Breaking Dollo's Evolutionary Law

The word "law" seems a mite loose nowadays. Some jasper on the Internet makes an observation or declaration, and if it gets support, it's called a "law". Fine, I'll make Cowboy Bob's Law right here and now: If a biblical creationist gives evidence against evolution, some sidewinder will cry, "Liar!" Howzat? Great, put that on the master list, okay? 

There are other "laws" that are more like guidelines of common observations.

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Laws of science, however, are supposed to be established through observation and testing. Louis Dollo came up with the Law of Irreversibility for evolution, that an organism cannot return to its ancestral state. It turns out that this "law" is another instance of scientists making assertions when they do not have a full understanding of science, but instead, realy on faith in evolution. Dollo's declaration actually hindered science, and his "law" was never tried-and-tested. Also, it's also been negated frequently. Creationists don't have this problem.

According to the brilliant conception of the immortal Charles Darwin (1809-1882): Evolution—the transformation of organisms—results from the fixation of useful individual variations provoked by the struggle for existence under the influence of natural selection. All species—animal or plant—which exist or have existed since the appearance of life on earth, must originate via this fundamental law.

So began “The Laws of Evolution” published in 1893 by Louis Dollo, curator of Belgium’s Royal Museum of Natural History. Dollo was a renowned Belgian paleontologist who gained his reputation for his work on Iguanodon dinosaurs and for the rules he formulated for paleobiology, the study of the biology of fossil life forms.

Interestingly, Harvard University’s eminent paleontologist Stephen Gould contributed to the publishing of Louis Dollo’s Papers on Paleontology and Evolution in 1980, a date that coincides with the period of considerable debate about Gould’s punctuated equilibrium mechanism of evolution. Dollo’s first law of evolution was “that evolution occurred by abrupt leaps,” which was also one premise of Gould’s mechanism. Dollo actually proposed three laws based on his field observations that have been influential in framing evolutionary research and theory. He is remembered today for his second law, which bears his name.

To read the rest, click on "Major Evolutionary Blunders: Breaking Dollo's Law". 

 



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