Talk:Development of Darwin's theory

message: This whole article seems to me to suffer from very reductionist premises as to the relation between various socio-political ideas and the development of zoology. --Christofurio 15:09, September 2, 2005 (UTC)
:I think you may looking for too much in a biographical article which aims to briefly outline events including pointers to the social and political context in which Darwin developed his theory from the time of his marriage to his involvement with Wallace. It would be welcome if you could add brief points covering the development of zoology at the time, though size of article is a constraint....dave souza 20:30, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Size of article is not a constraint. We can always create more daughter articles, very easily indeed. The only constraints are noteworthiness and verifiability. -Silence 19:38, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough. It seems to be about 32 kb, which is getting towards the level the software complains about, but modest compared to many articles. Having said that, rereading Christofurio's note it looks as though the beef was about the premise of Desmond and Moore's book, that Darwin's ideas can be looked at in the context of social and political developments of the time. Well, that's the source. . ..dave souza, talk 20:19, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Note that the 32-kb "limit" is a relic and an arbitrary size suggestion, not a real software limitation. The fact that most Featured Articles are much longer than 32kb shows that longer articles have a better chance of meeting Wikipedia's comprehensiveness standards. However, my comment was a general note about the viability of allowing articles to expand freely when noteworthy new information arises, not a specific response to the requests of Christofurio; I have no opinion on whether that specific information would benefit the article. -Silence 20:45, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: :New section moved from article:
According to Darwin, embryonic organisms make inappropriate structures in their adulthood form though related to other animals. For instance, he pointed out the existence of eyes in the embryos of moles. Pelvic rudiments were also noted in embryos of snakes. Embryonic whales also have teeth. Darwin’s argument was that some adaptations depart from the type of the organism helping it survive in some kind of environment. The differences Darwin noted with between species in the same genera appear greater as the development of the embryo persists. As such, he emphasized the idea of common descent pointing to the embryonic similarities between different animal groups. The distinctions between evolutionary embryologists was between homology and analogy. According to Darwin, homologous structures are the animal organs that have similarities arising from the derived ancestral structure. A bird, for example, could have forelimbs of humans making the structures homologous. On the other hand, Darwin defined analogous structures as those with similarities arising from performance of similar functions instead of being traced to a common ancestor. For instance, the wings of a butterfly and those of a bird have different origins but similar functionality.
Homologies are to be carefully considered and must always be associated to the organization level being compared. Darwin emphasized this fact by giving the example of the wings of a bat and those of a bird. The two animals have wings that are homologous as forelimbs but not as wings. As such, the homology relates that mammals and birds share a common ancestry.
:This jumps ahead of the next section, which discusses Owen's use of homologies, and doesn't in my view add anything useful. The cited source isn't about homologies, it's about domesticated animals. . dave souza, talk 08:58, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Embryonic Homologies