Thursday, September 25, 2025

Left -vs- Right is Moot (Part 20, Charlie Kirk)

Typica and carbonaria morphs on the same tree. The light-coloured typica (below the bark's scar) is nearly invisible on this pollution-free tree, camouflaging it from predators.











Continuing on from my previous post, I decided to include an excerpt from the  Peppered moth evolution Wikipedia page, due to it having culminated into a heated battle between “science and religion”… or if you will “left versus right”: 

In 1978, Sewall Wright described it as "the clearest case in which a conspicuous evolutionary process has actually been observed."[4][5]

Biston betularia f. typica, the white-bodied peppered moth
Biston betularia f. carbonaria, the black-bodied peppered moth 

The dark-coloured or melanic form of the peppered moth (var. carbonaria) was rare, though a specimen had been collected by 1811. After field collection in 1848 from Manchester, an industrial city in England, the frequency of the variety was found to have increased drastically. By the end of the 19th century it almost completely outnumbered the original light-coloured type (var. typica), with a record of 98% in 1895.[6] The evolutionary importance of the moth was only speculated upon during Darwin's lifetime. It was 14 years after Darwin's death, in 1896, that J. W. Tutt presented it as a case of natural selection.[7] Because of this, the idea spread widely, and more people came to believe in Darwin's theory.

Bernard Kettlewell was the first to investigate the evolutionary mechanism behind peppered moth adaptation, between 1953 and 1956. He found that a light-coloured body was an effective camouflage in a clean environment, such as in rural Dorset, while the dark colour was beneficial in a polluted environment like industrial Birmingham. This selective survival was due to birds, which easily caught dark moths on clean trees and white moths on trees darkened with soot. The story, supported by Kettlewell's experiment, became the canonical example of Darwinian evolution and evidence for natural selection used in standard textbooks.

However, failure to replicate the experiment and Theodore David Sargent's criticism of Kettlewell's methods in the late 1960s led to general skepticism. When Judith Hooper's Of Moths and Men was published in 2002, Kettlewell's story was more sternly attacked, and accused of fraud. The criticism became a major argument for creationistsMichael Majerus was their principal defender. His seven-year experiment beginning in 2001, the most elaborate of its kind in population biology, the results of which were published posthumously in 2012, vindicated Kettlewell's work in great detail. This restored the peppered moth evolution as "the most direct evidence", and "one of the clearest and most easily understood examples of Darwinian evolution in action"

Of course, the Wikipedia article does provide links in the names of notable persons mentioned so I checked them all, and if I were to choose one over the others: 

Jonathan Corrigan Wells (September 19, 1942 – September 19, 2024)

He died on his birthday, and so another addition to the recent and prolific “Birthday Blues” pattern cluster.  Three of my recent series of posts were posted on September 19: 

Duck in Merica (Part 13 Charlie Kirk)
Duck &&& … All the Presidents Men… (Part 12 Charli...
Foul Fowl Fowler (Part 11 Charlie Kirk)

I think at this point I would like to weigh in.  First of all Jonathan Wells who is a creationist and proponent for the creationist intelligent design movement (so religious right wing), with its title “intelligent design”, is definitely unfair to many who believe in the principal of “intelligent design”— a deity (god/goddess/nature… if you will), who set all life as we know it in motion…, and that evolution is simply a tool— an intricate part of that ongoing hand continuing to be played out.  I do not follow any of the mainstream religious belief systems… I have my own unique belief where evidence found in our world constantly challenges my own preconceived notions, and this doesn’t ever interfere with my own “intelligent design” belief/hypothesis.  

 








 




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