Understanding Evolution

This video serves as a starting point for any of those interested in casually researching the theory of evolution. Although evolution within itself is a very simple process, its simplicity makes it a blatant target for misunderstanding, and consequently unjustified denial.

Essentially, Darwinism can be broken into three constituents:

1) Enablers: the conditions that must be present in order for the process to take place.
• Diversity: not all individuals in a population are genetically or physically identical.
• Differential reproductive success: variation inevitably leads to diversity in the successfulness of procreation.

2) Mechanisms: the how and why for the process in question.
• Natural selection (nonrandom, adaptive mechanism): genes that reflect the greatest capacity to enhance survival and reproduction are more likely to become popular throughout a population over successive generations.
• Genetic drift (random, very minimal adaptive benefit): allele frequencies fluctuate in a random fashion, as accidents hold the ability to carry profound effects in populations of little effective size.

3) Consequences: the results of the process.
• Transmutation: the populations gene pool changes in its information content as time progresses under the mechanisms of evolution.
• Speciation: populations can become geographically isolated, and in certain situations, the founder population (the one that split off from its parent population) can evolve to loose the mutual capacity to reproduce effectively with members of the parent population.
• Common descent: the phenomena that all species share genetic relationship to one another, because their ancestors acted as a parent species from which they separated and continued to evolve independently.

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Alleles: gene variants.

Allele frequency: the relative popularity of gene variants in populations over ongoing generations. An allele frequency flux is a change in this popularity.

Population: a localized group of individuals, whose members belong to the same species, and thus possess the ability to reproduce fertile offspring with one another.

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Recommended books:

Darwin, Charles (1859) On the Origin of Species (1st edition).*

Dawkins, Richard (2009) The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution.

Dennett, Daniel (1995) Darwins Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life.

Gould, Stephen Jay (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory.

Maynard Smith, John (1958) The Theory of Evolution.

Mayr, Ernst (2002) What Evolution Is.

*The first edition of On the Origin is preferred because it best represents the modern understanding of evolution. The ignorance of genetics at the time caused Darwin to flirt with Lamarckian principles in response to criticism, and political pressure resulted in pandering to the religious. The first edition is the most scientifically accurate, and best represents Darwins true thoughts and conclusions.

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Evolution resources:
• http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evol...
• http://www.pbs.org/evolution
• http://www.evolution.berkely.edu
• http://www.ncse.com
• http://www.talkorigins.org

Recommended
• http://www.youtube.com/user/TheRation...
• http://www.youtube.com/user/TheRation...
• http://www.youtube.com/user/Scienceof...

Please visit
• http://www.scienceofreason.org

Category:

Education

Tags:

• evolution
• natural selection
• genetic drift
• genes
• alleles
• gene pool
• biology
• Darwinism
• speciation
• common descent
• modification

[ShandySpoon]

Thank YOU very much!!

[FlyingEvolutionist59]

No problem! I'm glad you enjoyed the video!

[bencubed]

Five stars !

[FlyingEvolutionist59]

Thank you very much!

[moviedude120796]

This is the comment I use for creationist videos: watch as I make my comment disappear due to the inability to take criticism

[DrMonkeyForAFoot]

Please, Please, PLEASE, don't call it "Darwinism". It's not a political view nor is it a religion, it's a scientific theory. Call it Evolution. You damn Newtonist!

[PeatBog61]

Very good introduction to evolution. Your use of language made it so much easier to understand than trudging through Darwin's 19th century English.

[jwil2570]

You're awesome.

[raminsh1]

Brilliant! That was an amazing video. I think there is a small problem that people who are not familiar with evolution theory won't understand it by this vieo anyway.

[spiderpug]

You sound like sheldon off the big bang theory!!!!!!!!!!! :D

[FlyingEvolutionist59]

That's true, I might need to show a very slight level of intellectual arrogance, especially in the presence of creationists.