What experiments have been done to test evolution?
You are aware, are you not, that cm is now incapable of responding.......
Here's one from the 1928 book Creation by Evolution. It is a compendium of papers from the creme-de-la-creme of evolution scientists of the time. Edited by Frances Mason. The book was endorsed by Nobel Laureate Sherrington (a eugenist.) He testifies in the introduction that the authors are "eminent authorities." These are exerpts.
Can We See Evolution Occurring?, pg. 24--33, Herbert Spencer Jennings:The doctrine of organic evolution is the doctrine that animals and plants are slowly transforming, producing new kinds; that they have done this in the past and are continuing to do it now. It does not deal with something transcendental, something metaphysical; it deals with processes as real as the running of a stream or the growth of a tree. Organic evolution, then, is a physiological process, like the digestion of food; it is something that is occurring at all times, including the present. The doctrine of organic evolution means simply that if you lived long enough you would see organisms begin as simple creatures, change shape and structure as a growing plant does, become diverse, transform repeatedly, until from one or a few types many would be produced. You would get dissolving views of amoeba transforming to creatures having more definite structures and greater complexity; of Hipparion becoming a horse; of an ape-like creature becoming a man.
In a human lifetime or in many human lifetimes we could not expect these changes to be great. Geological time is enormously long and evolution is prodigiously slow. The doctrine of evolution would therefore not lead us to expect to see widely diverse creatures produced. The popular demand that we should see a cat, or the offspring of a cat, transformed into a dog, or an amoeba into a vertebrate, is not in accord with the doctrine of evolution. We cannot expect in a lifetime to see new "species" produced. All that the doctrine of evolution leads us to expect is that there should appear slight hereditary changes, so that from a single race there are produced a number of hereditarily diverse races, differing slightly.
Do we find this? Studies of this sort have been made of a number of organisms. What was found in such a study made by the present writer may be set forth as a type.
It is common to suggest that amoeba or some amoeba-like creature is the original stock from which animals descended; "from amoeba to man" is a common phrase. It is of interest to examine amoebas from this point of view. Are amoebas still transforming, producing other kinds of animals? Some of the amoebas are naked and formless, so that the detection of any slight hereditary changes would be almost impossible. Others have shells of definite form and structure, furnishing excellent opportunity for the detection of hereditary alterations. These shelled amoebas, though they closely resemble the naked ones, are designated by other names. One called Difflugia corona (Fig. 1) was selected for observation and breeding... A new generation is produced about every two to four days, so that in the course of a year or two many generations may be followed through thousands of descendants produced from one individual.
Do these thousands of descendants all remain hereditarily alike. Or do they gradually and slowly diverge, becoming hereditarily different, as the doctrine of evolution sets forth?
This was studied by allowing a single individual to reproduce for many generations, until it had produced thousands of offspring. In the early generations of such an experiment, hereditary changes cannot be detected. The offspring often differ from the parents in certain respects, but most of these differences appear not to be inherited. The next generation shows similar differences, but as the generations increase in number we find that certain diversities accumulate and become hereditary. In some descendants the spines become longer; in others they remain shorter. In some the bodies are larger; in others they are smaller. Different combinations of size of bodies and of length of spine appear. These differences are inherited. In time from the original single individual a number of diverse stocks have been formed.
What the doctrine of evolution asserts is therefore true for Difflugia. It does gradually transform and produce new races. If this is what evolution means, we have here seen evolution occurring.
Remember that there are two opposite doctrines. One holds that the constitution of organisms is permanent; that they were created as they are and do not change. The other, the doctrine of evolution, holds that the hereditary constitution slowly changes as generations pass; that a single race differentiates in the course of time into diverse ones; that from one stock many are produced. The critical observations that have been made on these minute living organisms through the passage of generations substantiates this theory; they do change and differentiate into diverse races as generations pass. The facts observed are what the doctrine of evolution demands, not what the opposed theory demands.
The evidence of evolution has been read in the rocks and the structures of plants and animals, but under the microscope Dr. Jennings is able to follow evolution not as a theory but as a thing that is actually taking place. —Frances Mason, editor.