Hace unos días estaba explicando en clase de biología los errores del lamarckismo, la teoría de la evolución de Lamarck, cuando uno de mis alumnos me preguntó:
"Carlos, entonces ¿es posible que lo mismo que en el libro de texto viene que el lamarckismo está equivocado, en el futuro los libros de biología say what you tell us as true today is completely wrong? "
I liked that I asked that question, because it squarely on the perception that people have about science, and also because it has a simple answer.
One of the characteristics of science is that its conclusions are tentative but do not take this too at the bottom of the letter. First, because it does not take very clever to see that many scientific discoveries work, because we could say that technology is how we give value to such discoveries. Come that if the aircraft fly, the car navigator to guide us, save us from anesthesia and pain see the pictures on the computer screen is because science has previously reached conclusions very successful.
also quite clear to leave gave me to compare science with the shooting, used the example of the theory of evolution.
Suppose that absolute certainty is the exact center of the target, a point so tiny stick the dart in it is practically impossible. Yes, you may hit closer to him, we can always approach ever closer to the truth. Until
Lamarck proposed his theory, all naturalists were fixed-comb, and thought that the history of life was substantially as described in Genesis, all species were created relatively recently as we know them today. The dart was not even the target, destroying the wall ended. (Even today, creationists are people who play this game, plying the waiter at the pub).
Lamarck was the first person to propose that species change over long periods of time. Although in theory there are errors (very difficult to detect at the time) the launch of Lamarck was the first to give the target. Okay, not crept closer to the center, but gave the target: evolution is a fact.
Darwin (and Wallace, we might say that threw the dart between the two) polished the ideas of Lamarck removing what was left and adding the ideas of natural selection and random changes, it greatly improved the score he had obtained Lamarck.
With the discovery of biological inheritance and molecular biology, the theory of evolution Darwin was greatly strengthened: all data reinforce it so much that we now know, as Dobzhansky said that "nothing in biology makes sense if is not in the light of evolution. " The dart is touching the highest score. And surely overcome in the future.
You see now what they mean that science is provisional?
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