WHAT CHARLIE DARWIN REALLY SAID

As you all know, there's currently a heated debate in the sci
news groups about what Charles Darwin really said about
the evolution of the eye.

It's time this matter is cleared up -- simply and concisely --
once and for all.

Actually, I thought I had ended all the confusion back on
Saturday, May 11, 1996, when a pseudo named Michael
Clark accused me of misquoting Darwin. He had the balls
to say I used only a portion of Darwin's quote.

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Here's what I said:

``To suppose that the eye (with so many parts all working
together) . . . could have been formed by natural selection
seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

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Here's what Charles Darwin really said:

'To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for
adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different
amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic
aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I
freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said
that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common
sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of
Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted
in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple
and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist,
(Wake me when it's over) Z Z Z Z Z Z Z z z z z z z . . . .
each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if
further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is
likewise certainly the case and if such variations should be useful
to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty
of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural
selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be
considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be
sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself
Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z z z z z z z . . .
originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms,
in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light,
it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their
barcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves,
endowed with this special sensibility.'
Darwin, 1859, Origin of Species

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I thought I said what Darwin had said but David Ian Greig
said what I said wasn't what Darwin really had said because
he said Darwin had more to say than what I said he had
said, then Steve Vickers of the UK butts in and says HE
knows what Darwin really said, claiming what I said he
had said wasn't what Darwin really had said, so I said, 'Okay,
I'll say what they say about what Darwin really said, since
I suppose that this is indeed what he had said, even though
I really don't know for sure if he had said it, but this is what
they say he had said.'

=============================================== =

Nice little song and dance, there, Zippy. Can you balance
a ball on your nose? ---- Michael Clark

Up your's, Bumblebrain!
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Folks, please excuse the rude interruption!

================================================

Actually, it really doesn't matter what Darwin had said
or what these fellas said he had said -- or what they say
I said or didn't say about what he said or didn't say --- since
what I said, whether Darwin said it or not, isn't something
that really needed to be said. Perhaps Darwin said what
they say he had said because he felt he had to say it -- he
certainly was entitled to say what he wanted to say. But by
saying what they say he had said, he actually said more
than he needed to say, so maybe he didn't have to say
what he said. 'Course, IF Darwin did say what these fellas
said he had said, critics could later say he had nothing
to say even though he had said it.

Ed Conrad
Emeritus Professor of Clear and Concise Journalism
Penn State University
University Park, Pa.
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