Gene Expression

We also talk about experimentalism -- the religion of modern science, and not an obviously bad thing.

Posted by: bob koepp | July 17, 2008 5:25 PM

I make a point of drawing the word "Darwinism" out, deepening my voice and affecting a British accent, then following it with an evil laugh. Also, I refer to Creationists as "Mosesists". If they get huffy, it's "Paulites".

Posted by: pough | July 17, 2008 5:47 PM

We do speak of the Newtonian universe, meaning that Newton's Principia (which united the work of Galileo, Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler, et al) was one of the great intellectual thresholds of human history. If you believe that the Origin of Species is an equivalent threshold (and I basically do) it wouldn't be wrong to talk about a Darwinian universe.

Christianists use the word "Darwinian" in a stupid way, but we shouldn't let them ruin a name for us.

One reason the "Darwinian" question is interesting is that no one is quite sure yet what, exactly, the significance of Darwin's work was. So if we're Darwinians, we still have to figure out what a Darwinian is. But figuring out the significance of the Origin of Species actually is an important question.

My theory is that Razib is a sucker for any lady PhD with big brown eyes who talks about sex.

Posted by: John Emerson | July 17, 2008 6:07 PM

I'm finding it hard to imagine a better descriptor than 'darwinian' for what Richard Michod calls 'darwinian dynamics'.

Posted by: bob koepp | July 17, 2008 7:14 PM

The definition of Darwinism is a hot topic. Gould even starts out his Structure by discussing it, and disagreeing with the guy who is right on this - David Hull. Hull's notion is that these terms are proper names that apply to historically connected sequences, not classes of ideas that are shared by all and only Darwinians. So Huxley can be a saltationist and a Darwinian, while Lyell is a gradualist and not, simply in virtue of the social organisation of these folk.

I my view there is no essence to "Darwinian" and cognate terms, so it is better to leave it as a historical name. Michod's book, for example, deals with a subset of the things that have been called Darwinian, and predominantly with selection, which isn't even Darwin's original idea. If Darwin originated any evolutionary ideas, they are common descent and sexual selection, and I'm not sure about the latter.

Posted by: John S. Wilkins | July 17, 2008 8:36 PM

It seems to me that the term "Darwinism" was coined by people who wanted to apply it in a philosophical manner ("social Darwinism") and has been popularized recently by the Creationist/ID crowd, as subtle way of equating it with other "isms" -- Communism, Fascism, Marxism, and so forth-- which are social theories, and to some degree, political positions. Making Evolution into an "ism" turns it, in the popular mind, from what is essentially a fact to something akin to an opinion which can be argued or refuted solely through rhetoric. This allows the Creationists to circumvent their fatal shortcoming-- lack of evidence-- and easily sell the whole thing as a "teach the controversy" battle of rival philosophical positions which sounds reasonable to the disinterested and uninformed public.

So I agree we should not be allow Evolution to be turned into an "ism" -- for no other reason than that we don't want it equated in the popular imagination with other "isms".

Posted by: eugene_X | July 18, 2008 2:15 AM

I don't see that naming an exceedingly broad and deep framework after the man who first sketched it out is outside the range of things we attach scientists' names to

aside from the copernican principle none of the examples are really of the same order as "darwinism." they're narrow concepts, like haldane's rule or the sewall wright effect. and the copernican principle is a more explicitly exclusive philosophical concept that darwinism.

Posted by: razib | July 18, 2008 3:29 AM

Actually we physicists do often use "newtonian mechanics", meaning non-quantum mechanics calculations. Of course the more common term in that case is "classical mechanics", but newtonian is usually used when one is talking specifically about directly using F=ma, as opposed to Lagrangian/hamiltonian mechanics. And of course the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian are always referred to as such. On the other hand, I don't think anyone refers to anything with einstonian.

So using the name of the person who invented it isn't necceserily about a cult of personality, sometimes it's just convention. As for this particular case, it seems the biologists are pretty clearly on the side that there's better words and we can retire this one ;P

Posted by: Coriolis | July 18, 2008 1:25 PM

Also I've heard usages like, "Galilean relativity versus Einsteinian relativity."

Posted by: Dan Dare | July 18, 2008 3:06 PM

Also don't forget Neo-Darwinian Synthesis.

I suppose you could call it "the modern evolutionary synthesis", but that is begging the question that it may be one day superceded by another "even more modern evolutionary synthesis" and then we'll have to go back to calling it neodarwinism.

Or perhaps, "the evolutionary synthesis formerly known as modern".

Posted by: Daniel Dare | July 18, 2008 5:04 PM