To Evolve or Not To Evole 0
Coincident with another attempt by Creationists to use agents of the state to propagate their magickal beliefs, paleontologist Oliver Knevitt lists his candidates for five terms in the public discourse that he thinks should be retired because they mislead the discussion.
Here’s one.
This is undoubtedly the worst term in general use. There are many, many fundamental problems with this term, as I’ve written about before, but one the main problems is that a link implies a chain; a great chain of being, with the dumber animals at the bottom and clever man at the top.
Yet, there is a much deeper reason why I’d like this term to be dead and buried. It is entirely perjorative. It is only used by those wishing to deinigrate evolution. It automatically implies that we are involved in some sort of gigantic join-the-dots puzzle; that we spend our time desperately poring through rocks trying to find that one elusive crocoduck that will fill in our tree and finally legitimize our ill-conceived agenda.
The reality is that, if anything, it’s the other way round. We have far too many fossils and which ones are closer to the ancestral line and which are further is the tricky bit.
I particularly commend his remarks on “survival of the fittest” to your attention. The phrase was invented by Herbert Spencer and used during the Gilded Age by defenders of the gilded ones to justify economic inequality and exploitation.
It has remained a favorite of the gilded ones ever since, as it enables them to anoint themselves as “the fittest” cats, when, in actuality, they are often just the fattest cats.
