Predictions "by evolutionary theory"?
pnyikos
1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
There does seem to be an unspoken definition behind the formula, and I
wonder whether the National Academy of Sciences has ever bothered to
attach a meaning to the formula--and even whether anyone in talk
origins has ever bothered to attach a meaning. As it apparently
stands, it's a very handy equivocation to use by anyone who wants to
avoid sticking his neck out too much.
Here is an interesting recent example. Back in 1918 Herman Muller did
an article with some natural infernces as to why so many mutations of
animals [he was researching the fruit fly *Drosophilia*] are lethal.
Obviously, the organs or systems affected by the mutations were
essential to the survival of the organism; and he observed that a lot
of these may have been nonessential in some remote ancestor or
another, but had become essential to survival thru other modifications
in the animals in question.
http://www.genetics.org/content/3/5/422.full.pdf
These observations were spin-doctored by Chris Ho-Stuart into the
following claim:
Muller's definition of "interlocking complexity" is exactly the same
as the definition of "irreducible complexity" -- a system of mutually
independent parts that requires all those parts to be present for the
system to work.
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/sep06.html
Since Muller was talking about was lethal (to the organism) genes, his
"systems" were quite different from the molecular machines to which
Behe attached the term "irreducible complexity", so the above spin-
doctoring is misleading/false on at least two counts.
Similar spin-doctoring, even to the point of claiming that Muller had
"predicted" and "discussed" Behe's "structures" was done by Douglas
Theobald in:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
Mark Isaak went even further, claiming that Muller had not only
"predicted" irreducible complexity but had even called it an
"expected" evolutionary phenomenon.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.html
Richard Forrest, on the other hand, recently played it safe, using the
"evoutionary theory predicted" mantra; his words are preserved in the
following exchange:
On Apr 19, 2:33 am, Ernest Major <{$t...@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message
> <490e6d64-3795-43e8-8d93-f28b41bbe...@l2g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
> pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> writes
[Forrest:]
> >> How have they established that "irreducible complexity" (which was
> >> incidentally predicted by evolutionary theory 90
> >> years ago)
>
> >I've only seen hints of it documented. Can you give me a quote that
> >clearly shows it?
>
> Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of
> Balanced Lethal Factors", by Hermann J Muller, in Genetics, Vol 3, No 5,
> Sept 1918, pp 422-499
>
> http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/3/5/422
This first one is to a site which contains a link to the actual pdf of
the Muller article. The other three are to the Talk.origins archive,
to the urls for the three spin-doctorings:
> http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/sep06.html
>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
>http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.html
> --
> alias Ernest Major
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
Burkhard
> Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
> 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
> evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
> improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
> scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
Well, depends a bit on your theory of science and a bit on semantics.
I'd say the predictions of a theory are simply its semantic
entailments, that usage of prediction is so common in theory of
science the classify if necessary as a term of art. Scientists may or
may not have identified these, in this case the prediction of the
theory also becomes a prediction of the scientist.
>
> There does seem to be an unspoken definition behind the formula, and I
> wonder whether the National Academy of Sciences has ever bothered to
> attach a meaning to the formula--and even whether anyone in talk
> origins has ever bothered to attach a meaning. As it apparently
> stands, it's a very handy equivocation to use by anyone who wants to
> avoid sticking his neck out too much.
>
> Here is an interesting recent example. Back in 1918 Herman Muller did
> an article with some natural infernces as to why so many mutations of
> animals [he was researching the fruit fly *Drosophilia*] are lethal.
> Obviously, the organs or systems affected by the mutations were
> essential to the survival of the organism; and he observed that a lot
> of these may have been nonessential in some remote ancestor or
> another, but had become essential to survival thru other modifications
> in the animals in question.http://www.genetics.org/content/3/5/422.full.pdf
>
> These observations were spin-doctored by Chris Ho-Stuart into the
> following claim:
> Muller's definition of "interlocking complexity" is exactly the same
> as the definition of "irreducible complexity" -- a system of mutually
> independent parts that requires all those parts to be present for the
> system to work.http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/sep06.html
>
> Since Muller was talking about was lethal (to the organism) genes, his
> "systems" were quite different from the molecular machines to which
> Behe attached the term "irreducible complexity", so the above spin-
> doctoring is misleading/false on at least two counts.
Where in Behe's definition does it say it only applies to molecular
machines, and not larger entities? I must have overlooked this.
here Behe's definition:
A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that
contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of
the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
(Darwin's Black Box p39)
No restriction to molecular machines mentioned there.
>
> Similar spin-doctoring, even to the point of claiming that Muller had
> "predicted" and "discussed" Behe's "structures" was done by Douglas
> Theobald in:http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
>
> Mark Isaak went even further, claiming that Muller had not only
> "predicted" irreducible complexity but had even called it an
> "expected" evolutionary phenomenon.http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.html
> University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
Christopher Denney
> Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
> 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
> evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
> improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
> scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
>
> There does seem to be an unspoken definition behind the formula, and I
> wonder whether the National Academy of Sciences has ever bothered to
> attach a meaning to the formula--and even whether anyone in talk
> origins has ever bothered to attach a meaning. As it apparently
> stands, it's a very handy equivocation to use by anyone who wants to
> avoid sticking his neck out too much.
>
> Here is an interesting recent example. Back in 1918 Herman Muller did
> an article with some natural infernces as to why so many mutations of
> animals [he was researching the fruit fly *Drosophilia*] are lethal.
> Obviously, the organs or systems affected by the mutations were
> essential to the survival of the organism; and he observed that a lot
> of these may have been nonessential in some remote ancestor or
> another, but had become essential to survival thru other modifications
>
> These observations were spin-doctored by Chris Ho-Stuart into the
> following claim:
> Muller's definition of "interlocking complexity" is exactly the same
> as the definition of "irreducible complexity" -- a system of mutually
> independent parts that requires all those parts to be present for the
>
> Since Muller was talking about was lethal (to the organism) genes, his
> "systems" were quite different from the molecular machines to which
> Behe attached the term "irreducible complexity", so the above spin-
> doctoring is misleading/false on at least two counts.
>
> Similar spin-doctoring, even to the point of claiming that Muller had
> "predicted" and "discussed" Behe's "structures" was done by Douglas
> Theobald in:http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
>
> Mark Isaak went even further, claiming that Muller had not only
> "predicted" irreducible complexity but had even called it an
>
> The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
> representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
Hmm, maybe that's the problem; people spend so much time trying to
find fault in the theory they don't actually pay attention to the
basic predictions.
pnyikos
wrote:
> On May 2, 12:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > Here is an interesting recent example. Back in 1918 Herman Muller did
> > an article with some natural infernces as to why so many mutations of
> > animals [he was researching the fruit fly *Drosophilia*] are lethal.
> > Obviously, the organs or systems affected by the mutations were
> > essential to the survival of the organism; and he observed that a lot
> > of these may have been nonessential in some remote ancestor or
> > another, but had become essential to survival thru other modifications
> > in the animals in question.
> >http://www.genetics.org/content/3/5/422.full.pdf
According to the websites below, the relevant pages are 463-464.
And the relevant passage there seems to be the following:
___________________________________
In the first place, it is likely that lethals are really among the
commonest forms of mutants, but they would be discovered much more
readily if they were dominant in regard to some visible character than
if they were completely recessive, and this would cause the proportion
of lethals among the dominant mutant factors to appear to be
excessively high, when compared with the proportion among the
recessives.
Most present-day animals are the result of a long process of
evolution, in which at least thousands of mutations must have taken
place. Each new mutant in turn must have derived its survival value
from the effect which it produced upon the "reaction system" that had
been brought into being by the many previously formed factors in
cooperation; thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose
effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very
numerous different elementary parts or factors, and many of the
characters and factors which, when new, were originally merely an
asset finally became necessary because other necessary characters and
factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the
former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of, or
even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to
disturb fatally the whole machinery;
for this reason we should expect very many, if not most, mutations to
result in lethal factors, and of the rest, the majority should be
"semi-lethal" or at least disadvantageous in the struggle for life,
and likely to set wrong any delicately balanced system, such as the
reproductive system.
=======================
It isn't too clear to me whether "a complicated machine" refers to the
whole animal or some system such as the reproductive system. The
clause "disturb fatally the whole machinery" seems to suggest the
latter.
> > These observations were spin-doctored by Chris Ho-Stuart into the
> > following claim:
> > "Muller's definition of "interlocking complexity" is exactly the same
> > as the definition of "irreducible complexity" -- a system of mutually
> > independent parts that requires all those parts to be present for the
> > system to work."
> > http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/sep06.html
Stuart's definition of irreducible complexity is correct. The trouble
is that Muller never hints that ALL the parts need to be present, only
that there are could be many parts like that, and often are. Hence
the use of "exactly" by Stuart is especially improper.
> > Since Muller was talking about was lethal (to the organism) genes, his
> > "systems" were quite different from the molecular machines to which
> > Behe attached the term "irreducible complexity", so the above spin-
> > doctoring is misleading/false on at least two counts.
>
> > Similar spin-doctoring, even to the point of claiming that Muller had
> > "predicted" and "discussed" Behe's "structures" was done by Douglas
> > Theobald in:
> >http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
>
> > Mark Isaak went even further, claiming that Muller had not only
> > "predicted" irreducible complexity but had even called it an
> > "expected" evolutionary phenomenon.
> >http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.html
>
> > Richard Forrest, on the other hand, recently played it safe, using the
> > "evoutionary theory predicted" mantra; his words are preserved in the
> > following exchange:
>
> > On Apr 19, 2:33 am, Ernest Major <{$t...@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > > In message
> > > <490e6d64-3795-43e8-8d93-f28b41bbe...@l2g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
> > > pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> writes
>
> > [Forrest:]
>
> > > >> How have they established that "irreducible complexity" (which was
> > > >> incidentally predicted by evolutionary theory 90
> > > >> years ago)
[...]
> Hmm, maybe that's the problem; people spend so much time trying to
> find fault in the theory they don't actually pay attention to the
> basic predictions.
Does "people" refer to creationists? If not, what are the basic
predictions to which you refer?
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On May 2, 6:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
> > 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
> > evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
> > improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
> > scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
>
> Well, depends a bit on your theory of science and a bit on semantics.
> I'd say the predictions of a theory are simply its semantic
> entailments,
What do you mean by that? If they were as abundant as this expression
seems to suggest, then scientists would routinely be making them all
the time. And yet the evolution of the naked mole rats of Africa was
the ONLY example of a "prediction of evolutionary theory" that I was
presented with in 1995 that an actual scientist went out on a limb to
make -- or seemed to.
Unfortunately, some people soon posted that the actual organism did
not fit the prediction in this case.
> that usage of prediction is so common in theory of
> science the classify if necessary as a term of art.
Um, could you rewrite that more clearly?
> Scientists may or
> may not have identified these, in this case the prediction of the
> theory also becomes a prediction of the scientist.
> > There does seem to be an unspoken definition behind the formula, and I
> > wonder whether the National Academy of Sciences has ever bothered to
> > attach a meaning to the formula--and even whether anyone in talk
> > origins has ever bothered to attach a meaning.
Would you like to try to formulate a clearly understandable
definition?
> > As it apparently
> > stands, it's a very handy equivocation to use by anyone who wants to
> > avoid sticking his neck out too much.
>
> > Here is an interesting recent example. Back in 1918 Herman Muller did
> > an article with some natural infernces as to why so many mutations of
> > animals [he was researching the fruit fly *Drosophilia*] are lethal.
> > Obviously, the organs or systems affected by the mutations were
> > essential to the survival of the organism; and he observed that a lot
> > of these may have been nonessential in some remote ancestor or
> > another, but had become essential to survival thru other modifications
> > in the animals in question.
> >http://www.genetics.org/content/3/5/422.full.pdf
I've posted the whole passage that seemed relevant in reply to
Christopher Denney a few minutes ago. I kept in the bibliographical
reference at the end of this post.
> > These observations were spin-doctored by Chris Ho-Stuart into the
> > following claim:
> > Muller's definition of "interlocking complexity" is exactly the same
> > as the definition of "irreducible complexity" -- a system of mutually
> > independent parts that requires all those parts to be present for the
> > system to work.
> > http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/sep06.html
>
> > Since Muller was talking about was lethal (to the organism) genes, his
> > "systems" were quite different from the molecular machines to which
> > Behe attached the term "irreducible complexity", so the above spin-
> > doctoring is misleading/false on at least two counts.
>
> Where in Behe's definition does it say it only applies to molecular
> machines, and not larger entities? I must have overlooked this.
Behe never applies the term for anything as big as a whole organism,
or even a large part like the reproductive system mentioned by
Muller. It is possible that he did not explicitly rule out the
possibility of whole organisms being irreducibly complex, but the
wording of the definition you give below suggests to me that they
don't fit the criterion.
> here Behe's definition:
> A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that
> contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of
> the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
> (Darwin's Black Box p39)
Note how this uses "the basic function," and no biological organism
has a single function. [I don't count viruses or viroids as
biological organisms, though one could call them "rogue pieces of
organisms."}
> No restriction to molecular machines mentioned there.
It seems to be implicit, what with the term "interacting parts".
That's why, for instance, the Krebs cycle is not one of his systems:
not all its parts interact with each other; instead they take turns,
so to speak, acting on molecules.
It's also why Theobald seems to be wrong, in his website, to claim
that "An irreducibly complex system has evolved in bacteria within the
past 70 years." He never hints that the parts interact, but ooly
explains that they act separately on a poison to render it
digestible. See next reference:
> > Similar spin-doctoring, even to the point of claiming that Muller had
> > "predicted" and "discussed" Behe's "structures" was done by Douglas
> > Theobald in:
> >http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
[...]
> > > Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of
> > > Balanced Lethal Factors", by Hermann J Muller, in Genetics, Vol 3, No 5,
> > > Sept 1918, pp 422-499
Peter Nyikos
chris thompson
> On May 2, 2:28 pm, Burkhard <b.scha...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > On May 2, 6:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
snip
>
> Behe never applies the term for anything as big as a whole organism,
> or even a large part like the reproductive system mentioned by
> Muller. It is possible that he did not explicitly rule out the
> possibility of whole organisms being irreducibly complex, but the
> wording of the definition you give below suggests to me that they
> don't fit the criterion.
>
> > here Behe's definition:
> > A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that
> > contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of
> > the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
> > (Darwin's Black Box p39)
>
> Note how this uses "the basic function," and no biological organism
> has a single function. [I don't count viruses or viroids as
> biological organisms, though one could call them "rogue pieces of
> organisms."}
>
(another snip)
I just want to address one point.
No one is talking about organisms, not even Behe. Behe is talking
about systems withing organisms. His favorite example seemed to be
blood clotting in mammals, and it was shown to be seriously flawed.
But if you want to discuss whole organisms...
Is an organism "irreducibly complex"? I'd say not. As I posted in
another thread, I know people missing lungs, spleens, kidneys,
intestines, fingers, toes, arms, legs, eyes, ears, and on...and
on...and on. Some people get by on half a brain (I don't know anyone
personally who's doing that). Let's not talk about intervertebral
discs or appendixes.
Organisms have a lot of things they can do without, but which improve
their reproductive success when present.
Chris
Darwin123
> Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
> 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
> evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
> improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
> scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
>
> There does seem to be an unspoken definition behind the formula, and I
> wonder whether the National Academy of Sciences has ever bothered to
> attach a meaning to the formula--and even whether anyone in talk
> origins has ever bothered to attach a meaning. As it apparently
> stands, it's a very handy equivocation to use by anyone who wants to
> avoid sticking his neck out too much.
>
> Here is an interesting recent example. Back in 1918 Herman Muller did
> an article with some natural infernces as to why so many mutations of
> animals [he was researching the fruit fly *Drosophilia*] are lethal.
> Obviously, the organs or systems affected by the mutations were
> essential to the survival of the organism; and he observed that a lot
> of these may have been nonessential in some remote ancestor or
> another, but had become essential to survival thru other modifications
> in the animals in question.http://www.genetics.org/content/3/5/422.full.pdf
by a deletion of a codon. The high energy particle from the radiation
knocks the atom out of the DNA molecule. When the codon is deleted,
the gene is effectively destroyed.
This type of mutation is called a knock-out mutation. The effect
of the mutation tends to be very large. Not always, because there is
some redundancy in the genome. However, the knock-out mutation is the
easiest to study because the effects are so large.
Because the effect is large, a knock out mutation is not likely
to contribute to evolution. Furthermore, the deletion of gene material
lessens the potential variability of future mutations.
The knock-out mutation is not the only type of mutation. Since
Morgan's time, other types of mutations have been discovered. Genes
can be duplicated within the genome. Chromosomes can be fused or split
without changing the genes themselves. Genes can be shifted in
position on the genome, which is sometimes called an epigenetic
mutation. Most of these effects take place during meiosis, and have
nothing to do with radiation. The impact of these other type of
mutations is far less than the typical knock-out mutation.
Mutations that have been studied quite a bit since Morganson's
day is the chromosome transposition and chromosme fusion. These create
very small changes in the phenotype. Chromosome fusion can change the
number of chromosomes in the cell with only a slight decrease in
fertility. This slight decrease in fertility creates a very slight
hybridization barrier. While not lethal to the offspring, it may help
separate species. Our own genome has been proven to contain at least
one chromosome fusion.
Another mutation that has been studied is gene duplication. The
duplication of a single gene on a chromosome does not have to destroy
the organism. However, it does cause changes that can be important.
One chromosome that shows an excess of gene duplication is the Y
chromosome in mammals. A Y chromosome in a mammal makes the mammal
into a male. The Y chromosome shows a large region which is entirely
useless. It contains only duplicates of a certain type of gene which
doesn't code for anything. The manner that gender is determined in
mammals seems to be a result of gene duplication randomly occurring in
the Y chromosome.
Another type of mutation that has small effects is chromosome
doubling. This has been studied mostly in plants. The effect of
chromosome doubling is small because the ratio between gene types is
unchanged.
There are certain chemicals that stimulate chromosome doubling in
plants. These chemicals have been used to create new varieties of
plants. Some of the evidence is that there have been a large number of
plants that have evolved naturally starting with a chromosome doubling
event. This type of mutation has been much rarer in mammal. However,
it seems to occur occasionally.
Hybridization of chromosome doubled plant with the initial
undoubled plant often causes a chromosome tripled plant.
I recently attended a seminar on ornamental cherry trees. Let me
share some of what I learned.
Ornamental cherry trees have been produced that are chromosome
doubled and chromosome tripled from the initial stock. Chromosome
doubled cherry trees can easily cross with others of their type.
Chromosome doubled cherry trees can cross with other chromosome
doubled cherry trees. The chromosome tripled varieties have difficulty
propagating by seed. They are basically sterile. However, they can
reproduce asexually like all cherry trees.
The phenotypic effect on the cherry trees is small. This is typical
of any mutation that can contribute to evolution. Macroevolution
occurs in a series of very small phenotypic mutations. The question
comes up as to what sort of total change would be big enough to
convince you that "macroevolution" was possible. Use ornamental
cherries as an example.
Research is continuing on all the various ways an organism can
mutate. The initial research by Morgan is way out of date. Mutations
can and do occur which cause small, nonlethal changes in the organism.
The claim that all mutations are lethal has been disproved for some
time. The hypothesis gets ground down a little more every few days.
The theory of evolution claims that small phenotypic changes can
accumulate to cause a total change that is very big. No one has been
able to disprove that hypothesis.
pnyikos
> On May 2, 5:44 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On May 2, 2:28 pm, Burkhard <b.scha...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > > On May 2, 6:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > Behe never applies the term for anything as big as a whole organism,
> > or even a large part like the reproductive system mentioned by
> > Muller. It is possible that he did not explicitly rule out the
> > possibility of whole organisms being irreducibly complex, but the
> > wording of the definition you give below suggests to me that they
> > don't fit the criterion.
>
> > > here Behe's definition:
> > > A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that
> > > contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of
> > > the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
> > > (Darwin's Black Box p39)
>
> > Note how this uses "the basic function," and no biological organism
> > has a single function. [I don't count viruses or viroids as
> > biological organisms, though one could call them "rogue pieces of
> > organisms."}
>
> (another snip)
>
> I just want to address one point.
>
> No one is talking about organisms, not even Behe. Behe is talking
> about systems withing organisms. His favorite example seemed to be
> blood clotting in mammals,
One of them: the others were the bacterial flagellum, the eukaryotic
cilium, the immune reaction system, and the protein transport system.
> and it was shown to be seriously flawed.
WHERE? The irreducible complexity was tested in three ways, by
knocking out one gene in mice, another gene, and then the two in
combination. All three kinds of mice had a terrible time of it, wound-
wise, so the irreducible complexity came out of this test in flying
colors.
There was a hilarious case of the blind leading the blind on all
this: Doollittle completely misread the article that reported on this
experiment and thought the mice with two genes knocked out were "doing
fine". Numerous people, including Michael Ruse and Neil Greespan, and
lots of people here in talk.origins, uncritically accepted Doolittle's
word for this, without ever bothering to read the original paper.
Michael Behe got lots of mileage out of this in his third Dover
testimony:
http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day10PM.pdf
[Doolittle misreading p15, Ruse uncritically repeating Doolittle p20,
Greenspan p 22 ditto]
> But if you want to discuss whole organisms...
Read what I wrote after posting the whole long excerpt from Muller's
paper, in response to Denney. IMHO, Muller was referring to whole
organisms, complicated animals, and of course those are NOT
irreducibly complex, as you point out next.
> Is an organism "irreducibly complex"? I'd say not. As I posted in
> another thread, I know people missing lungs, spleens, kidneys,
> intestines, fingers, toes, arms, legs, eyes, ears, and on...and
> on...and on.
But we also have lots of vital organs and processes, as embryologists
dealing with trisomies know: there are only three compatible with more
than a few minutes outside the womb and of those, only Down Syndrome
allows growth to maturity.
Peter Nyikos
Burkhard
> On May 2, 2:28 pm, Burkhard <b.scha...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > On May 2, 6:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
> > > 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
> > > evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
> > > improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
> > > scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
>
> > Well, depends a bit on your theory of science and a bit on semantics.
> > I'd say the predictions of a theory are simply its semantic
> > entailments,
>
> What do you mean by that?
take a suitably defined theory T, then the predictions of the theory X
are simply T |= X
> If they were as abundant as this expression
> seems to suggest, then scientists would routinely be making them all
> the time.
Only if they were "logically omniscient" which as humans they aren't.
> And yet the evolution of the naked mole rats of Africa was
> the ONLY example of a "prediction of evolutionary theory" that I was
> presented with in 1995 that an actual scientist went out on a limb to
> make -- or seemed to.
>
Because that was the only intersting one, I guess. interesting
predictions are a subset of the predictions.
> Unfortunately, some people soon posted that the actual organism did
> not fit the prediction in this case.
>
> > that usage of prediction is so common in theory of
> > science the classify if necessary as a term of art.
>
> Um, could you rewrite that more clearly?
Theory of science uses the term "prediction of the theory"
consistently with a specific meaning. This, like all technical terms,
can differ subtly from the everyday usage. Reasons for that are
increased precision, and/or making relevant distinctions. Here, a
relevant distinction is between predictions scientist make at a
specific point in time( a factual question that can be studied by
historians of science) vs the predictions the theory makes, which is a
timeless, logical relation.
>
> > Scientists may or
> > may not have identified these, in this case the prediction of the
> > theory also becomes a prediction of the scientist.
> > > There does seem to be an unspoken definition behind the formula, and I
> > > wonder whether the National Academy of Sciences has ever bothered to
> > > attach a meaning to the formula--and even whether anyone in talk
> > > origins has ever bothered to attach a meaning.
>
> Would you like to try to formulate a clearly understandable
> definition?
I thought I just did. The predictions of a theory are the set of
sentences that are semantically entailed by it.
well, he applies it to mousetraps if I recall correctly
> or even a large part like the reproductive system mentioned by
> Muller.
Well, to use the vocabulary of my favourite theory if science: the
intended models are only a subset of the potential models of a
theory.
Or in layman's terms: Newton's theory does not just apply to apples,
even if this had been his main or even only example.
and didn't he use the immune system?
>It is possible that he did not explicitly rule out the
> possibility of whole organisms being irreducibly complex, but the
> wording of the definition you give below suggests to me that they
> don't fit the criterion.
>
> > here Behe's definition:
> > A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that
> > contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of
> > the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
> > (Darwin's Black Box p39)
>
> Note how this uses "the basic function," and no biological organism
> has a single function.
I'd draw the opposite conclusion. That he modifies "function" by
"basic" allows precisely for more than one function, the "basic" one
being a mere subset
> [I don't count viruses or viroids as
> biological organisms, though one could call them "rogue pieces of
> organisms."}
>
> > No restriction to molecular machines mentioned there.
>
> It seems to be implicit, what with the term "interacting parts".
Can't see how this follows. The bones of my arm are "interacting
parts", I'd say.
John Harshman
Why does it matter? In either case what would seem to be defined is an
IC system. And that was the point.
>>> These observations were spin-doctored by Chris Ho-Stuart into the
>>> following claim:
>>> "Muller's definition of "interlocking complexity" is exactly the same
>>> as the definition of "irreducible complexity" -- a system of mutually
>>> independent parts that requires all those parts to be present for the
>>> system to work."
>>> http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/sep06.html
>
> Stuart's definition of irreducible complexity is correct. The trouble
> is that Muller never hints that ALL the parts need to be present, only
> that there are could be many parts like that, and often are. Hence
> the use of "exactly" by Stuart is especially improper.
That doesn't seem like a problem to me. He may not say explicitly that
there are no removable parts, but he does imply it, "interlocking" being
the key word. And at any rate, what he presents here can be turned into
an IC system by removing a few parts first. The major point is that
Muller presents a way in which an IC system can evolve through many
slight changes, each advantageous. And that's what Behe claims can't
happen. Behe's dilemma was solved many decades before he formulated it.
Might I add that "spin-doctoring" seems once more to impute dishonesty
to the folks you mention. Did you intend that? I don't think they're
dishonest at all. And I also think they're right.
John Harshman
> On May 2, 10:44 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> On May 2, 2:28 pm, Burkhard <b.scha...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> On May 2, 6:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>>> Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
>>>> 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
>>>> evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
>>>> improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
>>>> scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
>>> Well, depends a bit on your theory of science and a bit on semantics.
>>> I'd say the predictions of a theory are simply its semantic
>>> entailments,
>> What do you mean by that?
>
> take a suitably defined theory T, then the predictions of the theory X
> are simply T |= X
I don't know what that means, though I'm pretty sure I know what
"semantic entailments" means. What does "|=" mean?
John S. Wilkins
> Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
> 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
> evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
> improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
> scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
Likewise, no physical, chemical, astronomical, biological or
mathematical theories make predictions. Only their practitioners do. If
a computer is used to simulate a space mission, no predictions are made
until a space scientist repeats them out loud.
--
John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney
http://evolvingthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
Burkhard
Closest I could get to the common symbol for the semantic entailment
relation? With other words there is no interpretation I that makes T
true and x false
John Harshman
Scientific predictions are seldom of the "if and only if" variety. They
have conceptual error bars attached. I'm supposing you know that, but
let's not forget.
I would prefer to consider the predictions of T to be that which we
should probably see if T is true and probably not see if alternative
theories U, V, and W are true. There are also theories M, Pi, and
Fishguts that we haven't yet thought of and that may make some of the
same predictions as T. At which point, we will need some new predictions
to distinguish among remaining active theories.
For Peter, Tiktaalik is often mentioned as a prediction of evolutionary
theory. I would also consider Microraptor gui, which looks almost
exactly like the "Proavis" hypothesized early in the last century. And I
will gladly make a great many predictions: the genomes of galliforms we
haven't looked at yet will strongly resemble those of galliforms we have
looked at, and will fall within a galliform clade in all phylogenetic
analyses. Anseriforms we haven't looked at yet, likewise. And the two
orders will be each others' sister groups no matter which avian genomes
you pick to compare them with. Of course those are among the boring
predictions. But they still would seem to contradict most alternative
theories, and therefore count as predictions.
John S. Wilkins
Not all applications of formal logic are scientific, no. All scientific
inferences must involve something that can be represented as a formal
inference, however. What Burkhard was doing was expressing a semantic
fact about scientific theories.
>
> I would prefer to consider the predictions of T to be that which we
> should probably see if T is true and probably not see if alternative
> theories U, V, and W are true. There are also theories M, Pi, and
> Fishguts that we haven't yet thought of and that may make some of the
> same predictions as T. At which point, we will need some new predictions
> to distinguish among remaining active theories.
This is quite consistent with T |= X, even if X is a probability,
likelihood or a semantic cluster.
>
> For Peter, Tiktaalik is often mentioned as a prediction of evolutionary
> theory. I would also consider Microraptor gui, which looks almost
> exactly like the "Proavis" hypothesized early in the last century. And I
> will gladly make a great many predictions: the genomes of galliforms we
> haven't looked at yet will strongly resemble those of galliforms we have
> looked at, and will fall within a galliform clade in all phylogenetic
> analyses. Anseriforms we haven't looked at yet, likewise. And the two
> orders will be each others' sister groups no matter which avian genomes
> you pick to compare them with. Of course those are among the boring
> predictions. But they still would seem to contradict most alternative
> theories, and therefore count as predictions.
John Harshman
I don't think so. A scientific theory is generally a probabilistic
claim, not "if X then Y" but "if X then some probability of Y". My point
was that science doesn't deal in certainty.
>> I would prefer to consider the predictions of T to be that which we
>> should probably see if T is true and probably not see if alternative
>> theories U, V, and W are true. There are also theories M, Pi, and
>> Fishguts that we haven't yet thought of and that may make some of the
>> same predictions as T. At which point, we will need some new predictions
>> to distinguish among remaining active theories.
>
> This is quite consistent with T |= X, even if X is a probability,
> likelihood or a semantic cluster.
Semantic cluster?
jillery
I'm pretty sure I pointed out this link to you before:
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/Clotting.html
Perhaps you ignored it because Miller shows a higher regard for
Doolittle than you do. OTOH I have a higher regard for Miller's
opinion on these things than I do on your opinion. So you're going to
have to a lot more to discredit Doolittle than the handwaving and
bluster you do here.
> The irreducible complexity was tested in three ways, by
> knocking out one gene in mice, another gene, and then the two in
> combination. All three kinds of mice had a terrible time of it, wound-
> wise, so the irreducible complexity came out of this test in flying
> colors.
That's a silly test. It doesn't test for IC, nevermind the larger
question of whether or not the clotting cascade is evolvable. This
time, please read the cite and understand what Miller actually wrote.
His argument doesn't rely on Doolitltle's misread of Bugge, but
instead on work Doolittle did himself.
> There was a hilarious case of the blind leading the blind on all
> this: Doollittle completely misread the article that reported on this
> experiment and thought the mice with two genes knocked out were "doing
> fine". Numerous people, including Michael Ruse and Neil Greespan, and
> lots of people here in talk.origins, uncritically accepted Doolittle's
> word for this, without ever bothering to read the original paper.
> Michael Behe got lots of mileage out of this in his third Dover
> testimony:
>
> http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day10PM.pdf
> [Doolittle misreading p15, Ruse uncritically repeating Doolittle p20,
> Greenspan p 22 ditto]
In part because you make such a big deal so often about Doolittle's
misread, I looked at your cite to see what's Behe says to make you say
he got so much mileage from it. The parts you identify are continuing
direct testimony from Dr. Behe. On page 15, Behe discusses the
meaning of "theory" as used in scientific journals. On page 20, Behe
discusses the opinions of Ernst Mayr, specifically about common
descent and natural selection. On page 22, Behe discusses a letter he
wrote defending ID to a journal of the NCSE. No mention on any of
these pages of Doolittle or the clotting cascade.
OK then. Perhaps your page numbers are off, and I could find what
you're referring to by searching for the persons you mention. After
all, you say it's there, so it must be there, right? Nowhere in the
entire transcript is Doolittle specified. Nor is Greenspan. There is
one reference to Ruse on page 47, but Behe is talking about the book
"Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA" as an example of the scientific
legitimacy of ID generally.
OK then. So I looked for any mention at all of the blood clotting
cascade. There are 4 references. on pages 32, 104, and two on page
121. But nothing about Doolittle. In fact, the references on page
121 says they're ending the day's session and will pick it up the next
morning.
Ok then. Perhaps your entire citation is off, and I could find what
you're referring to by searching on a different day. So I repeated my
whole search for the morning session on Day 11. Aha! In fact, words
roughly fitting your description appear on pages 15, 20, and 22. So,
on what basis did Behe get so much mileage? That Doolittle, in an
informal essay written for the Boston Review, made a trivial
mistake. As I have shown above, even you make mistakes, as we are
all human. To dismiss Doolittle's life work, as well as the opinions
of Greenspand and Muse based on Doolittle's life work, because of this
trivial faux-pas is quite a stretch, even for you. So what mileage
did Behe get out of it? His point certainly didn't impact the
judge's decision.
If I remove the flim-flam from your obtuse criticism, I can get down
to the technical merits of Behe's argument, and by proxy yours. ISTM
the meat of Behe's point is; are IC systems evolvable? Even if the
clotting cascade is shown to be IC, and I don't accept that it has,
then Behe still has to demonstrate that IC systems can't be evolved.
Behe's argument fails to make that case, because evolution doesn't
work by breaking systems down, but by building new systems up by re-
purposing pre-existing parts.
> > But if you want to discuss whole organisms...
>
> Read what I wrote after posting the whole long excerpt from Muller's
> paper, in response to Denney. IMHO, Muller was referring to whole
> organisms, complicated animals, and of course those are NOT
> irreducibly complex, as you point out next.
>
> > Is an organism "irreducibly complex"? I'd say not. As I posted in
> > another thread, I know people missing lungs, spleens, kidneys,
> > intestines, fingers, toes, arms, legs, eyes, ears, and on...and
> > on...and on.
>
> But we also have lots of vital organs and processes, as embryologists
> dealing with trisomies know: there are only three compatible with more
> than a few minutes outside the womb and of those, only Down Syndrome
> allows growth to maturity.
>
> Peter Nyikos- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
John S. Wilkins
See below...
>
> >> I would prefer to consider the predictions of T to be that which we
> >> should probably see if T is true and probably not see if alternative
> >> theories U, V, and W are true. There are also theories M, Pi, and
> >> Fishguts that we haven't yet thought of and that may make some of the
> >> same predictions as T. At which point, we will need some new predictions
> >> to distinguish among remaining active theories.
> >
> > This is quite consistent with T |= X, even if X is a probability,
> > likelihood or a semantic cluster.
>
> Semantic cluster?
If the implcations of T in a semantic space are not exact (they do not
predict a single possible state) they may (indeed must at a minimum)
specify some cluster of locations in that space. A theory T that allowed
any location to be occupied in the semantic posibility space would be
worse than useless.
...
John Harshman
If that's what is intended, I withdraw my objection.
>>>> I would prefer to consider the predictions of T to be that which we
>>>> should probably see if T is true and probably not see if alternative
>>>> theories U, V, and W are true. There are also theories M, Pi, and
>>>> Fishguts that we haven't yet thought of and that may make some of the
>>>> same predictions as T. At which point, we will need some new predictions
>>>> to distinguish among remaining active theories.
>>> This is quite consistent with T |= X, even if X is a probability,
>>> likelihood or a semantic cluster.
>> Semantic cluster?
>
> If the implcations of T in a semantic space are not exact (they do not
> predict a single possible state) they may (indeed must at a minimum)
> specify some cluster of locations in that space. A theory T that allowed
> any location to be occupied in the semantic posibility space would be
> worse than useless.
>
> ...
Semantic possibility space? Is the construction of buzzphrases a major
industry in philosophy of science?
Nic
this, but mine is. I can understand the use of the so-called
syntactic turnstile, but I don't know what semantic turnstile might
mean. Is it just the stepping back to a metalanguage?
Burkhard
But "certainty" is not a consequence of my formulation. You simply
integrate the probabilistic qualifier into the formulation of the
conclusion.
The calculus of probabilities is after all itself a mathematical
theory with logically valid inferences.
Burkhard
Sure, and nothing in my formulation precludes that. They are part of
the way in which you (typically) express the X.
>
> I would prefer to consider the predictions of T to be that which we
> should probably see if T is true and probably not see if alternative
> theories U, V, and W are true.
I'd say these are the interesting subclass of all the predictions of
the theory. A matter of convenience rather than substance.
>There are also theories M, Pi, and
> Fishguts that we haven't yet thought of and that may make some of the
> same predictions as T.
see, that is why I start with the broader definition. You yourself
talk here about predictions that don't do the job of deciding between
theories - but you still call them predictions.
so it seems to me to be easier to define "prediction of a theory X"
independently of what other theories say - which leaves you with lots
of trivial and uninteresting predictions, but no harm done. You then
can distinguish, as you just did, the interesting (for a given
problem) from the uninteresting predictions.
One consequence of my formulation that might be seen as counter-
intuitive is of course that every empirical theory "predicts" all
mathematical truths. I'd say no harm done, for the above reasons, but
if you are unhappy about this you can chose a more restricted
entailment relation, say from relevance logics
Ernest Major
<ad66c0cc-1382-4326...@26g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> writes
It was my impression that the generally understanding of irreducible
complexity was not that the system worked less well when a part was
removed, but that the system didn't work at all.
--
alias Ernest Major
richardal...@gmail.com
> 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
> evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
> improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
> scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
>
> There does seem to be an unspoken definition behind the formula, and I
> wonder whether the National Academy of Sciences has ever bothered to
> attach a meaning to the formula--and even whether anyone in talk
> origins has ever bothered to attach a meaning. As it apparently
> stands, it's a very handy equivocation to use by anyone who wants to
> avoid sticking his neck out too much.
>
> Here is an interesting recent example. Back in 1918 Herman Muller did
> an article with some natural infernces as to why so many mutations of
> animals [he was researching the fruit fly *Drosophilia*] are lethal.
> Obviously, the organs or systems affected by the mutations were
> essential to the survival of the organism; and he observed that a lot
> of these may have been nonessential in some remote ancestor or
> another, but had become essential to survival thru other modifications
>
> These observations were spin-doctored by Chris Ho-Stuart into the
> following claim:
> Muller's definition of "interlocking complexity" is exactly the same
> as the definition of "irreducible complexity" -- a system of mutually
> independent parts that requires all those parts to be present for the
>
> Since Muller was talking about was lethal (to the organism) genes, his
> "systems" were quite different from the molecular machines to which
> Behe attached the term "irreducible complexity", so the above spin-
> doctoring is misleading/false on at least two counts.
>
> Similar spin-doctoring, even to the point of claiming that Muller had
> "predicted" and "discussed" Behe's "structures" was done by Douglas
> Theobald in:http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
>
> Mark Isaak went even further, claiming that Muller had not only
> "predicted" irreducible complexity but had even called it an
>
> Richard Forrest, on the other hand, recently played it safe, using the
> "evoutionary theory predicted" mantra; his words are preserved in the
> following exchange:
My word, you *do* like using emotive and loaded terms. "Spin-
doctored" , "mantra".
The simple fact is that Muller predicted the existence of interlocking
complexity, which is defined in exactly the same way as Behe's
"irreducible complexity". I gave a link to the paper in which he
defined it.
No "mantra", no "spin-doctoring". You asked for a citation. I gave it.
Now you are ignoring it.
Figures.
Just to clarify: here is the relevant section of Muller's paper:
"Most present-day animals are the result of a long process of
evolution, in which at least thousands of mutations must have taken
place. Each new mutant in turn must have derived its survival value
from the effect which it produced upon the “reaction system” that had
been brought into being by the many previously formed factors in
cooperation; thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose
effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very
numerous different elementary parts or factors, and many of the
characters and factors which, when new , were originally merely an
asset finally became necessary because other necessary characters and
factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the
former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of , or
even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to
disturb fatally the whole machinery; for this reason we should expect
very many, if not most, mutations to result in lethal factors, and of
the rest, the majority should be “semi-lethal” or at least
disadvantageous in the struggle for life, and likely to set wrong any
delicately balanced system, such as the reproductive system."
Perhaps you can explain how Muller's description of the interlocking
systems which he argues are an inevitable consequence of evolution
differs from Behe's definition of 'irreducible complexity'?
"A single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts
that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."
What do you think this makes of his claim that such systems could not
be produced by evolutionary processes?
And what do you think this tells us about the honesty of the ID
movement that they studiously ignore the fact that the existence of
such systems was *predicted* by evolutionary theory nearly a century
ago?
...in anticipation of a lack of any substantive response to this...
RF
>
> On Apr 19, 2:33 am, Ernest Major <{$t...@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > In message
> > <490e6d64-3795-43e8-8d93-f28b41bbe...@l2g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
> > pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> writes
>
> [Forrest:]
>
> > >> How have they established that "irreducible complexity" (which was
> > >> incidentally predicted by evolutionary theory 90
> > >> years ago)
>
> > >I've only seen hints of it documented. Can you give me a quote that
> > >clearly shows it?
>
> > Genetic Variablity, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of
> > Balanced Lethal Factors", by Hermann J Muller, in Genetics, Vol 3, No 5,
> > Sept 1918, pp 422-499
>
> >http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/3/5/422
>
> This first one is to a site which contains a link to the actual pdf of
> the Muller article. The other three are to the Talk.origins archive,
> to the urls for the three spin-doctorings:
>
> >http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/sep06.html
> >http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
> >http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.html
> > --
> > alias Ernest Major
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
Ernest Major
<85875964-78d4-4a6c...@e21g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>,
Darwin123 <drose...@yahoo.com> writes
>On May 2, 1:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
>> 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
>> evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
>> improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
>> scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
>>
>> There does seem to be an unspoken definition behind the formula, and I
>> wonder whether the National Academy of Sciences has ever bothered to
>> attach a meaning to the formula--and even whether anyone in talk
>> origins has ever bothered to attach a meaning. As it apparently
>> stands, it's a very handy equivocation to use by anyone who wants to
>> avoid sticking his neck out too much.
>>
>> Here is an interesting recent example. Back in 1918 Herman Muller did
>> an article with some natural infernces as to why so many mutations of
>> animals [he was researching the fruit fly *Drosophilia*] are lethal.
>> Obviously, the organs or systems affected by the mutations were
>> essential to the survival of the organism; and he observed that a lot
>> of these may have been nonessential in some remote ancestor or
>> another, but had become essential to survival thru other modifications
>> in the animals in question.http://www.genetics.org/content/3/5/422.full.pdf
> Most of the mutations caused by high energy radiation are caused
>by a deletion of a codon. The high energy particle from the radiation
>knocks the atom out of the DNA molecule. When the codon is deleted,
>the gene is effectively destroyed.
I think that you misunderstand both the process and the terminology.
My understanding is that radiation doesn't delete a codon (3 aligned
base pairs), which sound quite implausible. It damages a base, which is
subsequently misrepaired.
> This type of mutation is called a knock-out mutation. The effect
>of the mutation tends to be very large. Not always, because there is
>some redundancy in the genome. However, the knock-out mutation is the
>easiest to study because the effects are so large.
A knock-out mutation is one which disables a gene. Either by "inserting"
a stop codon early in the gene, or by making an amino acid residue
substitution that disables the active site, or be deleting essential
parts of the gene. Naively I would expect that the first process is the
one generally used by experimenters.
> Because the effect is large, a knock out mutation is not likely
>to contribute to evolution. Furthermore, the deletion of gene material
>lessens the potential variability of future mutations.
> The knock-out mutation is not the only type of mutation. Since
>Morgan's time, other types of mutations have been discovered. Genes
>can be duplicated within the genome. Chromosomes can be fused or split
>without changing the genes themselves. Genes can be shifted in
>position on the genome, which is sometimes called an epigenetic
>mutation. Most of these effects take place during meiosis, and have
>nothing to do with radiation. The impact of these other type of
>mutations is far less than the typical knock-out mutation.
Epigenetic change is a mutable term, but I don't think that
translocations fall into the category. For a start a translocation is
indefinitely inheritable, which is not the norm for an epigenetic
change.
Another process that occurs quite commonly in flowering plants is the
production of unreduced (diploid) gametes.
But you've omitted perhaps the most frequent cause of mutation - errors
in DNA replication, which is not a 100% accurate process.
> I recently attended a seminar on ornamental cherry trees. Let me
>share some of what I learned.
> Ornamental cherry trees have been produced that are chromosome
>doubled and chromosome tripled from the initial stock. Chromosome
>doubled cherry trees can easily cross with others of their type.
>Chromosome doubled cherry trees can cross with other chromosome
>doubled cherry trees. The chromosome tripled varieties have difficulty
>propagating by seed. They are basically sterile. However, they can
>reproduce asexually like all cherry trees.
> The phenotypic effect on the cherry trees is small. This is typical
>of any mutation that can contribute to evolution. Macroevolution
>occurs in a series of very small phenotypic mutations. The question
>comes up as to what sort of total change would be big enough to
>convince you that "macroevolution" was possible. Use ornamental
>cherries as an example.
> Research is continuing on all the various ways an organism can
>mutate. The initial research by Morgan is way out of date. Mutations
>can and do occur which cause small, nonlethal changes in the organism.
>The claim that all mutations are lethal has been disproved for some
>time. The hypothesis gets ground down a little more every few days.
> The theory of evolution claims that small phenotypic changes can
>accumulate to cause a total change that is very big. No one has been
>able to disprove that hypothesis.
>
--
alias Ernest Major
pnyikos
I'm very familiar with the entailment symbol, and I think the main
issue is this: what counts as part of "evolutionary theory"? Is it
enough, as most people here seem to think, to be compatible with it
and to consist of vague unquantified and untestable conjeectures, or
is it necessary for it to undergo the same demanding vetting process
that the accepted core of the theory has had to undergo?
In other words, is it legitimate to piggyback onto an exalted theory
that fits what I call the "awestruck" definition of "theory" which is
the favorite of anti-creationists here, without taking great pains to
justify its inclusion into said theory?
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
No, it is because it has to do wih something that has nothing to do
with Doolittle. It involves itself with the explanation of how the
clotting system could have easily evolved, DESPITE being irreducibly
complex.
And that explanation involves autocatalycity, which I estmate 99% of
Behe critics don't have any idea of, and yet it is what makes it
possible for both the immune and blood clotting systems to evolve by
simple, Darwinian steps.
Did you think I was an uncritical Behe partisan? Surprise, surprise!
I've been pushing this particular insight since before you ever joined
t.o.
>OTOH I have a higher regard for Miller's
> opinion on these things than I do on your opinion. So you're going to
> have to a lot more to discredit Doolittle than the handwaving and
> bluster you do here.
Miller isn't playing the Doolittle game in your source, the way he
played it earlier and got shot down by Behe for it.
Peter Nyikos
Burkhard
Why woudl that matter for the definition of "predicted by a theory"
that you requested? My definition is not theory specific
Is it
> enough, as most people here seem to think, to be compatible with it
> and to consist of vague unquantified and untestable conjeectures,
If you as you claim are familiar withthe enailment symbol, doesn't
that answer this question?
>or
> is it necessary for it to undergo the same demanding vetting process
> that the accepted core of the theory has had to undergo?
I have no idea what you are talking about. What "vetting process" do
you think is relevant for the definition of predication?
>
> In other words, is it legitimate to piggyback onto an exalted theory
> that fits what I call the "awestruck" definition of "theory" which is
> the favorite of anti-creationists here, without taking great pains to
> justify its inclusion into said theory?
I have no idea what that sentence tries to say
>
> Peter Nyikos
John S. Wilkins
> On May 3, 3:52 am, j...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> > John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> > > John S. Wilkins wrote:
...
> > > > This is quite consistent with T |= X, even if X is a probability,
> > > > likelihood or a semantic cluster.
> >
> > > Semantic cluster?
> >
> > If the implications of T in a semantic space are not exact (they do not
> > predict a single possible state) they may (indeed must at a minimum)
> > specify some cluster of locations in that space. A theory T that allowed
> > any location to be occupied in the semantic posibility space would be
> > worse than useless.
> >
> Why "semantic"? I don't think John Harshman's question was about
> this, but mine is. I can understand the use of the so-called
> syntactic turnstile, but I don't know what semantic turnstile might
> mean. Is it just the stepping back to a metalanguage?
A semantic construct is something that uses some representational
symbolism, and it has a number of properties, such as denotation and
intension. A theory is such a beast. It's not that we need a
metalanguage to *use* a theory, of course, but we do need one (in this
case the metalanguage of philosophy of science, or as I call it Sci-Phi)
to discuss it.
But that doesn't imply semantic ascent, of course - I can stop talking
about talking about science at some point. And I do. General
philosophers simply continue a bit further.
John S. Wilkins
> > If the implications of T in a semantic space are not exact (they do not
> > predict a single possible state) they may (indeed must at a minimum)
> > specify some cluster of locations in that space. A theory T that allowed
> > any location to be occupied in the semantic posibility space would be
> > worse than useless.
> >
> > ...
> Semantic possibility space? Is the construction of buzzphrases a major
> industry in philosophy of science?
No, it's something that goes back to a development post-Kuhn, in which
it was noted that a theory is not merely a logical construct (the
"syntactical" view) but also has denotation and interpretation, and
hence is a semantic construct.
So a theory has to have some structure in a semantic way. The usual way
is to think of a theory as existing in a space of possible statements or
contrasts. I think of a theory as a location in that space, a
coordinate, where the dimensions of the space are set by the effective
variables in the theoretical debate in a discipline, and the theory
itself is the alternatives the theory specifies, and hence is a
coordinate.
Key names are Frederick Suppe
<http://books.google.com/books?id=qMarktkwRWUC>, who invented this
approach, and Bas van Fraassen, who is the leading noise. They disagree
- Suppe is a realist who thinks that the variables of the theory are
representations of real aspects of the world, while van Fraassen is an
antirealist who thinks it is merely enough that they are empirically
adequate. Van Fraassen has a new book on the subject:
http://books.google.com/books?id=eqniRAAACAAJ
which I am presently reading on my Kindle app.
Finally, as always I am struck by the hubris and lack of irony of a
*biologist* of all professionals cavilling at technical terminology in
any other discipline.
John Harshman
Fair enough.
John Harshman
I expected that, certainly. But biological terms generally have nice,
simple, easy to understand definitions. And when we have "spaces", their
dimensions are explicit and clear too.
Walter Bushell
jo...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> But that doesn't imply semantic ascent, of course - I can stop talking
> about talking about science at some point. And I do. General
> philosophers simply continue a bit further.
But it's hard to talk about not talking about talking about talking
about science. But, I seem to have managed.
--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?
jillery
<snippage restored>
> > I'm pretty sure I pointed out this link to you before:
> >
> > http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/Clotting.html
> >
> > Perhaps you ignored it because Miller shows a higher regard for
> > Doolittle than you do. OTOH I have a higher regard for Miller's
> > opinion on these things than I do on your opinion. So you're going to
> > have to a lot more to discredit Doolittle than the handwaving and
> > bluster you do here.
> >
> > > The irreducible complexity was tested in three ways, by
> > > knocking out one gene in mice, another gene, and then the two in
> > > combination. All three kinds of mice had a terrible time of it, wound-
> > > wise, so the irreducible complexity came out of this test in flying
> > > colors.
>
> > That's a silly test. It doesn't test for IC, nevermind the larger
> > question of whether or not the clotting cascade is evolvable. This
> > time, please read the cite and understand what Miller actually wrote.
> > His argument doesn't rely on Doolitltle's misread of Bugge, but
> > instead on work Doolittle did himself.
It turns out I made a mistake. I had accepted Behe's word that
Doolittle misread Bugge. I did so in part because the links to
Bugge's article were broken, and I naively assumed Behe didn't misread
what Bugge wrote. In fact, Behe is wrong. I found an online version
of Bugge's article:
And for comparison, here is Behe's criticism of Doolittle:
http://www.trueorigin.org/behe03.asp
> > > There was a hilarious case of the blind leading the blind on all
> > > this: Doollittle completely misread the article that reported on this
> > > experiment and thought the mice with two genes knocked out were "doing
> > > fine". Numerous people, including Michael Ruse and Neil Greespan, and
> > > lots of people here in talk.origins, uncritically accepted Doolittle's
> > > word for this, without ever bothering to read the original paper.
> > > Michael Behe got lots of mileage out of this in his third Dover
> > > testimony:
> > >
> > > http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day10PM.pdf
> > > [Doolittle misreading p15, Ruse uncritically repeating Doolittle p20,
> > > Greenspan p 22 ditto]
Bugge wrote several times that the mice with double-knockout genes
fared almost as well as the control mice, and certainly far better
than the mice with the single-knockout plasminogen gene.
So Doolittle's comment that "For all practical purposes, the mice
lacking both genes were normal!" correctly represents Bugge's
expressed position, as Doolittle's "normal" refers to the context of
Bugge's experiment, which is necessarily different from any natural
environment. Behe misread Doolittle. If anything, Behe's complaint
is with Bugge, not Doolittle, not Ruse, and not Greenspan.
> No, it is because it has to do wih something that has nothing to do
> with Doolittle. It involves itself with the explanation of how the
> clotting system could have easily evolved, DESPITE being irreducibly
> complex.
Neither Behe nor you have shown the blood-clotting cascade to be
irreducibly complex. OTOH Miller has shown the blood-clotting cascade
is not irreducibly complex.
> And that explanation involves autocatalycity, which I estmate 99% of
> Behe critics don't have any idea of, and yet it is what makes it
> possible for both the immune and blood clotting systems to evolve by
> simple, Darwinian steps.
I admit I have no idea what "autocatalycity" means in this context.
> Did you think I was an uncritical Behe partisan? Surprise, surprise!
> I've been pushing this particular insight since before you ever joined
> t.o.
I missed which particular insight you're crowing about here.
> >OTOH I have a higher regard for Miller's
> > opinion on these things than I do on your opinion. So you're going to
> > have to a lot more to discredit Doolittle than the handwaving and
> > bluster you do here.
>
> Miller isn't playing the Doolittle game in your source, the way he
> played it earlier and got shot down by Behe for it.
As I demonstrated earlier, it was Behe playing that game, not
Doolittle and not Miller.
Steven L.
news:7ad355f4-1ae5-4b1f...@x1g2000yqb.googlegroups.com:
Evolutionary biology is a large topic that includes a variety of
theories on different subjects.
More recent advances have also undergone a "demanding vetting process."
It took years for reverse transcription to be accepted, because it would
represent an exception to the standard theory from the 1950s onward that
DNA is transcribed into RNA which then encodes for proteins. Only
after the discovery of reverse transcriptase in 1970 was reverse
transcription accepted as a real possibility. And now we know of many
retroviruses.
> In other words, is it legitimate to piggyback onto an exalted theory
> that fits what I call the "awestruck" definition of "theory" which is
> the favorite of anti-creationists here, without taking great pains to
> justify its inclusion into said theory?
"Anti-creationists" aren't the ones doing the piggybacking.
It's the creationists who keep lumping abiogenesis in with "Darwinism,"
even though Darwin never did much work on abiogenesis and most
everything we know about it came after him.
-- Steven L.
Walter Bushell
jo...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> If the implcations of T in a semantic space are not exact (they do not
> predict a single possible state) they may (indeed must at a minimum)
> specify some cluster of locations in that space. A theory T that allowed
> any location to be occupied in the semantic posibility space would be
> worse than useless.
Wait a minute, that is exactly what quantum physics predicts, and even
pre 20th century physics allows all the air in the room to spontaneously
migrate to one corner causing the inhabitants to die.
You have to allow for a probability distribution.
Walter Bushell
Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> In article <1k0p8te.1sjmsps1d4fpj4N%jo...@wilkins.id.au>,
> jo...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>
> > But that doesn't imply semantic ascent, of course - I can stop talking
> > about talking about science at some point. And I do. General
> > philosophers simply continue a bit further.
>
> But it's hard to talk about not talking about talking about talking
> about science. But, I seem to have managed.
Ignore previous message, if you please.
pnyikos
> > The irreducible complexity was tested in three ways, by
> > knocking out one gene in mice, another gene, and then the two in
> > combination. All three kinds of mice had a terrible time of it, wound-
> > wise, so the irreducible complexity came out of this test in flying
> > colors.
>
> That's a silly test. It doesn't test for IC,
Of course it does. It shows that if one of the parts of the cascades
is missing, clotting becomes impossible. Precisely, it does it for
two of the factors. AFAIK the others have been untested so far,
because Behe critics aren't interested in showing that the clotting
cascade is not IC. And I can think of three reasons for that:
1. Some critics mistakenly believe that the IC nature has been
refuted.
2. Some others know better, but they don't want to waste months of
research only to find out that the factor they are testing for IS
necessary.
3. Some others don't care whether the cascade is IC or not; the fact
that it could have evolved by small, Darwinian steps is what they are
really interested in.
> nevermind the larger
> question of whether or not the clotting cascade is evolvable.
Yes, that is an utterly different question, as I already pointed out
in my first reply to you this morning.
I administered a 3-hour exam in between, but now I'm back.
> > There was a hilarious case of the blind leading the blind on all
> > this: Doollittle completely misread the article that reported on this
> > experiment and thought the mice with two genes knocked out were "doing
> > fine". Numerous people, including Michael Ruse and Neil Greespan, and
> > lots of people here in talk.origins, uncritically accepted Doolittle's
> > word for this, without ever bothering to read the original paper.
> > Michael Behe got lots of mileage out of this in his third Dover
> > testimony:
>
> >http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day10PM.pdf
In my haste, I copied the wrong website. Mea culpa [trivia: "aculpa"
is off by only two letters].
It is in Behe's third testimony where this is talked about:
http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day11AM.pdf
> > [Doolittle misreading p15, Ruse uncritically repeating Doolittle p20,
> > Greenspan p 22 ditto]
[...]
> Ok then. Perhaps your entire citation is off, and I could find what
> you're referring to by searching on a different day. So I repeated my
> whole search for the morning session on Day 11.
Yes. Sorry to have put you to all that extra trouble.
> Aha! In fact, words
> roughly fitting your description appear on pages 15, 20, and 22. So,
> on what basis did Behe get so much mileage? That Doolittle, in an
> informal essay written for the Boston Review, made a trivial
> mistake.
He wouldn't have written that essay if it were not for that "trivial"
mistake. It is the keystone without which the essay would have hardly
had any point.
Ruse and Greenspan got a lot of mileage out of that "trivial" mistake
and so did Doollittle. It is only because the mistake is only
relevant to the now-trivial issue of whether the clotting is IC that
we can label it "trivial" in hindsight..
Doolittle started his Boston Review paper with sarcasm as to how his
decades of research were apparently wasted. And then he "salvaged"
these decades by triumphantly marching out the paper which he had so
badly misread, and proceeded to give everyone his misreading.
>As I have shown above, even you make mistakes, as we are
> all human. To dismiss Doolittle's life work,
...which Doolittle sarcastically and very temorarily did, but no one
else to my knowledge has done. Behe hasn't done it: he's given lots
of praise to the man EXCEPT for this hilarious blunder of his. He's
said that no one on earth knows as much about the clotting system as
Doolittle, and AFAIK that's still true.
>as well as the opinions
> of Greenspand and Muse based on Doolittle's life work,
What did Greenspan contribute, besides their blind assurance that
Doolittle had refuted the IC nature of the clotting system?
>because of this
> trivial faux-pas is quite a stretch, even for you.
Attributing an overall negative opinion of Doolittle to me is a
stretch, even for you. I have a lot of respect for the man, just like
Behe does.
>So what mileage
> did Behe get out of it? His point certainly didn't impact the
> judge's decision.
He finally got a publicly available site where people can read just
how mistaken the scads of people are who have been following
Doolittle (or secondarily, Ruse and Greenspan) blindly wrt that one
experiment.
Peter Nyikos
Burkhard
Sorry, pet peeve, but you have been hanging around Ray for too long.
Bas is not an antirealist, and neither am I. I have the greatest
respect for reality (after all, it is the only place where you can get
a good steak), and it was only after a long and happy relationship
that we decided to go our different ways, realising that we had
developed over the years different interests. But we remained on
friendly terms, I'm seeing her regularly, and we have joint custody
for some of my articles.
A-realist, or non-realist maybe (or indeed a hyperrealist, les
extremes se touchent and all that) but not anti.
pnyikos
> pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> writes
The clotting system is only one of several systems for stopping the
flow of blood; it just happens to be by far the most efficient one.
Behe goes into this in DBB, page 86.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
CORRECTION!! I should have written "Ruse and Greenspan" for "he". I
have no reason to think that Miller ever read Doollittle's paper and
was misled by it, the way these two pundits were.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
"mantra" is just a little turnabout for the way you decided, on the
base of ZERO evidence, and in defiance of everything that I have ever
posted on Usenet, that I am a creationist.
Will you stick to that conviction to your dying day, or is there
something I could say or do to shake you loose from that conviction?
Anticipating a discouraging answer, I've used the term "spin-
doctored" below as another little turnabout.
> The simple fact is that Muller predicted the existence of interlocking
> complexity,
Baloney. He OBSERVED its existence and sort of implicitly predicted
that precursors would be found where the necessary parts were not yet
necessary.
> which is defined in exactly the same way as Behe's
> "irreducible complexity".
It certainly does not look that way in the two cites which Theobald
gave:
Muller, H. J. (1918) "Genetic variability, twin hybrids and constant
hybrids, in a case of balanced lethal factors." Genetics 3:422-499.
[Free Text, Genetics Online]
Muller, H. J. (1939) "Reversibility in evolution considered from the
standpoint of genetics." Biological Reviews of the Cambridge
Philosophical Society 14:261-280.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
The two cites clearly speak of "necessary characters" but don't
breathe a word about ALL the characters (in what? the whole animal?
don't be ridiculous!) being necessary. See below.
> I gave a link to the paper in which he
> defined it.
I didn't see that post of yours. Is the definition to be found
elsewhere than in the two passages Theobald cited?
___________________ begin passage 1
"... thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose effective
working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very numerous
different elementary parts or factors, and many of the characters and
factors which, when new, were originally merely an asset finally
became necessary because other necessary characters and factors had
subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the former. It
must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of, or even a slight
change in any one of these parts is very likely to disturb fatally the
whole machinery; for this reason we should expect very many, if not
most, mutations to result in lethal factors ..."
Muller 1918 pp. 463-464. (emphasis in the original)
===================== end passage 1, begin 2
"... an embryological or physiological process or structure newly
arisen by gene mutation, after becoming once established (with or
without the aid of selection), later takes more and more part in the
whole complex interplay of vital processes. For still further
mutations that arise are now allowed to stay if only they work in
harmony with all genes that are already present, and, of these further
mutations, some will naturally depend, for their proper working, on
the new process or structure under consideration. Being thus finally
woven, as it were, into the most intimate fabric of the organism, the
once novel character can no longer be withdrawn with impunity, and may
have become vitally necessary."
Muller 1939 pp. 271-272.
***************************** end passage 2
> Just to clarify: here is the relevant section of Muller's paper:
HAH! you cited a slightly different portion of the 1918 paper than
Theobald, and BOTH are subsets of what I cited to Denney!
> "Most present-day animals are the result of a long process of
> evolution, in which at least thousands of mutations must have taken
> place. Each new mutant in turn must have derived its survival value
> from the effect which it produced upon the “reaction system” that had
> been brought into being by the many previously formed factors in
> cooperation; thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose
> effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very
> numerous different elementary parts or factors, and many of the
> characters and factors
You spin-doctored "many" to read "all." :-)
> which, when new , were originally merely an
> asset finally became necessary because other necessary characters and
> factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the
> former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of , or
> even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to
> disturb fatally the whole machinery;
You spin-doctored "these parts" to read "all of the parts". :-)
> for this reason we should expect
> very many, if not most, mutations to result in lethal factors, and of
> the rest, the majority should be “semi-lethal” or at least
> disadvantageous in the struggle for life,
"disadvantageous" is a far cry from establishing the necessity of the
factor being mutated.
>and likely to set wrong any
> delicately balanced system, such as the reproductive system."
If a creationist were to cite this as evidence that mutations are
almost invariably lethal, he would soon be set straight on his
ignorance of the fact that Muller's concept of "mutation" is no longer
in use.
> Perhaps you can explain how Muller's description of the interlocking
> systems which he argues are an inevitable consequence of evolution
> differs from Behe's definition of 'irreducible complexity'?
>
> "A single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts
> that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
> of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."
Muller did not speak of single systems, he spoke of lethal vs non-
lethal mutations, and that clearly refers to the organism as a
whole.
Would you read his closing comments as evidence that any mutation to
the human appendix is very likely to be disadvantageous?
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On May 3, 1:52 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On May 2, 8:20 pm, Burkhard <b.scha...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > > On May 3, 12:50 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
> > > > Burkhard wrote:
> > > > > On May 2, 10:44 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > >> On May 2, 2:28 pm, Burkhard <b.scha...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> > > > >>> I'd say the predictions of a theory are simply its semantic
> > > > >>> entailments,
> > > > >> What do you mean by that?
>
> > > > > take a suitably defined theory T, then the predictions of the theory X
> > > > > are simply T |= X
>
> > > > I don't know what that means, though I'm pretty sure I know what
> > > > "semantic entailments" means. What does "|=" mean?
>
> > > Closest I could get to the common symbol for the semantic entailment
> > > relation? With other words there is no interpretation I that makes T
> > > true and x false
>
> > I'm very familiar with the entailment symbol, and I think the main
> > issue is this: what counts as part of "evolutionary theory"?
>
> Why woudl that matter for the definition of "predicted by a theory"
> that you requested? My definition is not theory specific
Your definition is exactlly the one I would come up with too. And so
I shifted over to where the real battlegrounds are likely to develop,
even given your definition.
It does look like others already are taking issue with your definition
as being a little too cut and dried, but I'm perfectly happy with it.
> > Is it
> > enough, as most people here seem to think, to be compatible with it
> > and to consist of vague unquantified and untestable conjeectures,
>
> If you as you claim are familiar withthe enailment symbol, doesn't
> that answer this question?
If it answers it, it does so in the negative, by saying it would screw
up the concept of entailment by adulterating the theory to where it is
ill-defined.
> >or
> > is it necessary for it to undergo the same demanding vetting process
> > that the accepted core of the theory has had to undergo?
>
> I have no idea what you are talking about. What "vetting process" do
> you think is relevant for the definition of predication?
I'm talking about ideas that are implicitly alleged to be part of
evolutionary theory, such as the inevitability of things like
irreducible complexity. A theory worthy of the name would not predict
the existence of things in such a radically contingent setting as
biological evolution, except by very careful delineation of
probabilities.
To get to the point: Forrest has claimed that some irreducibly
complex systems must inevitably arise, simply because evolutionary
theory incorporates data that show that it is possible for previously
unnecessary characters to become necessary. But to be an IC *system*,
a "basic function" has to be identified and the factors must be
mutually interacting. So that already severely restricts the sets of
characters that are suitable for evolution to a stage of irreducible
complexity. And one must take into account the reverse reactions,
making characters that are necessary become unnecessary.
Also one must take into account the "add a part" formula of
Theobald. Perhaps, while some factors are becoming necessary, the
system grows with the addition of temporarily unnecessary parts. In
that case the forces moving towards making parts necessary may never
catch up to the point where ALL parts of the system become necessary.
Worse yet, two systems might come together to form a bigger system
where it becomes even more difficult for ALL the parts to become
necessary.
All of these considerations have been ignored by Forrest and E. Major
and J. Harshman, all of whom simply extrapolated and decided that
somehow evolutionary theory, embodied in Muller's general words,
would predict that some IC systems WILL arise in the hurly-burly of
actual evolution of life on earth.
Of course, they have no idea what those future systems might be like.
Nor do they have any idea what precursors Behe's favorite machines,
the eukaryotic cilium and the bacterial flagellum may have been, nor
how Muller's rather vague ideas would make THOSE systems a likely
outcome of evolution.
> > In other words, is it legitimate to piggyback onto an exalted theory
> > that fits what I call the "awestruck" definition of "theory" which is
> > the favorite of anti-creationists here, without taking great pains to
> > justify its inclusion into said theory?
>
> I have no idea what that sentence tries to say
Sorry, I'll try to explain.
Every time someone like Behe or a creationist tries to define "theory"
they are "set straight" by people who say the only correct, scientific
definition is what I call "the awestruck definition": something that
makes "theory" so exalted that only a few great examples can possibly
aspire to it.
These are examples like Newton's theory of universal gravitation, or
Einstein's theory of relativity, or neo-Darwinism, or the quantum
theory, all of which try to account for a tremendous set of phenomena
and have been subjected to long and rigorous testing that make them
very likely to be THE truth about the part of reality that they
survey.
And the issue before us is: shall we include Muller's rather off-hand
talk about how various factors may have become necessary that once
were unnecesssary, as an INTEGRAL part of the neo-Darwinian synthesis
without subjecting it to long and rigorous testing?
Should we not, rather, say that it is not "evolutionary theory" on the
basis of which that "90 year old prediction" was made, but rather an
untested hypothesis about things that have an evolutionary aspect?
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
Where? Already in the abstract he wrote:
"Mice deficient in Plg and Fib are phenotypically indistinguishable
from Fib-deficient mice."
Are you alleging that Fib-deficient mice fared almost as well as
control mice? The table of pathologies (Table 3) certainly does not
seem to say that. Many of the singly Fib-deficient mice and the
doubly-deficient mice suffered from abnormalities of the liver (33 and
41 percent, respectively) and some individuals had other problems as
well.
Were you reading stuff like the following too hastily?
"Aside from the lack of clotting function and fibrinolytic potential
documented previously, we found no impact of the single or combined
deficiencies on the general hematological profile of the mice ( Table
1)."
Did you miss the significance of "Aside from the lack of clotting
function..."? There's the whole ball game, right there: Fibrinogen is
necessary for clotting, and if you want to prove that the clotting
cascade is NOT IC, you'll have to find some other gene to knock out.
>and certainly far better
> than the mice with the single-knockout plasminogen gene.
No argument there.
> So Doolittle's comment that "For all practical purposes, the mice
> lacking both genes were normal!" correctly represents
your layman's view of the situation. Rather than cherry-picking this
bit out, how about ALSO letting us know what Doolittle said about the
mice lacking only the fibrinogen gene?
I promise you, if you aren't deliberately hiding something from us,
you are in for a shock.
To brace yourself for it, take special note of that "phenotypically
indistinguishable bit" that is already in the abstract.
[additional benighted statements by you mercifully deleted]
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> "pnyikos" <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
"Darwinism" seems to be their code for the neo-Darwinian synthesis, or
in some cases, whatever the prevalent evolutionary synthesis of the
day is.
Anyway, there have been some pretty strenuous efforts by anti-
creationists of talk.origins to claim that the natural selection and
mutations that operates on biological life also operated in a pre-
biotic setting, making abiogenesis as natural and "expectable" an
occurrence as the evolution of *Homo sapiens* from primitive
metazoans, or even from primitive eukaryotes.
Before he died, "el cid" was one of these people who believed that,
yes, Darwinian evolution worked just as well begining from the
primitive Urey-Miller soup as it did later on, after the first
prokaryotes came into existence. So did John Harshman. It's a
difficult conviction to counteract.
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
> All of these considerations have been ignored by Forrest and E. Major
> and J. Harshman, all of whom simply extrapolated and decided that
> somehow evolutionary theory, embodied in Muller's general words,
> would predict that some IC systems WILL arise in the hurly-burly of
> actual evolution of life on earth.
I don't recall making such a claim, but perhaps my memory isn't as good
as it might be. Could you refresh my memory?
John Harshman
> Before he died, "el cid" was one of these people who believed that,
> yes, Darwinian evolution worked just as well begining from the
> primitive Urey-Miller soup as it did later on, after the first
> prokaryotes came into existence. So did John Harshman. It's a
> difficult conviction to counteract.
This seems to be a week for people making up stories about me. I don't
recall saying that either. If by "Darwinian evolution" you mean "natural
selection", all that requires is replication with some kind of
inheritance, plus a difference in inherited characteristics that affects
future replication. The more exact the inheritance, the better natural
selection will work. Pre-biotic systems could easily have had a form of
inheritance good enough for selection to bite, though not as good as
real organisms. I don't see this as in any way controversial. Do you? Why?
Christopher Denney
> On May 2, 2:26 pm, Christopher Denney <christopher.den...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
[snip]
>
> > Hmm, maybe that's the problem; people spend so much time trying to
> > find fault in the theory they don't actually pay attention to the
> > basic predictions.
>
> Does "people" refer to creationists? If not, what are the basic
> predictions to which you refer?
>
> Peter Nyikos
Mostly Creationists, they are the ones who spend the most time trying
to "Disprove" evolution.
People who call for examples of "cats giving birth to dogs" just don't
get one of the basic predictions of evolutionary theory is that that
kind of thing never happens.
Barring profound mutations, offspring are very much like their
parents; and the parents have to be similar to one another.
Otherwise the whole thing (evo) doesn't work.
pnyikos
"That doesn't seem like a problem to me. He may not say explicitly
that
there are no removable parts, but he does imply it, "interlocking"
being
the key word. And at any rate, what he presents here can be turned
into
an IC system by removing a few parts first. The major point is that
Muller presents a way in which an IC system can evolve through many
slight changes, each advantageous. And that's what Behe claims can't
happen. Behe's dilemma was solved many decades before he formulated
it."
Sound familiar? You said it on this thread.
By the way, "removing a few parts first" is far removed from anything
Muller wrote. He wrote of ADDING parts which then rely on the old
ones, thereby making them necessary, as one of the possible ways
optional parts become necessary.
And by the way, I may not be the only one who thinks that the
"machines" to which Muller referred where whole animals. Orr used the
example of lungs as a body part which was once optional and is now
necessary for us tetrapods. This comes just before he brings in
Muller, and this "optional becoming necessary" is the aspect of
Muller's theory that he brings out in a footnote..
What confuses the issue is that Orr indulges in what looks to me like
a hilarious anachronism, attibuting gene duplication to Muller, and
talking as though the genes which Muller studied coded for individual
proteins in some mysterious unidentified biochemical pathways.
Granted, by 1939, when Muller did his second paper on "necessary
characters" it was believed that genes were somehow parts of
chromosomes. But did Muller really think that gene duplication would
be the key to various pathways? If anyone has an url for that 1939
paper, I'd be grateful.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> pnyikos wrote:
> > Before he died, "el cid" was one of these people who believed that,
> > yes, Darwinian evolution worked just as well begining from the
> > primitive Urey-Miller soup as it did later on, after the first
> > prokaryotes came into existence. So did John Harshman. It's a
> > difficult conviction to counteract.
I accused you and el cid of wild extrapolation from the biological
realm to the chemical realm, but y'all resisted that characterization
strenuously. And again you want to minimize the difference:
> This seems to be a week for people making up stories about me. I don't
> recall saying that either. If by "Darwinian evolution" you mean "natural
> selection", all that requires is replication with some kind of
> inheritance, plus a difference in inherited characteristics that affects
> future replication. The more exact the inheritance, the better natural
> selection will work. Pre-biotic systems could easily have had a form of
> inheritance good enough for selection to bite, though not as good as
> real organisms. I don't see this as in any way controversial. Do you? Why?
I think natural selection works quintillions of times better on real
organisms than on individual molecules and, indeed, on all but the
most advanced progenotes. Most of the things people have bothered to
spell out in their rhapsodies of the inevitabilityof life are dead
ends in this respect, like the protospheres of Fox, and the ur-cells
of one website whose author is no longer available for questioning.
I'm referring to the website where the author talks about how easy it
is for enzyme activitiy in proteins to arise by random reactions, and
contents himself with a few simple ligases that are a far cry from the
enzymes that are textbook favorites.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
By the way, the Orr paper is the first linked by Theobald. Here is an
url for it:
jillery
> On May 3, 11:22 am, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On May 3, 9:00 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > On May 2, 10:47 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On May 2, 7:16 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > > On May 2, 6:36 pm, chris thompson <chris.linthomp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > > On May 2, 5:44 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > > > > On May 2, 2:28 pm, Burkhard <b.scha...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
<snip for brevity>
> > > > > > I just want to address one point.
>
> > > > > > No one is talking about organisms, not even Behe. Behe is talking
> > > > > > about systems withing organisms. His favorite example seemed to be
> > > > > > blood clotting in mammals,
>
> > > > > One of them: the others were the bacterial flagellum, the eukaryotic
> > > > > cilium, the immune reaction system, and the protein transport system.
>
> > > > > > and it was shown to be seriously flawed.
>
> > > > > WHERE?
>
> > <snippage restored>
>
> > > > I'm pretty sure I pointed out this link to you before:
>
> > > >http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/Clotting.html
>
It's just a bit ironic at this point for you to be quotemining the
abstract.
> Are you alleging that Fib-deficient mice fared almost as well as
> control mice?
I don't allege it. Bugge wrote it:
"The survival profile of the cohort of Fib-/- mice followed in this
study was similar to that of control mice (Figure 2 and Table 2). "
and
"Note the severe wasting of the Plg-/- mouse, whereas the appearance
of the Plg-/-/Fib-/- mouse is indistinguishable from the control and
Fib-/- mice"
and
"The fact that Fib-/- mice can tolerate a full-thickness skin incision
without excessive bleeding (data not shown), and that healing time of
skin wounds in Fib-/- mice is similar to that of control mice (Figure
4, and data not shown), provided an opportunity to establish whether a
complex pathophysiological process, wound healing, was also corrected
in Plg-/- mice by the absence of fibrin(ogen)."
This last one is especially interesting to me, if not to you. It
shows that a compromised clotting system still works, if not as well,
even when one or two of its parts are removed, and so disproves IC by
Behe's definition.
So much for that distraction. More to your original claim, Bugge also
writes:
"We report that Fib deficiency rescues mice from the spontaneous
pathologies known to befall Plg-deficient mice, suggesting that
fibrinolysis is the only essential physiological role of Plg."
and
" Indeed, no signs of weight loss or wasting were observed in any of
more than 20 Plg-/-/Fib-/- mice that were followed for more than a
year. This dramatic rescue from the severe-wasting syndrome normally
associated with Plg deficiency provided a first indication that
general ill health in young Plg-/- mice depended on fibrin(ogen)."
and
"The survival profile of Plg-/-/Fib-/- mice showed that a lack of
fibrin(ogen) rescued animals from the early morbidity and premature
death associated with Plg deficiency (Figure 2 and Table 2)."
and
"Consistent with the remarkably strong growth and survival
characteristics of Plg-/-/Fib-/- mice, none of the microscopic
abnormalities specifically recognized in Plg-/- animals were
documented in the 17 Plg-deficient mice that also lacked fibrin(ogen)
(Figure 3 and Table 3)."
and
"Therefore, the proposal that Plg deficiency results in a profound
impediment in cellular infiltration into fibrin-rich matrices remains
as the simplest hypothesis consistent with phenotypic rescue observed
in Plg-/-/Fib-/- mice."
Clearly Bugge is of the opinion that knocking out fibrinogen
significantly improved the health of plasminogen-deficient mice. So
much so that he repeatedly uses the word "rescue" in his descriptions
of it.
> The table of pathologies (Table 3) certainly does not
> seem to say that. Many of the singly Fib-deficient mice and the
> doubly-deficient mice suffered from abnormalities of the liver (33 and
> 41 percent, respectively) and some individuals had other problems as
> well.
>
> Were you reading stuff like the following too hastily?
Your original point is that Behe got a lot of mileage out of
Doolittle's misread, and Greenspan's and Ruse's alleged failure to
read, Bugge's article. I see you add me to that list of alleged
misreaders. Of course gene-compromised mice have metabolic problems
control mice do not. So what? The point Doolittle made is not about
their relatively poor health. The point Doolittle made was that a
clotting cascade with two parts removed works at all. That makes it
not IC.
ISTM the most honest thing you can do right now is remove those names
from your list of hasty readers, and add to it Behe's and yours.
> "Aside from the lack of clotting function and fibrinolytic potential
> documented previously, we found no impact of the single or combined
> deficiencies on the general hematological profile of the mice ( Table
> 1)."
>
> Did you miss the significance of "Aside from the lack of clotting
> function..."? There's the whole ball game, right there: Fibrinogen is
> necessary for clotting, and if you want to prove that the clotting
> cascade is NOT IC, you'll have to find some other gene to knock out.
Covered above, but I'm glad to repeat it here, as you might have
missed it in your hasty read:
"The fact that Fib-/- mice can tolerate a full-thickness skin incision
without excessive bleeding (data not shown), and that healing time of
skin wounds in Fib-/- mice is similar to that of control mice (Figure
4, and data not shown), provided an opportunity to establish whether a
complex pathophysiological process, wound healing, was also corrected
in Plg-/- mice by the absence of fibrin(ogen)."
That clotting-deficient mice healed full-thickness skin incisions
similarly to control mice suggests the clotting mechanism was not
"knocked out", as you say, and so is not IC.
<snippage of your remaining beknighted statements right back atcha>
John Harshman
> On May 3, 2:38 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> All of these considerations have been ignored by Forrest and E. Major
>>> and J. Harshman, all of whom simply extrapolated and decided that
>>> somehow evolutionary theory, embodied in Muller's general words,
>>> would predict that some IC systems WILL arise in the hurly-burly of
>>> actual evolution of life on earth.
>> I don't recall making such a claim, but perhaps my memory isn't as good
>> as it might be. Could you refresh my memory?
>
> "That doesn't seem like a problem to me. He may not say explicitly
> that there are no removable parts, but he does imply it,
> "interlocking" being the key word. And at any rate, what he presents
> here can be turned into an IC system by removing a few parts first.
> The major point is that Muller presents a way in which an IC system
> can evolve through many slight changes, each advantageous. And that's
> what Behe claims can't happen. Behe's dilemma was solved many decades
> before he formulated it."
>
> Sound familiar? You said it on this thread.
Yes, but it seems to have nothing to do with what you claim I said. You
seem to have mentally changed "can" to "must".
> By the way, "removing a few parts first" is far removed from anything
> Muller wrote. He wrote of ADDING parts which then rely on the old
> ones, thereby making them necessary, as one of the possible ways
> optional parts become necessary.
Which is once again irrelevant to my point. My point is that your
complaint, that a system isn't IC, can be addressed by removing parts
until the remaining system is IC. And this is in fact what many IDers do.
> And by the way, I may not be the only one who thinks that the
> "machines" to which Muller referred where whole animals. Orr used the
> example of lungs as a body part which was once optional and is now
> necessary for us tetrapods. This comes just before he brings in
> Muller, and this "optional becoming necessary" is the aspect of
> Muller's theory that he brings out in a footnote..
So? What does it matter? Regardless of how Muller or Orr chose to apply
it, the concept is applicable to all sorts of things.
> What confuses the issue is that Orr indulges in what looks to me like
> a hilarious anachronism, attibuting gene duplication to Muller, and
> talking as though the genes which Muller studied coded for individual
> proteins in some mysterious unidentified biochemical pathways.
>
> Granted, by 1939, when Muller did his second paper on "necessary
> characters" it was believed that genes were somehow parts of
> chromosomes. But did Muller really think that gene duplication would
> be the key to various pathways? If anyone has an url for that 1939
> paper, I'd be grateful.
Not having seen the article to which you refer here, I'm unwilling to
grant that you have correctly explained an error by Orr. Certainly you
have misunderstood the claims you attribute to me.
John Harshman
> On May 3, 2:42 pm, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> pnyikos wrote:
>>> Before he died, "el cid" was one of these people who believed that,
>>> yes, Darwinian evolution worked just as well begining from the
>>> primitive Urey-Miller soup as it did later on, after the first
>>> prokaryotes came into existence. So did John Harshman. It's a
>>> difficult conviction to counteract.
>
> I accused you and el cid of wild extrapolation from the biological
> realm to the chemical realm, but y'all resisted that characterization
> strenuously.
That's because I don't agree with you. But "just as well" is a serious
misstatement.
> And again you want to minimize the difference:
>
>> This seems to be a week for people making up stories about me. I don't
>> recall saying that either. If by "Darwinian evolution" you mean "natural
>> selection", all that requires is replication with some kind of
>> inheritance, plus a difference in inherited characteristics that affects
>> future replication. The more exact the inheritance, the better natural
>> selection will work. Pre-biotic systems could easily have had a form of
>> inheritance good enough for selection to bite, though not as good as
>> real organisms. I don't see this as in any way controversial. Do you? Why?
>
> I think natural selection works quintillions of times better on real
> organisms than on individual molecules and, indeed, on all but the
> most advanced progenotes.
You are entitled to your opinions. I've never claimed otherwise.
John Harshman
abilities. Orr never attributes gene duplication to Muller. He merely
says that gene duplication commonly results in evolution of just the
sort Muller described in his paper. That's nothing like what you accuse
Orr of.
John S. Wilkins
> In article <1k0ozk6.z3ylea1rfm0ifN%jo...@wilkins.id.au>,
> jo...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>
> > If the implcations of T in a semantic space are not exact (they do not
> > predict a single possible state) they may (indeed must at a minimum)
> > specify some cluster of locations in that space. A theory T that allowed
> > any location to be occupied in the semantic posibility space would be
> > worse than useless.
>
> Wait a minute, that is exactly what quantum physics predicts, and even
> pre 20th century physics allows all the air in the room to spontaneously
> migrate to one corner causing the inhabitants to die.
>
> You have to allow for a probability distribution.
A distribution *is* a specification of the way things are predicted to
be. If the likelihood of most regions of the possibility space are very
nearly zero, you have made a positive prediction.
--
John S. Wilkins, Associate, Philosophy, University of Sydney
http://evolvingthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
John S. Wilkins
> Bas is not an antirealist, and neither am I. I have the greatest
> respect for reality (after all, it is the only place where you can get
> a good steak), and it was only after a long and happy relationship
> that we decided to go our different ways, realising that we had
> developed over the years different interests. But we remained on
> friendly terms, I'm seeing her regularly, and we have joint custody
> for some of my articles.
Anti-realist, back when I were an undergraduate, meant not that one
thought there was no reality at all, but that the terms of a scientific
theory (or, in Putnam's version, of a language of any kind) need not
denote actual reality. I have no doubt van Fraassen thinks there is a
world. It is the *nature* of that world that is at issue, and he denies
that scientific theories tell us about the world _directly_.
I am more in line with Stathos Psillos' structural realism myself. That
way I can think that I know something more about the world with a good
theory that is empirically adequate than I do without it, and not be
committed to the ontology of every theory (which is problematic when
your best theories contradict each other).
John S. Wilkins
> In article <1k0p8te.1sjmsps1d4fpj4N%jo...@wilkins.id.au>,
> jo...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
>
> > But that doesn't imply semantic ascent, of course - I can stop talking
> > about talking about science at some point. And I do. General
> > philosophers simply continue a bit further.
>
> But it's hard to talk about not talking about talking about talking
> about science. But, I seem to have managed.
"Do't mention the war. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with
it."
Mark Isaak
> But it's hard to talk about not talking about talking about talking
> about science. But, I seem to have managed.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume
Burkhard
> Burkhard<b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Bas is not an antirealist, and neither am I. I have the greatest
>> respect for reality (after all, it is the only place where you can get
>> a good steak), and it was only after a long and happy relationship
>> that we decided to go our different ways, realising that we had
>> developed over the years different interests. But we remained on
>> friendly terms, I'm seeing her regularly, and we have joint custody
>> for some of my articles.
>
> Anti-realist, back when I were an undergraduate, meant not that one
> thought there was no reality at all, but that the terms of a scientific
> theory (or, in Putnam's version, of a language of any kind) need not
> denote actual reality.
I just remembered our failed attempts to convince Ray that the
privative a does not mean "against", which would be "anti", not "a". An
anti-realist, literally, is not someone who does not belief in reality,
but someone who does and is against it. And yes, i know arguments from
etymology often fail :o)
Walter Bushell
jo...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> > In article <1k0ozk6.z3ylea1rfm0ifN%jo...@wilkins.id.au>,
> > jo...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> >
> > > If the implcations of T in a semantic space are not exact (they do not
> > > predict a single possible state) they may (indeed must at a minimum)
> > > specify some cluster of locations in that space. A theory T that allowed
> > > any location to be occupied in the semantic posibility space would be
> > > worse than useless.
> >
> > Wait a minute, that is exactly what quantum physics predicts, and even
> > pre 20th century physics allows all the air in the room to spontaneously
> > migrate to one corner causing the inhabitants to die.
> >
> > You have to allow for a probability distribution.
>
> A distribution *is* a specification of the way things are predicted to
> be. If the likelihood of most regions of the possibility space are very
> nearly zero, you have made a positive prediction.
I predicted you'd say that.
Walter Bushell
jo...@wilkins.id.au (John S. Wilkins) wrote:
> pnyikos <nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
> > 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
> > evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
> > improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
> > scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
>
> Likewise, no physical, chemical, astronomical, biological or
> mathematical theories make predictions. Only their practitioners do. If
> a computer is used to simulate a space mission, no predictions are made
> until a space scientist repeats them out loud.
Shirley, typing them into the internet or publishing to a journal (or
even Readers Digest or National Inquirer) would count.
pnyikos
> On May 3, 2:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On May 3, 11:22 am, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On May 3, 9:00 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > On May 2, 10:47 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip for brevity]
> > > It turns out I made a mistake. I had accepted Behe's word that
> > > Doolittle misread Bugge.
And you were right the first time.
[snip for brevity]
> > > I found an online version
> > > of Bugge's article:
>
> > >http://tinyurl.com/3vbets6
>
> > > And for comparison, here is Behe's criticism of Doolittle:
>
> > >http://www.trueorigin.org/behe03.asp
>
> > > > > > There was a hilarious case of the blind leading the blind on all
> > > > > > this: Doollittle completely misread the article that reported on this
> > > > > > experiment and thought the mice with two genes knocked out were "doing
> > > > > > fine". Numerous people, including Michael Ruse and Neil Greespan, and
> > > > > > lots of people here in talk.origins, uncritically accepted Doolittle's
> > > > > > word for this, without ever bothering to read the original paper.
> > > > > > Michael Behe got lots of mileage out of this in his third Dover
> > > > > > testimony:
The correct url for that is:
http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day11AM.pdf
> > > > > > [Doolittle misreading p15, Ruse uncritically repeating Doolittle p20,
> > > > > > Greenspan p 22 ditto]
>
> > > Bugge wrote several times that the mice with double-knockout genes
> > > fared almost as well as the control mice,
>
> > Where? Already in the abstract he wrote:
>
> > "Mice deficient in Plg and Fib are phenotypically indistinguishable
> > from Fib-deficient mice."
>
> It's just a bit ironic at this point for you to be quotemining the
> abstract.
"quotemining" is not the right word when the quote suits the situation
so perfectly. There is nothing in the whole article to suggest that
the sentence is in any way misleading.
> > Are you alleging that Fib-deficient mice fared almost as well as
> > control mice?
>
> I don't allege it. Bugge wrote it:
>
> "The survival profile of the cohort of Fib-/- mice followed in this
> study was similar to that of control mice (Figure 2 and Table 2). "
Mortality is a very rough yardstick. Morbidity is much better, and
for that, Table 3 is the place to look.
> "Note the severe wasting of the Plg-/- mouse, whereas the appearance
> of the Plg-/-/Fib-/- mouse is indistinguishable from the control and
> Fib-/- mice"
>
> and
>
> "The fact that Fib-/- mice can tolerate a full-thickness skin incision
> without excessive bleeding (data not shown), and that healing time of
> skin wounds in Fib-/- mice is similar to that of control mice (Figure
> 4, and data not shown), provided an opportunity to establish whether a
> complex pathophysiological process, wound healing, was also corrected
> in Plg-/- mice by the absence of fibrin(ogen)."
>
> This last one is especially interesting to me, if not to you. It
> shows that a compromised clotting system still works,
No, it does not. Wound healing and stoppage of hemorrhaging can take
a number of different forms without the benefit of clotting. Behe
points this out on page 86 of DBB.
Didn't you take the article seriously when it said, "Aside from the
loss of clotting function...?" Did you notice ANY mention of clots by
the Fib-deficient mice? I certainly did not.
> if not as well,
> even when one or two of its parts are removed, and so disproves IC by
> Behe's definition.
You need to show that there was clotting of any sort taking place for
that.
I've deleted some quotes that show that the various pathologies
associated with plasminogen deficitency were missing from the doubly
deficient mice. Nobody denied that, and that includes me and Behe.
> > The table of pathologies (Table 3) certainly does not
> > seem to say that. Many of the singly Fib-deficient mice and the
> > doubly-deficient mice suffered from abnormalities of the liver (33 and
> > 41 percent, respectively) and some individuals had other problems as
> > well.
>
> > Were you reading stuff like the following too hastily?
>
> Your original point is that Behe got a lot of mileage out of
> Doolittle's misread, and Greenspan's and Ruse's alleged failure to
> read, Bugge's article. I see you add me to that list of alleged
> misreaders. Of course gene-compromised mice have metabolic problems
> control mice do not. So what?
So Doolittle was dead wrong when he contrasted the Fib-deficient mice
so strongly with the mice lacking both genes:
"Not long after that, the same workers knocked out
the gene for fibrinogen in another line of mice.
Again, predictably, these mice were ailing,
although in this case hemorrhage was the problem.
And what do you think happened when these two lines
of mice were crossed? For all practical purposes,
the mice lacking both genes were normal!6"
http://bostonreview.net/BR22.1/doolittle.html
But no more normal than the mice with which he is contrasting them
here!
> The point Doolittle made is not about
> their relatively poor health. The point Doolittle made was that a
> clotting cascade with two parts removed works at all.
He did not mention clotting in reference to those mice. Go ahead,
read the article. I've given you the url.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
Or of Orr's careless wording?
> Orr never attributes gene duplication to Muller. He merely
> says that gene duplication commonly results in evolution of just the
> sort Muller described in his paper.
How do you get THAT out of the following passage?
"The story of gene duplication—which can be found in every evolution
text—is just a special case of Muller's theory. But it's an immensely
important case: it explains how new genes arise and, thus, ultimately,
how biochemical pathways get built."
MY reading seems to be bolstered by the introductiory words he says
about Muller. He says the following, right after talking about
biochemical pathways:
"I wish I could claim credit for this Darwinian model of irreducible
complexity, but I'm afraid I've been scooped by eighty years. This
scenario was first hinted at by the geneticist H. J. Muller in 1918
and worked out in some detail in 1939.6 Indeed, Muller gives reasons
for thinking that genes which at first improved function will
routinely become essential parts of a pathway."
After reminding us how Muller got the Nobel Prize in 1946, he starts
into a new paragraph, at the end of which comes the quote I gave you
above. But the paragraph is interesting for other reasons.
"Although Muller's essay isn't as well known as it should be, the gist
of his idea is common wisdom in evolutionary biology. Here's an
important application: Molecular evolutionists have shown that some
genes are duplications of others. In other words, at some point in
time an extra copy of a gene got made. The copy wasn't essential—the
organism obviously got along fine without it. But through time this
copy changed, picking up a new, and often related, function. After
further evolution, this duplicate gene will have become essential.
(We're loaded with duplicate genes that are required: myoglobin, for
instance, which carries oxygen in muscles, is related to hemoglobin,
which carries oxygen in blood. Both are now necessary.) "
Actually, Ken Miller's and Keith Robison's account of how the clotting
cascade could have evolved talks about loss of function, not picking
up of new functions.
Here is how it goes. An enzyme in the primitive precursor system was
autocatalytic, i.e., able to cut itself, in addition to its other
enzymatic activity on the next protein in the system. When a gene
duplication occurred, at first both proteins cut themselves and, of
course, each other, along with the next protein. But then, one
duplicate lost its effect on the next protein, and became specialized
to just cutting itself and the other duplicate, which in turn lost the
ability to cut the other duplicate, and was just able to cut itself
and the next protein, or maybe just the next protein.
And then the process repeated itself, over and over again, until we
arrived at the Rube Goldberg clotting system that Behe had lots of fun
talking about because it is so amazingly complicated.
And if we had to rely on Chris Ho-Stuart's and Theobald's amateurish
descriptions of how these systems might build up, we would have to
wait until the heat death of the universe before the clotting system
had a decent chance to evolve.
By the way, who DID come up with the idea of gene duplication and its
role in evolution?
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
No, I'm going with your reading abilities here.
>> Orr never attributes gene duplication to Muller. He merely
>> says that gene duplication commonly results in evolution of just the
>> sort Muller described in his paper.
>
> How do you get THAT out of the following passage?
>
> "The story of gene duplication—which can be found in every evolution
> text—is just a special case of Muller's theory. But it's an immensely
> important case: it explains how new genes arise and, thus, ultimately,
> how biochemical pathways get built."
I see no other credible interpretation.
> MY reading seems to be bolstered by the introductiory words he says
> about Muller.
I don't think it is.
> He says the following, right after talking about
> biochemical pathways:
>
> "I wish I could claim credit for this Darwinian model of irreducible
> complexity, but I'm afraid I've been scooped by eighty years. This
> scenario was first hinted at by the geneticist H. J. Muller in 1918
> and worked out in some detail in 1939.6 Indeed, Muller gives reasons
> for thinking that genes which at first improved function will
> routinely become essential parts of a pathway."
How does this in any way bolster your reading? I don't understand.
> After reminding us how Muller got the Nobel Prize in 1946, he starts
> into a new paragraph, at the end of which comes the quote I gave you
> above. But the paragraph is interesting for other reasons.
You will have to explain those reasons, because I don't get whatever
point you are attempting to make below.
> "Although Muller's essay isn't as well known as it should be, the gist
> of his idea is common wisdom in evolutionary biology. Here's an
> important application: Molecular evolutionists have shown that some
> genes are duplications of others. In other words, at some point in
> time an extra copy of a gene got made. The copy wasn't essential—the
> organism obviously got along fine without it. But through time this
> copy changed, picking up a new, and often related, function. After
> further evolution, this duplicate gene will have become essential.
> (We're loaded with duplicate genes that are required: myoglobin, for
> instance, which carries oxygen in muscles, is related to hemoglobin,
> which carries oxygen in blood. Both are now necessary.) "
>
> Actually, Ken Miller's and Keith Robison's account of how the clotting
> cascade could have evolved talks about loss of function, not picking
> up of new functions.
So? It's still a case of duplicate parts being initially dispensable but
then becoming essential.
> Here is how it goes. An enzyme in the primitive precursor system was
> autocatalytic, i.e., able to cut itself, in addition to its other
> enzymatic activity on the next protein in the system. When a gene
> duplication occurred, at first both proteins cut themselves and, of
> course, each other, along with the next protein. But then, one
> duplicate lost its effect on the next protein, and became specialized
> to just cutting itself and the other duplicate, which in turn lost the
> ability to cut the other duplicate, and was just able to cut itself
> and the next protein, or maybe just the next protein.
>
> And then the process repeated itself, over and over again, until we
> arrived at the Rube Goldberg clotting system that Behe had lots of fun
> talking about because it is so amazingly complicated.
>
> And if we had to rely on Chris Ho-Stuart's and Theobald's amateurish
> descriptions of how these systems might build up, we would have to
> wait until the heat death of the universe before the clotting system
> had a decent chance to evolve.
That's an assertion, but shouldn't you be supporting it with some kind
of argument?
> By the way, who DID come up with the idea of gene duplication and its
> role in evolution?
I don't know. Why do you ask?
jillery
> On May 3, 4:53 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On May 3, 2:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > On May 3, 11:22 am, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On May 3, 9:00 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > > On May 2, 10:47 pm, jillery <69jpi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > It turns out I made a mistake. I had accepted Behe's word that
> > > > Doolittle misread Bugge.
>
> And you were right the first time.
Either way works for me. A questionable "misread" in a book review
for a literary magazine does not "a lot of mileage" make.
> > > > I found an online version
> > > > of Bugge's article:
>
> > > >http://tinyurl.com/3vbets6
>
> > > > And for comparison, here is Behe's criticism of Doolittle:
>
> > > >http://www.trueorigin.org/behe03.asp
>
> > > > > > > There was a hilarious case of the blind leading the blind on all
> > > > > > > this: Doollittle completely misread the article that reported on this
> > > > > > > experiment and thought the mice with two genes knocked out were "doing
> > > > > > > fine". Numerous people, including Michael Ruse and Neil Greespan, and
> > > > > > > lots of people here in talk.origins, uncritically accepted Doolittle's
> > > > > > > word for this, without ever bothering to read the original paper.
> > > > > > > Michael Behe got lots of mileage out of this in his third Dover
> > > > > > > testimony:
>
> The correct url for that is:http://www.aclupa.org/downloads/Day11AM.pdf
Your welcome.
> > > > Bugge wrote several times that the mice with double-knockout genes
> > > > fared almost as well as the control mice,
>
> > > Where? Already in the abstract he wrote:
>
> > > "Mice deficient in Plg and Fib are phenotypically indistinguishable
> > > from Fib-deficient mice."
>
> > It's just a bit ironic at this point for you to be quotemining the
> > abstract.
>
> "quotemining" is not the right word when the quote suits the situation
> so perfectly. There is nothing in the whole article to suggest that
> the sentence is in any way misleading.
The above is not the misleading part. It's your question immediately
below that qualifies the above.
> > > Are you alleging that Fib-deficient mice fared almost as well as
> > > control mice?
>
> > I don't allege it. Bugge wrote it:
>
> > "The survival profile of the cohort of Fib-/- mice followed in this
> > study was similar to that of control mice (Figure 2 and Table 2). "
>
> Mortality is a very rough yardstick. Morbidity is much better, and
> for that, Table 3 is the place to look.
Take it up with Bugge. He wrote it, and contradicts your quotemine
above.
> > "Note the severe wasting of the Plg-/- mouse, whereas the appearance
> > of the Plg-/-/Fib-/- mouse is indistinguishable from the control and
> > Fib-/- mice"
>
> > and
>
> > "The fact that Fib-/- mice can tolerate a full-thickness skin incision
> > without excessive bleeding (data not shown), and that healing time of
> > skin wounds in Fib-/- mice is similar to that of control mice (Figure
> > 4, and data not shown), provided an opportunity to establish whether a
> > complex pathophysiological process, wound healing, was also corrected
> > in Plg-/- mice by the absence of fibrin(ogen)."
>
> > This last one is especially interesting to me, if not to you. It
> > shows that a compromised clotting system still works,
>
> No, it does not. Wound healing and stoppage of hemorrhaging can take
> a number of different forms without the benefit of clotting. Behe
> points this out on page 86 of DBB.
Darn. I don't happen to have a copy of DBB handy to see what Behe
actually wrote. I hope you take no offense if I reserve comment on
this point until I do. I'm sure you don't want me to be hasty about
this.
In the meantime, do you intend to retract your question wrt Bugge's
description of Fib-deficient mice and control mice?
> Didn't you take the article seriously when it said, "Aside from the
> loss of clotting function...?" Did you notice ANY mention of clots by
> the Fib-deficient mice? I certainly did not.
>
> > if not as well,
> > even when one or two of its parts are removed, and so disproves IC by
> > Behe's definition.
>
> You need to show that there was clotting of any sort taking place for
> that.
>
> I've deleted some quotes that show that the various pathologies
> associated with plasminogen deficitency were missing from the doubly
> deficient mice.
That's ok. I restored them here so you don't have to read them so
hastily:
**************************************************************************
and
and
and
and
*************************************************************************
> Nobody denied that, and that includes me and Behe.
And nobody accused you of denying that. What you do and do not deny
is not the issue here. Bugge's quotes directly counter your assertion
that Doolittle "completely misread" Bugge's report. Since that is the
substance of your (and Behe's) complaint against Doolittle, these
quotes are quite relevant, although not in the way you might like.
> > > The table of pathologies (Table 3) certainly does not
> > > seem to say that. Many of the singly Fib-deficient mice and the
> > > doubly-deficient mice suffered from abnormalities of the liver (33 and
> > > 41 percent, respectively) and some individuals had other problems as
> > > well.
>
> > > Were you reading stuff like the following too hastily?
>
> > Your original point is that Behe got a lot of mileage out of
> > Doolittle's misread, and Greenspan's and Ruse's alleged failure to
> > read, Bugge's article. I see you add me to that list of alleged
> > misreaders. Of course gene-compromised mice have metabolic problems
> > control mice do not. So what?
>
> So Doolittle was dead wrong when he contrasted the Fib-deficient mice
> so strongly with the mice lacking both genes:
>
> "Not long after that, the same workers knocked out
> the gene for fibrinogen in another line of mice.
> Again, predictably, these mice were ailing,
> although in this case hemorrhage was the problem.
> And what do you think happened when these two lines
> of mice were crossed? For all practical purposes,
> the mice lacking both genes were normal!6"
You read too hastily again. To remind you, Bugge's experiment had
four populations of mice; 1. control, 2. plasminogen deficient, 3.
fibrinogen deficient, 4. deficient in both. Each population
demonstrated different levels of morbidity. As you say, nobody denies
that. The point you seem to ignore is that Bugge states that pop. 4
was phenotypically similar to pop. 1, which pop.2 was so poor that all
the mice in it died before the experiemt ended. So the experiment
shows a dramatic range of phenotypic responses to these different
metabolic challenges, and that is what Doolittle described above.
> > The point Doolittle made is not about
> > their relatively poor health. The point Doolittle made was that a
> > clotting cascade with two parts removed works at all.
>
> He did not mention clotting in reference to those mice.
Are you deliberately conflating "clotting cascade" and "clotting"?
Two major subtexts in Doolittle's review are about the clotting
cascade and Bugge's mice. In fact it's Doolittle's mention of them in
his review that is at the heart of what you and Behe claim is
Doolittle's misread, and your gloating on how much mileage Behe got
over it in Dover. But as I have shown, Doolittle read Bugge as Bugge
wrote it, and so did Ruse, Greenspan, and myself. I find Doolittle's
closing remark most relevant here:
" No one doubts that mice deprived of these two genes would be
compromised in the wild, but the mere fact that they appear normal in
the laboratory setting is a striking example of the point and
counterpoint, step-by-step scenario in reverse!"
It is this that I paraphrased when I originally commented on
Doolittle's review. Since you snipped it without note in your reply
to that comment, I unsnip it back here, so you can read it without
haste:
**********************************************************************
So Doolittle's comment that "For all practical purposes, the mice
lacking both genes were normal!" correctly represents Bugge's
expressed position, as Doolittle's "normal" refers to the context of
Bugge's experiment, which is necessarily different from any natural
environment. Behe misread Doolittle. If anything, Behe's complaint
is with Bugge, not Doolittle, not Ruse, and not Greenspan.
***********************************************************************
As a final note, I am not interested in participating in a thread
where I have to restore relevant content that you delete so ... umm...
indiscrimately. I hoped I wouldn't have to. Yes, I followed your
lead, but obviously you have much more practice and interest in doing
such things than I do. Feel free to practice your artfulness on
somebody else.
pnyikos
>
> >>> Here is an interesting recent example. Back in 1918 Herman Muller did
> >>> an article with some natural infernces as to why so many mutations of
> >>> animals [he was researching the fruit fly *Drosophilia*] are lethal.
> >>> Obviously, the organs or systems affected by the mutations were
> >>> essential to the survival of the organism; and he observed that a lot
> >>> of these may have been nonessential in some remote ancestor or
> >>> another, but had become essential to survival thru other modifications
> >>> in the animals in question.
> >>>http://www.genetics.org/content/3/5/422.full.pdf
>
> > And the relevant passage there seems to be the following:
>
> > ___________________________________
> > In the first place, it is likely that lethals are really among the
> > commonest forms of mutants, but they would be discovered much more
> > readily if they were dominant in regard to some visible character than
> > if they were completely recessive, and this would cause the proportion
> > of lethals among the dominant mutant factors to appear to be
> > excessively high, when compared with the proportion among the
> > recessives.
> > Most present-day animals are the result of a long process of
> > evolution, in which at least thousands of mutations must have taken
> > place. Each new mutant in turn must have derived its survival value
> > from the effect which it produced upon the "reaction system" that had
> > been brought into being by the many previously formed factors in
> > cooperation; thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose
> > effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very
> > numerous different elementary parts or factors, and many of the
> > asset finally became necessary because other necessary characters and
> > factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the
> > former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of, or
> > even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to
> > disturb fatally the whole machinery;
> > for this reason we should expect very many, if not most, mutations to
> > "semi-lethal" or at least disadvantageous in the struggle for life,
> > reproductive system.
> > It isn't too clear to me whether "a complicated machine" refers to the
> > whole animal or some system such as the reproductive system. The
> > clause "disturb fatally the whole machinery" seems to suggest the
> > latter.
>
> Why does it matter? In either case what would seem to be defined is an
> IC system.
I don't think any but the very simplest prokaryotes are IC, and even
there, we have something I don't think even Behe is ready to claim.
If you think the human body or even *Drosophilia* could be an IC
system, then you have no idea what IC means. [Clue for us humans:
tonsils, adenoids, appendix.]
And that was the point.
>
> >>> These observations were spin-doctored by Chris Ho-Stuart into the
> >>> following claim:
> >>> "Muller's definition of "interlocking complexity" is exactly the same
> >>> as the definition of "irreducible complexity" -- a system of mutually
> >>> independent parts that requires all those parts to be present for the
> >>> system to work."
> >>>http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/sep06.html
>
> > Stuart's definition of irreducible complexity is correct. The trouble
> > is that Muller never hints that ALL the parts need to be present, only
> > that there are could be many parts like that, and often are. Hence
> > the use of "exactly" by Stuart is especially improper.
>
> That doesn't seem like a problem to me. He may not say explicitly that
> there are no removable parts, but he does imply it, "interlocking" being
> the key word.
You are reading way too much into it.
> And at any rate, what he presents here can be turned into
> an IC system by removing a few parts first. The major point is that
> Muller presents a way in which an IC system can evolve through many
> slight changes, each advantageous.
In theory. But once you try to quantify it, you get into the quagmire
of conflicting trends, as I tried to explain later. Bottom line: no
one ever predicted IC systems explicitly until Behe came up with the
concept. If you disagree, you need to point to something other than
what was quoted from Muller so far.
> And that's what Behe claims can't
> happen.
False. He did speak of circuitous, roundabout ways. And I don't
think you grasp the beauty of the Miller/Robison scenario even now.
I've never seen any other plausible way of arriving at either the
clotting or immune "complement system" cascades. Certainly Stuart and
Theobald weren't even in the ballpark.
> Might I add that "spin-doctoring" seems once more to impute dishonesty
> to the folks you mention. Did you intend that? I don't think they're
> dishonest at all.
You may be right about that. I do need to be more careful about
attributing things to dishonesty that could also be explained as being
due to breathtaking incompetence.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
That's a separate issue. The sentence from the abstract quoted above
made no mention of the controls; it only mentioned the two kinds of
Fib-deficient mice, the ones with the gene for plasminogen and the
ones lacking that too.
It is YOU who made the claim that I was questioning below, and you
seem to be quotemining the article in support of it.
> > > > Are you alleging that Fib-deficient mice fared almost as well as
> > > > control mice?
>
> > > I don't allege it. Bugge wrote it:
>
> > > "The survival profile of the cohort of Fib-/- mice followed in this
> > > study was similar to that of control mice (Figure 2 and Table 2). "
>
> > Mortality is a very rough yardstick. Morbidity is much better, and
> > for that, Table 3 is the place to look.
>
> Take it up with Bugge. He wrote it, and contradicts your quotemine
> above.
Not in the above quote, which speaks only of survival. Did you find
some other quote that supported your claim?
> > > "Note the severe wasting of the Plg-/- mouse, whereas the appearance
> > > of the Plg-/-/Fib-/- mouse is indistinguishable from the control and
> > > Fib-/- mice"
This was in reference to photos, and external appearance is another
very crude yardstick. Are you familiar with the various uses of the
word "cosmetic"?
> > > and
>
> > > "The fact that Fib-/- mice can tolerate a full-thickness skin incision
> > > without excessive bleeding (data not shown), and that healing time of
> > > skin wounds in Fib-/- mice is similar to that of control mice (Figure
> > > 4, and data not shown), provided an opportunity to establish whether a
> > > complex pathophysiological process, wound healing, was also corrected
> > > in Plg-/- mice by the absence of fibrin(ogen)."
>
> > > This last one is especially interesting to me, if not to you. It
> > > shows that a compromised clotting system still works,
>
> > No, it does not. Wound healing and stoppage of hemorrhaging can take
> > a number of different forms without the benefit of clotting. Behe
> > points this out on page 86 of DBB.
>
> Darn. I don't happen to have a copy of DBB handy to see what Behe
> actually wrote. I hope you take no offense if I reserve comment on
> this point until I do. I'm sure you don't want me to be hasty about
> this.
He is rather brief: platelets can congregate to produce what may look
superficially like a clot, but has nothing to do with the clotting
mechanism. Also tissues can constrict to close off the wound. I see
the latter process at work lots of times when I suffer paper cuts,
etc.
> In the meantime, do you intend to retract your question wrt Bugge's
> description of Fib-deficient mice and control mice?
No, it's just that now we are haggling over quantification of "almost
as well".
> > Didn't you take the article seriously when it said, "Aside from the
> > loss of clotting function...?" Did you notice ANY mention of clots by
> > the Fib-deficient mice? I certainly did not.
No reply to this one from you.
Hence I do not withdraw it. ;-)
[snip repost which contains no extra comments by you]
> Clearly Bugge is of the opinion that knocking out fibrinogen
> significantly improved the health of plasminogen-deficient mice. So
> much so that he repeatedly uses the word "rescue" in his descriptions
> of it.
> *************************************************************************
>
> > Nobody denied that, and that includes me and Behe.
>
> And nobody accused you of denying that. What you do and do not deny
> is not the issue here. Bugge's quotes directly counter your assertion
> that Doolittle "completely misread" Bugge's report.
He did as far as his main point about it in the Boston Review went,
his only talking point wrt Behe as far as the mice were concerned.
Granted, he did get the problems of the Plg-deficient mice and the
simply Fib-deficient mice right, so i withdraw the "completely" and
replace it with "badly.."
And now comes the reason I put stress on the word "cosmetic":
> > > > The table of pathologies (Table 3) certainly does not
> > > > seem to say that. Many of the singly Fib-deficient mice and the
> > > > doubly-deficient mice suffered from abnormalities of the liver (33 and
> > > > 41 percent, respectively) and some individuals had other problems as
> > > > well.
[...]
> > > Your original point is that Behe got a lot of mileage out of
> > > Doolittle's misread, and Greenspan's and Ruse's alleged failure to
> > > read, Bugge's article. I see you add me to that list of alleged
> > > misreaders. Of course gene-compromised mice have metabolic problems
> > > control mice do not. So what?
>
> > So Doolittle was dead wrong when he contrasted the Fib-deficient mice
> > so strongly with the mice lacking both genes:
>
> > "Not long after that, the same workers knocked out
> > the gene for fibrinogen in another line of mice.
Your pop 3 below.
> > Again, predictably, these mice were ailing,
> > although in this case hemorrhage was the problem.
> > And what do you think happened when these two lines
> > of mice were crossed?
Your pop 4 below.
> > For all practical purposes,
> > the mice lacking both genes were normal!6"
> > http://bostonreview.net/BR22.1/doolittle.html
> You read too hastily again.
I see no relevance in what you wrote below to this "too hastily"
assertion, which appears baseless.
> To remind you, Bugge's experiment had
> four populations of mice; 1. control, 2. plasminogen deficient, 3.
> fibrinogen deficient, 4. deficient in both. Each population
> demonstrated different levels of morbidity. As you say, nobody denies
> that. The point you seem to ignore is that Bugge states that pop. 4
> was phenotypically similar to pop. 1,
He *stated* that pop 4 was phenotypically *indistinguishable* from
pop. 3. Where do you get the "phenotypically similar to pop 1" bit?
From Doolittle?
> which pop.2 was so poor that all
> the mice in it died before the experiemt ended. So the experiment
> shows a dramatic range of phenotypic responses to these different
> metabolic challenges, and that is what Doolittle described above.
Not above. I did not quote what he said about the pop 2 mice.
> > > The point Doolittle made is not about
> > > their relatively poor health. The point Doolittle made was that a
> > > clotting cascade with two parts removed works at all.
>
> > He did not mention clotting in reference to those mice.
>
> Are you deliberately conflating "clotting cascade" and "clotting"?
No. Doolittle mentioned neither one in the part about the pop 3 nor
pop 4 mice that I quoted a portion of above. Clots are only mentioned
wrt the pop 2 mice, and I haven't quoted that part.
> Two major subtexts in Doolittle's review are about the clotting
> cascade and Bugge's mice. In fact it's Doolittle's mention of them in
> his review that is at the heart of what you and Behe claim is
> Doolittle's misread,
No, only the comparison between pop 3 and pop 4 mice. But if you
correct what he wrote there, his whole case against the clotting
cascade claims of Behe collapses, and an uncharitable person might say
he was hoist by his own sarcastic petard when he said,
"Now it appears that I have wasted my career." [*ibid.*]
Fortunately, neither I nor Behe are uncharitable. We both have great
respect for Doolittle, despite this embarrassing momentary lapse by
him.
> But as I have shown, Doolittle read Bugge as Bugge
> wrote it, and so did Ruse, Greenspan, and myself.
NO. I stand by what I said earlier. I still maintain that Ruse and
Greenspan uncritically believed what Doolittle said. I don't think
either of them made the effort you have made to exonerate Doolittle of
an embarrassing lapse.
> " No one doubts that mice deprived of these two genes would be
> compromised in the wild, but the mere fact that they appear normal in
> the laboratory setting
Only to the extent that the pop 3 mice did. But then, pop goes the
big contrast he was making above. And in that contrast lay his main
error.
> is a striking example of the point and
> counterpoint, step-by-step scenario in reverse!"
Erroneous premises lead to dubious conclusion.
[...]
> As a final note, I am not interested in participating in a thread
> where I have to restore relevant content that you delete so ... umm...
> indiscrimately.
I don't think I deleted anything relevant to the argument. You
restored a huge amount of stuff on pop 2 mice and comparisons with the
other populations that was irrelevant to the points I was making all
along. And so I deleted it again, as before.
Peter Nyikos
richardal...@gmail.com
> On May 3, 3:43 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On May 2, 6:55 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
> > > 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
> > > evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
> > > improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
> > > scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
>
> > > wonder whether the National Academy of Sciences has ever bothered to
> > > attach a meaning to the formula--and even whether anyone in talk
> > > origins has ever bothered to attach a meaning. As it apparently
> > > stands, it's a very handy equivocation to use by anyone who wants to
> > > avoid sticking his neck out too much.
>
> > > Here is an interesting recent example. Back in 1918 Herman Muller did
> > > an article with some natural infernces as to why so many mutations of
> > > animals [he was researching the fruit fly *Drosophilia*] are lethal.
> > > Obviously, the organs or systems affected by the mutations were
> > > essential to the survival of the organism; and he observed that a lot
> > > of these may have been nonessential in some remote ancestor or
> > > another, but had become essential to survival thru other modifications
> > > in the animals in question.http://www.genetics.org/content/3/5/422.full.pdf
>
> > > following claim:
> > > Muller's definition of "interlocking complexity" is exactly the same
> > > as the definition of "irreducible complexity" -- a system of mutually
> > > independent parts that requires all those parts to be present for the
> > > system to work.http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/sep06.html
>
> > > "systems" were quite different from the molecular machines to which
> > > Behe attached the term "irreducible complexity", so the above spin-
> > > doctoring is misleading/false on at least two counts.
>
> > > Similar spin-doctoring, even to the point of claiming that Muller had
> > > "predicted" and "discussed" Behe's "structures" was done by Douglas
> > > Theobald in:http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
>
> > > Mark Isaak went even further, claiming that Muller had not only
> > > "predicted" irreducible complexity but had even called it an
> > > "expected" evolutionary phenomenon.http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200.html
>
> > > Richard Forrest, on the other hand, recently played it safe, using the
> > > "evoutionary theory predicted" mantra; his words are preserved in the
> > > following exchange:
>
> > My word, you *do* like using emotive and loaded terms. "Spin-
> > doctored" , "mantra".
>
> "mantra" is just a little turnabout for the way you decided, on the
> base of ZERO evidence, and in defiance of everything that I have ever
> posted on Usenet, that I am a creationist.
The evidence I offer is
1) That you support ID and
2) That ID has been tested in the courts and the judgement was that it
is "scientific" creationism in a cheap suit.
That isn't "zero evidence", not even if you capitalise the "zero".
>
> Will you stick to that conviction to your dying day, or is there
> something I could say or do to shake you loose from that conviction?
What conviction? You asked for a citation supporting my statement the
Muller anticipated the concept of "irreducible complexity" proposed by
IDers. I gave it.
Yes, I'm convinced that I supported by argument with evidence, and
nothing you can say will change that conviction. Just as I am
convinced that today is 6th May 2011, and nothing you can say will
change that conviction.
>
> Anticipating a discouraging answer, I've used the term "spin-
> doctored" below as another little turnabout.
In what way is providing a citation to support my statements a
"discouraging answer"?
>
> > The simple fact is that Muller predicted the existence of interlocking
> > complexity,
>
> Baloney. He OBSERVED its existence and sort of implicitly predicted
> that precursors would be found where the necessary parts were not yet
> necessary.
I suggest that any rational reading of the extract from his paper I
quoted shows that this is not the case.
>
> > which is defined in exactly the same way as Behe's
> > "irreducible complexity".
>
> It certainly does not look that way in the two cites which Theobald
> gave:
I don't care what cites Theobald gave.
I gave you a citation which describes it in a way that is
indistinguishable from Behe's "irreducible complexity".
>
> Muller, H. J. (1918) "Genetic variability, twin hybrids and constant
> hybrids, in a case of balanced lethal factors." Genetics 3:422-499.
> [Free Text, Genetics Online]
>
> Muller, H. J. (1939) "Reversibility in evolution considered from the
> standpoint of genetics." Biological Reviews of the Cambridge
> Philosophical Society 14:261-280.http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
>
> The two cites clearly speak of "necessary characters" but don't
> breathe a word about ALL the characters (in what? the whole animal?
> don't be ridiculous!) being necessary. See below.
>
> > I gave a link to the paper in which he
> > defined it.
>
> I didn't see that post of yours.
Then I suggest that you are either lying or are unable to read simple
English. Not only did I cite the paper, I provided a link to an on-
line copy of it and quoted directly the relevant portion in my
previous post.
What more could you ask for?
> Is the definition to be found
> elsewhere than in the two passages Theobald cited?
It's description is to be found in the passage I cited in the post to
which you are responding.
>
> ___________________ begin passage 1
> "... thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose effective
> working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very numerous
> different elementary parts or factors, and many of the characters and
> factors which, when new, were originally merely an asset finally
> became necessary because other necessary characters and factors had
> subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the former. It
> must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of, or even a slight
> change in any one of these parts is very likely to disturb fatally the
> whole machinery; for this reason we should expect very many, if not
> most, mutations to result in lethal factors ..."
> Muller 1918 pp. 463-464. (emphasis in the original)
> ===================== end passage 1, begin 2
> "... an embryological or physiological process or structure newly
> arisen by gene mutation, after becoming once established (with or
> without the aid of selection), later takes more and more part in the
> whole complex interplay of vital processes. For still further
> mutations that arise are now allowed to stay if only they work in
> harmony with all genes that are already present, and, of these further
> mutations, some will naturally depend, for their proper working, on
> the new process or structure under consideration. Being thus finally
> woven, as it were, into the most intimate fabric of the organism, the
> once novel character can no longer be withdrawn with impunity, and may
> have become vitally necessary."
> Muller 1939 pp. 271-272.
> ***************************** end passage 2
>
> > Just to clarify: here is the relevant section of Muller's paper:
>
> HAH! you cited a slightly different portion of the 1918 paper than
> Theobald, and BOTH are subsets of what I cited to Denney!
...and the portion I cited describes the interlocking nature of
bioloigical systems and argues that they are an inevitable consequence
of evolution by natural selection.
It's called a "prediction".
>
> > "Most present-day animals are the result of a long process of
> > evolution, in which at least thousands of mutations must have taken
> > place. Each new mutant in turn must have derived its survival value
> > from the effect which it produced upon the “reaction system” that had
> > been brought into being by the many previously formed factors in
> > cooperation; thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose
> > effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very
> > numerous different elementary parts or factors, and many of the
> > characters and factors
>
> You spin-doctored "many" to read "all." :-)
I did nothing of the sort. Stop lying.
>
> > which, when new , were originally merely an
> > asset finally became necessary because other necessary characters and
> > factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the
> > former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of , or
> > even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to
> > disturb fatally the whole machinery;
>
> You spin-doctored "these parts" to read "all of the parts". :-)
I did nothing of the sort. Stop lying.
>
> > for this reason we should expect
> > very many, if not most, mutations to result in lethal factors, and of
> > the rest, the majority should be “semi-lethal” or at least
> > disadvantageous in the struggle for life,
>
> "disadvantageous" is a far cry from establishing the necessity of the
> factor being mutated.
So what?
>
> >and likely to set wrong any
> > delicately balanced system, such as the reproductive system."
>
> If a creationist were to cite this as evidence that mutations are
> almost invariably lethal, he would soon be set straight on his
> ignorance of the fact that Muller's concept of "mutation" is no longer
> in use.
If a creationist cited a paper which shows that the poster child of
ID, "irreducible complexity", was predicted by evolutionary theory
nearly a century ago I'd be very surprised.
>
> > Perhaps you can explain how Muller's description of the interlocking
> > systems which he argues are an inevitable consequence of evolution
> > differs from Behe's definition of 'irreducible complexity'?
>
> > "A single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts
> > that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
> > of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."
>
> Muller did not speak of single systems, he spoke of lethal vs non-
> lethal mutations, and that clearly refers to the organism as a
> whole.
Oh my! And you accuse me of "spin-doctoring"!
From the point of view of the ID assertion it makes no difference if
we are talking about the organism as a whole or one of it's systems.
>
> Would you read his closing comments as evidence that any mutation to
> the human appendix is very likely to be disadvantageous?
I'd read his comments as implying that any mutation is likely to be
disadvantageous. That does change the fact than only a small number of
advantageous mutations are needed to drive the mechanism of evolution
by natural selection.
RF
>
> Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
Forrest acts below as though he HAD stuck his neck out. To me it
looks like he is deliberately misunderstanding a question of mine
below in order to score some cheap debating points.
> > > My word, you *do* like using emotive and loaded terms. "Spin-
> > > doctored" , "mantra".
Richard, the "logic" whereby you dispute the next thing I say leads me
to wonder how an illogical person like you ever got interested in
science enough to be doing research on plesiosaurs.
> > "mantra" is just a little turnabout for the way you decided, on the
> > base of ZERO evidence, and in defiance of everything that I have ever
> > posted on Usenet, that I am a creationist.
>
> The evidence I offer is
> 1) That you support ID
If by "ID" you mean "that which the judge in Dover ruled to be a
religious concept" then I do not support ID.
If by "ID" you mean "intelligent design" in the literal sense of those
two words, then I support it to a limited extent, but that extent
disqualifies the next thing you write:
> 2) That ID has been tested in the courts and the judgement was that it
> is "scientific" creationism in a cheap suit.
The ONLY ID that I have endorsed is that based on directed panspermy,
a hypothesis due to the atheist Francis Crick, and to Leslie Orgel
(whose religious affiliation is not known to me, but it's irrelevant
anyway.
Crick mentioned a modest version of intelligent design that the
panspermists, ordinary naturally evolved intelligent beings like
ourselves, may have indulged in, and I have mentioned other versions
that still seem to be well within the capabilities of us human beings,
given enough time.
> That isn't "zero evidence", not even if you capitalise the "zero".
It IS zero evidence, because you have indulged in sophistry based on
an equivocation wrt the expression "ID".
The irony is that you and another person unjustly accused me of using
equivocation on that very term.
> > Will you stick to that conviction to your dying day, or is there
> > something I could say or do to shake you loose from that conviction?
>
> What conviction?
The conviction that I am a creationist. Did the words "you decided"
go over your head?
You're playing dumb just so you can duck my question, aren't you?
> You asked for a citation supporting my statement the
> Muller anticipated the concept of "irreducible complexity" proposed by
> IDers. I gave it.
For what that support is worth.
> Yes, I'm convinced that I supported by argument with evidence, and
> nothing you can say will change that conviction.
Your "Yes" has no valid referent. I never mentioned anything ELSE
of yours that could be construed as a conviction; I even accused you
of "playing it safe" and identified just hw
>Just as I am
> convinced that today is 6th May 2011, and nothing you can say will
> change that conviction.
Grow up.
> > Anticipating a discouraging answer, I've used the term "spin-
> > doctored" below as another little turnabout.
>
> In what way is providing a citation to support my statements a
> "discouraging answer"?
Wrong referent. The question to which I was referring was whether
there is anything I could say or do to shake your conviction that I am
a creationist. And you've given TWO discouraging answers to that.
One is your flagrant wordplay with "ID" and the other is what looks
like you playing dumb about what the question was.
Continued in next reply.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
<richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 3, 6:22 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On May 3, 3:43 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
>
> > <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > The simple fact is that Muller predicted the existence of interlocking
> > > complexity,
>
> > Baloney. He OBSERVED its existence and sort of implicitly predicted
> > that precursors would be found where the necessary parts were not yet
> > necessary.
>
> I suggest that any rational reading of the extract from his paper I
> quoted shows that this is not the case.
I suggest that you post the words that you think imply anything BUT
that. Below, even YOU say something that seems to agree with me, but
it is just too vaguely worded.
> > > which is defined in exactly the same way as Behe's
> > > "irreducible complexity".
>
> > It certainly does not look that way in the two cites which Theobald
> > gave:
>
> I don't care what cites Theobald gave.
Essentially the same one you did, and another that looks a bit more
promising than the one you gave, because it holds out the hope that
Muller bothered to explicitly DEFINE "interlocking complexity" instead
of just giving a general idea of what it means. Both are cited by me
below, in the post to which you are replying.
> I gave you a citation which describes it in a way that is
> indistinguishable from Behe's "irreducible complexity".
Then you haven't a clue as to what "irreducible complexity" means. It
does NOT mean "some parts are necessary for the function." It means
(in part) that ALL parts are necessary for the function.
> > Muller, H. J. (1918) "Genetic variability, twin hybrids and constant
> > hybrids, in a case of balanced lethal factors." Genetics 3:422-499.
> > [Free Text, Genetics Online]
>
> > Muller, H. J. (1939) "Reversibility in evolution considered from the
> > standpoint of genetics." Biological Reviews of the Cambridge
> > Philosophical Society 14:261-280.http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
>
> > The two cites clearly speak of "necessary characters" but don't
> > breathe a word about ALL the characters (in what? the whole animal?
> > don't be ridiculous!) being necessary. See below.
>
> > > I gave a link to the paper in which he
> > > defined it.
>
> > I didn't see that post of yours.
>
> Then I suggest that you are either lying or are unable to read simple
> English.
After I posted the words to which you are replying, I found your post
in another thread. Stop being so trigger-happy.
And your citation adds NOTHING to what I already posted in response to
Denney, and leaves some things out.
I said pretty much the same thing after I said "Baloney".
> It's called a "prediction".
What *I* said following "Baloney" described a prediction worthy of the
name. You are sort of implying the same thing I said, but in a much
vaguer way.
Anyway, call it what you will, it is NOT a prediction of the concept
of irreducible complexity.
> > > "Most present-day animals are the result of a long process of
> > > evolution, in which at least thousands of mutations must have taken
> > > place. Each new mutant in turn must have derived its survival value
> > > from the effect which it produced upon the “reaction system” that had
> > > been brought into being by the many previously formed factors in
> > > cooperation; thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose
> > > effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very
> > > numerous different elementary parts or factors, and many of the
> > > characters and factors
>
> > You spin-doctored "many" to read "all." :-)
>
> I did nothing of the sort. Stop lying.
Do you know all the uses of smileys in contexts like these? It sure
doesn't look that way.
Anyway, now that I've explained the difference between irreducible and
interlocking complexity, you should see the message behind my little
joke.
>
>
> > > which, when new , were originally merely an
> > > asset finally became necessary because other necessary characters and
> > > factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the
> > > former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of , or
> > > even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to
> > > disturb fatally the whole machinery;
>
> > You spin-doctored "these parts" to read "all of the parts". :-)
>
> I did nothing of the sort. Stop lying.
See my previous comment, twit. I dislike repeating myself more than
you apparently do.
>
>
> > > for this reason we should expect
> > > very many, if not most, mutations to result in lethal factors, and of
> > > the rest, the majority should be “semi-lethal” or at least
> > > disadvantageous in the struggle for life,
>
> > "disadvantageous" is a far cry from establishing the necessity of the
> > factor being mutated.
>
> So what?
Read my earlier comments carefully and you will see the answer to this
question.
> > >and likely to set wrong any
> > > delicately balanced system, such as the reproductive system."
>
> > If a creationist were to cite this as evidence that mutations are
> > almost invariably lethal, he would soon be set straight on his
> > ignorance of the fact that Muller's concept of "mutation" is no longer
> > in use.
>
> If a creationist cited a paper which shows that the poster child of
> ID, "irreducible complexity", was predicted by evolutionary theory
> nearly a century ago I'd be very surprised.
Changing the subject in this abrupt way seems to be a specialty of
yours.
> > > Perhaps you can explain how Muller's description of the interlocking
> > > systems which he argues are an inevitable consequence of evolution
> > > differs from Behe's definition of 'irreducible complexity'?
>
> > > "A single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts
> > > that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
> > > of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."
>
> > Muller did not speak of single systems, he spoke of lethal vs non-
> > lethal mutations, and that clearly refers to the organism as a
> > whole.
>
> Oh my! And you accuse me of "spin-doctoring"!
Only in a joking way, as turnabout for your baseless charge that I am
a creationist.
> From the point of view of the ID assertion it makes no difference if
> we are talking about the organism as a whole or one of it's systems.
"the ID assertion" -- what a grand equivocation! Can you tell me
what it means in 1000 words or less?
> > Would you read his closing comments as evidence that any mutation to
> > the human appendix is very likely to be disadvantageous?
>
> I'd read his comments as implying that any mutation is likely to be
> disadvantageous. That does change the fact than only a small number of
> advantageous mutations are needed to drive the mechanism of evolution
> by natural selection.
You left out the word "not". With it inserted in the proper place, I
agree.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
>
Lest there be more misunderstandings, let me clarify something I
wrote.
> > You asked for a citation supporting my statement the
> > Muller anticipated the concept of "irreducible complexity" proposed by
> > IDers. I gave it.
> For what that support is worth.
> >Yes, I'm convinced that I supported by argument with evidence, and
> > nothing you can say will change that conviction.
By "ELSE" below I meant "besides the conviction that I am a
creationist."
> Your "Yes" has no valid referent. I never mentioned anything ELSE
> of yours that could be construed as a conviction; I even accused you
> of "playing it safe" and identified just hw
I meant to write "identified just how you were playing it safe wrt the
term `prediction' as applied to irreducible complexity." And that was
to not mention Muller by name at first, but to attribute the
prediction to "evolutionary theory".
No suggestion of a conviction there; quite the contrary.
Peter Nyikos
richardal...@gmail.com
What rot! You have attempted to defend the notions of irreducible
complexity and specified complexity which lie at the heart of the
claims of the IDers for scientific legitimacy.
>
> If by "ID" you mean "intelligent design" in the literal sense of those
> two words, then I support it to a limited extent, but that extent
> disqualifies the next thing you write:
>
> > 2) That ID has been tested in the courts and the judgement was that it
> > is "scientific" creationism in a cheap suit.
>
> The ONLY ID that I have endorsed is that based on directed panspermy,
> a hypothesis due to the atheist Francis Crick, and to Leslie Orgel
> (whose religious affiliation is not known to me, but it's irrelevant
> anyway.
That's flatly false. You have attempted to defend Behe's assertions of
"irreducible complexity" and Dembski's assertions of "specified
complexity" as characterising "design". That has nothing to do with
Crick or Orgel's hypotheses of panspermia.
> Crick mentioned a modest version of intelligent design that the
> panspermists, ordinary naturally evolved intelligent beings like
> ourselves, may have indulged in, and I have mentioned other versions
> that still seem to be well within the capabilities of us human beings,
> given enough time.
>
That has not been the subject of this thread.
> > That isn't "zero evidence", not even if you capitalise the "zero".
>
> It IS zero evidence, because you have indulged in sophistry based on
> an equivocation wrt the expression "ID".
I suggest that the only equivocation going on here is yours. You have
specifically been defending Behe's notion of "irreducible complexity",
a key argument of the ID movement.
>
> The irony is that you and another person unjustly accused me of using
> equivocation on that very term.
>
Oh, please!
Anyone with half a brain can check back up the thread and see that
this is a blatant lie.
> > > Will you stick to that conviction to your dying day, or is there
> > > something I could say or do to shake you loose from that conviction?
>
> > What conviction?
>
> The conviction that I am a creationist. Did the words "you decided"
> go over your head?
Nothing you have posted so far would lead me to think that you are not
a supporter of ID as defined by creationists such as Behe and Dembski.
Bearing in mind that creationists build their whole argument on
falsehoods, and have been know to lie about their religious
convictions in the pretence that they have reached their conclusions
about evolutionary theory from a study of the evidence, why should I
think that you are *not* a creationist?
>
> You're playing dumb just so you can duck my question, aren't you?
>
I haven't ducked any questions.
> > You asked for a citation supporting my statement the
> > Muller anticipated the concept of "irreducible complexity" proposed by
> > IDers. I gave it.
>
> For what that support is worth.
So I did exactly what you asked, and the citation I gave supports my
position.
What more could one ask for?
> > Yes, I'm convinced that I supported by argument with evidence, and
> > nothing you can say will change that conviction.
>
> Your "Yes" has no valid referent. I never mentioned anything ELSE
> of yours that could be construed as a conviction; I even accused you
> of "playing it safe" and identified just hw
>
> >Just as I am
> > convinced that today is 6th May 2011, and nothing you can say will
> > change that conviction.
>
> Grow up.
I suggest that the boot is on the other foot here.
>
> > > Anticipating a discouraging answer, I've used the term "spin-
> > > doctored" below as another little turnabout.
>
> > In what way is providing a citation to support my statements a
> > "discouraging answer"?
>
> Wrong referent.
Why? Or have you once again moved the goalposts without telling
anyone?
> The question to which I was referring was whether
> there is anything I could say or do to shake your conviction that I am
> a creationist.
Then I suggest that you learn to write clearer English.
Bearing in mind that your posts promote creationist arguments, and
creationists lie about their beliefs in the pretence that they arrived
at their position for non-religious reasons, you'd have to provide a
pretty convicing argument that you are not a creationist.
Frankly, I don't care.
> And you've given TWO discouraging answers to that.
> One is your flagrant wordplay with "ID" and the other is what looks
> like you playing dumb about what the question was.
Don't confuse your inability to express yourself clearly with others
"playing dumb".
RF
richardal...@gmail.com
You accuse me of lying and think that if you add a smiley it's okay?
You *must* be a creationist!
> It sure
> doesn't look that way.
>
> Anyway, now that I've explained the difference between irreducible and
> interlocking complexity, you should see the message behind my little
> joke.
No, you have *asserted* that there is a difference.
There isn't in any rational sense.
>
>
>
> > > > which, when new , were originally merely an
> > > > asset finally became necessary because other necessary characters and
> > > > factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the
> > > > former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of , or
> > > > even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to
> > > > disturb fatally the whole machinery;
>
> > > You spin-doctored "these parts" to read "all of the parts". :-)
>
> > I did nothing of the sort. Stop lying.
>
> See my previous comment, twit. I dislike repeating myself more than
> you apparently do.
..and once again, do you think that if you add a smiley to an
accusation of dishonesty on my part it makes it acceptable?
>
>
>
> > > > for this reason we should expect
> > > > very many, if not most, mutations to result in lethal factors, and of
> > > > the rest, the majority should be “semi-lethal” or at least
> > > > disadvantageous in the struggle for life,
>
> > > "disadvantageous" is a far cry from establishing the necessity of the
> > > factor being mutated.
>
> > So what?
>
> Read my earlier comments carefully and you will see the answer to this
> question.
No, you equivocate and try to evade the issue. That is not an answer.
>
> > > >and likely to set wrong any
> > > > delicately balanced system, such as the reproductive system."
>
> > > If a creationist were to cite this as evidence that mutations are
> > > almost invariably lethal, he would soon be set straight on his
> > > ignorance of the fact that Muller's concept of "mutation" is no longer
> > > in use.
>
> > If a creationist cited a paper which shows that the poster child of
> > ID, "irreducible complexity", was predicted by evolutionary theory
> > nearly a century ago I'd be very surprised.
>
> Changing the subject in this abrupt way seems to be a specialty of
> yours.
Oh, please! It was a direct response to the content of your post. If
you change the subject, don't evade the issues it raises by accusing
others of doing so.
>
> > > > Perhaps you can explain how Muller's description of the interlocking
> > > > systems which he argues are an inevitable consequence of evolution
> > > > differs from Behe's definition of 'irreducible complexity'?
>
> > > > "A single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts
> > > > that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
> > > > of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."
>
> > > Muller did not speak of single systems, he spoke of lethal vs non-
> > > lethal mutations, and that clearly refers to the organism as a
> > > whole.
>
> > Oh my! And you accuse me of "spin-doctoring"!
>
> Only in a joking way, as turnabout for your baseless charge that I am
> a creationist.
Bearing in mind that you are defending a key creationist argument in
this very post it is hardly "baseless".
Actually, in the citation I gave he refers specifically to the
reproductive system as exhibiting interlocking complexity. That is not
the organism as a whole.
>
> > From the point of view of the ID assertion it makes no difference if
> > we are talking about the organism as a whole or one of it's systems.
>
> "the ID assertion" -- what a grand equivocation! Can you tell me
> what it means in 1000 words or less?
That if the origin of certain biological systems cannot be explained
by "Darwinian" processes the alternative is to explain them in terms
of an "intelligent designer" of unspecifed but possibly supernatural
powers.
RF
pnyikos
<richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 13, 9:08 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On May 6, 3:37 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
>
> > <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On May 3, 6:22 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On May 3, 3:43 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
>
> > > > <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > The simple fact is that Muller predicted the existence of interlocking
> > > > > complexity,
I've left some things in below for later reference, while deleting a
bunch of other stuff that Richard also didn't respond to this time
around.
> > > > Baloney. He OBSERVED its existence and sort of implicitly predicted
> > > > that precursors would be found where the necessary parts were not yet
> > > > necessary.
[...]
> > > I gave you a citation which describes it in a way that is
> > > indistinguishable from Behe's "irreducible complexity".
>
> > Then you haven't a clue as to what "irreducible complexity" means. It
> > does NOT mean "some parts are necessary for the function." It means
> > (in part) that ALL parts are necessary for the function.
<crickets chirping>
> > > > Muller, H. J. (1918) "Genetic variability, twin hybrids and constant
> > > > hybrids, in a case of balanced lethal factors." Genetics 3:422-499.
> > > > [Free Text, Genetics Online]
>
> > > > Muller, H. J. (1939) "Reversibility in evolution considered from the
> > > > standpoint of genetics." Biological Reviews of the Cambridge
> > > > Philosophical Society 14:261-280.
>>>>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html
>
> > > > The two cites clearly speak of "necessary characters" but don't
> > > > breathe a word about ALL the characters (in what? the whole animal?
> > > > don't be ridiculous!) being necessary. See below.
[...]
> > > > > Just to clarify: here is the relevant section of Muller's paper:
>
> > > > HAH! you cited a slightly different portion of the 1918 paper than
> > > > Theobald, and BOTH are subsets of what I cited to Denney!
>
> > > ...and the portion I cited describes the interlocking nature of
> > > bioloigical systems and argues that they are an inevitable consequence
> > > of evolution by natural selection.
>
> > I said pretty much the same thing after I said "Baloney".
See above.
> > > It's called a "prediction".
>
> > What *I* said following "Baloney" described a prediction worthy of the
> > name. You are sort of implying the same thing I said, but in a much
> > vaguer way.
>
> > Anyway, call it what you will, it is NOT a prediction of the concept
> > of irreducible complexity.
>
> > > > > "Most present-day animals are the result of a long process of
> > > > > evolution, in which at least thousands of mutations must have taken
> > > > > place. Each new mutant in turn must have derived its survival value
> > > > > from the effect which it produced upon the “reaction system” that had
> > > > > been brought into being by the many previously formed factors in
> > > > > cooperation; thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose
> > > > > effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very
> > > > > numerous different elementary parts or factors, and many of the
> > > > > characters and factors
>
> > > > You spin-doctored "many" to read "all." :-)
>
> > > I did nothing of the sort. Stop lying.
>
> > Do you know all the uses of smileys in contexts like these?
>
> You accuse me of lying
Don't be daft. There are other explanations for your behavior than
that, including an ignorance of what "irreducible complexity" means.
See above.
>and think that if you add a smiley it's okay?
> You *must* be a creationist!
I'm beginning to wonder whether you are sane. The only alternative
(besides dishonesty) to insanity that I can see at the moment is that
you are such a Johnny-come-lately to Usenet, you have precious little
feel for its customs or participants.
> > It sure
> > doesn't look that way.
>
> > Anyway, now that I've explained the difference between irreducible and
> > interlocking complexity, you should see the message behind my little
> > joke.
>
> No, you have *asserted* that there is a difference.
> There isn't in any rational sense.
No rational difference between "all" and "some"???? You are coming
across more and more like a troll.
Do you know what the word "troll" means in the context of Usenet?
> > > > > which, when new , were originally merely an
> > > > > asset finally became necessary because other necessary characters and
> > > > > factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the
> > > > > former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of , or
> > > > > even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to
> > > > > disturb fatally the whole machinery;
>
> > > > You spin-doctored "these parts" to read "all of the parts". :-)
>
> > > I did nothing of the sort. Stop lying.
>
> > See my previous comment, twit. I dislike repeating myself more than
> > you apparently do.
>
> ..and once again, do you think that if you add a smiley to an
> accusation of dishonesty on my part it makes it acceptable?
If I had made that accusation, you'd have a case. As it is, you have
none.
Continued in next post
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On May 13, 9:08 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On May 6, 3:37 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com" <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On May 3, 6:22 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > >On May 3, 3:43 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
[quoting Muller:]
> > > > > for this reason we should expect
> > > > > very many, if not most, mutations to result in lethal factors, and of
> > > > > the rest, the majority should be “semi-lethal” or at least
> > > > > disadvantageous in the struggle for life,
>
> > > > "disadvantageous" is a far cry from establishing the necessity of the
> > > > factor being mutated.
>
> > > So what?
>
> > Read my earlier comments carefully and you will see the answer to this
> > question.
>
> No, you equivocate and try to evade the issue. That is not an answer.
I did the OPPOSITE of equivocation: I clearly distinguished between
"all" and "some," etc. See the reply I did to you just now, a nd
below.
Just where do you think I equivocated?
> > > > >and likely to set wrong any
> > > > > delicately balanced system, such as the reproductive system."
>
> > > > If a creationist were to cite this as evidence that mutations are
> > > > almost invariably lethal, he would soon be set straight on his
> > > > ignorance of the fact that Muller's concept of "mutation" is no longer
> > > > in use.
>
> > > If a creationist cited a paper which shows that the poster child of
> > > ID, "irreducible complexity", was predicted by evolutionary theory
> > > nearly a century ago I'd be very surprised.
>
> > Changing the subject in this abrupt way seems to be a specialty of
> > yours.
>
> Oh, please! It was a direct response to the content of your post.
Enough already with the histrionics. Nobody ever suggested that a
creationist would do such a thing. The only real issue is whether any
professional biologist specializing in evolution would use the term
"predicted by evolutionary theory" in a context like this.
So far, I haven't heard from one, except John Harshman, and I wonder
how conversant he is with evolutionary theory, as opposed to
systematics, which is tracing evolutionary trees but not necessarily
being conversant with the theory of evolution itself.
[There are two mathematicians right here in my department who work in
theoretical systematics, but I wouldn't want to consult them on any
real-life biology.]
At some point I'll broach this topic in sci.bio.evolution, but that
does not allow crossposting to any non-sci newsgroup, and I want this
discussion to mature a bit more before going over there.
> > > > > Perhaps you can explain how Muller's description of the interlocking
> > > > > systems which he argues are an inevitable consequence of evolution
> > > > > differs from Behe's definition of 'irreducible complexity'?
>
> > > > > "A single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts
> > > > > that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one
> > > > > of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."
>
> > > > Muller did not speak of single systems, he spoke of lethal vs non-
> > > > lethal mutations, and that clearly refers to the organism as a
> > > > whole.
>
> > > Oh my! And you accuse me of "spin-doctoring"!
>
> > Only in a joking way, as turnabout for your baseless charge that I am
> > a creationist.
>
> Bearing in mind that you are defending a key creationist argument
HUH?????? Kindly identify that argument, please. What I am TRYING to
do here is to make sure that we are really discussing biology and not
some politically motivated use of the term "prediction".
>in
> this very post it is hardly "baseless".
++++++++++++ sarcasm on
If a creationist were to argue that today is May 16, and I were to
back him up, I take it you would accuse me of defending a key
creationist argument.
++++++++++++++++ sarcasm off
> Actually, in the citation I gave he refers specifically to the
> reproductive system as exhibiting interlocking complexity. That is not
> the organism as a whole.
True, but there again, he does not say that the removal of any part
would spell an end to reproductive ability.
>
>
> > > From the point of view of the ID assertion it makes no difference if
> > > we are talking about the organism as a whole or one of it's systems.
>
> > "the ID assertion" -- what a grand equivocation! Can you tell me
> > what it means in 1000 words or less?
>
> That if the origin of certain biological systems cannot be explained
> by "Darwinian" processes the alternative is to explain them in terms
> of an "intelligent designer" of unspecifed but possibly supernatural
> powers.
I don't think there is any biological system that cannot be explained
by naturalistic methods, and I stick to naturalistic methods in trying
to explain them. Whether they deserve the rubric of "Darwinian" is
partly a matter of semantics, and I don't like getting hung up on
semantics any more than I have to.
Didn't they teach you in composition classes to limit your subject?
I'm just trying to get at a couple of specialized issues in this
thread, one of which is the proper use of the term "prediction" and
the other is the distinction between interlocking complexity and
irreducible complexity.
Note that I agreed with you below, and once again you left the
crickets chirping.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
It is a well-defined concept, at least the way Behe defined it. My
only concern is that people get clear about whether they are talking
about it, or something else.
One of the worst offenders was also someone for whom I have a great
deal of respect and hardly ever had cause to criticize otherwise: in
the talk.origins Archive, Keith Robison (whom I miss very much despite
this bizarre lapse). He ignorantly stated that Behe calls something
"irreducibly complex" if he cannot see how it could have evolved.
>and specified complexity which lie at the heart of the
> claims of the IDers for scientific legitimacy.
I don't recall ever getting into a discussion about "specified
complexity", but IIRC it too is a well-defined concept.
> > If by "ID" you mean "intelligent design" in the literal sense of those
> > two words, then I support it to a limited extent, but that extent
> > disqualifies the next thing you write:
>
> > > 2) That ID has been tested in the courts and the judgement was that it
> > > is "scientific" creationism in a cheap suit.
>
> > The ONLY ID that I have endorsed is that based on directed panspermy,
> > a hypothesis due to the atheist Francis Crick, and to Leslie Orgel
> > (whose religious affiliation is not known to me, but it's irrelevant
> > anyway.
>
> That's flatly false. You have attempted to defend Behe's assertions of
> "irreducible complexity"
No. I never defended his assertions as to what FOLLOWS from a
"diagnosis" of irreducible complexity; my only concern is that they
not be misrepresented.
> and Dembski's assertions of "specified
> complexity" as characterising "design".
I think you are relying on hearsay here. I never endorsed these
conclusions. I have just tried to clarify what the HELL the word
"characterizing" (or a related word that escapes me at the moment) is
supposed to mean in this context.
> > Crick mentioned a modest version of intelligent design that the
> > panspermists, ordinary naturally evolved intelligent beings like
> > ourselves, may have indulged in, and I have mentioned other versions
> > that still seem to be well within the capabilities of us human beings,
> > given enough time.
>
> That has not been the subject of this thread.
You have falsely alleged that I am a creationist, and I feel it is
imperative that this falsehood be refuted
> > > That isn't "zero evidence", not even if you capitalise the "zero".
>
> > It IS zero evidence, because you have indulged in sophistry based on
> > an equivocation wrt the expression "ID".
>
> I suggest that the only equivocation going on here is yours.
Look up the word "equivocation" in the dictionary. It is tailor-made
for laying bare what you did: use one definition of ID to accuse me of
defending it, and another to assert that it is religious creationist
dogma in disguise.
I cannot for the life of me see how it is supposed to apply to the
following, even if it were true, which it is not (see above):
> You have
> specifically been defending Behe's notion of "irreducible complexity",
> a key argument of the ID movement.
> > The irony is that you and another person unjustly accused me of using
> > equivocation on that very term.
>
> Oh, please!
> Anyone with half a brain can check back up the thread and see that
> this is a blatant lie.
On the contrary: you and another person DID accuse me of it. As for
the false part....
Listen, you Johnny-come-lately. In the 1990's I argued for
intelligent design by panspermists for three years, and nobody ever
had any objections to my using "intelligent design (ID)" in its
literal sense. In fact, I can't recall anyone using it in any other
sense.
How the ****HELL**** was I supposed to know that in the near-decade I
was absent from talk.origins, a clique based in that newsgroup decided
to restrict the term to something centered on the Dover ruling,
something that occurred right in the middle of my absence???
And why was the decision made? Was it so that claims like "the
judgement was that ID is `scientific' creationism in a cheap suit."
would be true BY DEFINITION OF TERMS?
Anyway, this explains why I said the charge of equivocation is false.
I kept using ID in the old fashioned sense right up to the point where
the charge of equivocation was made.
Continued in next post.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
<richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 13, 8:45 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On May 6, 3:37 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
>
> > <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On May 3, 6:22 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > Will you stick to that conviction to your dying day, or is there
> > > > something I could say or do to shake you loose from that conviction?
>
> > > What conviction?
>
> > The conviction that I am a creationist. Did the words "you decided"
> > go over your head?
>
> Nothing you have posted so far would lead me to think that you are not
> a supporter of ID as defined by creationists such as Behe and Dembski.
Baloney. You have seen only a tiny fraction of my total output on the
topic of ID. And NONE of it supports the claim that I am a
creationist.
You are indulging in guilt by association, nothing more. Admit it.
> Bearing in mind that creationists build their whole argument on
> falsehoods, and have been know to lie about their religious
> convictions in the pretence that they have reached their conclusions
> about evolutionary theory from a study of the evidence,
My conclusions are that metazoans have evolved from a common ancestor,
that eukaryotes have almost certainly evolved from a common ancestor,
and that all organisms on earth may have evolved from a few common
ancestors through an "annealing" process as described by Woese, though
it is a stretch to talk about a single common ancestor with so much
lateral exchange of DNA going on.
And these conclusions do not assume the tiniest smidgin of intelligent
design. The main alternative to the third conclusion in my mind is
design by an intelligent species that evolved naturally on another
planet. And if all they did in the way of intelligent design was what
Crick suggested, then life on that planet almost surely evolved by a
Woese-like annealing process.
I've reached those conclusions from a study of the evidence.
Do you think I am lying?
> why should I
> think that you are *not* a creationist?
See above.
[...]
> > > > Anticipating a discouraging answer, I've used the term "spin-
> > > > doctored" below as another little turnabout.
>
> > > In what way is providing a citation to support my statements a
> > > "discouraging answer"?
>
> > Wrong referent.
>
> Why? Or have you once again moved the goalposts without telling
> anyone?
Didn't you bother to read the next sentence before going off half-
cocked like this? Here is the next sentence:
> > The question to which I was referring was whether
> > there is anything I could say or do to shake your conviction that I am
> > a creationist.
> Then I suggest that you learn to write clearer English.
> Bearing in mind that your posts promote creationist arguments,
False.
> and
> creationists lie about their beliefs in the pretence that they arrived
> at their position for non-religious reasons, you'd have to provide a
> pretty convicing argument that you are not a creationist.
Does the above qualify?
Peter Nyikos
William Morse
> Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
> 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
> evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
> improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
> scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
>
> There does seem to be an unspoken definition behind the formula, and I
> wonder whether the National Academy of Sciences has ever bothered to
> attach a meaning to the formula--and even whether anyone in talk
> origins has ever bothered to attach a meaning. As it apparently
> stands, it's a very handy equivocation to use by anyone who wants to
> avoid sticking his neck out too much.
>
> an article with some natural infernces as to why so many mutations of
> animals [he was researching the fruit fly *Drosophilia*] are lethal.
> Obviously, the organs or systems affected by the mutations were
> essential to the survival of the organism; and he observed that a lot
> of these may have been nonessential in some remote ancestor or
> another, but had become essential to survival thru other modifications
> in the animals in question.
I am responding rather late to the original post. I have read much of
the various responses and have a somewhat different take.
I disagree with Muller's basic premise, although I have not read the
article. Most mutations are not in fact lethal, they are neutral. Most
of the mutations that are not neutral are still not lethal, although
they are likely to be deleterious.
Evolution has not to my mind produced many instances of irreducible
complexity. In fact the reason that one can safely say that current
organisms are evolved rather than designed is that they exhibit very
little irreducible complexity, instead they exhibit massive redundancy.
The organisms themselves (as others have noted and which you agree) are
very fault tolerant. When a subsystem is (perhaps due to Mullers
premise) itself susceptible to failure due to minor genetic errors, we
generally see backup systems.
To me the problem with Behe's concept of irreducible complexity is that
what we actually see in nature is not evidence of design but evidence of
evolution. This is most especially true of a watch, the supposed
hallmark of evidence for design.
Yours,
Bill
John Harshman
Hello? 1918? What did "mutation" mean in 1918? We're talking about gross
variations in morphology noticeable easily when counting fruit flies.
Most of which are indeed deleterious.
> Evolution has not to my mind produced many instances of irreducible
> complexity.
Best to list some.
> In fact the reason that one can safely say that current
> organisms are evolved rather than designed is that they exhibit very
> little irreducible complexity, instead they exhibit massive redundancy.
> The organisms themselves (as others have noted and which you agree) are
> very fault tolerant. When a subsystem is (perhaps due to Mullers
> premise) itself susceptible to failure due to minor genetic errors, we
> generally see backup systems.
>
> To me the problem with Behe's concept of irreducible complexity is that
> what we actually see in nature is not evidence of design but evidence of
> evolution.
How is that a problem with Behe's concept? You must explain. Would
observed IC be evidence of ID, as you seem to be implying here?
> This is most especially true of a watch, the supposed
> hallmark of evidence for design.
What definition of "evolution" are you using here?
richardal...@gmail.com
> richardalanforr...@googlemail.com wrote:
> > On May 13, 9:08 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > On May 6, 3:37 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com" <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On May 3, 6:22 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > > >On May 3, 3:43 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
>
> [quoting Muller:]
>
> > > > > > for this reason we should expect
> > > > > > very many, if not most, mutations to result in lethal factors, and of
> > > > > > the rest, the majority should be “semi-lethal” or at least
> > > > > > disadvantageous in the struggle for life,
>
> > > > > "disadvantageous" is a far cry from establishing the necessity of the
> > > > > factor being mutated.
>
> > > > So what?
>
> > > Read my earlier comments carefully and you will see the answer to this
> > > question.
>
> > No, you equivocate and try to evade the issue. That is not an answer.
>
> I did the OPPOSITE of equivocation: I clearly distinguished between
> "all" and "some," etc. See the reply I did to you just now, a nd
> below.
>
> Just where do you think I equivocated?
>
In this irrelevant digression.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > > > > >and likely to set wrong any
> > > > > > delicately balanced system, such as the reproductive system."
>
> > > > > If a creationist were to cite this as evidence that mutations are
> > > > > almost invariably lethal, he would soon be set straight on his
> > > > > ignorance of the fact that Muller's concept of "mutation" is no longer
> > > > > in use.
>
> > > > If a creationist cited a paper which shows that the poster child of
> > > > ID, "irreducible complexity", was predicted by evolutionary theory
> > > > nearly a century ago I'd be very surprised.
>
> > > Changing the subject in this abrupt way seems to be a specialty of
> > > yours.
>
> > Oh, please! It was a direct response to the content of your post.
>
> Enough already with the histrionics.
It is not "histrionics" to point out
1) I was not changing the subject and
2) My response directly addressed your argument
> Nobody ever suggested that a
> creationist would do such a thing.
To quote you: If a creationist were to cite this as evidence that
mutations are almost invariably lethal, he would soon be set straight
on his ignorance of the fact that Muller's concept of "mutation" is
no longer in use. "
> The only real issue is whether any
> professional biologist specializing in evolution would use the term
> "predicted by evolutionary theory" in a context like this.
I have. I'm a professional biologist specializing in evolution.
>
> So far, I haven't heard from one, except John Harshman, and I wonder
> how conversant he is with evolutionary theory, as opposed to
> systematics, which is tracing evolutionary trees but not necessarily
> being conversant with the theory of evolution itself.
I suggest that he is rather more conversant with it than you are.
>
> [There are two mathematicians right here in my department who work in
> theoretical systematics, but I wouldn't want to consult them on any
> real-life biology.]
John Harshman is not a mathematician.
>
> At some point I'll broach this topic in sci.bio.evolution, but that
> does not allow crossposting to any non-sci newsgroup, and I want this
> discussion to mature a bit more before going over there.
Based on the evidence of your posts, I suggest that the chances of any
discussion "maturing" if you are involved is rather low.
>
>
>
>
> > > > Oh my! And you accuse me of "spin-doctoring"!
>
> > > Only in a joking way, as turnabout for your baseless charge that I am
> > > a creationist.
>
> > Bearing in mind that you are defending a key creationist argument
>
> HUH?????? Kindly identify that argument, please.
You appear to be defending the concept of "irreducible complexity" as
indicating "design". Or aren't you?
> What I am TRYING to
> do here is to make sure that we are really discussing biology and not
> some politically motivated use of the term "prediction".
I'm using the term "prediction" in the sense that scientists use the
term.
>
> >in
> > this very post it is hardly "baseless".
>
> ++++++++++++ sarcasm on
> If a creationist were to argue that today is May 16, and I were to
> back him up, I take it you would accuse me of defending a key
> creationist argument.
> ++++++++++++++++ sarcasm off
No, I wouldn't.
But as the concept of "irreducible complexity" was devised to promote
a creationist argument, I suggest that you are defending a creationist
argument.
>
> > Actually, in the citation I gave he refers specifically to the
> > reproductive system as exhibiting interlocking complexity. That is not
> > the organism as a whole.
>
> True, but there again, he does not say that the removal of any part
> would spell an end to reproductive ability.
So what do you think he means by " It must result, in consequence,
that a dropping out of , or
even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to
disturb fatally the whole machinery; "
?
>
>
>
> > > > From the point of view of the ID assertion it makes no difference if
> > > > we are talking about the organism as a whole or one of it's systems.
>
> > > "the ID assertion" -- what a grand equivocation! Can you tell me
> > > what it means in 1000 words or less?
>
> > That if the origin of certain biological systems cannot be explained
> > by "Darwinian" processes the alternative is to explain them in terms
> > of an "intelligent designer" of unspecifed but possibly supernatural
> > powers.
>
> I don't think there is any biological system that cannot be explained
> by naturalistic methods, and I stick to naturalistic methods in trying
> to explain them. Whether they deserve the rubric of "Darwinian" is
> partly a matter of semantics, and I don't like getting hung up on
> semantics any more than I have to.
>
> Didn't they teach you in composition classes to limit your subject?
I suggest that this ad hominem is merely an attempt to deflect from
the inadequacy of your argument.
RF
richardal...@gmail.com
I suggest that a definition which includes conclusions about how such
a system can come into existence is not well-defined. In Behe's
definition of IC he includes the following:
"An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is,
by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to
work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a
precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex
system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. "
> My
> only concern is that people get clear about whether they are talking
> about it, or something else.
>
> One of the worst offenders was also someone for whom I have a great
> deal of respect and hardly ever had cause to criticize otherwise: in
> the talk.origins Archive, Keith Robison (whom I miss very much despite
> this bizarre lapse). He ignorantly stated that Behe calls something
> "irreducibly complex" if he cannot see how it could have evolved.
I suggest that this is perfectly true. As was demonstrated during the
Dover v. Kitzmiller trial, Behe finds it convenient to reject
explanations for the evolution of bacterial flagella described in
dozens of scientific papers as "unconvincing" without even bothering
to read the papers.
>
> >and specified complexity which lie at the heart of the
> > claims of the IDers for scientific legitimacy.
>
> I don't recall ever getting into a discussion about "specified
> complexity", but IIRC it too is a well-defined concept.
I've never come across a definition of specified complexity which does
not depend on handwaving assertions. You may regard that as "well-
defined". I don't.
I suggest that the question of whether or not you are a creationist is
one which can be resolved by reading the content of your posts.
Actually, it's the way in which the concept of ID is promoted by the
DI, the organisation set up to promote ID creationism.
RF
pnyikos
> On 05/02/2011 01:55 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
>
>
> > Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
> > 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
> > evolutionary theory" in talk.origins. Strictly speaking, it is
> > improper: evolutionary theory does not make predictions, only
> > scientists interpreting evolutionary theory do.
>
> > There does seem to be an unspoken definition behind the formula, and I
> > wonder whether the National Academy of Sciences has ever bothered to
> > attach a meaning to the formula--and even whether anyone in talk
> > origins has ever bothered to attach a meaning. As it apparently
> > stands, it's a very handy equivocation to use by anyone who wants to
> > avoid sticking his neck out too much.
>
> > Here is an interesting recent example. Back in 1918 Herman Muller did
> > an article with some natural infernces as to why so many mutations of
> > animals [he was researching the fruit fly *Drosophilia*] are lethal.
> > Obviously, the organs or systems affected by the mutations were
> > essential to the survival of the organism; and he observed that a lot
> > of these may have been nonessential in some remote ancestor or
> > another, but had become essential to survival thru other modifications
> > in the animals in question.
>
> I am responding rather late to the original post.
No problem. Glad to have you on board.
>I have read much of
> the various responses and have a somewhat different take.
>
> I disagree with Muller's basic premise, although I have not read the
> article. Most mutations are not in fact lethal, they are neutral. Most
> of the mutations that are not neutral are still not lethal, although
> they are likely to be deleterious.
>
> Evolution has not to my mind produced many instances of irreducible
> complexity. In fact the reason that one can safely say that current
> organisms are evolved rather than designed is that they exhibit very
> little irreducible complexity, instead they exhibit massive redundancy.
> The organisms themselves (as others have noted and which you agree) are
> very fault tolerant. When a subsystem is (perhaps due to Mullers
> premise) itself susceptible to failure due to minor genetic errors, we
> generally see backup systems.
>
> To me the problem with Behe's concept of irreducible complexity is that
> what we actually see in nature is not evidence of design but evidence of
> evolution. This is most especially true of a watch, the supposed
> hallmark of evidence for design.
You lost me on that last sentence. Watches are designed by
intelligent beings. Over the centuries, watches have had their design
refined and otherwise altered (like the colossal step backwards with
the changeover to watches requiring new batteries every so often).
But that too is intelligent design (i.e., purposive design by
intelligent beings) rather than any evolution via imperfect
reproduction of the watches themselves.
What you seem to be opting for is what I sarcastically call
"Dawkinsian evolution," after the foolish analogy Dawkins made using
computer-generated "flowers" in _The Blind Watchmaker_. Random
mutations were built into the virtual genome of the virtual flowers
and the most interesting specimens in each generation were preserved
for action of random mutations to produce the next generation. And
after a number of generations, what he had looked like insects rather
than like flowers.
And this was supposed to be a simulation of Darwinian evolution!
It says something for Dawkins's level of intelligence that he was
oblivious to the obvious flaw in the analogy until after the book was
published. It was an intelligent being, Dawkins, who did the
selection, not on any biological principle of "fitness" but simply his
subjective idea of what was most "interesting."
I wonder what Richard Forrest's attitude towards this is. Would he
say that Dawkins was actually simulating creationism? He seems to
have a very expansive definition of "creationist." It is so expansive
that Behe, who believes in common descent but perhaps also in
"evolution by divine Dawkins style little nudges" is a creationist in
The World According to Richard Forrest.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
That is NOT part of the definition. It is a conclusion arrived at
using an imperfect knowledge of the *behavior* of irreducibly complex
systems.
> "An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is,
> by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to
> work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a
> precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex
> system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. "
"missing a part" is where he was led astray, as seen by the Milller/
Robison explanation of how the clotting and immune system cascades
could have evolved by slight, successive modifications of a precursor
system.
On the other hand, the Chris Ho-Stuart explanation is so far out that
it reminds me of how I once posted the following ditty, though in an
entirely different context.
Ho, ho, Chris Ho-Stuart,
You're as far out as the Cloud of Oort!
> > My
> > only concern is that people get clear about whether they are talking
> > about it, or something else.
>
> > One of the worst offenders was also someone for whom I have a great
> > deal of respect and hardly ever had cause to criticize otherwise: in
> > the talk.origins Archive, Keith Robison (whom I miss very much despite
> > this bizarre lapse). He ignorantly stated that Behe calls something
> > "irreducibly complex" if he cannot see how it could have evolved.
>
> I suggest that this is perfectly true. As was demonstrated during the
> Dover v. Kitzmiller trial, Behe finds it convenient to reject
> explanations for the evolution of bacterial flagella described in
> dozens of scientific papers
AFAIK there never was an explanation. All I ever saw was a claim that
some protein pump mechanism was probably a precursor. Have you found
any papers that actually gave a step-by-step, Darwinian hypothesis for
how it might have evolved?
I tried to get people, back in the 1990's, to propose a Darwinian
scheme for the evolution of the flagellum from the protein pump
mechanism, but IIRC all I got was what I call the Isaakian Dogmatism
Reversal Attack:
"Just because YOU can't imagine a Darwinian scheme [and we aren't
posting one ourselves] doesn't mean one doesn't exist."
That's the usual "argument" for Darwinian evolution of anything and
everything in talk.origins. The part in brackets isn't explicitly
stated most of the time, but it is valid almost all the time. There do
exist some exceptions, like Robison's Kekule-like explanation of
clotting cascade evolution, but they are few and far between.
But in the D v. K testimony he made something of a case for the claim
that the evolution o
> as "unconvincing" without even bothering
> to read the papers.
On the contrary, he even mentioned some papers suggesting that the
evolution was in the opposite direction, bacterial flagellae losing
some of their parts and gradually shifting over to a protein pump
mechanism.
>
>
> > >and specified complexity which lie at the heart of the
> > > claims of the IDers for scientific legitimacy.
>
> > I don't recall ever getting into a discussion about "specified
> > complexity", but IIRC it too is a well-defined concept.
>
> I've never come across a definition of specified complexity which does
> not depend on handwaving assertions.
Are you sure you aren't smuggling things into the definitions that
aren't meant to be there? I caught you doing it up there, after all.
True, but for the opposite reason you claim: if one reads the contents
of a representative sample of my posts, the fact that I am NOT a
creationist is the inevitable conclusion.
However, you may be stretching the definition of "creationist" way
beyond any I've ever seen. See my comments about you in my reply to
William Morse a little while ago.
> > > I suggest that the only equivocation going on here is yours.
>
> > Look up the word "equivocation" in the dictionary. It is tailor-made
> > for laying bare what you did: use one definition of ID to accuse me of
> > defending it, and another to assert that it is religious creationist
> > dogma in disguise.
>
> > I cannot for the life of me see how it is supposed to apply to the
> > following, even if it were true, which it is not (see above):
<crickets chirping>
> > > You have
> > > specifically been defending Behe's notion of "irreducible complexity",
> > > a key argument of the ID movement.
> > > > The irony is that you and another person unjustly accused me of using
> > > > equivocation on that very term.
>
> > > Oh, please!
> > > Anyone with half a brain can check back up the thread and see that
> > > this is a blatant lie.
>
> > On the contrary: you and another person DID accuse me of it. As for
> > the false part....
>
> > Listen, you Johnny-come-lately. In the 1990's I argued for
> > intelligent design by panspermists for three years, and nobody ever
> > had any objections to my using "intelligent design (ID)" in its
> > literal sense. In fact, I can't recall anyone using it in any other
> > sense.
>
> > How the ****HELL**** was I supposed to know that in the near-decade I
> > was absent from talk.origins, a clique based in that newsgroup decided
> > to restrict the term to something centered on the Dover ruling,
> > something that occurred right in the middle of my absence???
>
> Actually, it's the way in which the concept of ID is promoted by the
> DI, the organisation set up to promote ID creationism.
The way it is promoted includes the insistence that the scientific
concept ID does NOT include any conclusions as to who or what the
designers were. It also includes the claim that this is the kind of
research the DI does on ID.
You obviously have something different in mind. What is it?
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
It *is* histrionics to preface what you say with "Oh, please!"
> to point out
> 1) I was not changing the subject and
> 2) My response directly addressed your argument
Don't make me laugh. You call weaving my phrase"If a
creationist...cite[d]" into an utterly different statement "directly
addressing" my argument???
> > Nobody ever suggested that a
> > creationist would do such a thing.
>
> To quote you: If a creationist were to cite this as evidence that
> mutations are almost invariably lethal, he would soon be set straight
> on his ignorance of the fact that Muller's concept of "mutation" is
> no longer in use. "
It really does look like you think of that weaving as a "direct
address"!! Very well, two can play that game. See smiley way below.
> > The only real issue is whether any
> > professional biologist specializing in evolution would use the term
> > "predicted by evolutionary theory" in a context like this.
>
> I have. I'm a professional biologist specializing in evolution.
You specialize in the paleontology of plesiosaurs, and I'm not sure
someone who is still a Ph.D. student should be billed as a
"professional biologist".
Did you get an M.S. along the way? In that case, I won't argue this
latter point.
>
>
> > So far, I haven't heard from one, except John Harshman, and I wonder
> > how conversant he is with evolutionary theory, as opposed to
> > systematics, which is tracing evolutionary trees but not necessarily
> > being conversant with the theory of evolution itself.
>
> I suggest that he is rather more conversant with it than you are.
That's why I set up this thread, to get clear on the use of "predicted
by evolutionary theory" preferably by professional biologists
specializing in evolution.
>
>
> > [There are two mathematicians right here in my department who work in
> > theoretical systematics, but I wouldn't want to consult them on any
> > real-life biology.]
>
> John Harshman is not a mathematician.
So what? Do you accept his credentials as to proper use of "predicted
by evolutionary theory" without investigating them further?
> > At some point I'll broach this topic in sci.bio.evolution, but that
> > does not allow crossposting to any non-sci newsgroup, and I want this
> > discussion to mature a bit more before going over there.
>
> Based on the evidence of your posts, I suggest that the chances of any
> discussion "maturing" if you are involved is rather low.
That's because you keep hitting me with false accusations, and making
all kinds of other strange assertions about Behe and the DI, and I am
not about to roll over and play dead to oblige you.
But do take a look at my responses to some other people, William Morse
for instance.
>
>
> > > > > Oh my! And you accuse me of "spin-doctoring"!
>
> > > > Only in a joking way, as turnabout for your baseless charge that I am
> > > > a creationist.
>
> > > Bearing in mind that you are defending a key creationist argument
>
> > HUH?????? Kindly identify that argument, please.
>
> You appear to be defending the concept of "irreducible complexity" as
> indicating "design". Or aren't you?
I am not. The most I've ever said along those lines is that, *given*
the hypothesis that panspermists altered or designed some organisms,
*some* irreducibly complex structures, most notably the bacterial
flagellum and the eukaryotic cilium, are very promising candidates for
what they *did* design.
I should qualify that: I don't recall saying anything more along the
lines of "indicating design" in the 1990's and 2000-1, and I know I
haven't said more since I returned in late 2010.
> > What I am TRYING to
> > do here is to make sure that we are really discussing biology and not
> > some politically motivated use of the term "prediction".
>
> I'm using the term "prediction" in the sense that scientists use the
> term.
Let's see you cite a peer-reviewed paper where biological phenomena
were said to have been predicted in YOUR sense.
>
>
> > >in
> > > this very post it is hardly "baseless".
>
> > ++++++++++++ sarcasm on
> > If a creationist were to argue that today is May 16, and I were to
> > back him up, I take it you would accuse me of defending a key
> > creationist argument.
> > ++++++++++++++++ sarcasm off
That "directly addressed" a similar comment about May 6 that you made
in another post. :-)
> No, I wouldn't.
> But as the concept of "irreducible complexity" was devised to promote
> a creationist argument,
See my comment to William Morse about this use of the word
"creationist."
>I suggest that you are defending a creationist
> argument.
Not the argument, just the intelligibility of the concept.
pnyikos
<richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 16, 9:44 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > richardalanforr...@googlemail.com wrote:
[about Muller:]
> > > Actually, in the citation I gave he refers specifically to the
> > > reproductive system as exhibiting interlocking complexity. That is not
> > > the organism as a whole.
>
> > True, but there again, he does not say that the removal of any part
> > would spell an end to reproductive ability.
>
> So what do you think he means by " It must result, in consequence,
> that a dropping out of , or
> even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to
> disturb fatally the whole machinery; "
> ?
I used "any" part to refer to each and every one of the parts: Muller
does not say that ALL the parts are such that removal of *any* of them
is very likely to disturb fatally the whole machinery. He just talks
about "these parts."
> > > > > From the point of view of the ID assertion it makes no difference if
> > > > > we are talking about the organism as a whole or one of it's systems.
>
> > > > "the ID assertion" -- what a grand equivocation! Can you tell me
> > > > what it means in 1000 words or less?
>
> > > That if the origin of certain biological systems cannot be explained
> > > by "Darwinian" processes the alternative is to explain them in terms
> > > of an "intelligent designer" of unspecifed but possibly supernatural
> > > powers.
>
> > I don't think there is any biological system that cannot be explained
> > by naturalistic methods, and I stick to naturalistic methods in trying
> > to explain them. Whether they deserve the rubric of "Darwinian" is
> > partly a matter of semantics, and I don't like getting hung up on
> > semantics any more than I have to.
>
> > Didn't they teach you in composition classes to limit your subject?
>
> I suggest that this ad hominem is merely an attempt to deflect from
> the inadequacy of your argument.
I suggest that you talking about ad hominems in this way is a case of
you throwing stones from a glass house, and of trying to deflect
attention from what I said next, by signing off at this point with...
> RF
And here is the point of what you call my "ad hominem":
> > I'm just trying to get at a couple of specialized issues in this
> > thread, one of which is the proper use of the term "prediction" and
> > the other is the distinction between interlocking complexity and
> > irreducible complexity.
You, on the other hand, seem to want to make the topic of this thread
"the ID assertion and the DI's promotion of creationism under its
guise, and Nyikos's seeming complicity in all of this"-- a huge
topic, best spread out over several threads.
Peter Nyikos
richardal...@gmail.com
Here's how Behe defines "irreducible complexity":
"By irreducible complexity I mean a single system which is composed of
several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and
where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to
effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be
produced directly by slight, successive modifications of a precursor
system, since any precursor to an irreducibly complex system is by
definition nonfunctional."
Note the term "by definition nonfunctional"
So do you think Behe doesn't understand what he means by "irreducible
complexity"?
>
> > "An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is,
> > by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to
> > work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a
> > precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex
> > system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. "
>
> "missing a part" is where he was led astray, as seen by the Milller/
> Robison explanation of how the clotting and immune system cascades
> could have evolved by slight, successive modifications of a precursor
> system.
"Led astray"?
Golly, who'd do such a thing?
Of course, it could mean that his definition of "irreducible
complexity" is such that it presumes conclusions about the nature of
precursor functions, and that the notion is nothing more than
handwaving assertion.
>
> On the other hand, the Chris Ho-Stuart explanation is so far out that
> it reminds me of how I once posted the following ditty, though in an
> entirely different context.
>
> Ho, ho, Chris Ho-Stuart,
> You're as far out as the Cloud of Oort!
Your poetic abilities exceed your abilities to construct an honest
argument.
>
> > > My
> > > only concern is that people get clear about whether they are talking
> > > about it, or something else.
>
> > > One of the worst offenders was also someone for whom I have a great
> > > deal of respect and hardly ever had cause to criticize otherwise: in
> > > the talk.origins Archive, Keith Robison (whom I miss very much despite
> > > this bizarre lapse). He ignorantly stated that Behe calls something
> > > "irreducibly complex" if he cannot see how it could have evolved.
>
> > I suggest that this is perfectly true. As was demonstrated during the
> > Dover v. Kitzmiller trial, Behe finds it convenient to reject
> > explanations for the evolution of bacterial flagella described in
> > dozens of scientific papers
>
> AFAIK there never was an explanation.
Please don't offer your ignorance as an argument.
> All I ever saw was a claim that
> some protein pump mechanism was probably a precursor. Have you found
> any papers that actually gave a step-by-step, Darwinian hypothesis for
> how it might have evolved?
What alternative can you offer to an evolutionary (*not* "Darwinian,
by the way) explanation for the origin of *any* biological system
which can be tested using the tools of science?
>
> I tried to get people, back in the 1990's, to propose a Darwinian
> scheme for the evolution of the flagellum from the protein pump
> mechanism, but IIRC all I got was what I call the Isaakian Dogmatism
> Reversal Attack:
Well bully for you. Here's a recent paper on the subject:
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/17/7116.abstract
>
> "Just because YOU can't imagine a Darwinian scheme [and we aren't
> posting one ourselves] doesn't mean one doesn't exist."
>
> That's the usual "argument" for Darwinian evolution of anything and
> everything in talk.origins. The part in brackets isn't explicitly
> stated most of the time, but it is valid almost all the time. There do
> exist some exceptions, like Robison's Kekule-like explanation of
> clotting cascade evolution, but they are few and far between.
>
> But in the D v. K testimony he made something of a case for the claim
> that the evolution o
>
> > as "unconvincing" without even bothering
> > to read the papers.
>
> On the contrary, he even mentioned some papers suggesting that the
> evolution was in the opposite direction, bacterial flagellae losing
> some of their parts and gradually shifting over to a protein pump
> mechanism.
...but rejected others without even bothering to read them.
>
>
>
> > > >and specified complexity which lie at the heart of the
> > > > claims of the IDers for scientific legitimacy.
>
> > > I don't recall ever getting into a discussion about "specified
> > > complexity", but IIRC it too is a well-defined concept.
>
> > I've never come across a definition of specified complexity which does
> > not depend on handwaving assertions.
>
> Are you sure you aren't smuggling things into the definitions that
> aren't meant to be there? I caught you doing it up there, after all.
Not according to the defintion of "irreducible complexity" in Behe's
own words. Do you think that Behe is smuggling things into the
definitions which aren't meant to be there?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >You may regard that as "well-
> > defined". I don't.
>
> > > > > If by "ID" you mean "intelligent design" in the literal sense of those
> > > > > two words, then I support it to a limited extent, but that extent
> > > > > disqualifies the next thing you write:
>
> > > > > > 2) That ID has been tested in the courts and the judgement was that it
> > > > > > is "scientific" creationism in a cheap suit.
>
> > > > > The ONLY ID that I have endorsed is that based on directed panspermy,
> > > > > a hypothesis due to the atheist Francis Crick, and to Leslie Orgel
> > > > > (whose religious affiliation is not known to me, but it's irrelevant
> > > > > anyway.
>
>
> > > > That has not been the subject of this thread.
>
> > > You have falsely alleged that I am a creationist, and I feel it is
> > > imperative that this falsehood be refuted
>
> > I suggest that the question of whether or not you are a creationist is
> > one which can be resolved by reading the content of your posts.
>
> True, but for the opposite reason you claim: if one reads the contents
> of a representative sample of my posts, the fact that I am NOT a
> creationist is the inevitable conclusion.
Obviously not "inevitable", as I am not the only poster who thinks
that you are a creationist.
RF
>
> However, you may be stretching the definition of "creationist" way
> beyond any I've ever seen. See my comments about you in my reply to
> William Morse a little while ago.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > > > I suggest that the only equivocation going on here is yours.
>
> > > Look up the word "equivocation"
>
> ...
>
> read more »
Mark Isaak
> On May 14, 4:09 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
> <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> [...]
>> What rot! You have attempted to defend the notions of irreducible
>> complexity
>
> It is a well-defined concept, at least the way Behe defined it.
Behe defined it essentially as a system which no longer functions if you
remove a part. What is a "part"? If I remove one atom from a mousetrap,
does that mean the mousetrap is not IC? What is a "function"? If I
remove the spring from a mousetrap, but it still functions to level a
wobbly table, does that mean the mousetrap is not IC?
These examples may seem extreme, but the basic problems they show come up
in biology all the time. They imply, ultimately, that no system is truly
irreducibly complex.
> [...]
> I don't recall ever getting into a discussion about "specified
> complexity", but IIRC it too is a well-defined concept.
Your recall incorrectly. "Specified complexity" has always been in the
eye of the beholder.
> [...]
> Listen, you Johnny-come-lately. In the 1990's I argued for intelligent
> design by panspermists for three years, and nobody ever had any
> objections to my using "intelligent design (ID)" in its literal sense.
> In fact, I can't recall anyone using it in any other sense.
>
> How the ****HELL**** was I supposed to know that in the near-decade I
> was absent from talk.origins, a clique based in that newsgroup decided
> to restrict the term to something centered on the Dover ruling,
> something that occurred right in the middle of my absence???
In my opinion, the term "intelligent design", unless accompanied by
disclaimers and caveats, applies to the antievolution movement
spearheaded by Phillip Johnson. The terms "irreducible complexity" and
"specified complexity" are wholly a part of that movement. To use either
of those terms is to associate yourself, wittingly or not, with the
intelligent design camp.
Your use of "intelligent design" is appropriate nonetheless, because the
design you propose is as much a form of creationism as is the design
hinted at by Johnson, Behe, Dembski, et al. Your creationism differs
enough from what is implied when the word is normally used that it would
be seriously misleading to call you a creationist without further
clarification, but I believe it is fair to use "creationism" for the
creation of first life by intelligent beings.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume
William Morse
Whatever "mutation" may have meant in 1918, most mutations are neutral.
Which means that both organisms and their subsystems are not irreducibly
complex. Yes I realize that what Muller was looking at was mutations in
genes affecting development, which are much more likely to have
significant effects. But defects in developmental genes are handled by
the redundancy of having multiple offspring. Critical development paths,
but not irreducible complexity, at least to me.
>> Evolution has not to my mind produced many instances of irreducible
>> complexity.
>
> Best to list some.
Some what? Instances of irreducible complexity that I can't think of? I
agree that examples are an important aid to understanding, but I don't
understand what examples you are looking for. If you can clarify I will
try to provide them.
>> In fact the reason that one can safely say that current organisms are
>> evolved rather than designed is that they exhibit very little
>> irreducible complexity, instead they exhibit massive redundancy. The
>> organisms themselves (as others have noted and which you agree) are
>> very fault tolerant. When a subsystem is (perhaps due to Mullers
>> premise) itself susceptible to failure due to minor genetic errors, we
>> generally see backup systems.
>>
>> To me the problem with Behe's concept of irreducible complexity is
>> that what we actually see in nature is not evidence of design but
>> evidence of evolution.
>
> How is that a problem with Behe's concept? You must explain. Would
> observed IC be evidence of ID, as you seem to be implying here?
That is a problem with Behe's concept because he claims that we observe
IC, but what we actually observe is massive redundancy. As I said above,
the actual IC that I am aware of is generally limited to developmental
constraints, and these are overcome by multiple offspring. Observed IC
could be evidence of ID - for instance if humans appeared in the fossil
record a few thousand years after the earliest sharks with nothing in
between - but we don't see that.
As well discussed in _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, evolution does produce
designed things. But when you look at them, it is clear that the design
is not ab initio, as one would expect from a creator.
>> This is most especially true of a watch, the supposed hallmark of
>> evidence for design.
>
> What definition of "evolution" are you using here?
Well clearly not change in gene frequencies :-)
I am using the commonly accepted definition of "a process of continuous
change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher,more complex, or
better state"
Yours,
Bill
William Morse
No, watches are designed by humans.
Over the centuries, watches have had their design
> refined and otherwise altered (like the colossal step backwards with
> the changeover to watches requiring new batteries every so often).
> But that too is intelligent design (i.e., purposive design by
> intelligent beings) rather than any evolution via imperfect
> reproduction of the watches themselves.
No. Over the centuries, changes to the design of watches were introduced
by humans, and some of those changes became fixed because of the market
for watches. The changes were not random, but nobody making one change
predicted the additional improvements that would later be added.
Evolution, not intelligent design.
> What you seem to be opting for is what I sarcastically call
> "Dawkinsian evolution," after the foolish analogy Dawkins made using
> computer-generated "flowers" in _The Blind Watchmaker_. Random
> mutations were built into the virtual genome of the virtual flowers
> and the most interesting specimens in each generation were preserved
> for action of random mutations to produce the next generation. And
> after a number of generations, what he had looked like insects rather
> than like flowers.
>
I have no idea what you are talking about. It does not appear to pertain
to our discussion. Perhaps you could elucidate further ?
John Harshman
But that isn't IC. IC has nothing to do with evolutionary history, but
with current function. And IC would be evidence of ID only if IC
couldn't (or would at least be very difficult to) evolve naturally.
Whether IC is or isn't common is irrelevant.
> As well discussed in _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, evolution does produce
> designed things. But when you look at them, it is clear that the design
> is not ab initio, as one would expect from a creator.
I think that calling evolved things "designed" only creates confusion.
>>> This is most especially true of a watch, the supposed hallmark of
>>> evidence for design.
>>
>> What definition of "evolution" are you using here?
>
> Well clearly not change in gene frequencies :-)
>
> I am using the commonly accepted definition of "a process of continuous
> change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher,more complex, or
> better state"
Not a definition I would use, and probably not one the IDers would accept.
pnyikos
follow-up to this post of Mark's, but they haven't appeared yet.
Meanwhile a post made long after I went to bed has appeared.
I hope DIG can rectify this situation.
I'll just loosely (very loosely!) paraphrase something I said last
night in one of the posts.
On May 17, 3:50 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Your use of "intelligent design" is appropriate nonetheless, because the
> design you propose is
corresponds in no way, shape, or form to the fantasy you have woven
below.
You are even worse than Paul Gans: he boycotts everything I post and
weaves tall tales about me, smug in the knowledge that he has the
excuse that he is only describing what he sort of recalls from over a
decade ago. You read at least some of my posts but you might as well
be emulating Gans for all practical purposes.
> as much a form of creationism as is the design
> hinted at by Johnson, Behe, Dembski, et al. Your creationism differs
> enough from what is implied when the word is normally used that it would
> be seriously misleading to call you a creationist without further
> clarification, but I believe it is fair to use "creationism" for the
> creation of first life by intelligent beings.
My hypothesis has to do with intelligent beings who designed (not
necessarily from scratch) the prokaryotes that constitute the first
life ON EARTH (because they sent them here) and who arose naturally on
their home planet. They are NOT the first life on their planet, which
emerged at least a billion years before any of them saw the light of
day. They might even be the LAST life on their home planet.
If you call THIS creationism, there is reason to wonder whether you
are seriously senile.
Peter Nyikos
William Morse
My example may have been poorly chosen, but I was trying to illustrate
the point you just made very clearly and concisely - that IC could be
evidence of ID if IC couldnt evolve naturally. I do think that means
that evolutionary history is important, since it does take some time to
evolve complex functions. My main point is still that what we observe
when we look at real organisms does not look anything like ID and does
not include much IC - instead it looks like a kluge with a lot of
redundancy thrown in.
>> As well discussed in _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, evolution does produce
>> designed things. But when you look at them, it is clear that the design
>> is not ab initio, as one would expect from a creator.
>
> I think that calling evolved things "designed" only creates confusion.
And I think it can create clarification. Not everyone is familiar with
population genetics or evo-devo, but most understand that lions have
sharp claws, big teeth, and can run fast for short distances because the
ones that didn't all starved. They are "designed" to do that. If one
insists on maintaining that evolution doesn't "design" things, one risks
losing the non-specialist audience.
>>>> This is most especially true of a watch, the supposed hallmark of
>>>> evidence for design.
>>>
>>> What definition of "evolution" are you using here?
>>
>> Well clearly not change in gene frequencies :-)
>>
>> I am using the commonly accepted definition of "a process of continuous
>> change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher,more complex, or
>> better state"
>
> Not a definition I would use, and probably not one the IDers would accept.
>
Not a definition I would use in a technical discussion, but it is
straight out of Webster's.
John Harshman
And my point is that this is irrelevant to whether there is evidence for ID.
>>> As well discussed in _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_, evolution does produce
>>> designed things. But when you look at them, it is clear that the design
>>> is not ab initio, as one would expect from a creator.
>> I think that calling evolved things "designed" only creates confusion.
>
> And I think it can create clarification. Not everyone is familiar with
> population genetics or evo-devo, but most understand that lions have
> sharp claws, big teeth, and can run fast for short distances because the
> ones that didn't all starved. They are "designed" to do that. If one
> insists on maintaining that evolution doesn't "design" things, one risks
> losing the non-specialist audience.
Fine with the scare quotes, pernicious without them.
>>>>> This is most especially true of a watch, the supposed hallmark of
>>>>> evidence for design.
>>>> What definition of "evolution" are you using here?
>>> Well clearly not change in gene frequencies :-)
>>>
>>> I am using the commonly accepted definition of "a process of continuous
>>> change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher,more complex, or
>>> better state"
>> Not a definition I would use, and probably not one the IDers would accept.
>
> Not a definition I would use in a technical discussion, but it is
> straight out of Webster's.
Is Webster's now to be our guide to biology?
Mark Isaak
> I did a number of posts to this thread last night, including two in
> follow-up to this post of Mark's, but they haven't appeared yet. Meanwhile
> a post made long after I went to bed has appeared.
>
> I hope DIG can rectify this situation.
>
> I'll just loosely (very loosely!) paraphrase something I said last night
> in one of the posts.
>
> On May 17, 3:50 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Your use of "intelligent design" is appropriate nonetheless, because the
>> design you propose is
>
> corresponds in no way, shape, or form to the fantasy you have woven
> below.
What you describe in your own words exactly matches my woven fantasy.
> You are even worse than Paul Gans: he boycotts everything I post and
> weaves tall tales about me, smug in the knowledge that he has the excuse
> that he is only describing what he sort of recalls from over a decade
> ago.
> You read at least some of my posts but you might as well be emulating
> Gans for all practical purposes.
>
>> as much a form of creationism as is the design hinted at by Johnson,
>> Behe, Dembski, et al. Your creationism differs enough from what is
>> implied when the word is normally used that it would be seriously
>> misleading to call you a creationist without further clarification, but
>> I believe it is fair to use "creationism" for the creation of first
>> life by intelligent beings.
>
> My hypothesis has to do with intelligent beings who designed (not
> necessarily from scratch) the prokaryotes that constitute the first
> life ON EARTH (because they sent them here) and who arose naturally on
> their home planet. They are NOT the first life on their planet, which
> emerged at least a billion years before any of them saw the light of
> day. They might even be the LAST life on their home planet.
>
> If you call THIS creationism, there is reason to wonder whether you are
> seriously senile.
If those prokaryotes were created from non-life, especially if design
from scratch is an open option, then that creation story is a form of
creationism. Again, noting that it deserves caveats so as not to give
people the impression that it refers to traditional biblical creationism.
Although I note your creationism is no different in principle from
certain creation myths in which the creator makes life from raw materials
and later redistributes it to new locations.
pnyikos
wrote:
> On May 2, 4:18 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On May 2, 2:26 pm, Christopher Denney <christopher.den...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > > Hmm, maybe that's the problem; people spend so much time trying to
> > > find fault in thetheorythey don't actually pay attention to the
> > > basic predictions.
>
> > Does "people" refer to creationists? If not, what are the basic
> > predictions to which you refer?
>
> > Peter Nyikos
>
> Mostly Creationists, they are the ones who spend the most time trying
> to "Disprove" evolution.
> People who call for examples of "cats giving birth to dogs" just don't
> get one of the basic predictions of evolutionarytheoryis that that
> kind of thing never happens.
> Barring profound mutations, offspring are very much like their
> parents; and the parents have to be similar to one another.
> Otherwise the whole thing (evo) doesn't work.
Of course not. Stuff along the line of "cats give birth to dogs" is
genuine kookiness. Who are some of the creationists in talk.origins
who persist in talking in this way even while replying to
corrections?
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On 05/17/2011 10:13 AM, pnyikos wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On May 16, 8:51 pm, William Morse<wdNOSPAMMo...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> On 05/02/2011 01:55 PM, pnyikos wrote:
>
> >>> Since shortly after I originally started posting to talk.origins, in
> >>> 1995, I have encountered uses of the expression "predicted by
> >>> improper: evolutionarytheorydoes not make predictions, only
Cute joke, but I think you know what I meant.
> > Over the centuries, watches have had their design
> > refined and otherwise altered (like the colossal step backwards with
> > the changeover to watches requiring new batteries every so often).
> > But that too is intelligent design (i.e., purposive design by
> > intelligent beings) rather than any evolution via imperfect
> > reproduction of the watches themselves.
>
> No. Over the centuries, changes to the design of watches were introduced
> by humans,
Those changes involved the use of intelligence, although maybe not of
a very high order. But when people speak of "intelligent design" in
this context, they really mean *purposive* (or "purposeful") actions
by agents acting on the basis of some degree of intelligence. The
whole point of books like _The Blind Watchmaker_ is that it is
possible to explain the unfolding of life on earth beginning with some
rather primitive one-celled organisms without recourse to any
purposeful behavior.
Dawkins wasn't always careful as to how he argued for this. See
below.
>and some of those changes became fixed because of the market
> for watches.
And the market is driven by innumerable financial actions of a
purposeful nature.
> The changes were not random, but nobody making one change
> predicted the additional improvements that would later be added.
Unpredictability by one human being has nothing to do with the basic
issue here.
> Evolution, not intelligent design.
Purpose-driven "evolution", exactly the sort of thing that Dawkins
failed to realize he was simulating. As I said earlier:
> > What you seem to be opting for is what I sarcastically call
> > "Dawkinsian evolution," after the foolish analogy Dawkins made using
> > computer-generated "flowers" in _The Blind Watchmaker_. Random
> > mutations were built into the virtual genome of the virtual flowers
As I now recall, Dawkins didn't even bother with simulating the
genome. To him, the computer program that kept being modified by
random mutations WAS the simulation of the genome, while the screen
display constituted the virtual flowers. According to Daniel Dennett
in a lecture here in Columbia, SC at the University of South Carolina
about a decade ago, others actually produced real simulations of
genomes and had the mutations act on them.
> > and the most interesting specimens in each generation were preserved
> > for action of random mutations to produce the next generation. And
> > after a number of generations, what he had looked like insects rather
> > than like flowers.
>
> I have no idea what you are talking about. It does not appear to pertain
> to our discussion. Perhaps you could elucidate further?
My point was that it was a purposive agent, Dawkins, who chose the
"organisms" for the next generation on the basis of subjective
criteria rather than trying to simulate any form of *natural*
selection, lacking any goal or purpose. Later simulators actually had
the virtual organisms compete against each other in various ways, and
the ones that won the competition for resources were then the starting
point for the next generation.
Dawkins is the darling of the media, but professional evolutionary
biologists generally look askance at him. See, for instance:
pages 1 and 3 are also interesting.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
Made in a laboratory from non-life, you mean. But that is only the
more radical version of my theory; the one I prefer is where the
panspermists modified existing organisms; for instance, by adding a
flagellum to certain bacteria that naturally evolved along with them.
> especially if design
> from scratch is an open option, then that creation story is a form of
> creationism.
You are stretching the meaning of 'creationism" beyond all reasonable
bounds. And I suggest that the motivation is an irrational anti-
creationist agenda, and maybe an irrational anti-Nyikos agenda.
Do you wish to be able to discredit me in the eyes of the majority of
talk.origins readers by simply labeling me a "creationist"?
> Again, noting that it deserves caveats so as not to give
> people the impression that it refers to traditional biblical creationism.
> Although I note your creationism is no different in principle from
> certain creation myths in which the creator makes life from raw materials
> and later redistributes it to new locations.
Noah did the redistribution according to the Bible. So in your kooky
world, Noah was a co-creator.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
fumbled.
On May 17, 11:20 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
<richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 17, 3:37 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On May 17, 3:24 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
>
> > <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On May 16, 10:21 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
[about irreducible complexity:]
> > > > My
> > > > only concern is that people get clear about whether they are talking
> > > > about it, or something else.
>
> > > > One of the worst offenders was also someone for whom I have a great
> > > > deal of respect and hardly ever had cause to criticize otherwise: in
> > > > the talk.origins Archive, Keith Robison (whom I miss very much despite
> > > > this bizarre lapse). He ignorantly stated that Behe calls something
> > > > "irreducibly complex" if he cannot see how it could have evolved.
>
> > > I suggest that this is perfectly true. As was demonstrated during the
> > > Dover v. Kitzmiller trial, Behe finds it convenient to reject
> > > explanations for the evolution of bacterial flagella described in
> > > dozens of scientific papers
>
> > AFAIK there never was an explanation.
>
> Please don't offer your ignorance as an argument.
Please cite a paper that provides one. The PNAS paper you cite below
does not.
What's more, it appeared AFTER the Dover trial, and so you have failed
to support your claim about Behe.
Care to try again?
> > All I ever saw was a claim that
> > some protein pump mechanism was probably a precursor. Have you found
> > any papers that actually gave a step-by-step, Darwinian hypothesis for
> > how it might have evolved?
> What alternative can you offer to an evolutionary (*not* "Darwinian,
> by the way) explanation for the origin of *any* biological system
> which can be tested using the tools of science?
There are several naturalistic alternatives. That some are more
testable than others is neither here nor there. I have proposed some
tests for my hypothesis that the bacterial flagellum was designed by
panspermists, but since you said "Frankly I don't care" I'm not about
to spend time describing them to you, except for a brief mention of
one.
If someone shows sincere interest, I'll be glad to present them all in
detail.
> > I tried to get people, back in the 1990's, to propose a Darwinian
> > scheme for the evolution of the flagellum from the protein pump
> > mechanism, but IIRC all I got was what I call the Isaakian Dogmatism
> > Reversal Attack:
>
> Well bully for you. Here's a recent paper on the subject:
>
> http://www.pnas.org/content/104/17/7116.abstract
There is no scenario for the evolution that would explain how the
various intermediate hypothesized precursors were of any use. There is
an "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" type statement that merely tells
the hypothesized order in which these things evolved, but nothing
hinting at natural selection favoring the process.
By the way, they have a line in there which is directly relevant to
one of the tests I posted several times for the panspermist design
hypothesis: the test of whether the most basal bacteria were gram-
negative. The authors say that two gram-positive types were "viewed
as two of the most basal bacterial lineages" which still leaves the
question open.
> > "Just because YOU can't imagine a Darwinian scheme [and we aren't
> > posting one ourselves] doesn't mean one doesn't exist."
>
> > That's the usual "argument" for Darwinian evolution of anything and
> > everything in talk.origins. The part in brackets isn't explicitly
> > stated most of the time, but it is valid almost all the time. There do
> > exist some exceptions, like Robison's Kekule-like explanation of
> > clotting cascade evolution, but they are few and far between.
[Behe finds it convenient to reject explanations]
> > > as "unconvincing" without even bothering
> > > to read the papers.
>
> > On the contrary, he even mentioned some papers suggesting that the
> > evolution was in the opposite direction, bacterial flagellae losing
> > some of their parts and gradually shifting over to a protein pump
> > mechanism.
>
> ...but rejected others without even bothering to read them.
Were you expecting him to read the PNAS paper two years before it came
out? :-)
Why didn't you cite a paper available to him before the Dover trial?
Could it be that you are just as ignorant about these papers as I am,
or more ignorant?
> > > > >and specified complexity which lie at the heart of the
> > > > > claims of the IDers for scientific legitimacy.
>
> > > > I don't recall ever getting into a discussion about "specified
> > > > complexity", but IIRC it too is a well-defined concept.
>
> > > I've never come across a definition of specified complexity which does
> > > not depend on handwaving assertions.
>
> > Are you sure you aren't smuggling things into the definitions that
> > aren't meant to be there? I caught you doing it up there, after all.
>
> Not according to the defintion of "irreducible complexity" in Behe's
> own words.
Correction: not according to the way you conflated the definition with
something that came later. See my first reply to this post of yours.
[...]
> > > > You have falsely alleged that I am a creationist, and I feel it is
> > > > imperative that this falsehood be refuted
>
> > > I suggest that the question of whether or not you are a creationist is
> > > one which can be resolved by reading the content of your posts.
>
> > True, but for the opposite reason you claim: if one reads the contents
> > of a representative sample of my posts, the fact that I am NOT a
> > creationist is the inevitable conclusion.
>
> Obviously not "inevitable", as I am not the only poster who thinks
> that you are a creationist.
Fallacious reasoning. Are you rational enough to detect the fallacy?
Actually there are two fallacies: the other is that you have totally
ignored what I wrote about my conclusions being the result of
examination of the evidence--said conclusions being utterly non-
creationist, and directly flying in the face of your anti-creationist
screed which you posted by way of "justifying" your baseless claim
that I am a creationist.
Did you not see that post? I posted it to this very thread, just
yesterday.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
On May 17, 11:20 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
<richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 17, 3:37 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > On May 17, 3:24 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
>
> > <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On May 16, 10:21 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On May 14, 4:09 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
>
> > > > <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > On May 13, 8:45 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > On May 6, 3:37 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
>
> > > > > > <richardalanforr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > > > On May 3, 6:22 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > > On May 3, 3:43 am, "richardalanforr...@googlemail.com"
> > > I suggest that a definition which includes conclusions about how such
> > > a system can come into existence is not well-defined. In Behe's
> > > definition of IC he includes the following:
>
> > That is NOT part of the definition. It is a conclusion arrived at
> > using an imperfect knowledge of the *behavior* of irreducibly complex
> > systems.
>
> Here's how Behe defines "irreducible complexity":
> "By irreducible complexity I mean a single system which is composed of
> several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and
> where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to
> effectively cease functioning.
End of definition. What follows is some reasoning that USES the
definition--but also something more.
> An irreducibly complex system cannot be
> produced directly by slight, successive modifications of a precursor
> system, since any precursor to an irreducibly complex system is by
> definition nonfunctional."
Note the word "directly". And note that later he points out that
there may be indirect routes.
One example is *removing* a nonessential part from a more complicated
system. Back in the 1990's there was a lot of talk about how Behe had
"overlooked" this possibility, but he simply didn't list it as one of
the indirect routes.
Behe went on to say that as the complexity of an irreducibly complex
system increases, the probability of such an indirect route becomes
vanishingly small.
I gave the following assessment of the situation ca. 1997: irreducible
complexity gives us "more bang for the buck" by making it likely that
explaining its existence takes more parts than are actually present in
it. I certainly did not, and do not, go along with more inflated
claims about how it ID is supposed to be a "defining
characteristic" (or whatever term you used) of IC systems.
> http://www.discovery.org/a/54
>
> Note the term "by definition nonfunctional"
>
> So do you think Behe doesn't understand what he means by "irreducible
> complexity"?
No, I think you need to read a sizable chunk of DBB instead of relying
on little snippets from it.
> > > "An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is,
> > > by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to
> > > work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a
> > > precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex
> > > system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. "
>
> > "missing a part" is where he was led astray, as seen by the Milller/
> > Robison explanation of how the clotting and immune system cascades
> > could have evolved by slight, successive modifications of a precursor
> > system.
>
> "Led astray"?
> Golly, who'd do such a thing?
His own thinking. He did not think deeply enough about gene
duplication -- but then, neither did anyone else until Miller and/or
Robison discovered how autocatalycity when *combined* with gene
duplication held the key to a gradual, "Darwinian" evolution of the
current clotting cascade.
Chris Ho-Stuart, even with Miller's exposition in front of him, was
led astray into giving an amateurish explanation of how irreducible
complexity could arise in the clotting system. So were numerous
people ca. 1997 until someone, unwilling to give a good explanation
himself, sent me to Robison's explanation.
> Of course, it could mean that his definition of "irreducible
> complexity" is such that it presumes conclusions about the nature of
> precursor functions, and that the notion is nothing more than
> handwaving assertion.
It is in his use of "directly" that he presumed these conclusions. It
seems clear from subsequent talk that he presumed "directly" meant
*adding* a part to a precursor system.
>
>
> > On the other hand, the Chris Ho-Stuart explanation is so far out that
> > it reminds me of how I once posted the following ditty, though in an
> > entirely different context.
>
> > Ho, ho, Chris Ho-Stuart,
> > You're as far out as the Cloud of Oort!
>
> Your poetic abilities exceed your abilities to construct an honest
> argument.
All my arguments are honest, and you have yet to demonstrate
otherwise.
The post I tried to re-post a few minutes ago addresses what came
later in the post to which this is a reply.
Peter Nyikos