The Scientific Approach to Evolution: What They Didn't Teach You in Biology Paperback – September 14, 2016

Our ancestors’ understanding of the universe was largely based on intuition until science provided a more accurate view. For example, because the stars and planets appeared to revolve around the earth every 24 hours, it was intuitively obvious to them that the world was the center of the universe. That understanding was so intuitively clear that it was unquestioned for thousands of years, except by people who were considered to be insane or demonic. It wasn’t until Copernicus quantitatively analyzed the motions of the stars and planets with their geometric paths that human understanding was changed.Similarly, for centuries people have intuitively felt that the physical universe has always existed in some physical form or other and that time has no beginning. But when Georges Lemaître began analyzing the physics of the universe mathematically, his analysis led him to the conclusion that the physical universe actually had a beginning and that it had exploded out of an originating single point. Even Einstein could not initially accept Lemaître’s conclusion because it was so counterintuitive, yet Einstein confirmed that Lemaître’s math was correct. About a half century later empirical quantitative input from Nobel laureate Arno Penzias and other scientists confirmed Lemaître’s conclusions.Our current understanding of evolution is that it is a succession of incremental mutations, each followed by selection of the fittest. This idea is intuitively satisfying. But where is the mathematical proof? What is the probability that a mutation will be beneficial in both the short term and the long term, and beyond that, will leave future generations of the organism in a position for further successful increments? What are the time delays in this process? Although each of these missing factors may be a function rather than a constant, they are nonetheless quantifiable. I have long wondered about this, but until now I haven’t seen the probability and mathematics of evolutionary theory adequately addressed.The current line of thinking goes something like this: The earth is generally estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old and became hospitable for life about a billion years later. So that gives us an upper limit of about 3.5 billion years for evolution to date. That’s about a million times longer than all of documented human history. So this should be plenty of time for almost anything to happen by natural random variation and selection. But that is still only an intuitive statement until we know the kinds of quantitative factors that I have mentioned above.I like the book THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO EVOLUTION because it opens a new quantitative dialogue in the science of evolution. Some critics may suggest that a book like this should be written from a DNA perspective by a biochemist or from a fossil evidence perspective by a paleontologist. But biochemists don’t normally deal with the kinds of factors listed above. Paleontologists play an important role in gathering empirical evidence, organizing it, and cataloging it, but this issue requires scientists who focus on building mathematical models that can be tested with the empirical data. A lot has been achieved in empiricism, but what we need now is rationalism.Perhaps it takes a fresh perspective from a biomedical engineer to get us out of the comfortable groove of intuition. The author of this book has very credible credentials, both in educational and in professional achievements.

An important take away from this book is that it is geared towards any individual with a background education of science, regardless of your philosophical or religious standing. Stadler is those individuals who wish to set the record straight and offer an approach in which all camps aren't just encouraged to take, but OBLIGED to take. It is fallacious to dismiss Stadler's approach as the ramblings of a random medicinal or engineer practitioner (he addresses similar objection in his book), the book does not provide six criteria for high confidence medicine research, the book is about six criteria for high confidence SCIENCE. This means that no matter your field of study and/or expertise, these are criteria that universally apply, whether you are a medical doctor, a geologist, a chemist, a biologist, doesn't matter. Stadler, in the midst of the origins debates, asks proponents from both sides, to consider and take into account these criteria before we begin considering evidences for or against each of the proponents theories about origins. Stadler's approach can utilized to deduce a very simple philosophical tool for students of science and even students specialized in philosophy of science, which I term Stadler's Diamond Sword. In short, for every question Q proposed under a scientific context, if said premises in Q, under evaluation by the six criteria of high confidence science, are categorized to have provided results that do not concord to results of high confidence science, then the scientists or practitioner has no obligation, pragmatically and/or philosophical, to take said results or questions at face value or warrant high confidence, and said individual is free and should cast serious doubts under said scientific context. And Rob Stadler throughout his book demonstrates the fruits of said approach when addressing both the high confidence evidence and low confidence evidence provided by evolutionists in the current debate. Of course, as a scientist, you are free to put trust in said low confidence results, but under Stadler's Diamond Sword (high confidence science approach), you have no obligation, career wise and even in practice in the context of scientific inquiry. So people who disdain scientists, regardless of their philosophical and/or religious standings, who provide scientific reasons to cast doubts on the current paradigm of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory are taking essentially an irrational approach to the issue under this approach Stadler provides. Which is why near the end of the book, Stadler provides straightforward educational tools for students of biology and from any field on how they should adopt and be trained to adopt an attitude to prioritize high confidence science over low confidence for the goal to provide society sober judgments on explaining scientific concepts which we have high confidence evidence for and which have practical implications, medicinal, engineering or even theoretical, but which have high confidence results nonetheless. Consequently, I recommend this book highly, both to students, professors and practicing scientists.

This excellent book is about more than just evolution. It is equally about science itself, and what science means. Stadler’s approach to his topic is to lay the foundation for how we can judge the accuracy or reliability of scientific results generally. In other words, what is our confidence in the science.So, while the book’s focus is evolution, the tools Stadler provides can be well applied to many other areas of science, and frees us to consider alternatives where “The Science” is really no more than conjecture or extrapolation.On the topic of Evolution, Stadler makes an important distinction between Micro-evolution and Macro-evolution. The former has been well studied, and can be taken with high confidence—following the criteria for high-confidence science as he lays it out. Macro-evolution—the origin of species from a single source—has only extremely low confidence science behind it. In fact, it is essentially conjecture.Stadler goes into the topic of bias with honesty, admitting the unavoidability of it—including his own. And it is precisely because of bias that the rigors of scientific method need to be brought to bear on any problem.This book is superbly written and thought out. I am not any kind of scientist and yet could follow the arguments and the data easily, without any sense that things were being “dumbed down”. Everything is very well explained and taken step by step.Overall this is a stimulating and thought-provoking book that will be interesting even to those who already have an opinion about evolution, regardless of what that opinion is. Anyone with an open mind will take a great deal from this book. Highly recommended.