A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION

  NATURAL GENETIC ENGINEERING The original blog post identified four groups involved in the current evolutionary debate: staunch supporters of the modern synthesis, promoters of an extended evolutionary synthesis, advocates for intelligent design, and creationists. In the view of microbiologist James A. Shapiro, most people fall into only two groups: creationists and Neo-Darwinists (supporters of the modern synthesis). He does so by lumping proponents of intelligent design with creationists and promoters of an extended evolutionary synthesis with supporters of the modern synthesis. Shapiro’s theory of natural genetic engineering, supported by a relatively large body of scientific literature, is radically different. It claims that random variation (mutation) and natural selection has only a very limited effect on evolution.   Rather, a multitude of complex processes within cells respond to the environment and guide the evolution of lifeforms. The initial blog post cited a f...