Não será por essas e outras que a nova teoria geral da evolução, a Síntese Evolutiva Ampliada, não será selecionista?
Mas o que Einstein tem a ver com Darwin? Boa pergunta. É que nestas nauseabundas louvaminhices, beija-mão e beija-pé de Darwin que estão acontecendo ao redor do mundo, pasmem, uma publicação especializada em Einstein, oops Física, perdeu a objetividade esperada de uma publicação científica de renome, e se curvou diante de Darwin-ídolo.
Einstein, você deve estar se revirando na 12ª. dimensão diante de tanta idolatria secularista.
Os ídolos foram feitos para destruição. A la Finéias, eu pretendo blogar sobre os demais artigos-panfletos da Nature Physics.
Fui, nem sei por que, pensando em Gödel e as suas caminhadas silenciosas com Einstein no campus da Universidade Princeton...
Sorry, periferia, mas este editorial está em inglês.
+++++
Editorial
Nature Physics 5, 161 (2009)
doi:10.1038/nphys1206
What's the big idea?
Abstract
It is not obviously the business of a physics journal to mark the anniversary of a major development in biology. But the repercussions of Darwin's theory of evolution are relevant to all.
Introduction
It is 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species, and 200 years since the birth of its author, Charles Darwin. This coincidence of anniversaries is being widely celebrated, even in the pages of Nature Physics. In this issue, in amongst the regular diet of superconductors, cold gases and quantum dots, there are several articles about Darwinism — from its original incarnation, through ongoing controversy, to modern interpretations in overtly physics contexts. The story of Darwinism, we believe, has something for everyone, including physicists.
© SPL
Charles Darwin, de uma fotografia tirada em 1874.
In 1859 — after years of careful observations and development of his idea, and fearing the publication of a similar idea by rival naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace — Darwin revealed his theory of evolution through natural selection. In Books and Arts (page 169), Patrick Goymer revisits the text of On the Origin of Species, and finds it still well worth the read. Darwin's original is a model of careful exposition, accessible and scientific. Well aware of the controversy that would meet his work, Darwin was conscientious in explaining its claims and its limitations. Mark Buchanan, recognizing the role of Darwin's thinking in a wider scientific context (Thesis, page 167), salutes Darwin as a "bold scientist", one of few "leaving the comfortable confines of the accepted theoretical framework of their day and launching themselves out into territory unknown".
Moving back into familiar territory, quantum physics, and specifically the quantum measurement problem, is the focus of Wojciech Zurek's Progress article, on page 181. But the approach may be less familiar: Zurek has borrowed from Darwin an essence of natural selection and applied it to quantum states (which are the fittest and will survive their environment?). This is 'quantum Darwinism', which leads, posits Zurek, to the meaningful emergence of the classical from the quantum. And what you might call 'digital Darwinism' is the topic of Seth Lloyd's Commentary (page 164) — how "quantum mechanics has a profound effect on the naturally selected world".
It is, of course, impossible to discuss the theory of evolution without also acknowledging its sociological impact, and the controversy that continues to surround it. Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, broaches the subject in his Commentary, on page 162. He considers why it is evolution — not gravity, or plate tectonics, or any other science — that is so persistently an area of conflict for those with religious beliefs.
Indeed, the fallacy that evolution is there to be believed in or not believed in is still pervasive. But no science is a matter of belief. Gravity is fact, not something that can be disbelieved at will. And for evolution, beyond Darwin's careful studies, we have 150 years of evidence accumulated (see, for example, the '15 evolutionary gems' collected at http://www.nature.com/darwin). Evolution is falsifiable science, and although Darwin did not incorporate the (then) just-published work on genetics by Gregor Mendel, the overarching concept of evolution is unchallenged scientifically.
That is something to be understood from this year's anniversary celebrations, perhaps — that science has a unique place in human culture, and is not counter, or equal and opposite, to anything else. Science just is. After all, isn't it appreciation of that purity, that integrity, that ultimately motivates us as scientists?
It's not so long since we were marking 'World Year of Physics', the 100th anniversary of Einstein's 1905 landmark papers on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion and special relativity. Now here, again, is a celebration of a big scientific idea (and an iconic scientist). It rather begs the question, for all of science: whose is the biggest idea?
Our articles on 'Darwin and physics' are collected online at http://www.nature.com/nphys/focus.
+++++
PDF deste editorial gratuito aqui.
Os demais artigos, professores, pesquisadores e alunos de graduação e pós-graduação de universidades públicas e privadas do Brasil infelizmente não poderão acessar gratuitamente através do site da CAPES-Periódicos porque não há assinatura da publicação Nature Physics.
