Darwin vs. Newton

My wife and I took our 5 year old son to the botanical garden a few months back. It's a great place with plenty to see. In addition to the gardens, there is an old mansion where they host exhibitions, and this summer, the theme of their exhibition was Darwin and his discoveries.

One of the "laws of nature" that was highlighted was the fact that animals of completely different species will develop virtually identical shapes and sizes given similar environments. To illustrate, they used the Armadillo, the Coypu and one more animal that I can't remember the name of.

In all three cases, they had examples of animals that were almost identical in shape and size, but from completely different places and of a completely different genetic origin.

The environment had put evolutionary pressure on these animals to develop similar shapes and sizes in order to survive. The result of this is that these animals look almost identical despite their genetic differences.

What's particularly interesting about this is of course that this rule must also apply over time. Going back in time, we should see animals with similar size and shapes as we see today. However, that is not what we see.

What we find is that there are certain shapes that have completely disappeared, and where shapes are similar, the animals are vastly larger than the same shaped animals of today.

The long necked dinosaurs like the Brontosaurus, were extremely successful in their time. The large muscular tail and the long swan like neck were clearly ideal for their environment. Yet nothing like this exists today.

The Triceratops on the other hand, looks suspiciously like the Rhinoceros, but was way bigger.

Using Darwin's principle of shapes and sizes, we can only conclude that something must have been very different in the environment. Otherwise, we would have seen these very successful shapes and sizes in animals of today.

The only logical conclusion from the viewpoint of Darwin is that gravity (and inertia) must have been less back in the days of the dinosaurs.

However, this would violate a "law of nature" postulated by Newton back in the 17th century. According to Newton, gravity and inertia are constants throughout space and time.

Newton's postulate is in other words in direct conflict with Darwin's principle of shapes and sizes.

We cannot have both, and since Newton's postulate has never been proven to be right, while Darwin's principle has a long list of confirmations, we must conclude that on this particular issue Darwin is right and Newton is wrong.

Gravity (and inertia) vary through time and space. Furthermore, all evidence points towards an increase in both gravity and inertia over time.

  

Meganeura, lifesize model

(from Land of the dead blog)