Wrong. “Gravity” used that way is just fine. It is an expansion of the word by analogy and comparison. Your restrictive use of the common word “evolution” is an attempt to claim exclusive use of it for a particular subset of meanings, an attempt to jargonize a common word. If you want the word to be allowed only a particular portion of its former meaning then you must add qualifiers. Evolution, without qualifiers, is any gradual change or series of changes that leads from one state or situation to another.
Also I guess it depends upon if you are describing the change itself as evolution - or if you were ascribing the change to being the RESULT of evolution.
If you said that Chinese Americans are taller than Chinese BECAUSE OF evolution - you would be wrong.
If you were saying the change itself was ‘evolution’ you might make a biologist want to correct you - but you would be semantically correct.
So how did the conversation go....
“Of course there is a constant evolution, as man has changed noticeably just since our arrival on this continent. Men of the Revolutionary War and Great War of Northern Aggression were much smaller and shorter lived than are we, so we can see evolution in our own families.” Concho
“The increased size of 20th century Americans seems to be from improved nutrition and health care and not from evolution.” Lucius Cornelius Sulla (obviously speaking of evolution as the MECHANISM of change)
“Increased nutrition and health are evolution every bit as much as genetic change. Evolution just means change.” ThanhPhero
NOT in the context of biological evolution - which was what was being discussed. Why are modern men taller than those during the Civil War? The change itself may be semantically described as ‘evolution’ i.e. gradual change - but the MECHANISM of change was better nutrition and medicine.