A good little article on a fascinating topic. But I disagree that "nothing changes. That is also true." On the contrary, everything changes constantly, mind and matter are in constant flux, arising and passing away trillions upo n trillions of times a second. It doesn't affect Ruse's exposition, but "Please consider!"

Just this morning as I was about to drive my grand-daughter to her year 10 class at Darwin High School,I thought it appropriate on the anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth to raise the issue of evolution with her.

I have previously encouraged her to read some of Richard Dawkins works to counter the Creationists misinformation and was astounded that she had no knowledge of the person after whom our city was named.

That speaks volumes about the poor selection of library material in our schools ...Are they being influenced by selectors who still deny evolution ?

I was therefore relieved to be able to pull out my small volume of 'Origin of Species' and introduce her to the great man's work.

I agree the work can be embellished with modern knowledge and it's high time it was done.
Meanwhile I am pleased to be able to hold the work up to it's desperate detractors as untouched by the myth of creationism

There is no such thing as "Darwinism." That is an ideological term, generally used by biblical literalists to imply that acceptance of evolution is some sort of secular religion, comparable to communism. But even today, some nonreligious skeptics suffer from a compulsion to minimize Darwin's achievement. A piece in a special section on Darwin in The New York Times this week by Carl Safina, president of the Blue Ocean Institute, was headlined "Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live." Safina argued that in "propounding `Darwinism,' even scientists and science writers perpetuate an impression that evolution is about one man, one book, one `theory.'" This sentence is a piece of undiluted codswallop. No scientist or decent science writer uses the term "Darwinism" in this fashion.

To talk of Darwinism is akin to referring to the laws of motion as "Newtonism" or Relativity as "Einsteinism". The great scientist, Darwin, recognised the role of natural selection in developing different life forms. That is an idea that is the basis of the life sciences of today. "Darwinism" is something else.

"Science never proves anything"

Gregory Bateson said that, (and I believe him). See 'Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Dutton, 1979

Bateson referred to the exacting logical proof that is the tool of mathematicians and philosophers. And he goes on to say that "... the truth about what can be perceived or arrived at by induction from perception is something else again."

The author's care to state that Darwin's arguments for evolution were "a consilience of inductions", stemming from Darwins original observations and synthesis, is to me the centrepiece of his argument. Michael Ruse makes clear that the consilience is now far, far stronger than it was in 1859.

It's worth elaborating on the difference between orthodox organic evolution via well-explored mechanisms of gene pool changes, and other forms of evolution; say, of traditional languages and other information transfer systems, which fall outside the Darwinian model. "Mind and Nature" is very interesting in this regard.

The song has gone but the melody lingers on.

Darwin wasn't the first to suggest the idea of evolution - he was, however, the first to suggest it in a way that made people sit up and take notice. He also explained it in a way that made sense. We have a lot to thank him for in that regard, even if we've had to tweak his argument over time. I enjoyed the Volkswagen analogy, but it also made me think. My first car was a 1962 Beetle, and I was disgusted when I saw the new Beetle: I saw fundamental differences which led me to deny that it was a true 'Beetle'.

What would Darwin think if he saw what had become of his theory today? I'd like to think that, with his analytical mind, he would be proud of what he had created, and delighted at the changes that have taken place to improve and refine his ideas. At the end of the day, he would be able to see his work at the root of it, just as Ferdinand Porsche would see the new Beetle as a refined, comfortable and expensive version of his original work. As the author says - Darwinism (or Darwin's theory, for those who don't like the former term) is far from its 'sell by date'. It has just matured with age.

"In that work, he argues not only for the fact of evolution - all organisms are the descendants, by a slow, natural process, from just one or a few simple forms - but also he proposes a mechanism of change."

Natural selection and speciation may be facts, but universal common descent certainly is not. Contrary to Mr. Ruse's dogmatic assertions, the fossil record certainly doesn't provide the evidence to show that "all organisms are the descendants, by a slow, natural process, from just one or a few simple forms." Quite the contrary. The Cambrian explosion, in which all of the modern forms of life suddenly appeared with no apparent ancestors or precursors, seems to disprove this hypothesis quite conclusively. At least the late Stephen Jay Gould had the intellectual honesty to admit this problem (even if his attempt to explain the sudden appearance of fully-developed life forms in the fossil record with his bizzare theory of "punctuated equilibrium" only raised more doubts about evolutionary theory). Mr. Ruse, in contrast, won't even admit that there are any problems at all with his "just-so" Darwinian narrative.

Now, I'm not asserting that all of Darwin's theories are past their "sell-by" date. But Mr. Ruse's arguments certainly are.