Summary:
This essay outlines the reasons why evolution is such a slow process, and demonstrates why the massive time scales of evolutionary change are difficult for some people to comprehend.
Evolutionary Time Scales
Author: Billy Smith
EVOLUTIONARY time scales are difficult to comprehend from a human perspective; resultantly, anthropocentric conceptions of time have perverted evolutionary theory. Evolution is seen by laymen as a generational process - a process pondering the question: if the offspring of sexual organisms are always different from their parents, why does speciation only take place over many thousands of generations? Speciation - even adaptation for that matter - cannot be viewed in this microcosmic scope. For the purpose of this paper, speciation will be defined as the elimination of any "potentiality for interbreeding among members" of non-conspecific groups (Daly & Wilson, p70). Adaptation arises by the "trial and error" of novel traits - traits that tend to be neutral or deleterious - in a relatively stable environment (Harter, 1999). Since neither neutral, nor.....
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