Empedoclean Evolution

As some of you have guessed, this blog post is a joke. On the original blog, one of the categories this is posted under is "fiction".

Very Interesting Blog Post. Here's an excerpt:

A new study into the transfer of genetic material laterally, or across taxonomic divisions, has shown that evolution does not proceed as Darwin thought, and that in fact the present theory of evolution is entirely false. Instead, it transpires that lateral genetic transfer makes new species much more like Empedocles' "random monster" theory over 2000 years ago had predicted.


Publishing in the Journal of Evolutionary Diversions, the major journal in the field, Professor Augustus P. Rillful and his colleagues of the paragenetics laboratory at the University of Münchhausen in Germany have shown experimentally that the ability of DNA to cross species boundaries at any distance makes the origin of species a solved problem, only it is solved in a way that Darwin never envisaged. This new theory, called Empedoclean Evolution, explains why novel traits can be found in many different taxonomic groups independently. Instead of being "discovered" by natural selection and then passed on to descendants, a solution can be "found" entirely by chance and shared throughout the living world, even between single celled organisms and plants or animals.