Understanding Evolution: a Simple and Easy Illustration

Understanding Evolution: A Simple and Easy Illustration by Adam Chandler on Saturday, June 23, 2012 at 5:54am Many people don’t understand what evolution is, and how it happens. Therefore, some of them might reject it based on not knowing what it is, or based on a wrong understanding of it. Because of that, I find it my duty to make an easy to understand illustration of evolution, as I believe I understand it well. I’ll try to make this illustration as easy as possible, and in many places, oversimplified to make it easy to understand for the reader with no background about the topic. Therefore, I won’t go into the actual details of the biological processes, and I won’t go into details about the evidence for evolution. To keep this as short and simple as possible, I’ll just give a general idea about the overwhelming and abundant evidence supporting evolution which is both a fact and a theory. This article is divided into four parts: Part I: Evolution, A Fact And A Theory Part II: The Evidence For Evolution Part III: Evolution Explained 1) What Evolution Is, And What It Is Not 2) How Evolution Happens Part IV: Final Remarks Part I: Evolution, A Fact And A Theory Let me start off with a simple clarification of what a fact is and what a theory is in science, and how evolution can be both a fact and a theory. I’m almost sure you’ve heard someone say: “Evolution is just a theory, why to believe in it? Once it’s a fact, we can look at it.” Or maybe you’ve heard someone say: “Evolution is just speculation and guess work, nothing for sure yet”. Those statements come out of a wrong understanding of what a theory is in science. In the public use of the word "theory", what comes to mind (the connotation of the word theory) is something that is not certain, that is built on speculation but not enough evidence. In science, the word "theory" is used differently. Before we examine what a theory means in science, let’s examine the word "fact" that has a stronger connotation for