>>I take it that you agree that the particular principle of Darwin’s that I mentioned above is false and transparently idiotic. Unfortunately his whole subsequent reasoning was based on it.<<
I was deliberately dodging that for a couple of reasons. One is that I’m a physicist by education who was coerced into teaching biology for one year so I don’t want to present myself as knowledgable about biology.
The other reason is that even conceding that a scientist was wrong about something 150 years ago just means he was wrong - it doesn’t effect what the evidence says to day.
>>But even if we expunge Darwin from evolution, it does not solve the problem because, you see, Ernst Mayr (a Darwin Medalist) repeats the very same principle in 2001.<<
I’ll look that up and read it.
I’ve posted twice that he got “what Darwin said” wrong.
Before I retired I taught this stuff. A hyperbolic oversimplification to say the least.