[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

there may be other less authoritative, or less august sources which still support the "Darwinism means evolution" populist usage.

The problem is with the scientific popularizers and journalists, who (mis)translate what little they know of science for mass consumption.

Putting those two statements together, I guess you're just defining "Darwinism" as the popular conception of evolution, and expressing a wish that people understood it better. I couldn't agree more (especially after reading these threads). Having done some science journalism, though, I have sympathy for the people who try to explain this stuff at a high-school level. It requires simplification, and simplifying a complex concept is always going to make it "wrong" (like calling a member of the family from a long way back an "ancestor").

[grey_whiskers]

The problem I was touching on there, is that often the specialists in a field use a word from their discipline to a lay audience, and are wildly misunderstood or mischaracterized as a result.

The lay people don't know any better -- they think they're doing well to have heard *of* the concept.

It is interesting in this regard that both the celebrated Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, and Nobel-laureate in physics Dick Feynman, independently came up with the idea that "if you can't express your concept in words an elementary student can follow, you don't really understand it yourself."

Those two--and Einstein--were in my judgment the clearest writers I have ever read.

See also the article from the book in post 926 this thread.

Cheers!