CHAPTER 6: EVOLUTION, CREATIONISM, & DESIGN Flashcards
What is Creationism?
The idea that evolutionary processes are not responsible for the organism we observe, rather, God is the one who created and brought them to life.
What are the two elements of Darwin’s Theory?
First is the idea that all present living things are related through genes as well as related by a family tree. Second is the idea of the natural selection.
What is Natural Selection?
This idea involves a variation in fitness that is passed from parents to their offsprings resulting to improvements of the offspring’s characteristics.
What is the Principle of the Common Cause and how is it related to the surprise principle?
The Principle of the Common Cause a hypotheses that is more plausible because it leads you to expect the connection of 2 objects observed which is also the consequence of the Surprise Principle.
The geneticist François Jacob said (in “Evolution and Tinkering,” Science Vol. 196, 1977, pp. 1161–66) that “natural selection does not work as an engineer works. It works like a tinkerer—a tinkerer who does not know exactly what he is going to produce but uses whatever he finds around him.” What does Jacob mean here? How is this point relevant to evaluating whether the hypothesis of evolution or the hypothesis of intelligent design is a more plausible explanation of the characteristics of living things?
He means that engineers gather materials knowing exactly what type of buildings they are going to construct. Wherein the natural selection is ike a tinkerer, because it builds products using materials that are accessible to him without knowing what the outcome will be like. It is relevant to the hypothesis of the evolution because the concept of evolution is more like the tinkerer and the intelligent design is similar to the engineer’s way of constructing.
What does it mean to say that two theories are predictively equivalent?
Two theories are predictively equivalent when one theory have the same argument but in a different versions.
How is the Principle of the Common Cause related to the Surprise Principle? (Hint: why do evolutionary biologists typically appeal to both of them, rather than just one?)
The Principle of the Common Cause is the connection or consequence of the Surprise principle between hypothesis observation and the alternative hypothesis.
