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| Biology GCSE Edition - Cambridge University Press |
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 Biology GCSE Edition. Jones, G., and M. Jones. 1987. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.This is a little more honest than some other texts about the weakness of evidence for evolution. However, it does not present any alternatives to evolution as credible or scientific. Evidence for evolutionThere is some honesty about The Fossil Record, but the textbook does not suggest that this evidence could be interpreted as suggesting that missing links have never existed. It is only very rarely that enough fossils have been found for us to be able to ‘see’ one kind of organism evolving from another. Usually there are big gaps in the fossil record, and we can only guess how the changes took place. Evidence for evolution from Vertebrate Limb Homology is stated cautiously, but the design alternative is not mentioned. Industrial melanism (The Peppered Moth) is cited as evidence for natural selection, but flaws in the experiments are not mentioned. Vestigial structures with no obvious function are used as evidence for evolution, though this shows loss, not gain, of functions. Antibiotic Resistance in bacteria is also used as evidence for evolution. There is also realism about the effects of artificial selection: Modern varieties of cattle, for example, selected over hundreds of years for high milk yield or fast meat production, would stand little chance of surviving for long in the wild. Unlike some textbooks, this one does mention that: Natural selection does not always produce change. The textbook is also upfront about the lack of evidence for speciation: Like many theories concerned with evolution this one sounds very convincing, but is difficult to prove. The main difficulty is that it takes so long to happen. We can find examples where we think it has happened in the past, and other examples where it is beginning to happen now. But the formation of new species in this way is such a slow process that no-one has yet been able to watch it happening from beginning to end. Thus an imaginary example of tiger beetle populations separated by an emerging mountin range is used in the main diagram explaining how speciation may occur. Hawaiian and Canada geese are used as a possible example of speciation. Teaching the controversy? Despite the book's honesty on some aspects of the evidence for evolution, it does not go further and suggest that evolution itself is controversial. The only alternative to evolution mentioned is that: Until the second half of the nineteenth century, most people believed that all the different species of living organism had been created at the same time, when the world began. Some people still believe this. In fact, very few people believe this because most creationists now believe that some speciation has occurred. The book does not look at any scientific evidence for any alternatives to evolution, and does not mention intelligent design. |
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Evolution by natural selection...has lately come to function more as an antitheory, called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best questionable and at worst not even wrong. Robert B. Laughlin, A Different Universe (New York: Basic Books, 2005) |
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