XXVII.1 From the very beginning, the theory of evolution has been a frequent target of more or less factual attacks

Evolutionary biology provides us with answers to questions of where living organisms came from on the Earth, including the organisms closest to us, i.e. human beings.These questions are understandably of great interest, not only for biologists, but also for the general public.Consequently, biology is not the only discipline that has attempted to find an answer to this question; similar attempts have been made since time immemorial by some branches of philosophy and some religions.Biologists consider Darwin’s explanation of the emergence and development of organisms to be quite adequate and hold discussions only on the importance of the individual evolutionary mechanisms.However, when we take into account other disciplines, e.g. philosophy, this explanation has certainly not been universally accepted, even after the almost 150 years that have expired since the publication of Darwin’s book “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”.The evolutionary explanation of the emergence and development of life is and apparently will continue in the future to be the target of attacks by the proponents of other opinions.

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The classical Darwinian theory of evolution can explain the evolution of adaptive traits only in asexual organisms. The frozen plasticity theory is much more general: It can also explain the origin and evolution of adaptive traits in both asexual and sexual organisms Read more
‹ XXVII. CRITICISM AND DEFENCE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES up XXVII.1.1 In principle, there tend to be three motives behind attacks on the theory of evolution: inconsistency with one’s ideological model of the world, fear of the consequences if evolutionary theory is generally accepted, and factual objections agai ›
Draft translation from: Evoluční biologie, 2. vydání (Evolutionary biology, 2nd edition), J. Flegr, Academia Prague 2009. The translation was not done by biologist, therefore any suggestion concerning proper scientific terminology and language usage are highly welcomed. You can send your comments to flegratcesnet [dot] cz. Thank you.