Page 68 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The Errors of the American National Academy of Sciences

appropriate. Confusion and controversy have often resulted because
different people working with different groups of organisms mean
different things by "species." 1
Professor Ali Demirsoy, a prominent proponent of Darwinism in
Turkey, expresses this fact in these terms:

The question of along which lines the species, taken as the basic unit
in the classification of animals and plants, should be distinguished
from other species, in other words the definition of "species," is one of
the hardest questions
for biology to answer.
To give a definition
which applies to all ani-
mal and plant groups
appears impossible in
the present state of our
knowledge. 2
The word species
generally brings to
mind kinds such as
dogs, horses, spiders,
dolphins, and apples.
The theory of evolu-

tion's claims regarding
the "origin of species"
bring to mind the ori-
gin of these life forms. Biologists, however, define "species" in a differ-
ent way. According to modern biology, a living species is a population
consisting of individuals which can mate and reproduce amongst
themselves. This definition separates groups of living things that we

think of as single species in daily life, into many more species. For in-
stance, some 34,000 species of spider have been described. 3

66