article like this, while keeping (and, indeed, enhancing) its informational value. It simply doesn't seem to merit an intermediary article; for example, it truly seems excessive to have such a lengthy intermediary between Evolution and Evolution as theory and fact, when the former could just as easily simply summarize and link to the latter. -Silence 03:59, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


I really like silence's new summary section in the evolution article. Very tightly argued. To me, smaller is better. I do not understand this seeming need to make the articles so long and bulky that people are overwhelmed with details in the main articles. I personally just get turned off when I see an article that is too long but I am glad to have other articles available if I want to know more about a particular aspect.
I obviously am quite fluid at this time about the names. I personally think misunderstandings is a bit of a dangerous name for an independent article because it seems a bit too POV and a bit too narrow. We are slowly just plugging away at this project but I want to be flexible about how we organize this material eventually so that most people are happy with it. I also want to avoid any articles that are too long, or not focused on one reasonable NPOV theme if possible.--Filll 04:15, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
The growth a eventual splitting off of a sub-section is the natural progression in Wikipedia. When I proposed this sub-section a while ago it was immediately thought it would gradually grow and mature sufficiently to be split off. Part of what allows someone to tightly argue and summarize a section in the first place is that it is stable and mature. As to the name, we specifically choose it because it was the most accurate and descriptive. - RoyBoy 800 02:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
It sounds like we agree, then. I'm open to experimenting with various possibilities, as long as we keep an open mind about weighing their pros and cons. -Silence 05:23, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

As long as we dont dump any important material, and can try to fit it together like a jigsaw puzzle, then I will be satisfied.--Filll 05:50, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Misunderstandings articles are all good; for instance, mondegreen about misunderstanding song lyrics and 0.999... about misunderstanding decimal representations of real numbers. Having said that, we need to carefully distinguish between:

  1. Misunderstandings regarding evolution; e.g., that theories are facts we don't yet know for sure, or that change is always an improvement.
  2. Easily refuted arguments that evolution is false; e.g., that evolution violates thermodynamics (a misunderstanding of thermodynamics, not evolution.)
  3. More serious arguments that evolution is false; (can't think of an example off the top of my head.)
  4. Arguments that evolution can't be proven to be true; e.g., that evolution makes no predictions.
  5. Arugments that evolution is evil or shouldn't be believed in (regardless of truth value); e.g., evolution leads to athiesm.

Currently only the "Disconnections between theory and fact" and "Evolution, complexity, and devolution" sections seem to discuss misunderstandings; the other sections belong in some other article (objections? controversies?). I like to imagine that a militant pro-ID fanatic would read the ideal evolution misunderstandings article and think only "Oh. I didn't realise that. That changes things. That's a different position to what I thought evolutionist scientists took." There should be no NPOV issue because the article shouldn't make claims as to whether or not evolution is true; it should dispell evolution's Straw Men and no more. Having said all that, the misunderstandings section in the evolution article seems to cover it pretty well, so I'm not sure if this article is even required. Endomorphic 02:18, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

No, it doesn't cover it very well, it summarizes it very well. There's a substantial difference between the two. The summary presents the concepts, this sub-article elaborates on the evidence. - RoyBoy 800 02:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I propose that Evolution present all that is needed for the summary, and, for the sake of comprehensiveness and avoiding redundancy, Objections to evolution be the article we direct people to for more in-depth analysis of the general creationist arguments (since it will need to do so even if we have a distinct Misunderstandings article; for all practical purposes, the only question is whether we should have a clone of certain select parts of the Objections article in the form of Misunderstandings). Individual articles like Evolution as theory and fact and Devolution are sufficient for in-depth articles on specific common misunderstandings.
Between the concise "Misunderstandings" section, the in-depth topic-specific daughter articles (e.g., Entropy and life), and the comprehensive "Objections" article, I honestly just don't see value in a fourth page/page-group that solely presents information already gone into in more comprehensiveness on Evolution, more depth on the topic-specific pages, and more NPOV and thoroughness on the Objections page. -Silence 04:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
A number of uses have pointed out that the only two sections in this article that really deal primarily with common misunderstandings, as opposed to common creationist objections to evolution or the creation-evolution controversy, are the first two sections. As such, as has been recommended several times, the off-topic (and thus, in this article's context, severely POVed) sections have been removed; all the information that was in them is already available at Objections to evolution anyway.
Additionally, I've added a tag disputing the neutrality of this article title/topic, so that users will be aware of the debate that's been ongoing here for the last few weeks. Of course, the main problem with this article is, but NPOV is a significant issue as well, considering how difficult it is to draw a line between "misunderstandings" and "creationist arguments" in this area, and how unverifiable such a distinction actually is.
Lastly, I recommend that we take a close look at how fundamentally flawed, and, indeed, unacceptable the two on-topic sections here are. Consider the fact that the "Distinctions between theory and fact" section begins like this!:
"Some critics of evolution claim that it is merely a theory. This criticism makes two claims: that evolution is a theory and therefore not a fact, and that theories are less established than facts (and less well supported than other beliefs)."
The article explicitly says, from the very beginning of this section, that this is primarily a criticism of evolution! If even the misunderstandings article concedes that, then clearly no argument can be made for this being a valuable POV fork from the new Objections article, which covers the same topic much better. For that matter, we have an entire article devoted to this confusion: Evolution as theory and fact. Why do we need no less than three articles with sections linking to that page (this one, Objections, and Evolution#Misunderstandings), when the daughter article itself is largely sufficient to handle the issue of correcting people's misconceptions on this, and does a much better job of it than this page?
Also, there are a grand total of 0 references in the entire section, which makes the section not only useless, redundant, POVed, and in some cases poorly-written, but also unverified and uncited, a clear violation of Wikipedia policy and a remarkable oversight for the first section of this article. For all these reasons, it seems absurd to me to bother with salvaging this section; as a misunderstanding, it's covered adequately in Evolution as theory and fact and summarized adequately in Evolution#Misunderstandings, and as a criticism of evolution, it's covered adequately in Objections to evolution and the aforementioned "theory and fact" page.
If you actually take the time to read the second page, you'll be surprised to find that it's really only two paragraphs long. The remaining paragraphs of this section are just a bloated, useless, confusing, lengthy string of example after example after example, a level of detail clearly both counterproductive and unwarranted in an article other than Devolution itself. Additionally, the only two sections of actual substance have only a single, mediocre-quality reference (a minor Talk.Origins "Creationist claims" page, a good resource but not really something to be exclusively relied on—and, of course, to rely on a "Creationist claims" page to provide the article's only citation for a "Misunderstanding about evolution" demonstrates remarkably well how much these claims are mote noteworthy as anti-evolution arguments than as simply misunderstandings, as well as demonstrating the real intentions and focus of the creators of this article, which was to create a backhanded version of Objections to evolution seeking to circumvent pesky Wikipedia policies like WP:NPOV). Much like the "Theory and fact" section, this section is redundant and useless; unlike that section, it's at least bigger than a stub and has a reference, but also unlike that paragraph, it is crippled and bogged down by a completely excessive list of unnecessary examples. Also, like that section, all the important article in this section is already available at other articles. Why not work to improve those articles, rather than using this article as a POV fork? -Silence 04:53, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image misspelling

In the image at the top, "flaggelates" should be spelled "flagellates". I didn't see a way to contact the image's contributor (file history doesn't work). Art LaPella 07:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I must be blind. I dont see the image you are describing at all.-Filll 07:06, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
You don't see Image:Tree of life.svg? -Silence 07:09, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Now I do. I just never bothered to blow it up.--Filll 07:24, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Fixed. darkliight[πalk] 07:45, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Falsifiability

I was looking for something on the falsifiability of evolutionary theory to link to another article, and couldn't find it. Should a section on the subject be added to this article? 1Z 02:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)1Z

We are working on a rough draft now on falsifiability. You are welcome to use any of our text that you want but I warn you that it is not finished yet. Let me get you the link to the draft.--Filll 02:38, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The falsifiability draft is at Talk:Evolution/falsifiabilitydraft. My plan, which I am not sure everyone agrees with, is to make one "objections article" that would be a lengthened version of this article, with longer articles like Evolution as theory and fact and a falsifiability in evolution or whatever longer title and a bunch more, as you see described above.--Filll 02:41, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible source?

Here's a cut section from the main evolution article. If this one is to be kept, not merged, it could be useful

[edit] Misunderstandings

There are a number of common misunderstandings about evolution, some of which have hindered its general acceptance and form the basis of various objections to evolution.[1][2][3] Critics of evolution frequently assert that evolution is "just a theory", a misunderstanding of the meaning of theory in a scientific context: whereas in colloquial speech a theory is a conjecture or guess, in science a theory is "a model of the universe, or a restricted part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make".[4] Critics also state that evolution is not a fact, although from a scientific viewpoint evolution is considered both a theory and a fact.[5][6][7]

Another common misunderstanding is the idea that one species, such as humans, can be more "highly evolved" or "advanced" than another. It is often assumed that evolution must lead to greater complexity, or that devolution ("backwards" evolution) can occur. Scientists consider evolution a non-directional process that does not proceed toward any ultimate goal; advancements are only situational, and organisms' complexity can either increase, decrease, or stay the same, depending on which is advantageous, and thus selected for.[8]

Evolution is also frequently misinterpreted as stating that humans evolved from monkeys; based on this, some critics argue that monkeys should no longer exist. This misunderstands speciation, which frequently involves a subset of a population cladogenetically splitting off before speciating, rather than an entire species simply turning into a new one. Additionally, biologists have never claimed that humans evolved from monkeys—only that humans and monkeys share a common ancestor, as do all organisms.[9]

It is also frequently claimed that speciation has only been inferred, never directly observed. In reality, the evolution of numerous new species has been observed.[10] A similar claim is that only microevolution, not macroevolution, has been observed; however, macroevolution has been observed as well, and modern evolutionary synthesis draws little distinction between the two, considering macroevolution to simply be microevolution on a larger scale.[11]

Evolution is sometimes misrepresented as being guided solely by "chance" or "randomness". This leads to expressions of disbelief that "pure chance" might generate the remarkable complexity of living beings, and probability arguments are sometimes used to criticize evolution by assessing the probability that a certain highly complex feature might occur "by chance". Darwinian evolution, however, is emphatically not random in its direction. Mutation is random; but natural selection, which determines whether or not those mutations are preserved and propagated throughout the population, is extremely non-random, in that only those features which are adaptive will be preserved. At any time, the evolutionary process encounters a multitude of possible directions, each being proposed by different, random mutations; but only those directions which prove to be adaptive will actually be "taken", and thus be used as a starting point for further exploration. In time, this highly biased (and therefore non-random) preservation allows evolution to reach arbitrary levels of adaptive complexity: the gradual accumulation of small, "plausibly lucky" improvements creates a final result which would have been highly implausible by purely random assembly.

Adam Cuerden talk 23:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

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