Hoyle’s Critique of Neo-Darwinian Theory and the Impact of Heavy-Tailed Distributions | Chapter 15 | New Visions in Biological Science Vol. 2

Because of mathematical and statistical flaws, physicist and astronomer Fred Hoyle has consistently denounced Neo-Darwinism as a defective theory. Even though he did not support creationists or other opponents of the idea, his comments have been utilised by them. Hoyle's critique of one part of Neo-Darwinism is examined in this paper to see if it has any merits. The conclusion is that, while Hoyle's mathematics are immaculate, and thus his critique based on them is valid, he did not go far enough with his argument, notably failing to address huge fluctuations in selected value. This could be owing to his notion that such deviations would be extremely rare, based on the assumption that they would follow a normal distribution. If a heavy-tailed distribution is used, however, such changes are possible. As a result, huge jumps in evolution's early phases may have occurred, albeit infrequently, to help it progress. The goal of this research is to assess the significance of Hoyle's findings and how they are influenced by current knowledge of heavy-tailed distributions.

Author (S) Details

Thomas B. Fowler
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering George Mason University, 4400 University Drive Fairfax, VA 22030, USA.

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