Macbeth on Faulty Extrapolation in Darwin's Theory of NS
david ford
Publishing Co., Inc.), 178pp.
From the back cover:
DARWIN RETRIED is a carefully documented repudiation of classical
Darwinism and its supporters, maintaining that errors have been discovered
in the reasoning behind the theory, about which the public has not been
informed. If queried, Darwinists will say that theirs is the best
available account of the evolutionary process, but it has become
increasingly evident that there are serious difficulties even with
neo-Darwinism, and many mysteries involving selection, micro-change, and
other matters remain unsolved. In short, incisive chapters Mr. Macbeth
exposes the flaws of contemporary Darwinism and suggests the necessity of
a fresh start in the study of the evolutionary mechanism.
Sir Karl R. Popper, Professor Emeritus at the University of London,
without associating himself with the author's position, writes: "An
excellent and fair, though unsympathetic retrial of Darwin. I regard the
book as most meritorious and as a really important contribution to the
debate ... a truly valuable book." ....
NORMAN MACBETH, a Harvard-trained lawyer, has made the study of Darwinian
theory his avocation for many years. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he
received his B.A. from Stanford University and his J.D. from Harvard Law
School. He lives in New York with his wife and two children and spends his
summers in Vermont. Among his previous writings is an article on
Darwinism, published in the _Yale Review_ in 1967, which led to this book.
Table of Contents:
1 Invalids and Invalidity
2 Comparative Anatomy and Embryology
3 The Species Problem, or the Origin of What?
4 What Do the Breeders Show?
5 Natural Selection
6 The Struggle for Existence
7 Survival of the Fittest
8 Adaptation
9 Sexual Selection
10 Paley and Probability
11 The Corollaries
12 Was It Slow and Tranquil?
13 Extinction, a Mystery
14 Religion in Reverse
15 The Total Theory
16 Must We Explain? Must We Defend?
17 The Case of the Hopeful Monster
Bibliography 167
Index 173
Chapter 4, "What Do the Breeders Show?":
The experience of breeders was of deep interest to Darwin. He bred pigeons
himself and hobnobbed with pigeon fanciers. He spent a great deal of time
talking to breeders of all sorts and recording their observations in his
copious notebooks. He was familiar with the great improvements that had
been made in many plants and domestic animals. Change was occurring before
his eyes. What could be more encouraging to a man who was brooding on the
idea of evolution?
But there was a difficulty. The observed changes were small. The breeders
could improve a sheep's wool or create a larger rose, but they never even
tried to make big changes, such as adding wings to a horse.
I am going to use the terms "micro" and "macro" to describe small changes
and large. Most small changes concern varieties, such as toy poodles or
giant aspidistras, but those who take a narrow view of species may say
that such changes affect species or even genera. There is no exact line
between these classifications, and there is no exact line between small
and large variations; but any sensible person can see that there is a
difference between small and large, especially if we assist him with crass
examples such as the contrast between breeding black horses and breeding
winged horses.
The changes that Darwin observed in the breeding pens were all micro. They
occurred without question, but they were not sufficient for his purposes
when he was faced with macro gaps between his units (the types or
species), because all of these started out with distinct forms even in the
earliest fossils. Comparative anatomy and embryology showed resemblances
between the units, but they also showed that between the units there were
gulfs going back to the misty beginnings. Looking only at large domestic
quadrupeds, it was easy to see that horses, cows, sheep, and goats all had
a backbone, four limbs, a brain, a heart, a skull, and a reproductive
system, and that these members were similar in many ways; but no one would
say that these animals were identical. They looked like cousins, but there
was neither a neatly graduated series of living links between them nor a
converging fossil genealogy behind them. Darwin had to find processes by
which the gaps could be bridged.
Darwin entertained the very questionable opinion that animals and plants
could vary in all directions and to an unlimited degree. In the first
edition of The Origin of Species he said: "I can see no difficulty in a
race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic
in their habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was
produced as monstrous as a whale."1 He knew that this was not the common
view, since as early as 1844 he had written: "That a limit to variation
does exist in nature is assumed by most authors, though I am unable to
discover a single fact on which this belief is grounded."2 He neglected to
add that he also could not discover a single fact on which an opposite
belief might be grounded.* [*: One author whom Darwin must have had in
mind was T. R. Malthus, whose _Essay on the Principle of Population_
influenced Darwin profoundly when he first read it in 1838. In chapter 1
of Book 3 of this work, Malthus took issue with those who contended that
they could improve plants and animals as much as they liked. He pointed
out that a variety of sheep had been bred for small head and legs, but
that it could hardly be carried to a point where the head and legs
disappeared entirely or were reduced to the scale of a rat. He added that
a carnation would never produce a flower as big as a large cabbage. These
statements are negatives that cannot he proved, but they are so reasonable
that surely Darwin has the burden of proof when he takes the opposite
position.]
Darwin was a timid man in many ways, but fortified by his faith in
variation he acted boldly in this situation. He took the micro changes
observed by the breeders (which in themselves did not begin to fill the
gaps) and he _extrapolated_ them. He said, in brief, that twenty years of
breeding often achieved substantial changes; therefore, if nature
continued the work for a hundred million years, it could close all the
gaps. His actual phrasing was more poetic: "Slow though the process of
selection may be, if feeble man can do so much by his powers of artificial
selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and
infinite complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one
with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be
effected in the long course of time by nature's power of selection."3
Extrapolation is a dangerous procedure.4 If you have a broad base of sound
observations, you can extend it a little at the ends without too much
risk; but if the base is short or insecure, extension can lead to
grotesque errors. Thus if you observe the growth of a baby during its
first months, extrapolation into the future will show that the child will
be eight feet tall when six years old. Therefore all statisticians
recommend caution in extrapolating. Darwin, however, plunged in with no
caution at all.
Despite Darwin's easy confidence, it seems likely that his extrapolation
was not justified. The first difficulty is that no one has ever seen a
macro change take place, whether in the breeding pens or among the
fossils. My paperbacks seemed to concede this, but the point worried me so
much that I spent ten dollars for _Evolution Above the Species Level_ by
the German biologist Bernhard Rensch. I found that Professor Rensch did
not pretend to have any actual examples in hand, although he asserted that
macro changes (which he prefers to call transspecific evolution) should
not be regarded as impossible.* [*: Professor Rensch's effort to
demonstrate nonimpossibility is an illustration of what Fischer (1970),
53, has in mind when he says: "_The fallacy of the possible proof_
consists in an attempt to demonstrate that a factual statement is true or
false by establishing the possibility of its truth or falsity. This tactic
. . . never proves a point at issue. Valid empirical proof requires not
merely the establishment of possibility, but an estimate of probability."]
The next difficulty is the lack of transitions. If we join Darwin in
assuming that macro changes _must_ have been accomplished by small steps,
so that the gaps were at one time filled, then what has happened to all
the intermediate forms? This question occurred to Darwin, and he furnished
the answers that are still in use today-- the extreme imperfection of the
geological record and the poorness of our paleontological collections.5
Hardin, asking himself a hundred years later whether he can show all the
links in the chain, replies: "No, of course not; the geological record is
imperfect and will always remain so, since it is highly improbable that
short-lived intermediate species will be fossilized."6
This is the standard answer, but it is rather threadbare after a century
of digging and collecting. The simple phrase "short-lived" is already
troublesome. How does Hardin know they were short-lived if he has never
seen them? Can any species really be short-lived when Huxley, reflecting
the generally accepted view, says that large changes occur over tens of
millions of years, while really major ones (what we would call macro) take
a hundred million or so?7
The heart of the problem is whether living things do indeed vary to an
unlimited extent or, to state it differently, whether micro changes
cumulate into macro effects. The instinctive feeling of untutored men is
against this. The species look stable. We have all heard of disappointed
breeders who carried their work to a certain point only to see the animals
or plants revert where they had started. Despite strenuous efforts for two
or three centuries, it has never been possible to produce a blue rose or a
black tulip.8 Darwin himself knew in 1844 that most authors assumed there
were limits to variation, and he also knew that among pigeons the crossing
of highly bred varieties was apt to provoke a reversion to "the ancient
rock-pigeon." Was he discouraged when, in the sixth and last edition of
_The Origin of Species_, he quietly excised the above passage about
converting bears into whales?
But it is not only untutored men and pre-Darwinian authors who are
skeptical. Eiseley reports the discovery by the Danish scientist W. L.
Johannsen that "the variations upon which Darwin and Wallace had placed
their emphasis cannot be selectively pushed beyond a certain point, that
such variability does not contain the secret of 'indefinite departure.'"9
Sir Julian Huxley reports that, in a pure eyeless strain of fruit flies,
after eight or ten generations the eyes had reverted almost to normal.10
I was also impressed by the story of a biologist who broke with orthodox
theory. The late Richard B. Goldschmidt (1878-1958) must have been a
highly tutored man, since Hardin calls him an "important geneticist"11 and
Smith devotes several pages to him.12 After observing mutations in fruit
flies for many years, Goldschmidt fell into despair. The changes, he
lamented, were so hopelessly micro that if a thousand mutations were
combined in one specimen, there would still be no new species.13 This led
him to propose the hypothesis of the "hopeful monster," whereby a huge
change might have occurred all at once and been preserved by a favoring
environment. His colleagues rejected this proposal as unsound, but they
seem to escape Goldschmidt's despair only by an act of faith.* [*: There
are moments when Simpson seems to be in basic agreement with Goldschmidt,
although he speaks of "quantum" evolution rather than "macro." But the
whole problem is left fallow by Simpson and largely ignored by his
colleagues. This story is expanded in Chapter 17.]
These pieces of evidence led me to suspect, diffidently at first, that
extrapolation was up to its old tricks, that micro changes did not
aggregate into macro, that macro changes could not be shown to occur, and
that one of Darwin's main props had collapsed. While I was wrestling with
this suspicion I encountered the works of Ernst Mayr of Harvard, who has
become one of my principal sources.
Mayr notes that animal populations have a certain persistence or inertia,
in that they resist sudden or drastic change, and he gives this
persistence the elegant name of "genetic homeostasis." He also provides a
splendid example of what I had been groping for-- the corollary tendency
of animals and plants to balk at being bred too far in any direction. This
comes out in his description of some work in 1948 with the famous fruit
fly, _Drosophila melanogaster_.14 Here is the gist of his account.
Two experiments were run, one for decrease and one for increase in the
number of bristles, which averaged 36 in the starting stock. Selection for
decrease was able, after thirty generations, to lower this average to 25
bristles, but then the line became sterile and died out. A mass low line
(maintained without selection) was started with 32 bristles and remained
nearly stable for ninety-five generations. All attempts to derive from
this line others with lower bristle numbers failed because the lines died
out before selection had made much progress. In the high line, progress
was at first rapid and steady. In twenty generations the average rose from
36 to 56. Then sterility became severe and a mass line (without selection)
was started. Average bristle number fell sharply and was down to 39 in
five generations.
Mayr regards these results as entirely normal. He believes that there is
just so much variability in a fruit fly, and that if it is pushed hard in
one direction it will be distorted in another. His language is plain:
"Obviously any drastic improvement under selection must seriously deplete
the store of genetic variability. . . . The most frequent correlated
response of one-sided selection is a drop in general fitness. This plagues
virtually every breeding experiment."15
Genetic homeostasis makes even micro changes look difficult, and seems to
be a fatal obstacle to macroevolution. Nevertheless, Mayr himself
continues to believe that macroevolution must take place through natural
selection working on small changes. But he cites no observed cases; he
confesses that he is relying on extrapolation; and in the midst of his
tentative suggestions about a modus operandi, he concedes that "much of
this is obviously speculative."16 Thus he seems to be a reluctant but
impressive witness against the cumulation of micro changes.
Mayr, with a century of literature at his fingertips, is immensely
sophisticated. But Darwin, in the first dawn, already perceived the
phenomena that Mayr describes. As to the idea of a limited store of
variability, he quotes Goethe's perspicuous remark that "in order to spend
on one side, nature is forced to economize on the other side."17 As to the
dangers of sterility, he said: "Sterility has been said to be the bane of
horticulture."18
Having slowly concluded that there is no evidence that micro changes
cumulate into macro effects, I was relieved to find that, although the
subject is seldom discussed, my view is shared by reputable scientists.*
[*: Some years after reaching this conclusion, I was further relieved by
my discovery of the Broom-Huxley doctrine that evolution is now exhausted
(see Chapter 15). These scholars seem to assert flatly and confidently
exactly what I had laboriously worked out for myself-- that we see only
micro evolution and that the micro steps do not cumulate into macro
effects.]
Thus Eiseley says: "It would appear that careful domestic breeding,
whatever it may do to improve the quality of race horses or cabbages, is
not actually in itself the road to the endless biological deviation which
is evolution. There is great irony in this situation, for more than almost
any other single factor, domestic breeding has been used as an argument
for the reality of evolution."19 Professor Deevey supplies terse phrases
such as "the species barrier" and "the limited charter" to describe the
situation, then confesses bankruptcy: "Some remarkable things have been
done by crossbreeding and selection inside the species barrier, or within
a larger circle of closely related species, such as the wheats. But wheat
is still wheat, and not, for instance, grapefruit; and we can no more grow
wings on pigs than hens can make cylindrical eggs."20 Thus my surmise
about winged horses is confirmed in New Haven.
When the experience of breeders is in question, it is prudent to consult
competent breeders. Luther Burbank who, though no theoretician, was the
most competent breeder of all time, looked at this problem. He eloquently
endorsed the limited charter:
"There is a law . . . of the Reversion to the Average. I know from my
experience that I can develop a plum half an inch long or one 2 1/2 inches
long, with every possible length in between, but I am willing to admit
that it is hopeless to try to get a plum the size of a small pea, or one
as big as a grapefruit. I have daisies on my farms little larger than my
fingernail and some that measure six inches across, but I have none as big
as a sunflower, and never expect to have. I have roses that bloom pretty
steadily for six months in the year, but I have none that will bloom
twelve, and I will not have. In short, there are limits to the development
possible, and these limits follow a law. But what law, and why? It is the
law that I have referred to above. Experiments carried on extensively have
given us scientific proof of what we had already guessed by observation;
namely, that plants and animals all tend to revert, in successive
generations, toward a given mean or average. Men grow to be seven feet
tall, and over, but never to ten; there are dwarfs not higher than 24
inches, but none that you can carry in your hand. . . . In short, there is
undoubtedly a pull toward the mean which keeps all living things within
some more or less fixed limitations."21
The dangers of extrapolation became very evident to Simpson when he tried
to calculate the tempo of evolution. Working from what he knew of the
fossils and time sequences, he could see that the bat's wing, for
instance, had changed very little since the middle Eocene (about one
hunched million years ago). If its earlier evolution had proceeded at the
same slow rate, its total time of development would be greater than the
age of the earth, a manifest absurdity. Therefore Simpson concluded that
in the early days the rate for bats must have been ten to fifteen times as
fast as later.* [*: The fragile nature of these speculations should be
carefully noted. The actual fossil record shows very slow change and
leaves little time available. Therefore Simpson is forced to assert
(without evidence) a rapid rate before the curtain went up. But if he made
it too rapid, he would he approaching the sudden leap, or saltation, to
which he is unalterably opposed.22]
Despite this testimony showing the species barrier and the dangers of
extrapolation, some biologists continue to extrapolate as ardently as ever
Darwin did. Thus Sir Julian Huxley says: "With the length of time
available, little adjustments can easily be made to add up to miraculous
adaptations; and the slight shifts of gene frequency between one
generation and the next can be multiplied to produce radical improvements
and totally new kinds of creatures."23 I found that Professor John Tyler
Bonner of Princeton was equally bold: "There is no reason to believe that
these large changes are not the result of the very same mechanisms as the
small changes. One involves a small step over a few years; the other
involves many many thousands of steps over millions of years."24 Huxley
and Bonner do not seem to be familiar with genetic homeostasis, although
Huxley knows of the disappointments with blue roses and black tulips.
Having quoted Luther Burbank, I will now depart even further from
professional scholarship by quoting Mark Twain's views on extrapolation:
"In the space of 176 years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself 242
miles. That is an average of a trifle over a mile and a third per year.
Therefore any calm person who is not blind or idiotic can see that in the
Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the
Lower Mississippi River was upward of 1,300,000 miles long and stuck out
over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any
person can see that 742 years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only
a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined
their streets together and be plodding along comfortably under a single
mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about
science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a
trifling investment of fact."
I doubt that Huxley and Bonner have heard of Mark Twain's calculations,
but Deevey is familiar with them and with the dangers of extrapolation.
Therefore it is astonishing to me that he should brush them off by saying:
"Yet a yachtsman makes extrapolations just as breathtaking whenever he
consults his watch and waits for high tide before sailing."25 The tide
tables are based on a hundred years of daily observations, which need be
projected not more than twelve and one-half hours into the future to give
the next high tide. The extrapolations of Huxley, Bonner, and Darwin are
the other way round; they are based on a few years of observation and are
projected hundreds of millions of years into the past and future. The two
cases are not equally breathtaking.
I cannot assert that the biologists have expressly abandoned Darwin's
position. Indeed, it seems likely that most of them would say that he
simply must be correct. But on the other hand, they would all recognize
the limits of variability, the curse of sterility, the dangers of
extrapolation, the hopelessness of trying to convert bears into whales or
of breeding winged horses, and the strong inertia of genetic homeostasis.
I do not see how these points can be reconciled with Darwin's position,
and I suggest that the time has come for a retreat.
Notes to Chapter 4:
1. Darwin (1859), 184.
2. Eiseley (1958), 186.
3. Darwin (1859), 109.
4. Olson (1960), 532-534, is the fullest and most temperate discussion I
have found of the dangers of extrapolation. He urgently recommends
caution. Simpson (1964), 140-141, also warns against extrapolation, though
Simpson frequently extrapolates. See also Fischer (1970), 120-122.
5. Darwin (1859), 280, 287.
6. Hardin (1961), 103.
7. Huxley (1957), 13.
8. Huxley (1942), 519.
9. Eiseley (1958), 227.
10. Huxley (1953), 40.
11. Hardin (1961), 226.
12. Smith (1958), 276-284.
13. Goldschmidt (1952), 94.
14. Mayr (1963), 285-286.
15. Mayr (1963), 290.
16. Mayr (1963), 586, 613, 615.
17. Darwin (1859), 147.
18. Darwin (1859), 9.
19. Eiseley (1958), 223.
20. Deevey (1967), 636.
21. Quoted in Hall (1939). Another great breeder demonstrated that the
tendency to vary does not operate in all directions and to an unlimited
degree; see N. I. Vavilov (1951) and his study of homologous variation;
also Huxley (1942), 511, 519. Compare Francis Galton's law of filial
regression; Kellogg (1925), 122.
22. Simpson (1944), 119, 139; (1953), 351-353.
23. Huxley (1957), 41.
24. Bonner (1962), 48.
25. Deevey (1967), 637.
Bibliography for Notes to Chapter 4:
Bonner, John Tyler, 1962, The Ideas of Biology (Harper).
Darwin, Charles, 1859, The Origin of Species (John Murray, London;
facsimile printed by Harvard University Press, 1966).
Deevey, Edward S., Jr., 1967, "The reply: letter from Birnam Wood," Yale
Review 61: 631-640.
Eiseley, Loren, 1958, The Immense Journey (Vintage Books).
Fischer, David H., 1970, Historians' Fallacies (Harper & Row).
Goldschmidt, Richard B., 1952, "Evolution, as viewed by one geneticist,"
American Scientist 40: 84-98.
Hardin, Garrett, 1961, Nature and Man's Fate (Mentor).
Huxley, Sir Julian S., 1942, Evolution, the Modern Synthesis (Allen &
Unwin, London).
Huxley, Sir Julian S., 1957, Evolution in Action (Mentor).
Huxley, Sir Julian S., A. C. Hardy, and E. B. Ford, eds., 1954, Evolution
As a Process (Allen & Unwin, London).
Kellogg, Vernon, 1925, Evolution, the Way of Man (Appleton).
Mayr, Ernst, 1963, Animal Species and Evolution (Harvard University
Press).
Olson, Everett C., 1960, "Morphology, paleontology, and evolution," in Tax
(1960), Vol. I, 523-545.
Simpson, George Gaylord, 1944, Tempo and Mode in Evolution (Columbia
University Press).
Simpson, George Gaylord, 1953, The Major Features of Evolution (Columbia
University Press; paperback by Simon & Schuster, 1967).
Simpson, George Gaylord, 1964, This View of Life (Harcourt, Brace &
World).
Smith, John Maynard, 1958, The Theory of Evolution (Penguin).
Vavilov, N. I., 1951, The Origin, Variation, Immunity, and Breeding of
Cultivated Plants (Chronica Botanica).
catshark
wrote:
[snip]
>NORMAN MACBETH, a Harvard-trained lawyer, has made the study of Darwinian
>theory his avocation for many years.
Oh! A *Harvard*-trained lawyer! Now *that* makes a difference . . .
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
Lawyers are like other people -- fools on the average;
but it is easier for an ass to succeed in that trade than any other.
-- Mark Twain --
gen2rev
wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 04:10:27 +0000 (UTC), david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu>
> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >NORMAN MACBETH, a Harvard-trained lawyer, has made the study of Darwinian
> >theory his avocation for many years.
>
> Oh! A *Harvard*-trained lawyer! Now *that* makes a difference . . .
Not really, but Macbeth is in good company. All the major evolutionary
theorists I've ever heard of were also lawyers... 8P
ReidRover
>From: catshark cats...@yahoo.com
>Date: 8/24/2003 8:58 AM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <h2ohkvojull3nk36i...@4ax.com>
>
>On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 04:10:27 +0000 (UTC), david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu>
>wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>>NORMAN MACBETH, a Harvard-trained lawyer, has made the study of Darwinian
>>theory his avocation for many years.
>
>Oh! A *Harvard*-trained lawyer! Now *that* makes a difference . . .
>
Wonder why so many especially Creationists are awed by Lawyers and especially
Harvard trained ones. I have to say having seen a Harvard grad in operation in
the Whitehouse for the last couple of years I am less than impressed by that
school.
Alan Wright
"david ford" <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu...
> Macbeth, Norman. 1971. _Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason_ (NY: Dell
> Publishing Co., Inc.), 178pp.
Hah! A Phillip Johnson wannabe. And yet another believer that science is
about distorting the evidence sufficiently well to sway a "jury".
Alan
catshark
wrote:
Hah! That's all you know! Shrub is a Yalie! ;-)
Biblically-based creationists have to be, I suspect, emotionally and
intellectually predisposed to appeals to authority in order to become
creationists in the first place. (Which is also why they accuse
"Darwinist" teachers of having nothing but their positions of authority to
back up evolutionary theory and are so enamored of lists of Ph.Ds, usually
from fields having nothing to do with biology, who disagree. To them, it
is a duel of authorities.)
Harvard lawyers are more authorative because they come from a big name,
prestigious university, and are, they think, making big bucks on Wall
Street or somethin', not like the guy with a diploma from the local state
school who does their house closing and who they know is no "brain".
Why take lawyers seriously at all about biology? Beats me. I know more
about evolutionary theory than the average person-in-the-street but anyone
who made a judgment about the *science* based on what I know is only
fooling themselves.
Which, come to think of it, may be *just* what they are after.
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
LAWYER, n.
One skilled in circumvention of the law.
- Ambrose Bierce -
John Wilkins
Actually, Phillip Johnson is a Norman Macbeth wannabe. Macbeth wrote
much earlier and I suspect actually *believed* what he said.
--
John Wilkins - wilkins.id.au
[I]magine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "...interesting
hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? ...
must have been made to have me in it." Douglas Adams, Salmon of Doubt
Alan Wright
"John Wilkins" <wil...@wehi.edu.au> wrote in message
news:1g08mnb.1h8ll1l1hw1p5tN%wil...@wehi.edu.au...
Oops! I should haved noted the publication date. The title threw me off.
So can anyone state definitively if the influence was the other way around?
Alan
ReidRover
>From: catshark cats...@yahoo.com
>Date: 8/24/2003 11:03 AM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <inthkv4vhc4js5hh7...@4ax.com>
>
>On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 16:23:02 +0000 (UTC), reid...@aol.com (ReidRover)
>wrote:
>
>>>
>>>From: catshark cats...@yahoo.com
>>>Date: 8/24/2003 8:58 AM Pacific Daylight Time
>>>Message-id: <h2ohkvojull3nk36i...@4ax.com>
>>>
>>>On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 04:10:27 +0000 (UTC), david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>[snip]
>>>
>>>>NORMAN MACBETH, a Harvard-trained lawyer, has made the study of Darwinian
>>>>theory his avocation for many years.
>>>
>>>Oh! A *Harvard*-trained lawyer! Now *that* makes a difference . . .
>>>
>>
>>Wonder why so many especially Creationists are awed by Lawyers and
>especially
>>Harvard trained ones. I have to say having seen a Harvard grad in operation
>in
>>the Whitehouse for the last couple of years I am less than impressed by that
>>school.
>
>Hah! That's all you know! Shrub is a Yalie! ;-)
>
Welll according to his biography at the Whitehouse website..he somehow got his
Masters in Business Administration ( they have master s in THAT??)..at Harvard
Business school in 1975..seeing his economic policies and how he puts himself
forward I dunno what kind of degrees they were giving out back in '75!
http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html
Mark Isaak
<dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>Macbeth, Norman. 1971. _Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason_ (NY: Dell
>Publishing Co., Inc.), 178pp.
[Copyright-violating text deleted. Thou shalt not steal, Mr. Ford.]
The book contains nothing that we have not seen here a thousand times
already.
--
Mark Isaak at...@earthlink.net
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger." -- Hermann Goering
TomS
<h2ohkvojull3nk36i...@4ax.com>, catshark stated..."
>
>On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 04:10:27 +0000 (UTC), david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu>
>wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>>NORMAN MACBETH, a Harvard-trained lawyer, has made the study of Darwinian
>>theory his avocation for many years.
>
>Oh! A *Harvard*-trained lawyer! Now *that* makes a difference . . .
Often, when I hear about the credentials of a lawyer, it is: The
name of the law school; Who they clerked with.
As if the three years of law school plus the one year of clerking
are all the qualifications needed for anything in law.
I won't go into the point that that means a total of four years of
study, starting from scratch, of the field (whereas, in most other
fields of study, there are years of undergraduate study *before* going
into graduate school, and graduate school is often more than three
years). I understand that there is such a thing as advanced legal
education, leading to a degree such as a master's or doctorate in
legal studies, but that doesn't seem to be a common requirement for
becoming a professor of law.
A lawyer friend of mine has suggested that the primary point of
legal education is forming the correct connections with other lawyers,
and that all you really need to know about the law, you learn in the
first year of law school.
catshark
wrote:
Hah! That shows all *I* know!
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
If nothing else, at least now I've
learned how to spell "blithering"!
catshark
wrote:
It kind of depends on what the objective is. If you want a broad (but not
particularly deep) education in the history and philosophy of the law and
its current state, the three years is probably needed. If you want enough
to pass the bar exam so you can get a license to practice law (which is
where you learn how to *be* a lawyer), a year is probably enough.
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
A concise definition of legal ethics:
" . . . having been bought a lawyer is supposed to stay bought."
-- Louann Miller --
dave e
> Publishing Co., Inc.), 178pp.
>
David Ford,
Following is another favorable review of this book, from an Amazon.com
user:
(five stars)
"I haven't read this book. I was reading the reviews to decide whether
or not I should read it and saw that the previous reviewer decided to
review it twice (giving it a single star twice) and decided in the
interest of fairness to nullify that by adding a 5 star. I decided to
check out this book because it was referenced by Jacques Barzun in his
Dawn to Decadence history. And any book that generates the hostility
witnessed in the previous review must be pretty good."
FIVE STARS!!! Man, you can't give a more compelling review than that.
Dave
Scott Rutter
<TomS_...@newsguy.com> wrote:
> Often, when I hear about the credentials of a lawyer, it is: The
>name of the law school; Who they clerked with.
>
> As if the three years of law school plus the one year of clerking
>are all the qualifications needed for anything in law.
It should be, change that to "everything" in law and it might take a
bit more study. One should be able to get a good grasp on a single
speciality of law in four years. If they've gotten to the point where
it takes more than four years to learn a single type of law I say we
just shoot all the lawyers and start over. :)
-
To Reply: Take off every Zig!
EAC - Director of Quantum Computing
Ordained Minister - Universal Life Church
Earle Jones
Scott Rutter <sZIGr...@cfl.rr.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Aug 2003 09:36:56 +0000 (UTC), TomS
> <TomS_...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
> > Often, when I hear about the credentials of a lawyer, it is: The
> >name of the law school; Who they clerked with.
> >
> > As if the three years of law school plus the one year of clerking
> >are all the qualifications needed for anything in law.
>
> It should be, change that to "everything" in law and it might take a
> bit more study. One should be able to get a good grasp on a single
> speciality of law in four years. If they've gotten to the point where
> it takes more than four years to learn a single type of law I say we
> just shoot all the lawyers and start over. :)
*
I recall a story about an ancient Asian kingdom. The wise old king
decided to gather up all the doctors and lawyers and banish them from
the kingdom.
But then, he noticed that people were getting sick, so he brought back
the doctors.
earle
*
John Wilkins
<Straight man>
What did he notice with the absence of the lawyers?
</Straight man>
Bill Jefferys
>On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 16:23:02 +0000 (UTC), reid...@aol.com (ReidRover)
>>Wonder why so many especially Creationists are awed by Lawyers and
>>especially Harvard trained ones. I have to say having seen a Harvard grad
>>in operation in the Whitehouse for the last couple of years I am less than
>>impressed by that school.
>
>Hah! That's all you know! Shrub is a Yalie! ;-)
Yes, but his MBA is from Harvard. Not that it did him much good,
because the businesses he ran tended to turn into shit.
Bill
--
Bill Jefferys/Department of Astronomy/University of Texas/Austin, TX 78712
Email: replace 'warthog' with 'clyde' | Homepage: quasar.as.utexas.edu
I report spammers to frau...@psinet.com
Finger for PGP Key: F7 11 FB 82 C6 21 D8 95 2E BD F7 6E 99 89 E1 82
Unlawful to use this email address for unsolicited ads: USC Title 47 Sec 227
David Jensen
<biclb...@drn.newsguy.com>:
>"On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 15:58:33 +0000 (UTC), in article
><h2ohkvojull3nk36i...@4ax.com>, catshark stated..."
>>
>>On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 04:10:27 +0000 (UTC), david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu>
>>wrote:
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>>NORMAN MACBETH, a Harvard-trained lawyer, has made the study of Darwinian
>>>theory his avocation for many years.
>>
>>Oh! A *Harvard*-trained lawyer! Now *that* makes a difference . . .
>
> Often, when I hear about the credentials of a lawyer, it is: The
>name of the law school; Who they clerked with.
>
> As if the three years of law school plus the one year of clerking
>are all the qualifications needed for anything in law.
Until fairly late in the nineteenth century, most lawyers were trained
by other lawyers in the US. Law schools were around, but not responsible
for most lawyers. As a practical matter, someone coming out of law
school is no more prepared to practice law than anyone going into law
school -- they'll just be able to do it better after they figure out the
mechanics of the day-to-day operations. Most academically oriented law
schools may offer but one, optional, class about actually running a
practice.
Being a good lawyer takes practice, so I would generally prefer a lawyer
with ten years experience over one who was on Law Review last year, even
though I expect that the Law Review lawyer would be brilliant in the
appeal after he lost the original case, if he ever sullied himself
enough to get into a courtroom.
> I won't go into the point that that means a total of four years of
>study, starting from scratch, of the field (whereas, in most other
>fields of study, there are years of undergraduate study *before* going
>into graduate school, and graduate school is often more than three
>years). I understand that there is such a thing as advanced legal
>education, leading to a degree such as a master's or doctorate in
>legal studies, but that doesn't seem to be a common requirement for
>becoming a professor of law.
No, it doesn't, though, as specialization becomes more clearly
pronounced, maybe to the point that Bar Associations will accept the
idea that formal specialization in law is a good idea, I expect more
graduate specialty programs (LL.M. in Tax is commonly offered now).
It doesn't really matter what the undergrad degree is, though it might
be harsh to call it trade school for liberal arts grads.
> A lawyer friend of mine has suggested that the primary point of
>legal education is forming the correct connections with other lawyers,
>and that all you really need to know about the law, you learn in the
>first year of law school.
_The Paper Chase_ wasn't quite a documentary, but...
catshark
<bi...@warthog.as.utexas.edu> wrote:
>At 6:03 PM +0000 on 8/24/03, catshark wrote:
>>On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 16:23:02 +0000 (UTC), reid...@aol.com (ReidRover)
>
>>>Wonder why so many especially Creationists are awed by Lawyers and
>>>especially Harvard trained ones. I have to say having seen a Harvard grad
>>>in operation in the Whitehouse for the last couple of years I am less than
>>>impressed by that school.
>>
>>Hah! That's all you know! Shrub is a Yalie! ;-)
>
>Yes, but his MBA is from Harvard. Not that it did him much good,
>because the businesses he ran tended to turn into shit.
>
Hey, he at least could recognize a *bigger* idiot to take the Rangers off
his hands.
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
Honesty is the best policy --
when there is money in it.
-- Mark Twain --
david ford
[snip]
> The book contains nothing that we have not seen here a thousand times
> already.
In that case, what talk.origins FAQ refutes Macbeth's argument that
neo-Darwinism has at its core faulty extrapolation?
Chris Ho-Stuart
[snip]
> "John Wilkins" <wil...@wehi.edu.au> wrote in message
> news:1g08mnb.1h8ll1l1hw1p5tN%wil...@wehi.edu.au...
>> Actually, Phillip Johnson is a Norman Macbeth wannabe. Macbeth wrote
>> much earlier and I suspect actually *believed* what he said.
>> --
>> John Wilkins - wilkins.id.au
>> [I]magine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "...interesting
>> hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? ...
>> must have been made to have me in it." Douglas Adams, Salmon of Doubt
>
> Oops! I should haved noted the publication date. The title
> threw me off.
>
> So can anyone state definitively if the influence was the
> other way around?
Definitely, yes; in the sense that Johnson knew of
Macbeth, and cites Macbeth in his own book.
Information courtesy of Wesley Elsberry.
<http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199803/0090.html>
Cheers -- Chris
John Wilkins
Let me read it tonight again, and I'll respond tomorrow (my time).
Mark Isaak
Your question is a non sequitur; commonness in the newsgroup does not
mean the FAQs have information on it. But for refutation, see
http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/guide/list.html. See especially
CB902, CB902.1, and CB902.2. And follow the links to relevant parts
of the FAQs.
John Wilkins
> david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > > The book contains nothing that we have not seen here a thousand times
> > > already.
> >
> > In that case, what talk.origins FAQ refutes Macbeth's argument that
> > neo-Darwinism has at its core faulty extrapolation?
>
> Let me read it tonight again, and I'll respond tomorrow (my time).
I was mistaken - I have Johnson's book not Macbeth's.
Perhaps you can help here, david - recount Macbeth's argument and we can
discuss it...
Mark Isaak
<at...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 06:01:17 +0000 (UTC), david ford
><dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Mark Isaak wrote:
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>> The book contains nothing that we have not seen here a thousand times
>>> already.
>>
>>In that case, what talk.origins FAQ refutes Macbeth's argument that
>>neo-Darwinism has at its core faulty extrapolation?
>
>Your question is a non sequitur; commonness in the newsgroup does not
>mean the FAQs have information on it. But for refutation, see
>http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/guide/list.html.
I should add that I have aimed to make that list comprehensive,
especially with the golden oldie creationist claims. If you do find
any claims in Macbeth's book that are not on that list, please let me
know. Thank you.
david ford
> On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 06:01:17 +0000 (UTC), david ford
> <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>
> >On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >
> >[snip]
> >
> >> The book contains nothing that we have not seen here a thousand times
> >> already.
> >
> >In that case, what talk.origins FAQ refutes Macbeth's argument that
> >neo-Darwinism has at its core faulty extrapolation?
>
> Your question is a non sequitur; commonness in the newsgroup does not
> mean the FAQs have information on it. But for refutation, see
> http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/guide/list.html. See especially
> CB902, CB902.1, and CB902.2. And follow the links to relevant parts
> of the FAQs.
Thanks, Mark. I have recast your writings as what appears below.
Please review my presentation of your thoughts, as I will be
critiquing your thoughts as they appear in my presentation. Plus, I
wish to be sure that I am understanding you correctly before I gently
critique your position. Please suggest any changes that may be needed
to my presentation of your thoughts. For reference, your original
words appear at the very end of this post.
Expounding/recasting of Mark's CB 902, 902.1, and 902.2, as understood
by David:
microevolution: change of allele frequencies
macroevolution: formation of new species, that is to say, formation of
populations that cannot interbreed with each other.
supermacroevolution: the arrival of new structures having new
functions, apart from the input of an intelligent creator(s) (see the
mention of Mayr's definition in
Problems with Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.10005310900310.17702-100000%$
Speciation/the forming of new species is distinct from changing allele
frequencies in that speciation requires a biological or geographical
factor that causes an interbreeding population to cease being able to
interbreed. Other than such an isolating factor, species formation
requires no processes other than changing allele frequencies. Species
formation can also be caused by disruptive selection and polypoidy;
disruptive selection and polypoidy are basically the same as changing
allele frequencies. Scientists have observed the arising of
populations that cannot interbreed with each other.
The non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures having new
functions is harder to observe directly. (To be more precise, it has
not been observed; if it had been observed, you can be sure that I
would mention it.) However, there is not the slightest bit of evidence
that the non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures having
new functions requires anything besides changing allele frequencies.
There is no reason to think that changing allele frequencies and the
formation of populations that cannot interbreed with each other
cannot, over time, add up to new structures having new functions.
There is every reason to believe that changing allele frequencies and
the formation of populations that cannot interbreed with each other
can add up to the non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures
having new functions. Creationists allege that
1) changing allele frequencies and the formation of populations that
cannot interbreed
and
2) the non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures having new
functions
are distinct, but they have not given one jot of evidence supporting
their allegation.
There is evidence of:
new structures appearing having new functions apart from the input of
an intelligent creator(s)
in these areas:
1) now-dead organisms' cumulative changes discovered in the fossil
record, and
2) the pattern of graduated similarities among living things that
makes it impossible to classify organisms as such things as "dogs",
"cats", and "quahogs."
Creationists allege that there are barriers to getting:
new structures having new functions apart from an intelligence's input
from:
changing allele frequencies, and the formation of populations that
cannot interbreed.
In response, evolutionists note that the only barrier to getting new
structures having new functions that anyone has ever proposed is time.
There were hundreds of millions of years available for the
non-intelligence-directed arrival of each new structure having a new
function. Therefore, time is not a barrier.
Besides being extrapolated from observed changing allele frequencies
and populations that became non-interbreeding, the belief that new
structures having new functions can arise apart from the input of an
intelligence(s) also find support from:
1) the fossil record,
2) the similarities and differences seen between present populations
that cannot interbreed,
3) comparisons of genomes, and
4) other evidence.
If there are pressures for changes to occur in one direction, the
changes will accumulate. Conditions in which changes are pressured to
occur in only one direction have been observed in:
certain climate changes, and "arms races" in the biological history of
certain organisms.
Supposing there are pressures in a biological situation, changes will
tend to go ever-farther away from a starting point.
Changing allele frequencies and populations that cease to interbreed
will not develop new structures having new functions if:
1) organisms are pressured to remain as they are,
2) there is not enough time, or
3) there are genetic mechanisms preventing the arrival of new
structures having new functions.
Pressures on organisms to remain as they are occur sometimes, but
certainly not always. The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and the
first life appeared on the earth basically as soon as the earth had
cooled sufficiently to permit the presence of that bacterial life.
There is no hint of a mechanism to prevent the arrival of:
new structures having new functions
from:
changing allele frequencies and populations that cease to be able to
interbreed.
Therefore, based on basic principles, the arrival of:
new structures having new functions
from:
changing allele frequencies and populations ceasing to be able to
interbreed
is to be expected.
The above refutes Macbeth's claim and supporting arguments that at its
core, neo-Darwinism is based on a faulty extrapolation, Macbeth's
argument appearing at
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308240006280.21425-100000%40li$
==========================================================.
http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/guide/list.html
CB902. Microevolution is distinct from macroevolution.
* CB902.1. There are barriers to large change.
* CB902.2. Small changes do not imply large changes.
Claim CB902:
Microevolution is distinct from macroevolution.
Source:
Wallace, Timothy, 2000. Five major evolutionist misconceptions about
evolution. http://www.trueorigins.org/isakrbtl.htm
Response:
1. Microevolution and macroevolution are different things, but they
involve mostly the same processes. Microevolution is defined as the
change of allele frequencies (that is, genetic variation due to
processes such as selection, mutation, genetic drift, or even
migration) within a population. There is no argument that
microevolution happens (although some creationists such as Wallace
deny that mutations happen). Macroevolution is defined as evolutionary
change at the species level or higher, i.e. the formation of new
species, new genera, etc. Speciation has also been observed.
Creationists have created another category which they use the word
"macroevolution" for. They have no technical definition of it, but in
practice they use it to mean evolution to an extent great enough that
it hasn't been observed yet. (Some creationists talk about
macroevolution being the emergence of new features, but it is not
clear what they mean by this. Taking it literally, gradually changing
a feature from fish fin to tetrapod limb to bird wing would not be
macroevolution, but a mole on your skin which neither of your parents
have would be.) I will call this category supermacroevolution to avoid
confusing it with real macroevolution.
Speciation is distinct from microevolution in that speciation usually
requires an isolating factor to keep the new species distinct. The
isolating factor need not be biological; a new mountain range or the
changed course of a river can qualify. Other than that, speciation
requires no processes other than microevolution. Some processes such
as diruptive selection (natural selection which drives two states of
the same feature further apart) and polyploidy (a mutation which
creates copies of the entire genome) may be involved more often in
speciation, but they are not substantively different from
microevolution.
Supermacroevolution is harder to observe directly. However, there is
not the slightest bit of evidence that it requires anything but
microevolution. There is no reason to think that small changes, over
time, cannot add up to large changes, and every reason to believe they
can. Creationists claim that microevolution and supermacroevolution
are distinct, but they have never provided an iota of evidence to
support their claim.
2. There is evidence for supermacroevolution in the form of
progressive changes in the fossil record and in the pattern of
similarities among living things showing an absence of distinct
"kinds." This evidence caused evolution of some kind to be accepted
even before Darwin proposed his theory.
Further Reading:
Wilkins, John, 1997. Macroevolution.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html
Previous Claim | List of Claims | Next Claim
created 2000-11-4
Claim CB902.1:
Evolutionists claim that biological evolution is extrapolated from the
minor variations we observe. They ignore that there are barriers to
large change.
Source:
Morris, John D., 2003 (May). Dating Niagara Falls. Impact #359, p. iv.
Response:
3. What barriers? The only barrier that anyone has ever proposed is
time, and the hundreds of millions of years available for evolution
show that that time isn't a real barrier.
4. Evolution is not just extrapolated from observed microevolution; it
is also interpolated from observed changes in the fossil record and
from the pattern of observed similarities and differences between
present species.
Previous Claim | List of Claims | Next Claim
created 2003-5-7
Claim CB902.2:
Creationists recognize that small, microevolutionary changes occur,
but small changes do not imply large changes, so the theory of
macroevolution is unjustified.
Response:
5. This claim falsely assumes that the conclusion of macroevolution is
based solely on the observation of microevolution. In fact,
microevolution is just one piece of the evidence that demonstrates
evolution as a whole. Other evidence includes the fossil record,
patterns of similarities and differences between living species,
genetic comparisons, and more [Darwin, 1872, Theobald, 1999].
6. Small changes do imply large changes under some common
circumstances. If there is some selective pressure for the changes to
go in one direction, the changes will add up. Such a condition can
happen, for example, under a gradual climate change or in evolutionary
arms races. Even if there is no selective pressure at all, the changes
will tend to diverge further and further from the starting point.
Small changes will not lead to large changes only
* if there is stabilizing selection for organisms to remain as they
are, or
* if there is too little time for much to happen, or
* if there are genetic mechanisms limiting change.
Stabilizing selection occurs sometimes, but is far from universal. We
know that the earth, and life on it, is very old. And there is no hint
of a mechanism to limit variation. Therefore, we expect large changes
based on basic principles.
Links:
Theobald, Douglas, 1999. 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The
Scientific Case for the Theory of Common Descent with Gradual
Modification, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
References:
1. Darwin, 1872. (see below)
2. Theobald, D., 1999. (see above)
Further Reading:
Darwin, C., 1872, The Origin of Species, 6th edition. (Senate,
London).
Previous Claim | List of Claims | Next Claim
created 2003-7-15
==========================================================
John Wilkins
I hope you don't mind my interposing in this thread. If so, ignore it
and I'll not continue replying. But I did offer to follow this up...
> Mark Isaak <at...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net> wrote:
> > On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 06:01:17 +0000 (UTC), david ford
> > <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
> >
> > >On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Mark Isaak wrote:
> > >
> > >[snip]
> > >
> > >> The book contains nothing that we have not seen here a thousand times
> > >> already.
> > >
> > >In that case, what talk.origins FAQ refutes Macbeth's argument that
> > >neo-Darwinism has at its core faulty extrapolation?
> >
> > Your question is a non sequitur; commonness in the newsgroup does not
> > mean the FAQs have information on it. But for refutation, see
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/guide/list.html. See especially
> > CB902, CB902.1, and CB902.2. And follow the links to relevant parts
> > of the FAQs.
>
> Thanks, Mark. I have recast your writings as what appears below.
> Please review my presentation of your thoughts, as I will be
> critiquing your thoughts as they appear in my presentation. Plus, I
> wish to be sure that I am understanding you correctly before I gently
> critique your position. Please suggest any changes that may be needed
> to my presentation of your thoughts. For reference, your original
> words appear at the very end of this post.
>
> Expounding/recasting of Mark's CB 902, 902.1, and 902.2, as understood
> by David:
>
> microevolution: change of allele frequencies
More generalisably, change of hereditable variations in populations
(which is what "allele" meant before the genetic hegemony; originally it
was "allelomorph" - "different forms"). Strictly, microevolution is
evolution not leading to speciation (yet). This is important since there
is a strong tradition of views where genes are thought to be one of many
aspects of subspecific evolution, or even as mere bookkeeping items.
> macroevolution: formation of new species, that is to say, formation of
> populations that cannot interbreed with each other.
Only in sexual organisms and not even then sometimes. Reproductive
isolation is a good mark of specific divergence in, say, vertebrates,
but not so much in, say, corals or molluscs or flowering plants, and so
on. Of course this then raises the thorny topic of what a species is if
it can exist independently of reproductive isolation, and I have a few
(100,000) words on the matter... but bear this in mind before making too
much of reproductive isolation. At best it is a diagnostic mark or
effect, and not a cause.
> supermacroevolution: the arrival of new structures having new
> functions, apart from the input of an intelligent creator(s) (see the
> mention of Mayr's definition in
> Problems with Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
> http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.10005310900310.17
> 702-100000%$
I am entirely unsure what this is, and have never heard of it before
now. If it is evolution based on evolutionary "novelties" then it is
entirely arbitrary. The merest change in function is (in one way) a new
function, so *any* evolution that affects function would, on this
account, be "super macro whatever". Moreover, on Darwinian theory, any
new structure is a modification of some old structure (structures do not
arise de novo).
I have a problem with these kinds of definitions (not yours, the idea of
novelty and grades) in evolution, so if you are going to say that no
change in phylogeny is new, I'd probably agree with you; it's not fatal
to evolutionary thinking or science, it's just a matter of personal
evaluation and description of things, and hence not "objective".
>
> Speciation/the forming of new species is distinct from changing allele
> frequencies in that speciation requires a biological or geographical
> factor that causes an interbreeding population to cease being able to
> interbreed. Other than such an isolating factor, species formation
> requires no processes other than changing allele frequencies. Species
> formation can also be caused by disruptive selection and polypoidy;
> disruptive selection and polypoidy are basically the same as changing
> allele frequencies. Scientists have observed the arising of
> populations that cannot interbreed with each other.
Again, be careful. Speciation occurs not when populations *can't*
rejoin, but when they *don't*; that is, when the lineages established by
the isolating mechanisms are stably separate. Sometimes this is due to
sexual incompatibility, sometimes by genetic incompatibility, sometimes
by behavioral, developmental, ecological and even morphological (as in
"that key won't go in that lock").
A continuing problem in the speciation debate is that specialists tend
to overgeneralise from their study organisms, as if everything was a
bird, a snail, a worm, or even a grasshopper. Each group of organisms
(and sometimes each species pair) has different mechanisms of remaining
stably distinct.
>
> The non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures having new
> functions is harder to observe directly. (To be more precise, it has
> not been observed; if it had been observed, you can be sure that I
> would mention it.) However, there is not the slightest bit of evidence
> that the non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures having
> new functions requires anything besides changing allele frequencies.
> There is no reason to think that changing allele frequencies and the
> formation of populations that cannot interbreed with each other
> cannot, over time, add up to new structures having new functions.
> There is every reason to believe that changing allele frequencies and
> the formation of populations that cannot interbreed with each other
> can add up to the non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures
> having new functions. Creationists allege that
> 1) changing allele frequencies and the formation of populations that
> cannot interbreed
> and
> 2) the non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures having new
> functions
> are distinct, but they have not given one jot of evidence supporting
> their allegation.
Now you are getting polemical; careful. As I noted, "new structure" does
not mean "structure with no precursors in the prior phylogeny" (for that
*would* be evidence of the intervention of something other than the
genetic and ecological causal processes of the organisms, and perhaps of
intelligent intervention although I'd make that inference rely on a lot
heavier evidence than just the absence of ordinary evolutionary
processes).
There is every reason to think that adaptive changes occur through
ordinary genetic processes in populations, via mutation, drift and
selection. There is a slew of study done on this (although we could of
course do with more - write to your local government and insist more
work be done investigating it now - the funding is minimal). But I fear
you (or the epynomous "creationist") will define "new structure" away to
mean just that sort of novelty evolution is not expected to cause, such
as the grafting of new limbs on a tetrapod to make a hexapod, with no
precursors at all.
>
> There is evidence of:
> new structures appearing having new functions apart from the input of
> an intelligent creator(s)
> in these areas:
> 1) now-dead organisms' cumulative changes discovered in the fossil
> record, and
> 2) the pattern of graduated similarities among living things that
> makes it impossible to classify organisms as such things as "dogs",
> "cats", and "quahogs."
Let's be a bit more clear here: what is predicted is that at some time
there will be organisms that resemble the key characters of two or more
modern groups equally poorly, but which are clearly to be grouped
together with them. For example, there will be a carnivore mammal that
is roughly equally similar to modern bears, canids and felids at some
point. Moreover, it is predicted that the earliest of these organisms
found will not be found in strata where identifiable representatives of
the modern groups are found, if we are lucky enough to have a good
record of those organisms. In short, we won't find an Ur-Carnivore int
he same strata as fully developed (i.e., "modern") felids, canids and
ursines. This will hold true for all groups of organisms.
Note, also, that modern taxonomists often have trouble delineating
*modern* organisms cleanly - intermediate forms (not ancestors)
sometimes occur that smear out the distinctions of folk taxonomy or
older less-informed taxonomy.
>
> Creationists allege that there are barriers to getting:
> new structures having new functions apart from an intelligence's input
> from:
> changing allele frequencies, and the formation of populations that
> cannot interbreed.
As distinct and independent claims, I think. Some think the former, some
the latter, and some both.
> In response, evolutionists note that the only barrier to getting new
> structures having new functions that anyone has ever proposed is time.
> There were hundreds of millions of years available for the
> non-intelligence-directed arrival of each new structure having a new
> function. Therefore, time is not a barrier.
Almost - there are problems getting *any* structure, because once
something has become central to the developmental "program" of a lineage
(i.e., a branch of the phylogenetic tree), it is less likely to be
feasibly and functionally modified, although it may be lost altogether.
This is because the older and more "central" functions are multiply
implicated in a host of through-life tasks, and the changes can cause
deleterious effects that are fitness-reducing.
Hence most changes will tend to occur in later-evolved structures, as
they are less likely to be implicated in many distinct traits or tasks
of the organism's body. Note, though, that this is a "tending" claim,
not an absolute prohibition. It is more of a claim that such
modifications as we do see will have a probability distribution such
that the most primitive (ancestral) structures will remain the least
modified after time has passed since the last common ancestor of the
group.
>
> Besides being extrapolated from observed changing allele frequencies
> and populations that became non-interbreeding, the belief that new
> structures having new functions can arise apart from the input of an
> intelligence(s) also find support from:
> 1) the fossil record,
> 2) the similarities and differences seen between present populations
> that cannot interbreed,
> 3) comparisons of genomes, and
> 4) other evidence.
Most especially comparative development. Since von Baer's work in the
1840s, developmental comparisons between related groups has been one of
the major supports for common descent with modification.
>
> If there are pressures for changes to occur in one direction, the
> changes will accumulate. Conditions in which changes are pressured to
> occur in only one direction have been observed in:
> certain climate changes, and "arms races" in the biological history of
> certain organisms.
> Supposing there are pressures in a biological situation, changes will
> tend to go ever-farther away from a starting point.
Yes, but again - this is for traits rather than organisms, and it relies
on there being long-term selective regimes (don't hypostasise this as
"pressures" - selective coeficients are mathematical things, which do
not "do" anything). But a lot of evolutionary change has nothing much to
do with selection so much as drift and the chance accrual of change in
founding populations of species. Arms races surely occur and are
documented in the fossil record and in experimental and field data, but
this is not thought to be the major force of evolutionary change over
phyletic lineages.
>
> Changing allele frequencies and populations that cease to interbreed
> will not develop new structures having new functions if:
> 1) organisms are pressured to remain as they are,
Stabilising selection
> 2) there is not enough time, or
Selection is overcome by the noise of short durations, such as
oscilating environments.
> 3) there are genetic mechanisms preventing the arrival of new
> structures having new functions.
I mistrust this one. It is unclear what it could mean in practice.
> Pressures on organisms to remain as they are occur sometimes, but
> certainly not always. The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and the
> first life appeared on the earth basically as soon as the earth had
> cooled sufficiently to permit the presence of that bacterial life.
Two distinct issues. Stasis occurs, and it is rare to find stasis over
billions of years, if that is what you are saying. We are unsure that
any organisms have remained sunstantially unchanged for more than a few
hundred million years. If anyone has examples, I'd love to hear of them.
>
> There is no hint of a mechanism to prevent the arrival of:
> new structures having new functions
> from:
> changing allele frequencies and populations that cease to be able to
> interbreed.
> Therefore, based on basic principles, the arrival of:
> new structures having new functions
> from:
> changing allele frequencies and populations ceasing to be able to
> interbreed
> is to be expected.
All this is true enough as a representation of modern theory (pace my
comments) but it leaves out some rather important aspects of evolution -
the massive interrelationships of different species and the variability
in the *rate* of change we can expect from these effects. For example,
should a "new" pathogen immigrate into an ecosystem due to a minor
change in *its* metabolism or defences, the effects can be massive on
the species it uses as a food source or host. This can cause very rapid
change in the hosts, even though the change has been small in the
pathogen. Moreover, you have entirely left extinction out of your
characterisation, and this causes major changes to occur relative to the
fossil record. Without it, there would be continua of forms; with it, we
see discrete groups.
I do not think it is entirely fair to say that macroevolution is "just"
repeated microevolution - it gives a false impression that nothing else
is going on. At the very least and most "reductionistic", macroevolution
is microevolution (populations genetics of mutation, drift and selection
of various kinds, not continuously operating at the same intensity or
rate) *plus* geographical and geological and climatic and astronomical
factors. For instance, the creation of shallow sea environments as two
contentintal plates approach each other, allows massive evolutionary
change to occur, and then rapid extinction rates as the shallow seas
disappear when the continents actually collide. This is not captured by
simple continuous-rate extrapolation because the "forces" that cause
change are themselves changing. Other folk argue that macroevolution
involves constraints brought about by species- and higher taxa-level
properties (I disagree, but the argument is made strongly by, e.g.,
Gould), such that a certain kind of species will more or less frequently
speciate due to its characteristics *as a species* rather than due to
the characteristics of the individuals or populations.
Here we are within a debate within the limits of evolutionary theory,
rather than between evolutionary theory and non-evolutionary views. To
argue against evolution because there is the micro=macro crowd that
reduces all evolution to allele change overlooks the claims and views of
the micro<>macro crowd that do not. You must deal effectively with all
of them, not just the one, to declare a solid victory.
Good luck.
>
> The above refutes Macbeth's claim and supporting arguments that at its
> core, neo-Darwinism is based on a faulty extrapolation, Macbeth's
> argument appearing at
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308240006280.21425-10
> 0000%40li$
>
Neither of your links appear to work. Can you try again or give the
google search criteria?
<snip Mark's version>
TomS
<1g0evzs.1m9406c1elvod3N%wil...@wehi.edu.au>, John Wilkins stated..."
>
>david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>
>I hope you don't mind my interposing in this thread. If so, ignore it
>and I'll not continue replying. But I did offer to follow this up...
If you'll excuse me, I have a few thoughts of my own, even though
I'm not a scientist of any sort, and I'd like to know where I've gone
astray.
I have the impression that it is quite possible for reproductive
isolation to occur with a quite small change. And that there is a
possibility of confusion in using the prefixes "micro-" and "macro-"
for "evolution" as if they referred to a quantitative difference. A
big difference might not make a macro-evolutionary change, and a small
difference might do. (My favorite example being the differences
within the species _Brassica_oleracea_ which includes brussels sprouts
and broccoli. Also there is the kind of "evolution" which takes place
within the immune system of a vertebrate, where there is an adaptive
change to produce antibodies to a new foreign protein. And there can
be big differences between different sexes within one species, or
between the queen and workers.)
[...snip...]
And those can be the kind of small changes that I'm thinking of
that result in speciation.
So, I'd say, it's a result of misleading terminology ("macro-"
and "micro-") that leads people to say that "macro-evolution is just
a lot of micro-evolution".
There is a distinctive phenomenon, one qualitatively new, that
takes place when a new species arises, and it deserves a distinctive
explanation, where "just a lot of small variations accumulating"
doesn't do it justice. Even if speciation requires a lot of small
variations accumulating, that alone is not enough to explain this
phenomenon.
I hasten to add that almost everybody admits that speciation
takes place by purely natural means. Even many of the creationists.
*Their* complaints are not about speciation. Whatever a species is,
it does reflect something objective about the world of life, and
it is recognized that there is no insurmountable difficulty in
explanations for the origins of species. It is known that the true
qualitative, objective "barrier" can be breeched. The creationists
are left with some subjective, quantitative distinction ("that's
too much for me to accept") with no reason at all to think that it
reflects anything objective about the world of life.
And I repeat, this is just the thoughts of a complete amateur.
I would appreciate corrections and clarifications.
Matt Silberstein
(John Wilkins):
[snip]
>I do not think it is entirely fair to say that macroevolution is "just"
>repeated microevolution - it gives a false impression that nothing else
>is going on. At the very least and most "reductionistic", macroevolution
>is microevolution (populations genetics of mutation, drift and selection
>of various kinds, not continuously operating at the same intensity or
>rate) *plus* geographical and geological and climatic and astronomical
>factors.
But don't geographic and geological and meteorological and
astronomical factors affect microevolution as well? Doesn't their
long term behavior consist of accumulated short term behavior? It
seems to me it is just a factor of time. Now time acts in two
apparently (but not actually) different ways. It seems that time
can act "gradually". A river "gradually" erodes a canyon, for
example. Or time can act "episodically", an unlikely event is
more likely in a long interval than in a short one. Take the
bolide from space example, that only seems "macro" and not
"micro" because big ones are so rare. I don't see any difference
in type here. If I look at 1,000 years of evolution I rarely need
to consider such rare events, if I look at a billion years or so,
I do.
> For instance, the creation of shallow sea environments as two
>contentintal plates approach each other, allows massive evolutionary
>change to occur, and then rapid extinction rates as the shallow seas
>disappear when the continents actually collide. This is not captured by
>simple continuous-rate extrapolation because the "forces" that cause
>change are themselves changing.
No, it is not a *simple* extrapolation. So don't do simply
extrapolations. But while it is happening it is just
microevolution. Uniformity of cause does not always lead to
uniformity of result.
[snip]
John Wilkins
I have now asked a half dozen specialists in speciation, including
Eviatar Nevo and Murray Littlejohn, as to whether there is any rough
amount of genetic change that answers to speciation. The answer - no. It
can be a little (I think I saw a paper suggesting as few as 50 point
mutations in one instance) or it can be a lot of change that occurs
within a single species. Nevo's mole rats have four chromosomal races -
that is the races have different chromosome numbers (there's a
duplication in one, IIRC) - in a single species.
Coincidentally ;-) both Darwin and Wallace said that there would not be
any set amount of change (referring to morphological and character
change) that would mark out species from varieties. I call it the
Wallace Principle, as he published it in 1858, before Darwin did:
"If there is no other character, that fact is one of the strongest
arguments against the independent creation of species, for why should a
special act of creation be required to call into existence an organism
differing only in degree from another which has been produced by
existing laws? If an amount of permanent difference, represented by any
number up to 10, may be produced by the ordinary course of nature, it is
surely most illogical to suppose, and very hard to believe, that an
amount of difference represented by 11 required a special act to call it
into existence. "
What bothers me about qualitative arguments is just that kind of
subjectivity, whether it is a creationist or an evolutionist speaking -
nature does not pay attention to what interests or surprises us, any
mmore than it does what is comforting to us.
Something is new if it changes, whether by a little or a lot (in our
understanding and cognitive classifications). If something is
surprising, that is because we are not prepared for it, and so we must
adjust our models of what nature does. But there is no level or quantity
at which it becomes a new quality. Whenever this has been tried in the
past, we always finish by collapsing all our classifications (and even
colour ends up a continuum).
The micro-macro distinction is objectively set - when a lineage has
permanently diverged from its parental lineage, it is a new species and
that is the lowest or least act of macroevolution. Microevolution is
what happens to lineages that are not permanently diverging. Adaptation
is what happens in both microevolution and macroevolution (if the
process of adaptation continues over a cladogenetic split).
The processes that occur at the micro level may, or may not, affect the
course of macroevolution. Larry, following Gould et al., will say that
there are processes occurring in "macro space" that are independant of
the processes in "micro space" because they are properties of the entire
species, not of any part of it (and let us be clear, species *do* have
properties that are not properties of their parts. The issue is whther
those properties are causally effective and if so whether they are
stronger over long periods than the microlevel processes).
I think, though, that there is no *rank* of the micro-macro boundary.
That is, just as there is no absolute amount of change that makes a
species, as Wallace's Principle notes, neither is there a fixed level at
which macroevolution kicks in - it is a relative rank. A species can
consist of a small population or of a metapopulation that grades from
one species to another in a ring.
In biology there appear to be no absolutes.
John Wilkins
> In talk.origins I read this message from wil...@wehi.edu.au
> (John Wilkins):
>
> [snip]
>
> >I do not think it is entirely fair to say that macroevolution is "just"
> >repeated microevolution - it gives a false impression that nothing else
> >is going on. At the very least and most "reductionistic", macroevolution
> >is microevolution (populations genetics of mutation, drift and selection
> >of various kinds, not continuously operating at the same intensity or
> >rate) *plus* geographical and geological and climatic and astronomical
> >factors.
>
> But don't geographic and geological and meteorological and
> astronomical factors affect microevolution as well? Doesn't their
> long term behavior consist of accumulated short term behavior? It
> seems to me it is just a factor of time. Now time acts in two
> apparently (but not actually) different ways. It seems that time
> can act "gradually". A river "gradually" erodes a canyon, for
> example. Or time can act "episodically", an unlikely event is
> more likely in a long interval than in a short one. Take the
> bolide from space example, that only seems "macro" and not
> "micro" because big ones are so rare. I don't see any difference
> in type here. If I look at 1,000 years of evolution I rarely need
> to consider such rare events, if I look at a billion years or so,
> I do.
Generally you can ignore such factors and treat the environment as
invariants, I understand, with short term evolution. But of course these
things *do* matter. The question is whether these things are mostly
cyclical (as in the climatic shifts over a twenty year cycle in
Australia, which has an El Niño driven drought-flood cycle) and so set a
"median range" to which organisms have to adapt, or directional (such as
the northward shift of Australia out of the Roaring Forties due to
tectonic drift, causing the country to dry out), changing that range.
There is no hard boundary; it is a matter of what we take for granted in
our models.
>
> > For instance, the creation of shallow sea environments as two
> >contentintal plates approach each other, allows massive evolutionary
> >change to occur, and then rapid extinction rates as the shallow seas
> >disappear when the continents actually collide. This is not captured by
> >simple continuous-rate extrapolation because the "forces" that cause
> >change are themselves changing.
>
> No, it is not a *simple* extrapolation. So don't do simply
> extrapolations. But while it is happening it is just
> microevolution. Uniformity of cause does not always lead to
> uniformity of result.
Or rather, uniformity of causal process is not constancy of rate... but
if you do *any* extrapolation at all, you must assume some averaging or
constancy of *some* process. For example, we assume that magnetic field
on earth have always behaved in a uniform manner, in order to
reconstruct tectonic positions over geological history. But there's
always that sneaking suspicion there's a mugger in the data waiting for
you to turn into that blind alley... reconstructing the past is a bitch
(for full elaboration of that statement read Sober's _Reconstructing the
past_, c 1988. He uses bigger words...).
>
> [snip]
Larry Moran
John Wilkins <wil...@wehi.edu.au> wrote:
[snip]
> The processes that occur at the micro level may, or may not, affect the
> course of macroevolution. Larry, following Gould et al., will say that
> there are processes occurring in "macro space" that are independant of
> the processes in "micro space" because they are properties of the entire
> species, not of any part of it (and let us be clear, species *do* have
> properties that are not properties of their parts. The issue is whther
> those properties are causally effective and if so whether they are
> stronger over long periods than the microlevel processes).
May I be permitted to add a minor correction? I have argued that it ain't
necessarily so that macroevolution is just lots of microevolution. As
you note, I've repeated Gould's arguments concerning species selection
(sorting) and other arguments that support the decoupling of microevolution
and macroevolution. However, I don't always agree with these arguments
so it's not quite right to imply that I'm a supporter of this concept.
I'm mostly concerned with making sure that everyone knows about real
controversies in evolutionary theory and, consequently, I often find
myself in the position of defending minority opinions without actually
believing in them. That's what curmudgeons do.
> I think, though, that there is no *rank* of the micro-macro boundary.
> That is, just as there is no absolute amount of change that makes a
> species, as Wallace's Principle notes, neither is there a fixed level at
> which macroevolution kicks in - it is a relative rank. A species can
> consist of a small population or of a metapopulation that grades from
> one species to another in a ring.
>
> In biology there appear to be no absolutes.
I tell my students that there's an exception to every rule and definition
in biochemistry. (This applies to all of biology and, yes, there's even
some exceptions to the rule that there are always exceptions!) This is why
biology is the most difficult of all sciences.
Larry Moran
Larry Moran
Matt Silberstein <mat...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> In talk.origins I read this message from wil...@wehi.edu.au
> (John Wilkins):
[snip]
>> For instance, the creation of shallow sea environments as two
>>contentintal plates approach each other, allows massive evolutionary
>>change to occur, and then rapid extinction rates as the shallow seas
>>disappear when the continents actually collide. This is not captured by
>>simple continuous-rate extrapolation because the "forces" that cause
>>change are themselves changing.
>
> No, it is not a *simple* extrapolation. So don't do simply
> extrapolations. But while it is happening it is just
> microevolution. Uniformity of cause does not always lead to
> uniformity of result.
It's a question of scale and perspective. You are focused on the gradual
changes that occur within each individual lineage as they diverge from a
common ancestor. These changes can be adequately described by
microevolutionary events under the influence of the environment. However,
if you are interested in a complete description of the historical record
for these various lineages you have to take into account things that
happen at a different scale. This includes the geological events that
lead to increases and decreases in diversity and it also includes
extinction and speciation events. In the later case (extinction and
speciation) there seems to be things going on that can not be completely
described by changes in the frequency of alleles within populations.
This doesn't mean that microevolution isn't involved. It means that on
the grand scale we may need to include other processes in evolutionary
theory. Some of these other processes have to do with the formation and
disappearance of populations themselves and this, by definition, is
outside the realm of microevolution. Gould and others would argue that
species selection is one of the processes that is distinct from
microevolution. If they are correct, then we can't account for the
tempo and pattern of macroevolutionary events by extrapolation from
simple changes in the frequency of alleles within a population. According
to the hierarchical theory of evolution, microevolution is necessary
but not sufficient to account for what we see in the historical record.
Larry Moran
pz
wil...@wehi.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote:
> I have now asked a half dozen specialists in speciation, including
> Eviatar Nevo and Murray Littlejohn, as to whether there is any rough
> amount of genetic change that answers to speciation. The answer - no. It
> can be a little (I think I saw a paper suggesting as few as 50 point
> mutations in one instance) or it can be a lot of change that occurs
> within a single species. Nevo's mole rats have four chromosomal races -
> that is the races have different chromosome numbers (there's a
> duplication in one, IIRC) - in a single species.
As a related point, if you talk to any specialists in developmental
genetics, they'll also tell you that there is no rough amount of
genetic change that correlates with the degree of morphological
variation. A single point mutation can have a more drastic effect on
the phenotype than a massive deletion.
--
pz
Mark Isaak
ford) wrote:
>Mark Isaak <at...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net> wrote in message news:<bjankv4j4ihj865hm...@4ax.com>...
>> On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 06:01:17 +0000 (UTC), david ford
>> <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>>
>> >On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> >
>> >[snip]
>> >
>> >> The book contains nothing that we have not seen here a thousand times
>> >> already.
>> >
>> >In that case, what talk.origins FAQ refutes Macbeth's argument that
>> >neo-Darwinism has at its core faulty extrapolation?
>>
>> Your question is a non sequitur; commonness in the newsgroup does not
>> mean the FAQs have information on it. But for refutation, see
>> http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/guide/list.html. See especially
>> CB902, CB902.1, and CB902.2. And follow the links to relevant parts
>> of the FAQs.
>
>Thanks, Mark. I have recast your writings as what appears below.
>Please review my presentation of your thoughts, as I will be
>critiquing your thoughts as they appear in my presentation.
Those are my thoughts? I would never have thunk it.
Seriously, much (well, a significant amount, anyway) of what you
present below are not my thoughts. I have no interest in
disentangling those parts, as I have other things to spend time on.
Maybe later.
The origin of new features has a separate entry, CB904.
John Wilkins
> On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 12:31:27 +0000 (UTC),
> John Wilkins <wil...@wehi.edu.au> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > The processes that occur at the micro level may, or may not, affect the
> > course of macroevolution. Larry, following Gould et al., will say that
> > there are processes occurring in "macro space" that are independant of
> > the processes in "micro space" because they are properties of the entire
> > species, not of any part of it (and let us be clear, species *do* have
> > properties that are not properties of their parts. The issue is whther
> > those properties are causally effective and if so whether they are
> > stronger over long periods than the microlevel processes).
>
> May I be permitted to add a minor correction? I have argued that it ain't
> necessarily so that macroevolution is just lots of microevolution. As
> you note, I've repeated Gould's arguments concerning species selection
> (sorting) and other arguments that support the decoupling of microevolution
> and macroevolution. However, I don't always agree with these arguments
> so it's not quite right to imply that I'm a supporter of this concept.
> I'm mostly concerned with making sure that everyone knows about real
> controversies in evolutionary theory and, consequently, I often find
> myself in the position of defending minority opinions without actually
> believing in them. That's what curmudgeons do.
Thanks for the clarification. I *had* thought from the past decade or so
that you were indeed a supporter of species selection, which,
incidentally, Gould *has* resurrected unapologetically in his Brick.
Indeed, he has gone so far as to make it a necessary corollary of
hierarchy theory. Now I know you are playing through on the curmudgeon
card, I realise I don't know *what* you think :-)
>
> > I think, though, that there is no *rank* of the micro-macro boundary.
> > That is, just as there is no absolute amount of change that makes a
> > species, as Wallace's Principle notes, neither is there a fixed level at
> > which macroevolution kicks in - it is a relative rank. A species can
> > consist of a small population or of a metapopulation that grades from
> > one species to another in a ring.
> >
> > In biology there appear to be no absolutes.
>
> I tell my students that there's an exception to every rule and definition
> in biochemistry. (This applies to all of biology and, yes, there's even
> some exceptions to the rule that there are always exceptions!) This is why
> biology is the most difficult of all sciences.
>
Hull once noted that there's nothing in biology so weird but that
there's not at least *one* example of it. This is a reworking, you'll be
pleased to note, of some Roman notable's comment that there's nothing so
absurd but that some philosopher hasn't believed it, so there is, after
all, a connection between philosophy and biology...
John Wilkins
david ford
Macbeth on Faulty Extrapolation in Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308240006280.21425-100000%40linux2.gl.umbc.edu
Problems with Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
John Wilkins
> John, hopefully these will work:
>
> Macbeth on Faulty Extrapolation in Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308240006280.21425-10
> 0000%40linux2.gl.umbc.edu
Thank you - yes, it works now.
As soon as I read this - "I am going to use the terms "micro" and
"macro" to describe small changes and large" I stopped. This is a
fundamental mistake, as I described in my earlier posts, It invalidates
the remaining argument because qualitative terms are arbitrary and
subjective.
>
> Problems with Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
> http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.10005310900310.1770
> 2-100000%40jabba.gl.umbc.edu
In this piece he says that the fossil record does not bear out the
expectations of natural selection but he's wrong. The expectations *some
people may or may not have had* about natural selection may not be met,
but we have much better ideas about how natural selection behaves, and
it does not cause a slow continuous and constant rate of change, even
leaving aside drift and founder effects.
So no score for Macbeth. IIRC, this was dealt with by Kitcher...
david ford
On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, dfo...@gl.umbc.edu
> >Thanks, Mark. I have recast your writings as what appears below.
> >Please review my presentation of your thoughts, as I will be
> >critiquing your thoughts as they appear in my presentation.
>
> Those are my thoughts? I would never have thunk it.
>
> Seriously, much (well, a significant amount, anyway) of what you
> present below are not my thoughts. I have no interest in
> disentangling those parts, as I have other things to spend time on.
> Maybe later.
>
> The origin of new features has a separate entry, CB904.
I am sorry to see you leave. Perhaps some of your fellow believers in the
blindwatchmaking thesis will respond to my critique of your thoughts and
respond to my questions of your extrapolationist position. If they do
not, and since you will not be around to defend your views, I may have to
critique my critique of your belief in extrapolation and may have to
answer my questions from a blindwatchmakingist's viewpoint. But if I do
that, I would also need to critique my critique of my critique of your
position.... You do, I trust, see where this vicious cycle is going.
Well, we will see.
Here now are my numbered responses to your thoughts. Your thoughts as I
have understood them appear at the end of this post, with numbers inserted
corresponding to my numbered responses to your thoughts.
1) I will grant that microevolution as you have defined it (change of
allele frequencies) has been observed occurring. I will also grant that
macroevolution as you have defined it (formation of new species, that is
to say, formation of populations that cannot interbreed with each other)
has been directly observed occurring.
2) I further concur with you that the arrival of new structures having new
functions, apart from the input of an intelligent creator(s), has not been
directly observed. (If I am misreading you, or if it has been observed
directly, please do speak up.)
3) And you believe based on _what?_ that there is every reason to believe
that changing allele frequencies and the formation of populations that
cannot interbreed with each other can add up to the
non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures having new functions?
I ask because so far I only see statements of belief-- no evidence, no
careful argumentation. But perhaps these are only introductory,
summarizing comments, and I have not read far enough to get to the part of
your thoughts where you discuss the evidence, the data, the literature
that exists to support your position. I shall continue reading.
4) How typical of creationists, making claims without giving one jot of
evidence in support of their claims-- are you a closet creationist? More
seriously, you might have overlooked in your no-doubt-exhaustive survey of
intelligent design literature the book _The Natural Limits to Biological
Change_ (1989). Perhaps I will discuss in the future some of the evidence
and data that it mentions.
5) Please provide 2 illustrations of now-dead organisms' cumulative
changes discovered in the fossil record. And remember, the fossil record
of horses is now no longer believed to constitute evidence for the belief
that new organisms have arisen on the earth in a gradual, step-by-step
fashion:
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.980816003836.28616B-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu
6) It is incorrect that there exists a pattern of graduated similarities
among living things that makes it impossible to classify organisms as such
things as "dogs", "cats", and "quahogs." I quote Gould using a different
definition of "species" than your interbreeding definition:
==== begin quote ====
Common sense dictates that the world of familiar, macroscopic organisms
presents itself to us in "packages" called species. All bird watchers and
butterfly netters know that they can divide the specimens of any local
area into discrete units blessed with those Latin binomials that befuddle
the uninitiated. Occasionally, to be sure, a package may become unraveled
and even seem to coalesce with another. But such cases are noted for their
rarity. The birds of Massachusetts and the bugs in my backyard are
unambiguous members of species recognized in the same way by all
experienced observers.
==== end quote ====
Interestingly, Gould continues by observing that "This notion of species
as 'natural kinds' fit splendidly with creationist tenets of a
pre-Darwinian age." See the essay "A Quahog is a Quahog" in Gould's _The
Panda's Thumb_ (1980).
7) It is incorrect that the only barrier to the arrival of new structures
having new functions apart from the input of an intelligent creator(s) is
time, as you should know:
you yourself have stated that changing allele frequencies and populations
that cease to interbreed will not develop new structures having new
functions if:
1) organisms are pressured to remain as they are,
2) there is not enough time, or
3) there are genetic mechanisms preventing the arrival of new structures
having new functions.
8) It is incorrect that there were hundreds of millions of years available
for the non-intelligence-directed arrival of each new structure having a
new function. To pick one of the more impressive counterexamples, "....
543 million years ago, in the early Cambrian, within the span of no more
than 10 million years, creatures with teeth and tentacles and claws and
jaws materialized with the suddenness of appari-tions." See the 4 December
1995 issue of _Time_, "When Life Exploded," pages 66-74. Tell me, do you
think changing of allele frequencies and populations that became
non-interbreeding were responsible for the appearance of the organisms
that appeared during the Cambrian explosion, a.k.a. biology's big bang?
9) Please be more explicit about your vague claim that:
the belief that new structures having new functions can arise apart from
the input of an
intelligence(s) also finds support from:
1) the fossil record,
2) the similarities and differences seen between present populations that
cannot interbreed,
3) comparisons of genomes, and
4) other evidence.
10) A climate's temperature goes up and down constantly. I do not
understand what you mean when you say that in certain climate changes
there are pressures for change to occur in only one direction. Can you
think of any additional cases in which there are pressures for changes to
occur in only one direction? I am trying to get an understanding of your
claim that if there are pressures for changes to occur in one direction,
the changes will accumulate. One example of what you have in mind might
be:
if my parents pressure me to change in one (upward) direction my GPA,
changes in my GPA will accumulate to the point where I have a 7.0.
It would be great if you could also provide an instance where there were
pressures in a biological situation in which resulting changes tended to
go ever-farther away from a starting point. For example, perhaps a family
tradition of cow-breeding started with ordinary, medium-sized cows and
through control of the environment and breeding, obtained after 40
generations cows as big as elephants.
11) Your mention of 3 potential barriers to the arrival of new structures
having new functions apart from the input of an intelligent creator(s)
sounds good to me. Perhaps I will expand on these points of yours at a
later time.
12) I agree that the earth is very old (specifically, 4.5 billion years
old), and that the first life is very old (the first life appeared on the
earth basically as soon as the earth had cooled sufficiently to permit the
presence of that bacterial life).
13) I bet your arms and hands are getting tired from all the handwaving
you have been doing.
14) Only in your dreams, Mark, have you refuted Macbeth's claim and
supporting arguments that at its core, neo-Darwinism is based on a faulty
extrapolation. Only in your dreams.
==========================================.
Mark Isaak <at...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net>:
> Your question is a non sequitur; commonness in the newsgroup does not
> mean the FAQs have information on it. But for refutation, see
> http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/guide/list.html. See especially
> CB902, CB902.1, and CB902.2. And follow the links to relevant parts
> of the FAQs.
Thanks, Mark. I have recast your writings as what appears below.
Please review my presentation of your thoughts, as I will be
critiquing your thoughts as they appear in my presentation. Plus, I
wish to be sure that I am understanding you correctly before I gently
critique your position. Please suggest any changes that may be needed
to my presentation of your thoughts. For reference, your original
words appear at the very end of this post.
Expounding/recasting of Mark's CB 902, 902.1, and 902.2, as understood
by David:
microevolution: change of allele frequencies
macroevolution: formation of new species, that is to say, formation of
populations that cannot interbreed with each other.
supermacroevolution: the arrival of new structures having new
functions, apart from the input of an intelligent creator(s) (see the
mention of Mayr's definition in
Problems with Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.10005310900310.17702-100000%40jabba.gl.umbc.edu
Speciation/the forming of new species is distinct from changing allele
frequencies in that speciation requires a biological or geographical
factor that causes an interbreeding population to cease being able to
interbreed. Other than such an isolating factor, species formation
requires no processes other than changing allele frequencies. Species
formation can also be caused by disruptive selection and polypoidy;
disruptive selection and polypoidy are basically the same as changing
allele frequencies. Scientists have observed the arising of
populations that cannot interbreed with each other.
AAA 1
The non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures having new
functions is harder to observe directly. (To be more precise, it has
not been observed; if it had been observed, you can be sure that I
would mention it.)
AAA 2
However, there is not the slightest bit of evidence
that the non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures having
new functions requires anything besides changing allele frequencies.
There is no reason to think that changing allele frequencies and the
formation of populations that cannot interbreed with each other
cannot, over time, add up to new structures having new functions.
There is every reason to believe that changing allele frequencies and
the formation of populations that cannot interbreed with each other
can add up to the non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures
having new functions.
AAA 3
Creationists allege that
1) changing allele frequencies and the formation of populations that
cannot interbreed
and
2) the non-intelligence-directed arrival of new structures having new
functions
are distinct, but they have not given one jot of evidence supporting
their allegation.
AAA 4
There is evidence of:
new structures appearing having new functions apart from the input of
an intelligent creator(s)
in these areas:
1) now-dead organisms' cumulative changes discovered in the fossil
record, and
2) the pattern of graduated similarities among living things that
makes it impossible to classify organisms as such things as "dogs",
"cats", and "quahogs."
AAA 5, 6
Creationists allege that there are barriers to getting:
new structures having new functions apart from an intelligence's input
from:
changing allele frequencies, and the formation of populations that
cannot interbreed.
In response, evolutionists note that the only barrier to getting new
structures having new functions that anyone has ever proposed is time.
There were hundreds of millions of years available for the
non-intelligence-directed arrival of each new structure having a new
function. Therefore, time is not a barrier.
AAA 7, 8
Besides being extrapolated from observed changing allele frequencies
and populations that became non-interbreeding, the belief that new
structures having new functions can arise apart from the input of an
intelligence(s) also find support from:
1) the fossil record,
2) the similarities and differences seen between present populations
that cannot interbreed,
3) comparisons of genomes, and
4) other evidence.
AAA 9
If there are pressures for changes to occur in one direction, the
changes will accumulate. Conditions in which changes are pressured to
occur in only one direction have been observed in:
certain climate changes, and "arms races" in the biological history of
certain organisms.
Supposing there are pressures in a biological situation, changes will
tend to go ever-farther away from a starting point.
AAA 10
Changing allele frequencies and populations that cease to interbreed
will not develop new structures having new functions if:
1) organisms are pressured to remain as they are,
2) there is not enough time, or
3) there are genetic mechanisms preventing the arrival of new
structures having new functions.
Pressures on organisms to remain as they are occur sometimes, but
certainly not always.
AAA 11
The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and the
first life appeared on the earth basically as soon as the earth had
cooled sufficiently to permit the presence of that bacterial life.
AAA 12
There is no hint of a mechanism to prevent the arrival of:
new structures having new functions
from:
changing allele frequencies and populations that cease to be able to
interbreed.
AAA 13
Therefore, based on basic principles, the arrival of:
new structures having new functions
from:
changing allele frequencies and populations ceasing to be able to
interbreed
is to be expected.
The above refutes Macbeth's claim and supporting arguments that at its
core, neo-Darwinism is based on a faulty extrapolation, Macbeth's
argument appearing at
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308240006280.21425-100000%40linux2.gl.umbc.edu
AAA 14
==========================================.
Mark Isaak
David,
If you cannot be brief, don't say anything at all. If you require
more than 10 lines simply to state your point, you don't understand
the point well enough to be arguing it. There may be something
worthwhile in what you wrote, but it is not my job to weed it out.
david ford
In _Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought_, David
Hackett Fischer discusses the fallacy of false extrapolation. He
defines the fallacy of false extrapolation as "a statistical series
which is stretched beyond the breaking point."
The clearest and simplest form of the fallacy of false extrapolation is
a "generalization from a true series A, B to a false A, B, C." For
example, the average American family size was 3.71 persons in 1940, and
only 3.54 persons in the year 1950. By extrapolating this data into the
future, one could arrive at the conclusion that there will be less than
one person in the average American family by the 22nd century-- a
patently absurd result. Extrapolating from the data of 3.54 persons in
1950 and 3.65 persons in 1960 in the average American family, one could
"expect" that by the 22nd century, there will be over 200 people in the
average American family, which Fischer notes is "not merely absurd but
inconceivable, in every sense of the word."
Mark Twain humorously describes other instances of extrapolation in
connection with the size of the Mississippi River:
"In the space of 176 years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself
242 miles. That is an average of a trifle over a mile and a third per
year. Therefore any calm person who is not blind or idiotic can see that
in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next
November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of 1,300,000 miles long
and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the
same token any person can see that 742 years from now the Lower
Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and
New Orleans will have joined their streets together and be plodding
along comfortably under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen.
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
Darwin made a similarly absurd extrapolation in which a series not of
river lengths but of organisms' structures is stretched to well beyond
the breaking point. Darwin extrapolated from
a) the series of organisms that intelligent plant breeders breed in
their efforts to produce higher-yielding crops, faster horses, larger
farm animals, etc. within a few hundred or thousand years
to
b) the claim that if the not-intelligent natural environment worked with
organisms for millions of years, then a few primitive, bacterial-like
lifeforms could turn into horses, cows, trilobites, dinosaurs, oak
trees, blackberry bushes, apes, and birds.
Extrapolating from
a) the series of organisms produced by humans breeding horses, corn,
wheat, pigeons, dogs, fruitflies, etc.
to
b) a series in which primordial lifeforms are believed to have become
dinosaurs, horses, gnats, whales, alligators, bamboo, weeping willows,
and ferns
is, like the Mississippi River and family size examples, illustrative of
getting "wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling
investment of fact."
Sources:
Fischer, David Hackett. 1970. _Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of
Historical Thought_ (NY: Harper & Row), 338 pages, chapter 4, pages
120-122.
The text of the Mark Twain quote comes from
Macbeth on Faulty Extrapolation in Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308240006280.21425-100000%40linux2.gl.umbc.edu
Macbeth probably got the text from Fischer, who cites Mark Twain's _Life
on the Mississippi_ (1917), pages 155-56.
Mark Isaak
<dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>In _Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought_, David
>Hackett Fischer discusses the fallacy of false extrapolation. He
>defines the fallacy of false extrapolation as "a statistical series
>which is stretched beyond the breaking point."
>[examples deleted]
>
>Darwin made a similarly absurd extrapolation in which a series not of
>river lengths but of organisms' structures is stretched to well beyond
>the breaking point. Darwin extrapolated from
>a) the series of organisms that intelligent plant breeders breed in
>their efforts to produce higher-yielding crops, faster horses, larger
>farm animals, etc. within a few hundred or thousand years
>to
>b) the claim that if the not-intelligent natural environment worked with
>organisms for millions of years, then a few primitive, bacterial-like
>lifeforms could turn into horses, cows, trilobites, dinosaurs, oak
>trees, blackberry bushes, apes, and birds.
>
>Extrapolating from
>a) the series of organisms produced by humans breeding horses, corn,
>wheat, pigeons, dogs, fruitflies, etc.
>to
>b) a series in which primordial lifeforms are believed to have become
>dinosaurs, horses, gnats, whales, alligators, bamboo, weeping willows,
>and ferns
>
>is, like the Mississippi River and family size examples, illustrative of
>getting "wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling
>investment of fact."
You mentioned a "statistical series" in your definition of false
extrapolation. Where is the statistical series in Darwin's argument?
Please give the numerical values (and what they measure) at at least
three points.
Darwin is not extrapolating. He notes that selection causes change in
domestic animals, generalizing the principle to natural selection, and
supporting the generalization with much other evidence. There is no
series.
catshark
wrote:
[snip]
> Darwin extrapolated from
>a) the series of organisms that intelligent plant breeders breed in
>their efforts to produce higher-yielding crops, faster horses, larger
>farm animals, etc. within a few hundred or thousand years
>to
>b) the claim that if the not-intelligent natural environment worked with
>organisms for millions of years, then a few primitive, bacterial-like
>lifeforms could turn into horses, cows, trilobites, dinosaurs, oak
>trees, blackberry bushes, apes, and birds.
Except that isn't what Darwin did.
From his notebooks we know that he developed his theory of natural
selection first and only afterwards saw the parallels with plant and animal
breeding as a model of the mechanism. He didn't start with artificial
selection and work outwards. He saw that his meticulously gathered
evidence supported a notion (inspired by but not borrowed directly from
Malthus) of selection by differential reproductive success. It was only
after that that he saw that artificial selection was a good analogy for use
in explaining his ideas.
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
For every complex problem,
there is a simple,
easy to understand,
incorrect answer.
- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi -
TomS
<vfc2mvgmfk4u2afsg...@4ax.com>, catshark stated..."
>
>On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 12:36:26 +0000 (UTC), david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu>
>wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>> Darwin extrapolated from
>>a) the series of organisms that intelligent plant breeders breed in
>>their efforts to produce higher-yielding crops, faster horses, larger
>>farm animals, etc. within a few hundred or thousand years
>>to
>>b) the claim that if the not-intelligent natural environment worked with
>>organisms for millions of years, then a few primitive, bacterial-like
>>lifeforms could turn into horses, cows, trilobites, dinosaurs, oak
>>trees, blackberry bushes, apes, and birds.
>
>Except that isn't what Darwin did.
>
>From his notebooks we know that he developed his theory of natural
>selection first and only afterwards saw the parallels with plant and animal
>breeding as a model of the mechanism. He didn't start with artificial
>selection and work outwards. He saw that his meticulously gathered
>evidence supported a notion (inspired by but not borrowed directly from
>Malthus) of selection by differential reproductive success. It was only
>after that that he saw that artificial selection was a good analogy for use
>in explaining his ideas.
Aside from that, it is only of historical interest *how* Darwin
came to his ideas. Remember the famous story about Kekule, how he
discovered the structure of the benzene ring in a dream about snakes?
It happens to be that Darwin did do very good science. People do
make parodies of scientific reasoning, and this parody of Darwin as
"faulty extrapolation" is very much like "Newton made a faulty
extrapolation from an apple falling on his head".
But nobody today -- or ever -- "believes" in evolution because
Darwin said so.
Even if some scientist makes a discovery because of a dream
about snakes, or because an apple hits him on the head, science is
supported by a body of evidence, and that's what's important.
catshark
wrote:
This is a constant theme with the anti-evolution crowd. I suppose that
they are so inured to the idea of an authoratative "text" that they assume
that scientists must have one too. Hence all the quote mining, the
"evolution is racist because Darwin was" claims and the like.
>
> Even if some scientist makes a discovery because of a dream
>about snakes, or because an apple hits him on the head, science is
>supported by a body of evidence, and that's what's important.
Quite correct.
But with some people you have to start at the beginning and speak slowly.
David is the type specimen for that.
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
The devil is in the details.
Science explains them.
Intelligent design explains them away.
- Mark VandeWettering -
david ford
his notebooks. My comments about faulty extrapolation take aim at what
Darwin wrote in his book _Origin of Species_ about his theory of
natural selection, and take aim at the neo-Darwinian theory of natural
selection.
david ford
narrow in including only numerical values. The non-statistical definition
of _Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition_ (1995) includes
"to project, extend, or expand (known data or experience) into an area not
known or experienced so as to arrive at a usually conjectural knowledge of
the unknown area."
An example of such extrapolation would be to say that since it has been
raining for some time, it will continue to rain the remainder of the
month. Or one can say that since it has been warm the past few months, it
will remain warm-- a winter season will not arrive.[Denton, 87]
Darwin's theory of natural selection involves an extrapolation (recall the
_Merriam-Webster's_ definition) of the changes observed over hundreds or
thousands of years by breeders of domestic animals and plants to the
belief that, given far greater amounts of time, natural selection will
lead to organisms of exquisite workmanship. Wrote Darwin,
"As man can produce and certainly has produced a great result by his
methodical and unconscious means of selection, what may not nature effect?
Man can act only on external and visible characters: nature cares nothing
for appearances, except in so far as they may be useful to any being. She
can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional
difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his own
good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends. Every selected
character is fully exercised by her; and the being is placed under
well-suited conditions of life. Man keeps the natives of many climates in
the same country; he seldom exercises each selected character in some
peculiar and fitting manner; he feeds a long and a short beaked pigeon on
the same food; he does not exercise a long-backed or long-legged quadruped
in any peculiar manner; he exposes sheep with long and short wool to the
same climate. He does not allow the most vigorous males to struggle for
the females. He does not rigidly destroy all inferior animals, but
protects during each varying season, as far as lies in his power, all his
productions. He often begins his selection by some half-monstrous form; or
at least by some modification prominent enough to catch his eye, or to be
plainly useful to him. Under nature, the slightest difference of structure
or constitution may well turn the nicely-balanced scale in the struggle
for life, and so be preserved. How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of
man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be,
compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods.
Can we wonder, then, that nature's productions should be far "truer" in
character than man's productions; that they should be infinitely better
adapted to the most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear
the stamp of far higher workmanship?"[Darwin, 83-84]
Mayr confirmed that the neo-Darwinian theory of natural selection, a.k.a.
the synthetic theory, involves extrapolation when writing,
"The nature and cause of transpecific evolution has been a highly
controversial subject during the first half of this century. The
proponents of the synthetic theory maintain that all evolution is due to
the accumulation of small genetic changes, guided by natural selection,
and that transpecific evolution is nothing but an extrapolation and
magnification of the events that take place within populations and
species."[Mayr, 351]
Mayr continues by observing,
"A well-informed minority, however, including such outstanding authorities
as the geneticist Goldschmidt, the paleontologist Schindewolf, and the
zoologists Jeannel, Cuenot, and Cannon, maintained until the 1950's that
neither evolution within species nor geographic speciation could explain
the phenomena of "macroevolution," or, as it is better called,
transpecific evolution. These authors contended that the origin of new
"types" and of new organs could not be explained by the known facts of
genetics and systematics. As alternatives they advanced two explanations,
both in conflict with the synthetic theory: saltations (the sudden origin
of new types) and intrinsic (orthogenetic) trends."[Mayr, 351]
Gould was another outstanding authority that came to reject the
neo-Darwinian intellectual-Kool-Aid. Commented Gould while referring to
Mayr's above characterization of the neo-Darwinian theory,
"I well remember how the synthetic theory beguiled me with its unifying
power when I was a graduate student in the mid-1960's. Since then I have
been watching it slowly unravel as a universal description of evolution.
The molecular assault came first, followed quickly by renewed attention to
unorthodox theories of speciation and by challenges at the level of
macroevolution itself. I have been reluctant to admit it-- since beguiling
is often forever-- but if Mayr's characterization of the synthetic theory
is accurate, then that theory, as a general proposition, is effectively
dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy."[Gould, 120]
Sources
Darwin, Charles. 1859. _On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection, Or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for
Life_, A Facsimile of the First Edition, with an Introduction by Ernst
Mayr (1964, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 513pp.
Denton, Michael. 1985. _Evolution: A Theory in Crisis_ (USA: Adler &
Adler), 368pp.
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1980. "Is a new and general theory of evolution
emerging?" _Paleobiology_ 6:119-130.
Mayr, Ernst. 1970. _Populations, Species, and Evolution: An Abridgment
of _Animal Species and Evolution__ (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press), 453pp.
On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 12:36:26 +0000 (UTC), david ford
>
catshark
wrote:
>I am not familiar with what exactly Darwin wrote when exactly in
>his notebooks. My comments about faulty extrapolation take aim at what
>Darwin wrote in his book _Origin of Species_ about his theory of
>natural selection, and take aim at the neo-Darwinian theory of natural
>selection.
You missed.
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
"Top posting":
A pernicious and antisocial practice
not deemed to rise to the level of a capital offense
in *most* of the Western Industrial nations . . .
Mark Isaak
<dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>Good catch, Mark-- Fischer's definition of faulty extrapolation is too
>narrow in including only numerical values. The non-statistical definition
>of _Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition_ (1995) includes
>"to project, extend, or expand (known data or experience) into an area not
>known or experienced so as to arrive at a usually conjectural knowledge of
>the unknown area."
>
>An example of such extrapolation would be to say that since it has been
>raining for some time, it will continue to rain the remainder of the
>month. Or one can say that since it has been warm the past few months, it
>will remain warm-- a winter season will not arrive.[Denton, 87]
>
>Darwin's theory of natural selection involves an extrapolation (recall the
>_Merriam-Webster's_ definition) of the changes observed over hundreds or
>thousands of years by breeders of domestic animals and plants to the
>belief that, given far greater amounts of time, natural selection will
>lead to organisms of exquisite workmanship.
>[snip quote-mining]
Darwin wrote about a bit more than changes in domestic animals.
Others since him have added a bit more. I can see how the extension
you cite can look like extrapolation if you ignore 99% of the other
data, but ONLY if you ignore 99% of the other data. Stop ignoring the
other data.
david ford
present some of this data, instead of merely alluding to its exisence?
As you know, we are discussing the theory of NS.
On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 04:00:05 +0000 (UTC), david ford
>
TomS
<motbmvo5fo1alsjf3...@4ax.com>, Mark Isaak stated..."
>
>On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 04:00:05 +0000 (UTC), david ford
><dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>
>>Good catch, Mark-- Fischer's definition of faulty extrapolation is too
>>narrow in including only numerical values. The non-statistical definition
>>of _Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition_ (1995) includes
>>"to project, extend, or expand (known data or experience) into an area not
>>known or experienced so as to arrive at a usually conjectural knowledge of
>>the unknown area."
>>
>>An example of such extrapolation would be to say that since it has been
>>raining for some time, it will continue to rain the remainder of the
>>month. Or one can say that since it has been warm the past few months, it
>>will remain warm-- a winter season will not arrive.[Denton, 87]
>>
>>Darwin's theory of natural selection involves an extrapolation (recall the
>>_Merriam-Webster's_ definition) of the changes observed over hundreds or
>>thousands of years by breeders of domestic animals and plants to the
>>belief that, given far greater amounts of time, natural selection will
>>lead to organisms of exquisite workmanship.
>>[snip quote-mining]
>
>Darwin wrote about a bit more than changes in domestic animals.
>Others since him have added a bit more. I can see how the extension
>you cite can look like extrapolation if you ignore 99% of the other
>data, but ONLY if you ignore 99% of the other data. Stop ignoring the
>other data.
It seems to be a convenient method of argumentation.
NN asks for proof of X.
JJ offers A as proof of X.
NN says that A does not prove Y.
Of course, this continues:
JJ offers B as proof of Y.
NN says that B does not prove Z.
and so on, until we get back, through various digressions and
bypaths, to X.
When engaged in such an argument, it may be necessary to point
out, when demonstrating X, that you haven't forgotten about Y, Z,
and other issues, and that there are good reasons for them, but
that you're just taking care of X for the moment.
This may demand a longer attention span than is possible on a
bumper sticker.
Mark Isaak
<dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>My mouth salivated when you mentioned "data," Mark. Do you care to
>present some of this data, instead of merely alluding to its exisence?
>As you know, we are discussing the theory of NS.
I am afraid I do not know how to transmit the contents of two entire
floors of a large library in a single post. I could give you the
addresses of some university libraries, but I trust you are
resourceful enough to find them on your own, if you care to look.
Feel free to inquire at the admissions office while you are at the
campus. The biology department undoubtedly has equipment and
materials by which you may derive the data yourself.
david ford
I wish to call your attention to Mark's robust response to my
request for data supporting the Darwinian theory of natural
selection.
Work is under way on a discussion to be posted in a
few days on experimental data involving fruit flies, and the
implications of that data for the validity of the Darwinian
theory of natural selection.
On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 00:32:36 +0000 (UTC), david ford
>
Thomas P.
<dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 00:32:36 +0000 (UTC), david ford
snip
>Dear Lurkers,
>I wish to call your attention to Mark's robust response to my
>request for data supporting the Darwinian theory of natural
>selection.
>Work is under way on a discussion to be posted in a
>few days on experimental data involving fruit flies, and the
>implications of that data for the validity of the Darwinian
>theory of natural selection.
>
Oh good! Later we could perhaps discuss the burning question of
whether or not their is actually a large land mass between Europe and
China. After all what are the odds that such a land mass would just
be there?
Thomas P.
Therion Ware
On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 08:12:46 +0000 (UTC) in alt.atheism, Thomas P.
("Thomas P." <tonyofremo...@yahoo.dk>, >) said, directing the
reply to alt.atheism
<cannot restrain>
I think it's more a question of whether there's a civilisation between
Europe and China
</cannot restrain>
--
"Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You."
- Attrib: Pauline Reage.
Inexpensive VHS & other video to CD/DVD conversion?
See: <http://www.Video2CD.com>. 35.00 gets your video on DVD.
all posts to this email address are automatically deleted without being read.
** atheist poster child #1 **
catshark
wrote:
>Dear Lurkers,
>I wish to call your attention to Mark's robust response to my
>request for data supporting the Darwinian theory of natural
>selection.
>Work is under way on a discussion to be posted in a
>few days on experimental data involving fruit flies, and the
>implications of that data for the validity of the Darwinian
>theory of natural selection.
Dear Lurkers,
I wish to call your attention to the fact that just a few minutes search
will reveal lots of data supporting the Darwinian theory of natural
selection (which is only a tiny amount compared to what you can find in a
good library) such as:
<http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/jul00.html>
<http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html>
<http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html>
<http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html>
<http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/finches.html>
I wish to also call to your attention the fact that David will now either
ignore this evidence, say that it does not "prove" that natural selection
actually occurs, say that it does not address what *he* meant by "data for
the validity of the Darwinian theory of natural selection" or some other
goal post shifting or evasion.
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions
have a pathetic, if praiseworthy, tendency to die
before reproducing their kind.
- Willard van Ormand Quine -
Kermit
> I am not familiar with what exactly Darwin wrote when exactly in
> his notebooks. My comments about faulty extrapolation take aim at what
> Darwin wrote in his book _Origin of Species_ about his theory of
> natural selection, and take aim at the neo-Darwinian theory of natural
> selection.
>
Except you didn't. You made a straw target, hung a sign on it labeled
"Darwinism here", and took aim at *that.
The point was that it doesn't really matter how he arrived at his
ideas; what's important is that they were supported by a large body of
evidence, made sense, and successfully made predictions. They have
since been supported by much data from other disciplines.
It was also pointed out that your important beliefs are derived from
an authority, whom you believe received it from the Creator. Hence,
founding authority and the proper method of receiving "knowledge" are
important to you. They are *not important in science; that is, the
source of inspiration is trivial. If Darwin had not come up with this,
someone else would have. Wallace, for one.
--- Kermit
Kermit
> Dear Lurkers,
> I wish to call your attention to Mark's robust response to my
> request for data supporting the Darwinian theory of natural
> selection.
> Work is under way on a discussion to be posted in a
> few days on experimental data involving fruit flies, and the
> implications of that data for the validity of the Darwinian
> theory of natural selection.
>
You should talk. There is no bible; nor are there any churches.
> On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Mark Isaak wrote:
> > On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 00:32:36 +0000 (UTC), david ford
> >
> > >My mouth salivated when you mentioned "data," Mark. Do you care to
> > >present some of this data, instead of merely alluding to its exisence?
> > >As you know, we are discussing the theory of NS.
> >
> > I am afraid I do not know how to transmit the contents of two entire
> > floors of a large library in a single post. I could give you the
> > addresses of some university libraries, but I trust you are
> > resourceful enough to find them on your own, if you care to look.
> >
> > Feel free to inquire at the admissions office while you are at the
> > campus. The biology department undoubtedly has equipment and
> > materials by which you may derive the data yourself.
--- Kermit
Thomas P.
Careful, Bush will put all of Europe on his hit list. Of course
someone will have to tell him where it is (pause) and what it is.
Thomas P.
Steve Watson
> On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 08:12:46 +0000 (UTC) in alt.atheism, Thomas P.
> ("Thomas P." <tonyofremo...@yahoo.dk>, >) said, directing the
> reply to alt.atheism
>
>
>
> >On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 05:08:53 +0000 (UTC), david ford
> ><dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, Mark Isaak wrote:
> >>> On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 00:32:36 +0000 (UTC), david ford
> >
> >
> >snip
> >
> >>Dear Lurkers,
> >>I wish to call your attention to Mark's robust response to my
> >>request for data supporting the Darwinian theory of natural
> >>selection.
> >>Work is under way on a discussion to be posted in a
> >>few days on experimental data involving fruit flies, and the
> >>implications of that data for the validity of the Darwinian
> >>theory of natural selection.
> >>
> >
> >Oh good! Later we could perhaps discuss the burning question of
> >whether or not their is actually a large land mass between Europe and
> >China. After all what are the odds that such a land mass would just
> >be there?
>
> <cannot restrain>
> I think it's more a question of whether there's a civilisation between
> Europe and China
> </cannot restrain>
There certainly is: I assure you it's quite civilized here in Canada.
-- Steve
Al Klein
>Dear Lurkers,
>I wish to call your attention to Mark's robust response to my
>request for data supporting the Darwinian theory of natural
>selection.
So you're saying that those individuals that survive are the LEAST fit
to do so?
--
Zymurgist # 2
(random sig, produced by SigChanger)
rukbat at optonline dot net
Therion Ware
On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 20:13:44 +0000 (UTC) in alt.atheism, Steve Watson
(siames...@yahoo.ca (Steve Watson)) said, directing the reply to
alt.atheism
Well, that's all right then!
david ford
We review now some observations by Mayr on organisms' observed
resistance to change and organisms' observed limitations in
capacity to change in the face of artificial/
human-intelligence-directed (and by extension, natural)
selection. Thereafter follows a summary, a challenge to
believers in the Darwinian theory of natural selection, and an
appendix describing fruit fly experiments involving strong
artificial selection for higher and lower numbers of fruit fly
bristles.
Generalizations from the Fruit Fly and Other Experiments
In Mayr's 1970 _Populations, Species, and Evolution_, in the
chapter "The Unity of the Genotype," Mayr introduces the phrase
"stabilizing selection," which "refers to the fact that natural
selection will tend to eliminate... deviant individuals from the
population, the selection pressure normally being more severe the
greater the deviation." Deviant individuals deviate from the
average in one or more respects.[175]
Mayr notes that plant and animal breeders have historically
utilized artificial/ human-intelligence-directed selection in one
direction so as to increase such things as cow milk production
and crop plant yield. However, lab experiments have provided the
"most refined analysis of the effects of one-directional
selection."[176] Mayr proceeds to discuss classic studies of
fruit fly bristle numbers.
Mayr describes details of certain fruit fly experiments involving
strong artificial selection in lab experiments for higher and
lower bristle numbers. He then observes that "A number of
generalizations can be derived from this and similar
studies."[178] For one thing, there exists in the genotype a
large capacity for storing variability. To illustrate, starting
with a population with an average of about 36 bristles,
populations of 56 and 25 bristles were derived, all without the
addition of fresh genetic material.
For another thing, the well-defined attribute of average bristle
number on two abdominal segments depended on a large number of
genes.
Extreme phenotypes, e.g. those with high bristle number, "can be
produced only by very specialized genotypes. Such genotypes are
bound to be unbalanced in more ways than one...."[179] Mayr
significantly observes that a "closed and sheltered lab
population" is "protected against the effects of immigration and
an adverse and variable environment," and so can "afford to
develop genotypes that would be of inferior viability in
nature."[181]
Most interestingly, it is seen that "any intense selection
results in various correlated effects," an example being
pigmentation changes. Some correlated effects did not affect
viability, while "others affected fertility, fecundity, and
larval survival." In fact, "the stocks reached a plateau where
they would not respond further to the artificial selection."[179]
Animal breeders have also observed such a limit.[179]
In fact,
"All the results of strong one-directional selection experiments
confirm that the response of the genotype is not that of a set of
independent genes but that of a single interdependent genetic
system. The nature of this system results not only in severe
limits in the response to the selection pressure but also in the
breakdown of epistatic balances. Such selection experiments
provide graphic illustrations of the cohesive complexity of any
genotype or gene pool."[179]
In accordance with this inference of cohesive, interdependent,
"harmoniously integrated"[184] genotypes/ gene complexes, "One of
the most interesting findings of recent selection experiments is
the tendency of phenotypes exposed to a severe selection pressure
for a specific phenotypic character to return to their original
condition when that pressure is discontinued."[181] This tendency
is termed genetic homeostasis/ genetic inertia, and is observed
in strong selection experiments for, e.g., larger body size and
higher bristle numbers in fruit flies, and bigger eggs and larger
egg numbers in farm birds.[182]
Summary
To summarize, the experimental evidence produced by lab
experiments with fruit flies and other organisms, and the
evidence from plant and animal breeders, is that:
a) organisms have limited capacities for the changing of their
phenotypes in the face of artificial/ human-intelligence-directed
selection
and that:
b) organisms' genotypes are cohesive, harmoniously interdependent
genotypes possessing genetic homeostasis.
A Challenge
I now ask believers in the theory of natural selection/ the
neo-Darwinian mechanism for their response to this summarizing
conclusion.
Perhaps believers will respond with the speculation that extinct
organisms lacked genetic homeostasis while present-day organisms
possess genetic homeostasis.
Perhaps believers will deny that present-day organisms possess
genetic homeostasis, and discuss experimental data in support of
their view, and attack the experimental methodology or
conclusion-drawing in studies that others think demonstrate
genetic homeostasis.
Perhaps believers will say that organisms that have not been
studied experimentally lack genetic homeostasis, while
experimentally-studied organisms are the exception to the general
rule that organisms lack genetic homeostasis.
Perhaps believers will say that observing genetic homeostasis in
the sheltered and pampered conditions of lab experiments and in
lab experiments involving large numbers of induced mutations, and
observations of genetic homeostasis in plant and animal breeding,
does not mean that other populations possess genetic
homeostasis-- most other living (and extinct) populations in fact
lack genetic homeostasis (or the case of extinct populations,
lacked genetic homeostasis).
Perhaps believers in the theory of natural selection will say
that starting with the presupposition that life arose and
developed totally apart from the input of an intelligent
agent(s), therefore the first spontaneously-generated lifeforms
must have developed into
whales, ferns, trilobites, gnats, oak trees, cows, barley,
uniquely-intelligent humans, corn, chickens, peach trees, horses,
pigeons, turtles, finches, fruit flies, and all other extinct and
living lifeforms,
and therefore genetic homeostasis could not have been a barrier
to the transformation of the first lifeforms into whales, ferns,
trilobites, etc.
and therefore, whatever genetic homeostasis is today observed in
whales, ferns, fossil trilobites, etc. today's observed genetic
homeostasis could not have preceded the arrival of
whales, ferns, trilobites, etc.
and therefore today's genetic homeostasis is not a barrier to
accepting that the Darwinian mechanism could have produced
whales, ferns, trilobites, gnats, oak trees, cows, barley,
uniquely-intelligent humans, corn, chickens, peach trees, horses,
pigeons, turtles, finches, fruit flies, and all other extinct and
living lifeforms
from those first spontaneously-generated organisms that were at
the outset of this line of thought presupposed to have arisen
totally apart from the input of an intelligent agent(s).
Believers, the ball is in your court.
Appendix: Data/ Results from Certain Fruit Fly Experiments
One selection experiment was done for increase of bristle number,
and another done for decrease in bristle number. The stock of
fruit flies begun with had an average of about 36 bristles on two
particular abdominal segments.
After 30 generations with selection for lower bristle number, the
starting number of bristles went down to 25; thereafter the fruit
fly line quickly became sterile and died out. Another fruit fly
line was started with 32 bristles which remained practically
stable for 95 generations, yet every attempt to obtain from this
line other lines having lower numbers of bristles failed-- the
"lines invariably died out owing to sterility."[177]
In the selection experiments for ever-higher bristle numbers,
bristle numbers went gradually from about 36 to about 56 bristles
on average, all within 20 generations. At this stage of about 56
bristles, severe sterility entered. A fruit fly line without
selection was started, and average bristle number plummeted to 39
bristles within five generations. This line fluctuated up and
down in bristle number without selection, once going as high as
46, but eventually settled on an average of about 40 bristles.
From this line averaging 40, new lines were started; the first
two of these new lines regained and maintained with selection the
record bristle number as quickly as the plummeting mentioned
earlier, all with much-improved viability.
One line taken off one of these two lines maintained high bristle
number instead of plummeting. However, new lines later taken off
one of the two lines proved far less successful-- the line used
had restabilized in some way that lost high bristle number
combinations.[176-178]
Bigdakine
>From: david ford dfo...@gl.umbc.edu
>Date: 9/18/03 7:32 AM Hawaiian Standard Time
>Message-id:
><Pine.SGI.4.44L.01.03091...@irix2.gl.umbc.edu>
THis is simply the old tired worn-out creationist argument that a newly
speciated fly, is still a fly.
Surely you could do better. No?
>A Challenge
>
>I now ask believers in the theory of natural selection/ the
>neo-Darwinian mechanism for their response to this summarizing
>conclusion.
>
>Perhaps believers will respond
Perhaps one day creationists will come up with a new well thought out argument.
Stuart
Dr. Stuart A. Weinstein
Ewa Beach Institute of Tectonics
"To err is human, but to really foul things up
requires a creationist"
catshark
wrote:
[snip Mayr, quoted but not understood]
>Summary
>
>To summarize, the experimental evidence produced by lab
>experiments with fruit flies and other organisms, and the
>evidence from plant and animal breeders, is that:
>a) organisms have limited capacities for the changing of their
>phenotypes in the face of artificial/ human-intelligence-directed
>selection
>and that:
>b) organisms' genotypes are cohesive, harmoniously interdependent
>genotypes possessing genetic homeostasis.
A better summary:
You don't know wtf you are talking about.
I admit I'm no expert but it only took about 15 minutes to find out that
that you haven't taken *any* time to find out what Mayr meant by
"stabilizing evolution". Either that or you expended a great deal of
dishonesty in putting this together. As I predicted earlier in this
thread, you have simply ignored what doesn't fit your preconceived ideas,
such as: "disruptive selection", "directed selection", "genetic drift",
"gene flow", "founder effect", "species selection", "recombination" and
many other facets of evolutionary theory, both Mayr's and others.
Anyone interested and unfamiliar can start by looking here:
<http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/e40/40d.htm>
<http://www.cbc.yale.edu/old/cce/ccepapers/Inert2/node1.html>
<http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/mayr_punctuated.html>
<http://biomed.brown.edu/Courses/BIO48/37.Tempo&Mode.2.HTML>
>
>A Challenge
[snip ridiculous list of strawmen demonstrating David's level of honesty]
>Believers, the ball is in your court.
No, you just double faulted once again.
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
We have done amazingly well in creating a cultural movement,
but we must not exaggerate ID's successes on the scientific front.
- William A. Dembski -
Robin Levett
news:20030918215159...@mb-m25.aol.com...
> >Subject: Re: Macbeth on Faulty Extrapolation in Darwin's
Theory of NS
> >From: david ford dfo...@gl.umbc.edu
> >Date: 9/18/03 7:32 AM Hawaiian Standard Time
> >Message-id:
>
><Pine.SGI.4.44L.01.03091...@irix2.gl.um
bc.edu>
> >
<snippage>
>
> >A Challenge
> >
> >I now ask believers in the theory of natural selection/
the
> >neo-Darwinian mechanism for their response to this
summarizing
> >conclusion.
> >
> >Perhaps believers will respond
>
> Perhaps one day creationists will come up with a new well
thought out argument.
Aren't they going to have to come up with an old well
thought out argument first?
--
I don't trust camels - or anyone else that can go for a week
without a drink.
(Use rle...@ibmrlevett.uklinux.net - deleting big blue -
for email)
Bigdakine
>Date: 9/18/03 4:58 PM Hawaiian Standard Time
>Message-id: <3kpdkb...@grendel.hayesway>
>
>"Bigdakine" <bigd...@aol.comGetaGrip> wrote in message
>news:20030918215159...@mb-m25.aol.com...
>> >Subject: Re: Macbeth on Faulty Extrapolation in Darwin's
>Theory of NS
>> >From: david ford dfo...@gl.umbc.edu
>> >Date: 9/18/03 7:32 AM Hawaiian Standard Time
>> >Message-id:
>>
>><Pine.SGI.4.44L.01.03091...@irix2.gl.um
>bc.edu>
>> >
>
><snippage>
>
>>
>> >A Challenge
>> >
>> >I now ask believers in the theory of natural selection/
>the
>> >neo-Darwinian mechanism for their response to this
>summarizing
>> >conclusion.
>> >
>> >Perhaps believers will respond
>>
>> Perhaps one day creationists will come up with a new well
>thought out argument.
>
>Aren't they going to have to come up with an old well
>thought out argument first?
A very good point.
david ford
Mayr, I did not know what I was talking about. You were very
perceptive in picking up on that.
Now I am not saying that I will do this, but would you like me to
present Mayr's original words, thereby revealing to one and all
just how badly I mangled what Mayr was saying?
I take it that my presentation of Mayr's definition of the phrase
"stabilizing selection" was not up to your high standards for
explication of terminology. What do you think of my handling of
Mayr's discussion of the concept of "genetic homeostasis"? As
you know from having read what I wrote about Mayr on genetic
homeostasis, you know that genetic homeostasis in observed
organisms was a central concept in what I wrote.
I am frequently accused of quote-mining, and am intrigued by your
approach of presenting links to entire articles as a means of
"rebutting" what I say. Your article-quote-mining is an
approach I just might emulate.
Berlinski's "The Deniable Darwin"
http://www.discovery.org/viewDB/index.php3?program=CRSC&command=view&id=130
I also observe that you mentioned a lot of buzzwords from
population genetics. They are very impressive buzzwords, I must
admit. In your estimation, do they have anything to add to the
question of how tigers and fruit flies and moths arose via
neo-Darwinian natural selection?
One of the articles you article-quote-mined states that "10,000 -
100,000 years can be an instant in geological time (especially in
the context of some deposition rates) but is ample time for
evolutionary events in populations." Source:
http://biomed.brown.edu/Courses/BIO48/37.Tempo&Mode.2.HTML
Another talk.origins denizen who has for the moment departed this
thread left unanswered a question of mine about the ample time
assertion. Perhaps you will answer the question, or quote an
article to answer the question for you:
It is incorrect that there were hundreds of millions of years
available for the non-intelligence-directed arrival of each new
structure having a new function. To pick one of the more
impressive counterexamples, ".... 543 million years ago, in the
early Cambrian, within the span of no more than 10 million years,
creatures with teeth and tentacles and claws and jaws
materialized with the suddenness of apparitions." See the 4
December 1995 issue of _Time_, "When Life Exploded," pages 66-74.
Tell me, do you think changing of allele frequencies and
populations that became non-interbreeding were responsible for
the appearance of the organisms that appeared during the Cambrian
explosion, a.k.a. biology's big bang?
Where do you come down on the question "is macroevolution
decoupled from microevolution?", a question mentioned in the same
article-quote-mined.
The article also speaks of "the shift from the peppered to the
dark form of Biston betularia [which] occured [sic] within the
span of 100 years by a completely 'Darwinian' mechanism." Do you
think the peppered moth case provides strong evidence for the
neo-Darwinian mechanism/ Darwin's theory of natural selection?
Oh, and Gould's first name is "Stephen," not "Steven" as the
article incorrectly stated.
As you know, many organisms in the fossil record exhibits
stasis-- they stay practically the same to all appearances from
their first arrival in the fossil record to when they leave the
fossil record (or, in the case of "living fossils," to when we
observe them strutting their stuff today). What do you think
accounts for numerous instances of stasis observed in fossil
record organisms? Genetic homeostasis?
I see that you chopped my "A Challenge" section. Here is the
challenge again, should you wish to reconsider declining
acceptance of it:
To summarize, the experimental evidence produced by lab
experiments with fruit flies and other organisms, and the
evidence from plant and animal breeders, is that:
a) organisms have limited capacities for the changing of their
phenotypes in the face of artificial/ human-intelligence-directed
selection
and that:
b) organisms' genotypes are cohesive, harmoniously interdependent
genotypes possessing genetic homeostasis.
A Challenge
I now ask believers in the theory of natural selection/ the
neo-Darwinian mechanism for their response to this summarizing
conclusion.
The Mayr article you article-quote-mined has two "[...]"s in it,
the second of which appeared just when things were getting quite
interesting:
"Recent discoveries in molecular biology have raised questions
about the meaning of stasis. The stasis found in morphological
characters in such old genera as Rana, Bufo, Plethodon, or even
Drosophila is not at all owing to the retention of an entirely
unchanged genotype. Through the electrophoresis method, countless
changes in quasi-neutral enzyme genes have been discovered, but
numerous other nonmorphological changes have also taken place in
these genera, such as the acquisition of new isolating
mechanisms, as well as of numerous adaptations to changing
environments. What has remained stable, however, is the
morphotype, the basic Bauplan. The species in some lineages that
can be inferred to have separated 30 to 60 million years ago are
morphologically still almost indistinguishable except in size,
coloration, and minor differences in skeletal dimensions. [...]"
Cited in:
<http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/mayr_punctuated.html>
I will try to get the book in question and see what if any
comments embarrassing to neo-Darwinism were suppressed by the
"[...]"s. Thank you for bringing this article on the Web to my
attention.
I find the juxtaposition of these 1992 and 1960 Mayr statements
interesting:
Mayr, Ernst. 1992. "Speciational Evolution or Punctuated
Equilibria" in Albert Somit and Steven Peterson, _The Dynamics of
Evolution_ (NY: Cornell University Press), 21-48. Cited in
<http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/mayr_punctuated.html>:
"Furthermore, enough mechanisms for the gradual acquisition of
evolutionary novelties are known (Mayr, 1960) to make the
occurrence of drastic mutations dispensable, at least as a normal
evolutionary process."
Mayr, Ernst. 1960. "The Emergence of Evolutionary Novelties" in
_The Evolution of Life: Its Origin, History and Future_, ed. Sol
Tax (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), 349-80, 349, 350,
357:
"There are fashionable problems and there are neglected problems
in any field of research. The problem of the emergence of
evolutionary novelties has undoubtedly been greatly neglected
during the past two or three decades, in spite of its importance
in the theory of evolution. No more auspicious occasion can be
envisioned for a renewed consideration of this problem than the
centenary of the publication of Darwin's _Origin of Species_.
....
As a result, the problem of the emergence of evolutionary
novelties has been almost completely neglected during the past
two or three decades. However, with the advances in evolutionary
theory that were being made during that same period, it is
profitable to consider this question once again. It is now
possible to give an answer not in conflict with the synthetic
theory of evolution and, more specifically, an answer not
requiring the occurrence of macromutations. The treatment in a
new attack on this problem will have to be somewhat exploratory
at this stage, in view of the recent neglect of this area. I hope
that my discussion will encourage more work and more thought on
the problem of the origin of evolutionary novelties, permitting
eventually a more balanced and definitive treatment.
....
THE GRADUAL ACQUISITION OF NEW STRUCTURES
The evidence, whether genetic, morphological, or functional, is
so uniformly opposed to a saltationist origin of new structures
that no choice is left but to search for explanations in terms of
a gradual origin. The role of natural selection in evolution
would indeed be a very inferior one if, as was believed by the
saltationists, it did nothing but weed out "hopeless monsters" in
favor of "hopeful monsters.""
Final question: Is anyone aware of a post-1960 "definitive
treatment" of "the problem of the origin of evolutionary novelties"?
There must be someone in talk.origins that knows of such. I would
like to look at it, should it exist.
On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, catshark wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 17:32:41 +0000 (UTC), david ford
>
catshark
wrote:
>You are right, J. Pieret. In summarizing and recapitulating
>Mayr, I did not know what I was talking about. You were very
>perceptive in picking up on that.
It didn't take much, given how obvious it was.
[snip]
>
>I am frequently accused of quote-mining, and am intrigued by your
>approach of presenting links to entire articles as a means of
>"rebutting" what I say. Your article-quote-mining is an
>approach I just might emulate.
They are called "references" and are common among educated people.
>Berlinski's "The Deniable Darwin"
>http://www.discovery.org/viewDB/index.php3?program=CRSC&command=view&id=130
Old stuff:
"But Is It Deception? 'The Deniable Darwin' examined..."
<http://www.rtis.com/nat/user/elsberry/evobio/evc/biid/biidtdd.html>
>
>I also observe that you mentioned a lot of buzzwords from
>population genetics. They are very impressive buzzwords, I must
>admit. In your estimation, do they have anything to add to the
>question of how tigers and fruit flies and moths arose via
>neo-Darwinian natural selection?
Only that, as you have agreed, *you* know nothing about it.
[snip rest of rambling]
---------------
J. Pieret
---------------
Some say "Ignorance is bliss."
In your case, it's merely chronic . . .
Huck Turner
> Macbeth, Norman. 1971. _Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason_ (NY: Dell
> Publishing Co., Inc.), 178pp.
>
> Chapter 4, "What Do the Breeders Show?":
>
> [snip]
>
> The changes that Darwin observed in the breeding pens were all micro. They
> occurred without question, but they were not sufficient for his purposes
> when he was faced with macro gaps between his units (the types or
> species), because all of these started out with distinct forms even in the
> earliest fossils. Comparative anatomy and embryology showed resemblances
> between the units, but they also showed that between the units there were
> gulfs going back to the misty beginnings. Looking only at large domestic
> quadrupeds, it was easy to see that horses, cows, sheep, and goats all had
> a backbone, four limbs, a brain, a heart, a skull, and a reproductive
> system, and that these members were similar in many ways; but no one would
> say that these animals were identical.
Yes, and this kind of evidence gives us very powerful justification
for arguing that these species had common ancestors. If these
similarities weren't so obvious, it would be much harder to justify
the "extrapolation" from small to large changes.
> They looked like cousins, but there
> was neither a neatly graduated series of living links between them nor a
> converging fossil genealogy behind them. Darwin had to find processes by
> which the gaps could be bridged.
>
> Darwin entertained the very questionable opinion that animals and plants
> could vary in all directions and to an unlimited degree. In the first
> edition of The Origin of Species he said: "I can see no difficulty in a
> race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic
> in their habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was
> produced as monstrous as a whale."1 He knew that this was not the common
> view, since as early as 1844 he had written: "That a limit to variation
> does exist in nature is assumed by most authors, though I am unable to
> discover a single fact on which this belief is grounded."2
It is not necessarily a contradiction to believe simultaneously that
evolution can produce indefinitely many design variations and that it
is impossible for evolution to produce certain kinds of variants. The
set of prime numbers contains an infinite number of values, but
doesn't contain 4. So what exactly did Darwin mean in this quote? It
seems reasonable to me that he saw "no difficulty" because he could no
reason why any of the intermediate forms would be an impossible
variant.
> He neglected to
> add that he also could not discover a single fact on which an opposite
> belief might be grounded.* [*: One author whom Darwin must have had in
> mind was T. R. Malthus, whose _Essay on the Principle of Population_
> influenced Darwin profoundly when he first read it in 1838. In chapter 1
> of Book 3 of this work, Malthus took issue with those who contended that
> they could improve plants and animals as much as they liked. He pointed
> out that a variety of sheep had been bred for small head and legs, but
> that it could hardly be carried to a point where the head and legs
> disappeared entirely or were reduced to the scale of a rat. He added that
> a carnation would never produce a flower as big as a large cabbage. These
> statements are negatives that cannot he proved, but they are so reasonable
> that surely Darwin has the burden of proof when he takes the opposite
> position.]
I think this is a red herring. Yes, there are constraints on form (see
D'Arcy Thompson's "On growth and form" on that issue), but I don't see
how this bears on the issue of speciation. Certain kinds of change
cannot occur. Yes, fine. Does that mean that speciation cannot occur?
No.
>
> Darwin was a timid man in many ways, but fortified by his faith in
> variation he acted boldly in this situation. He took the micro changes
> observed by the breeders (which in themselves did not begin to fill the
> gaps) and he _extrapolated_ them. He said, in brief, that twenty years of
> breeding often achieved substantial changes; therefore, if nature
> continued the work for a hundred million years, it could close all the
> gaps. His actual phrasing was more poetic: "Slow though the process of
> selection may be, if feeble man can do so much by his powers of artificial
> selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and
> infinite complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one
> with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be
> effected in the long course of time by nature's power of selection."3
>
> Extrapolation is a dangerous procedure.4 If you have a broad base of sound
> observations, you can extend it a little at the ends without too much
> risk; but if the base is short or insecure, extension can lead to
> grotesque errors. Thus if you observe the growth of a baby during its
> first months, extrapolation into the future will show that the child will
> be eight feet tall when six years old. Therefore all statisticians
> recommend caution in extrapolating. Darwin, however, plunged in with no
> caution at all.
>
What Macbeth is talking about is the problem with 'linear'
extrapolation (not extrapolation per se) and so to take the analogy of
baby growth, if you measure the rate of change in a species over a
short timescale and extrapolate from that about how long it would take
to accumulate enough changes for speciation to occur, you could be
wildly out because who's to say that the change is going to be
constant. That's the warning that a mathematician would give you.
Macbeth seems to be using this warning to say something else though.
He appears to be arguing against the view that there is any continuity
between small-scale variation and large-scale variation. He is not
arguing about whether the rate of change is constant.
> [snip]
>
> The next difficulty is the lack of transitions. If we join Darwin in
> assuming that macro changes _must_ have been accomplished by small steps,
> so that the gaps were at one time filled, then what has happened to all
> the intermediate forms? This question occurred to Darwin, and he furnished
> the answers that are still in use today-- the extreme imperfection of the
> geological record and the poorness of our paleontological collections.5
> Hardin, asking himself a hundred years later whether he can show all the
> links in the chain, replies: "No, of course not; the geological record is
> imperfect and will always remain so, since it is highly improbable that
> short-lived intermediate species will be fossilized."6
>
> This is the standard answer, but it is rather threadbare after a century
> of digging and collecting. The simple phrase "short-lived" is already
> troublesome. How does Hardin know they were short-lived if he has never
> seen them? Can any species really be short-lived when Huxley, reflecting
> the generally accepted view, says that large changes occur over tens of
> millions of years, while really major ones (what we would call macro) take
> a hundred million or so?7
>
The trouble with enormous timescales is that we cannot really
comprehend them and compare them. We all know that evolution is
supposed to occur over very large timescales and we all know that
fossils are laid down in the rocks over very large timescales, but it
is a serious mistake to assume that these timescales are comparable.
The truth is that geological processes are much slower that
evolutionary processes by many orders of magnitude so that
evolutionary changes are fleeting compared to geological ones.
A second reason why there appear to be discontinuities in the fossil
record is that animals spread with shifting climates and conditions so
that similar variants will end up recorded in deposits that are very
far apart. Their descendants eventually move back to the original
location and get recorded in the rocks perhaps alongside remaining
populations of the ancestral form. This makes it look like there are
sudden jumps from one type to the other, but that is an illusion that
comes from looking at one site in isolation.
> The heart of the problem is whether living things do indeed vary to an
> unlimited extent or, to state it differently, whether micro changes
> cumulate into macro effects. The instinctive feeling of untutored men is
> against this. The species look stable. We have all heard of disappointed
> breeders who carried their work to a certain point only to see the animals
> or plants revert where they had started. Despite strenuous efforts for two
> or three centuries, it has never been possible to produce a blue rose or a
> black tulip.8 Darwin himself knew in 1844 that most authors assumed there
> were limits to variation, and he also knew that among pigeons the crossing
> of highly bred varieties was apt to provoke a reversion to "the ancient
> rock-pigeon." Was he discouraged when, in the sixth and last edition of
> _The Origin of Species_, he quietly excised the above passage about
> converting bears into whales?
>
The version that is sold in bookshops today is the first edition. It
is generally regarded to be the best version precisely because Darwin
weakened his thesis in later versions by making changes like this. He
even started leaning towards a Lamarkian view of inheritance by the
sixth edition. This is really only of interest to biographers unless
you believe that Darwin's word on evolution should be final.
> [snip]
>
> Mayr notes that animal populations have a certain persistence or inertia,
> in that they resist sudden or drastic change, and he gives this
> persistence the elegant name of "genetic homeostasis." He also provides a
> splendid example of what I had been groping for-- the corollary tendency
> of animals and plants to balk at being bred too far in any direction. This
> comes out in his description of some work in 1948 with the famous fruit
> fly, _Drosophila melanogaster_.14 Here is the gist of his account.
>
I guess we can expect that species will come to occupy the most stable
regions of design space simply because the unstable variants will keep
changing until they become stable variants. The question is what could
lead to the big changes if small changes always lead to less
stability? One answer might be that an environmental change alters the
fitness landscape making a previously stable variant unstable. Another
possibilty is that genetic drift brings a design closer to an
evolutionary pathway that leads to another stable design.
> [snip]
>
> Thus Eiseley says: "It would appear that careful domestic breeding,
> whatever it may do to improve the quality of race horses or cabbages, is
> not actually in itself the road to the endless biological deviation which
> is evolution. There is great irony in this situation, for more than almost
> any other single factor, domestic breeding has been used as an argument
> for the reality of evolution."19 Professor Deevey supplies terse phrases
> such as "the species barrier" and "the limited charter" to describe the
> situation, then confesses bankruptcy: "Some remarkable things have been
> done by crossbreeding and selection inside the species barrier, or within
> a larger circle of closely related species, such as the wheats. But wheat
> is still wheat, and not, for instance, grapefruit; and we can no more grow
> wings on pigs than hens can make cylindrical eggs."20 Thus my surmise
> about winged horses is confirmed in New Haven.
>
As I said earlier, the inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical
eggs, etc. has no bearing on whether speciation can occur. That
evolution cannot produce some specific variant says nothing about
whether it can produce a different species.
> [snip same mistake repeated many times]
H.
---
Like-minds don't notice shared mistakes. Talk to someone else.
John Wilkins
david ford wrote:
> > Darwin himself knew in 1844 that most authors assumed there
> > were limits to variation, and he also knew that among pigeons the crossing
> > of highly bred varieties was apt to provoke a reversion to "the ancient
> > rock-pigeon." Was he discouraged when, in the sixth and last edition of
> > _The Origin of Species_, he quietly excised the above passage about
> > converting bears into whales?
> >
>
> The version that is sold in bookshops today is the first edition. It
> is generally regarded to be the best version precisely because Darwin
> weakened his thesis in later versions by making changes like this. He
> even started leaning towards a Lamarkian view of inheritance by the
> sixth edition. This is really only of interest to biographers unless
> you believe that Darwin's word on evolution should be final.
The agreed on best edition is the second edition - it corrected a number
of typos, added some more interesting material, and yet doesn't water
down the message.
A chimeric edition (second edition with some later additional text, and
including the "A historical sketch" introductory chapter of the third
edition) was recently published in Canada. It has a *lot* of useful
ancillary material, such as excerpts from Spencer, Huxley, Wallace,
Darwin's correspondence, and so on:
Carroll, Joseph, ed. 2003. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection, by Charles Darwin. Toronto: Broadview Press.
It's not useful as an academic edition (having neither the original page
numbers nor apparatus indicating where the amendments have been made)
but it is a useful text to own and a good way to get into Darwin. It's a
"student's edition" too, so it's relatively cheap.
--
John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
For long you live and high you fly,
and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
Huck Turner
Okay, I stand corrected. My copy says it's the first edition with the
"historical sketch" and glossary (that appear in later editions)
included. It's published in paperback by Penguin Classics (1985) in
the UK, Australia, Canada and USA. I bought this edition in a bookshop
in Australia a few years ago and it still seems to be readily
available although I see that my library has a copy of the second
edition published in 1996 edited with intro by Gillian Beer.
david ford
corresponding to my numbered responses to your thoughts.
1. I agree that similarities in anatomical structures and
embryos among many biological organisms could be interpreted as
justification for the claim that those organisms had common
ancestors. Those similarities could also be interpreted as
providing strong justification for the proposition that those
organisms had a common designer or common designing-committee of
designers.
You state that "If these similarities weren't so obvious, it
would be much harder to justify the 'extrapolation' from small to
large changes." Should a possible-world's alternative state of
affairs make a particular extrapolation even more of a ridiculous
and implausible stretch, that does not mean that extrapolation is
justified given an actual state of affairs.
2. Darwin saw no difficulty in a population of bears becoming in
time more and more aquatic and as big as whales because he had a
very strong belief/faith in the creative powers of Darwinian
natural selection.
3. I am not arguing that speciation (the arrival of organisms
that can no longer interbreed) cannot occur. I agree with you
that-- and think Macbeth would concur that-- speciation (the
arrival of organisms that can no longer interbreed) can and does
and has been observed to occur. At least 2 other creationists
besides myself have acknowledged such:
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.9911082221330.16551-100000%40jabba.gl.umbc.edu
You accept that "certain kinds of change cannot occur." Do you
think arrangements of atoms and molecules changed in ways such
that life came from non-life in the distant past apart from the
input of intelligence?
4. There are more varieties of faulty extrapolation than just
linear extrapolation, as I discussed in
better conception of faulty extrapolation
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0309142357280.7954-100000%40linux3.gl.umbc.edu
which was a follow-up to
fallacy of false extrapolation
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.4.44L.01.0309100834320.2240460-100000%40irix2.gl.umbc.edu
5. You discussed 2 explanations for, in your words, "why there
appear to be discontinuities in the fossil record." Would you
agree with me that the fossil record lacks confirmation of the
neo-Darwinian theory of natural selection? (Should you think the
fossil record contains confirmation of the theory of natural
selection: what data/evidence makes you think this is the case?)
Your use of the word "fleeting" in connection with the speed of
alleged-blindwatchmaking changes in contrast to the slowness of
geological changes
reminded me of Ager's book chapter entitled "The Fleeting Fossil"
and a quote therein:
Ager, Eldredge & Tattersall
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.990509232910.38199A-100000%40umbc8.umbc.edu
And Ager's comments remind me of a remark by Bateson:
1922 Bateson, Lerner, Orwell
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.990810225527.4089209B-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu
Perhaps I will detail what made Bateson agnostic as to the
mechanism of blindwatchmaking, difficulties he thinks laymen need
not concern themselves with. Inquisitive laymen might think
differently.
6. In my opinion, Darwin's word should not be final on anything.
Darwin's bear-to-whale fable brought much ridicule and attack.
See Gould's article mentioned in
_Basilosaurus_'s purported vestigial leg
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.95.970709233733.17288H-100000%40umbc8.umbc.edu
As the years passed, Darwin did indeed weaken his affirmation of
Darwinian natural selection. To illustrate, witness this 1871
statement from his _The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation
to Sex_ (1981 Princeton University Press reprint of the 1871
edition), volume one, 152-3:
Thus a very large yet undefined extension may safely be
given to the direct and indirect results of natural
selection; but I now admit, after reading the essay by
Nageli on plants, and the remarks by various authors with
respect to animals, more especially those recently made by
Professor Broca, that in the earlier editions of my 'Origin
of Species' I probably attributed too much to the action of
natural selection or the survival of the fittest. I have
altered the fifth edition of the Origin so as to confine my
remarks to adaptive changes of structure. I had not formerly
sufficiently considered the existence of many structures
which appear to be, as far as we can judge, neither
beneficial nor injurious; and this I believe to be one of
the greatest oversights as yet detected in my work. I may be
permitted to say as some excuse, that I had two distinct
objects in view, firstly, to shew that species had not been
separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had
been the chief agent of change, though largely aided by the
inherited effects of habit, and slightly by the direct
action of the surrounding conditions. Nevertheless I was not
able to annul the influence of my former belief, then widely
prevalent, that each species had been purposely created; and
this led to my tacitly assuming that every detail of
structure, excepting rudiments, was of some special, though
unrecognised, service. Any one with this assumption in his
mind would naturally extend the action of natural selection,
either during past or present times, too far. Some of those
who admit the principle of evolution, but reject natural
selection, seem to forget, when criticising my book, that I
had the above two objects in view; hence if I have erred in
giving to natural selection great power, which I am far from
admitting, or in having exaggerated its power, which is in
itself probable, I have at least, as I hope, done good
service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate
creations.
7. Your mention of "design space" and "fitness landscape"
reminded me of my desire for concreteness. Please name three
living and/or extinct organisms that you think lack
genetic homeostasis.
8. With which, if any, of these statements do you agree:
a) The [Huck]"inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs,
etc. has no bearing on whether speciation"/ the appearance
of non-interbreeding populations can or cannot occur via
neo-Darwinian natural selection.
b) The inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs, etc.
has no bearing on whether hens can become cows via
neo-Darwinian natural selection.
c) The inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs, etc.
has no bearing on whether ferns can become oak trees via
neo-Darwinian natural selection.
d) The inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs, etc.
has no bearing on whether bears can become whales via
neo-Darwinian natural selection.
e) The inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs, etc.
has no bearing on whether bacteria can become humans via
neo-Darwinian natural selection.
On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Huck Turner wrote:
> david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
> news:<Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu>...
> > Macbeth, Norman. 1971. _Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason_ (NY:
> > Dell Publishing Co., Inc.), 178pp.
> >
> > Chapter 4, "What Do the Breeders Show?":
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > The changes that Darwin observed in the breeding pens were all micro.
> > They occurred without question, but they were not sufficient for his
> > purposes when he was faced with macro gaps between his units (the
> > types or species), because all of these started out with distinct
> > forms even in the earliest fossils. Comparative anatomy and embryology
> > showed resemblances between the units, but they also showed that
> > between the units there were gulfs going back to the misty beginnings.
> > Looking only at large domestic quadrupeds, it was easy to see that
> > horses, cows, sheep, and goats all had a backbone, four limbs, a
> > brain, a heart, a skull, and a reproductive system, and that these
> > members were similar in many ways; but no one would say that these
> > animals were identical.
>
> Yes, and this kind of evidence gives us very powerful justification for
> arguing that these species had common ancestors. If these similarities
> weren't so obvious, it would be much harder to justify the
> "extrapolation" from small to large changes.
1.
> > They looked like cousins, but there was neither a neatly graduated
> > series of living links between them nor a converging fossil genealogy
> > behind them. Darwin had to find processes by which the gaps could be
> > bridged.
> >
> > Darwin entertained the very questionable opinion that animals and
> > plants could vary in all directions and to an unlimited degree. In the
> > first edition of The Origin of Species he said: "I can see no
> > difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection,
> > more and more aquatic in their habits, with larger and larger mouths,
> > till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."1 He knew that
> > this was not the common view, since as early as 1844 he had written:
> > "That a limit to variation does exist in nature is assumed by most
> > authors, though I am unable to discover a single fact on which this
> > belief is grounded."2
>
> It is not necessarily a contradiction to believe simultaneously that
> evolution can produce indefinitely many design variations and that it is
> impossible for evolution to produce certain kinds of variants. The set
> of prime numbers contains an infinite number of values, but doesn't
> contain 4. So what exactly did Darwin mean in this quote? It seems
> reasonable to me that he saw "no difficulty" because he could no reason
> why any of the intermediate forms would be an impossible variant.
2.
> > He neglected to add that he also could not discover a single fact on
> > which an opposite belief might be grounded.* [*: One author whom
> > Darwin must have had in mind was T. R. Malthus, whose _Essay on the
> > Principle of Population_ influenced Darwin profoundly when he first
> > read it in 1838. In chapter 1 of Book 3 of this work, Malthus took
> > issue with those who contended that they could improve plants and
> > animals as much as they liked. He pointed out that a variety of sheep
> > had been bred for small head and legs, but that it could hardly be
> > carried to a point where the head and legs disappeared entirely or
> > were reduced to the scale of a rat. He added that a carnation would
> > never produce a flower as big as a large cabbage. These statements are
> > negatives that cannot he proved, but they are so reasonable that
> > surely Darwin has the burden of proof when he takes the opposite
> > position.]
>
> I think this is a red herring. Yes, there are constraints on form (see
> D'Arcy Thompson's "On growth and form" on that issue), but I don't see
> how this bears on the issue of speciation. Certain kinds of change
> cannot occur. Yes, fine. Does that mean that speciation cannot occur?
> No.
3.
4.
5.
> > The heart of the problem is whether living things do indeed vary to an
> > unlimited extent or, to state it differently, whether micro changes
> > cumulate into macro effects. The instinctive feeling of untutored men
> > is against this. The species look stable. We have all heard of
> > disappointed breeders who carried their work to a certain point only
> > to see the animals or plants revert where they had started. Despite
> > strenuous efforts for two or three centuries, it has never been
> > possible to produce a blue rose or a black tulip.8 Darwin himself knew
> > in 1844 that most authors assumed there were limits to variation, and
> > he also knew that among pigeons the crossing of highly bred varieties
> > was apt to provoke a reversion to "the ancient rock-pigeon." Was he
> > discouraged when, in the sixth and last edition of _The Origin of
> > Species_, he quietly excised the above passage about converting bears
> > into whales?
> >
>
> The version that is sold in bookshops today is the first edition. It is
> generally regarded to be the best version precisely because Darwin
> weakened his thesis in later versions by making changes like this. He
> even started leaning towards a Lamarkian view of inheritance by the
> sixth edition. This is really only of interest to biographers unless you
> believe that Darwin's word on evolution should be final.
6.
> > [snip]
> >
> > Mayr notes that animal populations have a certain persistence or
> > inertia, in that they resist sudden or drastic change, and he gives
> > this persistence the elegant name of "genetic homeostasis." He also
> > provides a splendid example of what I had been groping for-- the
> > corollary tendency of animals and plants to balk at being bred too far
> > in any direction. This comes out in his description of some work in
> > 1948 with the famous fruit fly, _Drosophila melanogaster_.14 Here is
> > the gist of his account.
> >
>
> I guess we can expect that species will come to occupy the most stable
> regions of design space simply because the unstable variants will keep
> changing until they become stable variants. The question is what could
> lead to the big changes if small changes always lead to less stability?
> One answer might be that an environmental change alters the fitness
> landscape making a previously stable variant unstable. Another
> possibilty is that genetic drift brings a design closer to an
> evolutionary pathway that leads to another stable design.
7.
> > [snip]
> >
> > Thus Eiseley says: "It would appear that careful domestic breeding,
> > whatever it may do to improve the quality of race horses or cabbages,
> > is not actually in itself the road to the endless biological deviation
> > which is evolution. There is great irony in this situation, for more
> > than almost any other single factor, domestic breeding has been used
> > as an argument for the reality of evolution."19 Professor Deevey
> > supplies terse phrases such as "the species barrier" and "the limited
> > charter" to describe the situation, then confesses bankruptcy: "Some
> > remarkable things have been done by crossbreeding and selection inside
> > the species barrier, or within a larger circle of closely related
> > species, such as the wheats. But wheat is still wheat, and not, for
> > instance, grapefruit; and we can no more grow wings on pigs than hens
> > can make cylindrical eggs."20 Thus my surmise about winged horses is
> > confirmed in New Haven.
> >
>
> As I said earlier, the inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical
> eggs, etc. has no bearing on whether speciation can occur. That
> evolution cannot produce some specific variant says nothing about
> whether it can produce a different species.
8.
Huck Turner
it 9 days ago so here it is again...
david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:<Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310...@linux1.gl.umbc.edu>...
> Huck, your post appears below, with numbers inserted into it
> corresponding to my numbered responses to your thoughts.
I've cut and pasted your responses so that they directly follow the
comments they refer to. I think it makes it easier for anyone else
reading.
>
> On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Huck Turner wrote:
>
> > david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
> > news:<Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu>...
> > > Macbeth, Norman. 1971. _Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason_ (NY:
> > > Dell Publishing Co., Inc.), 178pp.
> > >
> > > Chapter 4, "What Do the Breeders Show?":
> > >
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > The changes that Darwin observed in the breeding pens were all micro.
> > > They occurred without question, but they were not sufficient for his
> > > purposes when he was faced with macro gaps between his units (the
> > > types or species), because all of these started out with distinct
> > > forms even in the earliest fossils. Comparative anatomy and embryology
> > > showed resemblances between the units, but they also showed that
> > > between the units there were gulfs going back to the misty beginnings.
> > > Looking only at large domestic quadrupeds, it was easy to see that
> > > horses, cows, sheep, and goats all had a backbone, four limbs, a
> > > brain, a heart, a skull, and a reproductive system, and that these
> > > members were similar in many ways; but no one would say that these
> > > animals were identical.
> >
> > Yes, and this kind of evidence gives us very powerful justification for
> > arguing that these species had common ancestors. If these similarities
> > weren't so obvious, it would be much harder to justify the
> > "extrapolation" from small to large changes.
>
> I agree that similarities in anatomical structures and
> embryos among many biological organisms could be interpreted as
> justification for the claim that those organisms had common
> ancestors. Those similarities could also be interpreted as
> providing strong justification for the proposition that those
> organisms had a common designer or common designing-committee of
> designers.
The alternative that you suggest here doesn't quite explain why there
should be any correlation between traits. For instance, why would it
be the case that if you know that some species has three bones in its
ears, you can predict with certainty that individuals of this species
have at least some bodily hair at some point in their developmental
life-cycle (two defining traits of mammals)? If a designer or
designers was responsible, they didn't just re-use design ideas
however they wanted, they re-used them in a very specific way. It
looks as if they started out with the simplest organisms and then
varied its design in various ways taking each of the resulting
variants in turn to produce more variations based on them and so on.
This is one
way that a designer could have gone about it so as to give us our
branching taxonomy of living things into kingdoms, phyla, classes,
orders, families, genera and species.
So yes, it is possible to think of an alternative explanation in terms
of a designer, but it raises some difficult questions about why the
designer would have gone about it this way. Evolution is a simpler
explanation for this branching taxonomy with the added bonus that it
also explains a whole lot of other things like the arrangement of
fossils into layers with prerequisite forms appearing in lower strata,
the existence of fossils of extinct species at all depths, and there
are a whole lot of other quite subtle properties of living things that
are explained by evolution but don't follow from design arguments.
Here's a short list that I like repeating:
(1) Evolution accurately predicts that females of all species are
generally more selective when choosing their mates than males.
Arguments from design don't predict this.
(2) Evolution accurately predicts that the likelihood with which one
individual behaves altruistically towards another is proportional to
the amount of genetic material they share (i.e. their relatedness).
Arguments from design don't predict this.
(3) Evolution explains the instinctive desire to care for and protect
one's own offspring (and other cute little animals with big eyes).
Arguments from design don't predict this.
(4) Evolution predicts that life on earth has a long history.
Arguments from design don't predict this.
(5) Evolution accurately predicts that inheritance is a process
involving the passing on of discrete packets of genetic material
rather than a mixing/diluting process. Arguments from design don't
predict this.
In short, if you follow Paley's argument-from-design reasoning to its
logical conclusion, not only do you dismiss the idea that living
things have the same origins as things like rocks (they are too finely
tuned to their functions to be the products of chance), but you will
also be persuaded - if you look closely enough - that living things
appear to have evolved rather than designed. It is impossible to make
sense of the kind of evidence that I've listed above from a design
point of view without introducing new theoretical apparatus. You could
of course argue that the designer wanted it to look as though living
things had evolved, but again we're left with the question "Why do
this?".
>
> You state that "If these similarities weren't so obvious, it
> would be much harder to justify the 'extrapolation' from small to
> large changes." Should a possible-world's alternative state of
> affairs make a particular extrapolation even more of a ridiculous
> and implausible stretch, that does not mean that extrapolation is
> justified given an actual state of affairs.
>
What I'm saying is that it would be easy to criticise the
'extrapolation' if we didn't have any evidence, but there was a lot of
evidence that you didn't acknowledge in your earlier post. So to
continue with the 'extrapolation' metaphor, including all of the
sources of evidence helps when you want to 'join the dots of the
graph'.
> > > They looked like cousins, but there was neither a neatly graduated
> > > series of living links between them nor a converging fossil genealogy
> > > behind them. Darwin had to find processes by which the gaps could be
> > > bridged.
> > >
> > > Darwin entertained the very questionable opinion that animals and
> > > plants could vary in all directions and to an unlimited degree. In the
> > > first edition of The Origin of Species he said: "I can see no
> > > difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection,
> > > more and more aquatic in their habits, with larger and larger mouths,
> > > till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."1 He knew that
> > > this was not the common view, since as early as 1844 he had written:
> > > "That a limit to variation does exist in nature is assumed by most
> > > authors, though I am unable to discover a single fact on which this
> > > belief is grounded."2
> >
> > It is not necessarily a contradiction to believe simultaneously that
> > evolution can produce indefinitely many design variations and that it is
> > impossible for evolution to produce certain kinds of variants. The set
> > of prime numbers contains an infinite number of values, but doesn't
> > contain 4. So what exactly did Darwin mean in this quote? It seems
> > reasonable to me that he saw "no difficulty" because he could no reason
> > why any of the intermediate forms would be an impossible variant.
>
> Darwin saw no difficulty in a population of bears becoming in
> time more and more aquatic and as big as whales because he had a
> very strong belief/faith in the creative powers of Darwinian
> natural selection.
>
Did Darwin believe
(1) that evolution can produce an infinite variety of organisms, or
(2) that evolution could produce any conceivable organism?
There is a difference between these two positions which you don't seem
to have acknowledged and which is at the heart of the matter. In case
you're wondering, I believe (1) and not (2). If Darwin believed (2),
then that's his problem, but I am not convinced that he did. You can
believe that whales evolved from bear-like creatures without believing
(2).
>
> > > He neglected to add that he also could not discover a single fact on
> > > which an opposite belief might be grounded.* [*: One author whom
> > > Darwin must have had in mind was T. R. Malthus, whose _Essay on the
> > > Principle of Population_ influenced Darwin profoundly when he first
> > > read it in 1838. In chapter 1 of Book 3 of this work, Malthus took
> > > issue with those who contended that they could improve plants and
> > > animals as much as they liked. He pointed out that a variety of sheep
> > > had been bred for small head and legs, but that it could hardly be
> > > carried to a point where the head and legs disappeared entirely or
> > > were reduced to the scale of a rat. He added that a carnation would
> > > never produce a flower as big as a large cabbage. These statements are
> > > negatives that cannot he proved, but they are so reasonable that
> > > surely Darwin has the burden of proof when he takes the opposite
> > > position.]
> >
> > I think this is a red herring. Yes, there are constraints on form (see
> > D'Arcy Thompson's "On growth and form" on that issue), but I don't see
> > how this bears on the issue of speciation. Certain kinds of change
> > cannot occur. Yes, fine. Does that mean that speciation cannot occur?
> > No.
>
> I am not arguing that speciation (the arrival of organisms
> that can no longer interbreed) cannot occur. I agree with you
> that-- and think Macbeth would concur that-- speciation (the
> arrival of organisms that can no longer interbreed) can and does
> and has been observed to occur. At least 2 other creationists
> besides myself have acknowledged such:
>
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.9911082221330.16551-100000%40jabba.gl.umbc.edu
>
> You accept that "certain kinds of change cannot occur." Do you
> think arrangements of atoms and molecules changed in ways such
> that life came from non-life in the distant past apart from the
> input of intelligence?
>
Yes, I do believe that in the absense of any better explanation.
But it's important to point out that the theory of natural selection
is about what happened after the first replicators appeared. Natural
selection doesn't provide an explanation for how the first replicators
appeared and it is not intended to this any more than it is intended
to explain gravity. It's not a theory of gravity or the origin of life
- it's a theory of the origin of species, of the diversification of
variants into different niches.
> There are more varieties of faulty extrapolation than just
> linear extrapolation, as I discussed in
> better conception of faulty extrapolation
>
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0309142357280.7954-100000%40linux3.gl.umbc.edu
> which was a follow-up to
> fallacy of false extrapolation
>
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.4.44L.01.0309100834320.2240460-100000%40irix2.gl.umbc.edu
>
I understand what you mean, but what you mean is not the same thing
that "all statisticians recommend caution" about.
> You discussed 2 explanations for, in your words, "why there
> appear to be discontinuities in the fossil record." Would you
> agree with me that the fossil record lacks confirmation of the
> neo-Darwinian theory of natural selection? (Should you think the
> fossil record contains confirmation of the theory of natural
> selection: what data/evidence makes you think this is the case?)
>
This is where the standard of evidence gets very high for you, but the
presence of ANY discernable pattern of variation from one type to
another in the fossil record is positive evidence in support of
evolution and would be very difficult to explain from a design point
of view. Why do you demand that EVERY apparent discontinuity be
explained? We aren't sure how much information we should expect to
find in the fossil record so how would a discontinuity be a problem
for the theory? Fossils certainly aren't common.
> Your use of the word "fleeting" in connection with the speed of
> alleged-blindwatchmaking changes in contrast to the slowness of
> geological changes
> reminded me of Ager's book chapter entitled "The Fleeting Fossil"
> and a quote therein:
> Ager, Eldredge & Tattersall
>
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.990509232910.38199A-100000%40umbc8.umbc.edu
>
> And Ager's comments remind me of a remark by Bateson:
> 1922 Bateson, Lerner, Orwell
>
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.990810225527.4089209B-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu
> Perhaps I will detail what made Bateson agnostic as to the
> mechanism of blindwatchmaking, difficulties he thinks laymen need
> not concern themselves with. Inquisitive laymen might think
> differently.
>
>
> > > The heart of the problem is whether living things do indeed vary to an
> > > unlimited extent or, to state it differently, whether micro changes
> > > cumulate into macro effects. The instinctive feeling of untutored men
> > > is against this. The species look stable. We have all heard of
> > > disappointed breeders who carried their work to a certain point only
> > > to see the animals or plants revert where they had started. Despite
> > > strenuous efforts for two or three centuries, it has never been
> > > possible to produce a blue rose or a black tulip.8 Darwin himself knew
> > > in 1844 that most authors assumed there were limits to variation, and
> > > he also knew that among pigeons the crossing of highly bred varieties
> > > was apt to provoke a reversion to "the ancient rock-pigeon." Was he
> > > discouraged when, in the sixth and last edition of _The Origin of
> > > Species_, he quietly excised the above passage about converting bears
> > > into whales?
> > >
> >
> > The version that is sold in bookshops today is the first edition. It is
> > generally regarded to be the best version precisely because Darwin
> > weakened his thesis in later versions by making changes like this. He
> > even started leaning towards a Lamarkian view of inheritance by the
> > sixth edition. This is really only of interest to biographers unless you
> > believe that Darwin's word on evolution should be final.
>
These views are no longer accepted within the modern theory. Darwin
can be forgiven for weakening his theory because certain pieces of the
puzzle weren't available to him in his time. He apparently hadn't read
Mendel's work and so lacked a plausible mechanism for how inheritance
works. Indeed something like Mendel's version of inheritance is
necessary to make the unwatered-down version of his theory work.
>
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > Mayr notes that animal populations have a certain persistence or
> > > inertia, in that they resist sudden or drastic change, and he gives
> > > this persistence the elegant name of "genetic homeostasis." He also
> > > provides a splendid example of what I had been groping for-- the
> > > corollary tendency of animals and plants to balk at being bred too far
> > > in any direction. This comes out in his description of some work in
> > > 1948 with the famous fruit fly, _Drosophila melanogaster_.14 Here is
> > > the gist of his account.
> > >
> >
> > I guess we can expect that species will come to occupy the most stable
> > regions of design space simply because the unstable variants will keep
> > changing until they become stable variants. The question is what could
> > lead to the big changes if small changes always lead to less stability?
> > One answer might be that an environmental change alters the fitness
> > landscape making a previously stable variant unstable. Another
> > possibilty is that genetic drift brings a design closer to an
> > evolutionary pathway that leads to another stable design.
>
> Your mention of "design space" and "fitness landscape"
> reminded me of my desire for concreteness. Please name three
> living and/or extinct organisms that you think lack
> genetic homeostasis.
>
I don't know of any personally, and I'm not qualified to speculate on
this but if I were to guess I'd say that the species that are most
likely to be evolutionarily unstable would be the ones that have
recently been introduced to environments that they didn't evolve in or
which have recently come into contact with species that have been
introduced. I'm thinking specifically of Australia and the effect of
species that have been introduced since the country was collonised by
the British. I suspect that the ecological changes that are still
occurring in Australia as a result are providing strong evolutionary
pressures on the wildlife there given that many are going extinct.
>
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > Thus Eiseley says: "It would appear that careful domestic breeding,
> > > whatever it may do to improve the quality of race horses or cabbages,
> > > is not actually in itself the road to the endless biological deviation
> > > which is evolution. There is great irony in this situation, for more
> > > than almost any other single factor, domestic breeding has been used
> > > as an argument for the reality of evolution."19 Professor Deevey
> > > supplies terse phrases such as "the species barrier" and "the limited
> > > charter" to describe the situation, then confesses bankruptcy: "Some
> > > remarkable things have been done by crossbreeding and selection inside
> > > the species barrier, or within a larger circle of closely related
> > > species, such as the wheats. But wheat is still wheat, and not, for
> > > instance, grapefruit; and we can no more grow wings on pigs than hens
> > > can make cylindrical eggs."20 Thus my surmise about winged horses is
> > > confirmed in New Haven.
> > >
> >
> > As I said earlier, the inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical
> > eggs, etc. has no bearing on whether speciation can occur. That
> > evolution cannot produce some specific variant says nothing about
> > whether it can produce a different species.
>
> With which, if any, of these statements do you agree:
> a) The [Huck]"inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs,
> etc. has no bearing on whether speciation"/ the appearance
> of non-interbreeding populations can or cannot occur via
> neo-Darwinian natural selection.
> b) The inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs, etc.
> has no bearing on whether hens can become cows via
> neo-Darwinian natural selection.
> c) The inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs, etc.
> has no bearing on whether ferns can become oak trees via
> neo-Darwinian natural selection.
> d) The inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs, etc.
> has no bearing on whether bears can become whales via
> neo-Darwinian natural selection.
> e) The inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs, etc.
> has no bearing on whether bacteria can become humans via
> neo-Darwinian natural selection.
>
I agree with all of those statements.
david ford
david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
> > John, hopefully these will work:
> >
> > Macbeth on Faulty Extrapolation in Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
> > http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308240006280.21425-10
> > 0000%40linux2.gl.umbc.edu
>
> Thank you - yes, it works now.
>
> As soon as I read this - "I am going to use the terms "micro" and
> "macro" to describe small changes and large" I stopped. This is a
> fundamental mistake, as I described in my earlier posts, It invalidates
> the remaining argument because qualitative terms are arbitrary and
> subjective.
I missed seeing those earlier posts.
Your comment about qualitative terms is moderately arbitrary
and 90% or so subjective.
Nice refutation, by the way, of Macbeth's arguments. You should
be a philosopher.
> > Problems with Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
> > http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.10005310900310.1770
> > 2-100000%40jabba.gl.umbc.edu
>
> In this piece he says that the fossil record does not bear out the
> expectations of natural selection but he's wrong.
So you think the fossil record _does_ bear out the expectations of
the theory of natural selection? If so, please provide refs to the
peer-reviewed scientific literature. (Such a request cannot, surely,
be too much to ask of the reigning paradigm.)
> The expectations *some
> people may or may not have had* about natural selection may not be met,
> but we have much better ideas about how natural selection behaves, and
> it does not cause a slow continuous and constant rate of change, even
> leaving aside drift and founder effects.
>
> So no score for Macbeth. IIRC, this was dealt with by Kitcher...
I am talking about the theory of NS, and hope you are too. I agree
that the theory of NS does not postulate that blindwatchmaking
will be constant/ continuous. Do you think the theory of NS
postulates that blindwatchmaking can occur quickly? If so,
do you think the theory of NS can account for the blindwatchmaking
that allegedly occurred during the Cambrian Explosion?
John Wilkins
> On Fri, 29 Aug 2003, John Wilkins:
> david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>
> > > John, hopefully these will work:
> > >
> > > Macbeth on Faulty Extrapolation in Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
> > > http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308240006280.21425-10
> > > 0000%40linux2.gl.umbc.edu
> >
> > Thank you - yes, it works now.
> >
> > As soon as I read this - "I am going to use the terms "micro" and
> > "macro" to describe small changes and large" I stopped. This is a
> > fundamental mistake, as I described in my earlier posts, It invalidates
> > the remaining argument because qualitative terms are arbitrary and
> > subjective.
>
> I missed seeing those earlier posts.
> Your comment about qualitative terms is moderately arbitrary
> and 90% or so subjective.
> Nice refutation, by the way, of Macbeth's arguments. You should
> be a philosopher.
Not intended as a refutation of his arguments, but of his premises.
There is no qualitative distinction betwwen "macro" and "micro" any more
than there is between "big" and "small". Suppose I started out an
argument in favour of adults being born fully formed because "I am going
to use the terms "Big" and "Small" to mean distinct states"? You just
know I'm going to argue that you can't swap between states like that,
right? And it's a silly argument to make.
>
> > > Problems with Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
> > > http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.10005310900310.1770
> > > 2-100000%40jabba.gl.umbc.edu
> >
> > In this piece he says that the fossil record does not bear out the
> > expectations of natural selection but he's wrong.
>
> So you think the fossil record _does_ bear out the expectations of
> the theory of natural selection? If so, please provide refs to the
> peer-reviewed scientific literature. (Such a request cannot, surely,
> be too much to ask of the reigning paradigm.)
Saez, A. G., I. Probert, et al. (2003). "Pseudo-cryptic speciation in
coccolithophores." Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 100(12): 7163-8.
Coccolithophores are a group of calcifying unicellular algae
that constitute a major fraction of oceanic primary productivity, play
an important role in the global carbon cycle, and are key
biostratigraphic marker fossils. Their taxonomy is primarily based on
the morphology of the minute calcite plates, or coccoliths, covering the
cell. These are diverse and include widespread fine scale variation, of
which the biological/taxonomic significance is unknown. Do they
represent phenotypic plasticity, genetic polymorphisms, or
species-specific characters? Our research on five commonly occurring
coccolithophores supports the hypothesis that such variation represents
pseudocryptic speciation events, occurring between 0.3 and 12.9 million
years ago from a molecular clock estimation. This finding suggests
strong stabilizing selection acting on coccolithophorid phenotypes. Our
results also provide strong support for the use of fine scale
morphological characters of coccoliths in the fossil record to improve
biostratigraphic resolution and paleoceanographic data retrieval.
Lonnig, W. E. and H. Saedler (2002). "Chromosome rearrangements and
transposable elements." Annu Rev Genet 36: 389-410.
There has been limited corroboration to date for McClintock's
vision of gene regulation by transposable elements (TEs), although her
proposition on the origin of species by TE-induced complex chromosome
reorganizations in combination with gene mutations, i.e., the
involvement of both factors in relatively sudden formations of species
in many plant and animal genera, has been more promising. Moreover,
resolution is in sight for several seemingly contradictory phenomena
such as the endless reshuffling of chromosome structures and gene
sequences versus synteny and the constancy of living fossils (or stasis
in general). Recent wide-ranging investigations have confirmed and
enlarged the number of earlier cases of TE target site selection (hot
spots for TE integration), implying preestablished rather than
accidental chromosome rearrangements for nonhomologous recombination of
host DNA. The possibility of a partly predetermined generation of
biodiversity and new species is discussed. The views of several leading
transposon experts on the rather abrupt origin of new species have not
been synthesized into the macroevolutionary theory of the punctuated
equilibrium school of paleontology inferred from thoroughly consistent
features of the fossil record.
Albert, V. A., D. G. Oppenheimer, et al. (2002). "Pleiotropy, redundancy
and the evolution of flowers." Trends Plant Sci 7(7): 297-301.
Most angiosperm flowers are tightly integrated, functionally
bisexual shoots that have carpels with enclosed ovules. Flowering plants
evolved from within the gymnosperms, which lack this combination of
innovations. Paradoxically, phylogenetic reconstructions suggest that
the flowering plant lineage substantially pre-dates the evolution of
flowers themselves. We provide a model based on known gene regulatory
networks whereby positive selection on a single, partially redundant
gene duplicate 'trapped' the ancestors of flower-bearing plants into the
condensed, bisexual state approximately 130 million years ago. The LEAFY
(LFY) gene of Arabidopsis encodes a master regulator that functions as
the main conduit of environmental signals to the reproductive
developmental program. We directly link the elimination of one LFY
paralog, pleiotropically maintained in gymnosperms, to the sudden
appearance of flowers in the fossil record.
Wagner, P. J. (2000). "The quality of the fossil record and the accuracy
of phylogenetic inferences about sampling and diversity." Syst Biol
49(1): 65-86.
Because phylogenies can be estimated without stratigraphic data
and because estimated phylogenies also infer gaps in sampling, some
workers have used phylogeny estimates as templates for evaluating
sampling from the fossil record and for "correcting" historical
diversity patterns. However, it is not known how sampling intensity (the
probability of sampling taxa per unit time) and completeness (the
proportion of taxa sampled) affect the accuracy of phylogenetic
inferences, nor how phylogenetically inferred estimates of sampling and
diversity respond to inaccurate estimates of phylogeny. Both issues are
addressed with a series of simulations using simple models of character
evolution, varying speciation patterns, and various rates of speciation,
extinction, character change, and preservation. Parsimony estimates of
simulated phylogenies become less accurate as sampling decreases, and
inaccurate trees chronically underestimate sampling. Biotic factors such
as rates of morphologic change and extinction both affect the accuracy
of phylogenetic estimates and thus affect estimated gaps in sampling,
indicating that differences in implied sampling need not reflect actual
differences in sampling. Errors in inferred diversity are concentrated
early in the history of a clade. This, coupled with failure to account
for true extinction times (i.e., the Signor-Lipps effect), inflates
relative diversity levels early in clade histories. Because factors
other than differences in sampling predict differences in the numbers of
gaps implied by phylogeny estimates, inferred phylogenies can be
misleading templates for evaluating sampling or historical diversity
patterns.
Reznick, D. N. and C. K. Ghalambor (2001). "The population ecology of
contemporary adaptations: what empirical studies reveal about the
conditions that promote adaptive evolution." Genetica 112-113: 183-98.
Under what conditions might organisms be capable of rapid
adaptive evolution? We reviewed published studies documenting
contemporary adaptations in natural populations and looked for general
patterns in the population ecological causes. We found that studies of
contemporary adaptation fall into two general settings: (1) colonization
of new environments that established newly adapted populations, and (2)
local adaptations within the context of a heterogeneous environments and
metapopulation structure. Local ecological processes associated with
colonizations and introductions included exposure to: (1) a novel host
or food resource; (2) a new biophysical environment; (3) a new predator
community; and (4) a new coexisting competitor. The new environments
that were colonized often had depauperate communities, sometimes because
of anthropogenic disturbance. Local adaptation in heterogeneous
environments was also often associated with recent anthropogenic
changes, such as insecticide and herbicide resistance, or industrial
melanism. A common feature of many examples is the combination of
directional selection with at least a short-term opportunity for
population growth. We suggest that such opportunities for population
growth may be a key factor that promotes rapid evolution, since
directional selection might otherwise be expected to cause population
decline and create the potential for local extinction, which is an
ever-present alternative to local adaptation. We also address the large
discrepancy between the rate of evolution observed in contemporary
studies and the apparent rate of evolution seen in the fossil record.
Morris, P. J., L. C. Ivany, et al. (1995). "The challenge of
paleoecological stasis: reassessing sources of evolutionary stability."
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 92(24): 11269-73.
The paleontological record of the lower and middle Paleozoic
Appalachian foreland basin demonstrates an unprecedented level of
ecological and morphological stability on geological time scales. Some
70-80% of fossil morphospecies within assemblages persist in similar
relative abundances in coordinated packages lasting as long as 7 million
years despite evidence for environmental change and biotic disturbances.
These intervals of stability are separated by much shorter periods of
ecological and evolutionary change. This pattern appears widespread in
the fossil record. Existing concepts of the evolutionary process are
unable to explain this uniquely paleontological observation of faunawide
coordinated stasis. A principle of evolutionary stability that arises
from the ecosystem is explored here. We propose that hierarchical
ecosystem theory, when extended to geological time scales, can explain
long-term paleoecological stability as the result of ecosystem
organization in response to high-frequency disturbance. The accompanying
stability of fossil morphologies results from "ecological locking," in
which selection is seen as a high-rate response of populations that is
hierarchically constrained by lower-rate ecological processes. When
disturbance exceeds the capacity of the system, ecological crashes
remove these higher-level constraints, and evolution is free to proceed
at high rates of directional selection during the organization of a new
stable ecological hierarchy.
Knoll, A. H. and K. J. Niklas (1987). "Adaptation, plant evolution, and
the fossil record." Rev Palaeobot Palynol 50: 127-49.
The importance of adaptation in determining patterns of
evolution has become an important focus of debate in evolutionary
biology. As it pertains to paleobotany, the issue is whether or not
adaptive evolution mediated by natural selection is sufficient to
explain the stratigraphic distributions of taxa and character states
observed in the plant fossil record. One means of addressing this
question is the functional evaluation of stratigraphic series of plant
organs set in the context of paleoenvironmental change and temporal
patterns of floral composition within environments. For certain organ
systems, quantitative estimates of biophysical performance can be made
on the basis of structures preserved in the fossil record. Performance
estimates for plants separated in time or space can be compared
directly. Implicit in different hypotheses of the forces that shape the
evolutionary record (e.g. adaptation, mass extinction, rapid
environmental change, chance) are predictions about stratigraphic and
paleoenvironmental trends in the efficacy of functional performance.
Existing data suggest that following the evolution of a significant
structural innovation, adaptation for improved functional performance
can be a major determinant of evolutionary changes in plants; however,
there are structural and development limits to functional improvement,
and once these are reached, the structure in question may no longer
figure strongly in selection until and unless a new innovation evolves.
The Silurian-Devonian paleobotanical record is consistent with the
hypothesis that the succession of lowland floodplain dominants preserved
in the fossil record of this interval was determined principally by the
repeated evolution of new taxa that rose to ecological importance
because of competitive advantages conferred by improved biophysical
performance. This does not seem to be equally true for
Carboniferous-Jurassic dominants of swamp and lowland floodplain
environments. In these cases, environmental disruption appears to have
been a major factor in shaping the fossil record. This does not mean
that continuing adaptation was not important during this interval, but
it may indicate that adaptive evolution was strongest in environments
other than those best represented in the paleobotanical record.
Dilcher, D. (2000). "Toward a new synthesis: major evolutionary trends
in the angiosperm fossil record." Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 97(13):
7030-6.
Angiosperm paleobotany has widened its horizons, incorporated
new techniques, developed new databases, and accepted new questions that
can now focus on the evolution of the group. The fossil record of early
flowering plants is now playing an active role in addressing questions
of angiosperm phylogeny, angiosperm origins, and angiosperm radiations.
Three basic nodes of angiosperm radiations are identified: (i) the
closed carpel and showy radially symmetrical flower, (ii) the bilateral
flower, and (iii) fleshy fruits and nutritious nuts and seeds. These are
all coevolutionary events and spread out through time during angiosperm
evolution. The proposal is made that the genetics of the angiosperms
pressured the evolution of the group toward reproductive systems that
favored outcrossing. This resulted in the strongest selection in the
angiosperms being directed toward the flower, fruits, and seeds. That is
why these organs often provide the best systematic characters for the
group.
Mack, A. L. (2000). "Did fleshy fruit pulp evolve as a defence against
seed loss rather than as a dispersal mechanism?" J Biosci 25(1): 93-7.
Relatively few studies have examined the evolution of the
mutualism between endozoochorous plants and seed dispersers. Most seed
dispersal studies are ecological and examine the role of fruit pulp in
promoting seed dispersal. This interaction is often assumed to have
originated due to selection stemming from seed dispersers. Here I
suggest a "defence scenario" wherein fleshy fruits originated as
mechanisms to defend seeds and secondarily became structures to promote
seed dispersal. I suggest that frugivory followed from herbivores that
specialized on consuming seed defensive tissues and that enhanced seed
dispersal was initially a consequence of seed defence. The proposed
defence scenario is not posited as an explanation for the sequence that
led to all modern frugivores. However, it is suggested that seed
predation was the initial source of selection that led to fleshy fruits;
the necessary precursor to frugivory. Support is described from the
fossil record and from modern structures and interactions. Testable
predictions are made in hope that greater interest will be focused on
the defensive role of fleshy fruit pulp both in modern interactions and
historically.
Lovejoy, C. O., M. J. Cohn, et al. (1999). "Morphological analysis of
the mammalian postcranium: a developmental perspective." Proc Natl Acad
Sci U S A 96(23): 13247-52.
The past two decades have greatly improved our knowledge of
vertebrate skeletal morphogenesis. It is now clear that bony morphology
lacks individual descriptive specification and instead results from an
interplay between positional information assigned during early limb bud
deployment and its "execution" by highly conserved cellular response
programs of derived connective tissue cells (e.g., chondroblasts and
osteoblasts). Selection must therefore act on positional information and
its apportionment, rather than on more individuated aspects of
presumptive adult morphology. We suggest a trait classification system
that can help integrate these findings in both functional and
phylogenetic examinations of fossil mammals and provide examples from
the human fossil record.
I'll leave it there - a search at PubMed for "selection" AND "fossil
record" found 49 hits, of which around 2/3 seem relevant here. I'm sure
with other criteria I could increase that enormously, but I don't see
why I should do your reading for you...
>
> > The expectations *some
> > people may or may not have had* about natural selection may not be met,
> > but we have much better ideas about how natural selection behaves, and
> > it does not cause a slow continuous and constant rate of change, even
> > leaving aside drift and founder effects.
> >
> > So no score for Macbeth. IIRC, this was dealt with by Kitcher...
>
> I am talking about the theory of NS, and hope you are too. I agree
> that the theory of NS does not postulate that blindwatchmaking
> will be constant/ continuous. Do you think the theory of NS
> postulates that blindwatchmaking can occur quickly? If so,
> do you think the theory of NS can account for the blindwatchmaking
> that allegedly occurred during the Cambrian Explosion?
Yes, and yes. Leaving aside the implicit poisoned well in the phrase
"blindwatchmaking", selection, drift and developmental adaptation can
account very well for the Cambrian "explosion" (which, it transpires was
some 62 million years - just yesterday a protovertebrate from the
Ediacaran pre-Cambrian period was reported). But major morphological
variations can occur very rapidly *in geological terms* and still be
gradual *in genetic terms*, because the relative timescales are orders
of magnitude different.
< http://www.peripatus.gen.nz/paleontology/CamExp.html>
KelvynT
>just yesterday a protovertebrate from the
>Ediacaran pre-Cambrian period was reported
Wow. Pikaia eat your notochord out.
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,7643205%255E421,00.html
""It's just been sitting on our back veranda since I found it." "
Kelvyn
Mitchell Coffey
"The Flinders Ranges fossil pushes back by 25 million years the
evolutionary timeline of vertebrates - animals with a backbone
considered the path to human evolution."
Some Creationists the glass as half-empty; some see a new, 25 million
year gap in the fossil record.
Mitchell Coffey
Huck Turner
> Huck, your post appears below, with numbers inserted into it
> corresponding to my numbered responses to your thoughts.
I've cut and pasted your responses so that they directly follow the
comments they refer to. I think it makes it easier for anyone else
reading.
>
> On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Huck Turner wrote:
>
> > david ford <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
> > news:<Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0308...@linux2.gl.umbc.edu>...
> > > Macbeth, Norman. 1971. _Darwin Retried: An Appeal to Reason_ (NY:
> > > Dell Publishing Co., Inc.), 178pp.
> > >
> > > Chapter 4, "What Do the Breeders Show?":
> > >
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > The changes that Darwin observed in the breeding pens were all micro.
> > > They occurred without question, but they were not sufficient for his
> > > purposes when he was faced with macro gaps between his units (the
> > > types or species), because all of these started out with distinct
> > > forms even in the earliest fossils. Comparative anatomy and embryology
> > > showed resemblances between the units, but they also showed that
> > > between the units there were gulfs going back to the misty beginnings.
> > > Looking only at large domestic quadrupeds, it was easy to see that
> > > horses, cows, sheep, and goats all had a backbone, four limbs, a
> > > brain, a heart, a skull, and a reproductive system, and that these
> > > members were similar in many ways; but no one would say that these
> > > animals were identical.
> >
> > Yes, and this kind of evidence gives us very powerful justification for
> > arguing that these species had common ancestors. If these similarities
> > weren't so obvious, it would be much harder to justify the
> > "extrapolation" from small to large changes.
>
> I agree that similarities in anatomical structures and
> embryos among many biological organisms could be interpreted as
> justification for the claim that those organisms had common
> ancestors. Those similarities could also be interpreted as
> providing strong justification for the proposition that those
> organisms had a common designer or common designing-committee of
> designers.
The alternative that you suggest here doesn't quite explain why there
should be any correlation between traits. For instance, why would it
be the case that if you know that some species has three bones in its
ears, you can predict with certainty that individuals of this species
have at least some bodily hair at some point in their developmental
life-cycle (two defining traits of mammals)? If a designer or
designers was responsible, they didn't just re-use design ideas
however they wanted, they re-used them in a very specific way. It
looks as if they started out with the simplest organisms and then
varied its design in various ways taking each of the resulting
variants in turn to produce more variations based on it. This is one
way that a designer could have gone about it so as to give us our
branching taxonomy of living things into kingdoms, phyla, classes,
orders, families, genera and species.
So yes, it is possible to think of an alternative explanation in terms
of a designer, but it raises some difficult questions about why the
designer would have gone about it this way. Evolution is a simpler
explanation for this branching taxonomy with the added bonus that it
also explains a whole lot of other things like the arrangement of
fossils into layers with prerequisite forms appearing in lower strata,
the existence of fossils of extinct species at all depths, and there
are a whole lot of other quite subtle properties of living things that
are explained by evolution but don't follow from design arguments.
Here's a short list that I like repeating:
(1) Evolution accurately predicts that females of all species are
generally more selective when choosing their mates than males.
Arguments from design don't explain this.
(2) Evolution accurately predicts that the likelihood with which one
individual behaves altruistically towards another is proportional to
the amount of genetic material they share (i.e. their relatedness).
Arguments from design don't explain this.
(3) Evolution explains the instinctive desire to care for and protect
one's own offspring (and other cute little animals with big eyes).
Arguments from design don't explain this.
(4) Evolution predicts that life on earth has a long history.
Arguments from design don't explain this.
(5) Evolution accurately predicts that inheritance is a process
involving the passing on of discrete packets of genetic material
rather than a mixing/diluting process. Arguments from design don't
explain this.
In short, if you follow Paley's argument-from-design reasoning to its
logical conclusion, not only do you dismiss the idea that living
things have the same origins as things like rocks (they are too finely
tuned to their functions to be the products of chance), but you will
also be persuaded - if you look closely enough - that living things
appear to have evolved rather than designed. It is impossible to make
sense of the kind of evidence that I've listed above from a design
point of view without introducing new theoretical apparatus. You could
of course argue that the designer wanted it to look as though living
things had evolved, but again we're left with the question "Why do
this?".
>
> You state that "If these similarities weren't so obvious, it
> would be much harder to justify the 'extrapolation' from small to
> large changes." Should a possible-world's alternative state of
> affairs make a particular extrapolation even more of a ridiculous
> and implausible stretch, that does not mean that extrapolation is
> justified given an actual state of affairs.
>
What I'm saying is that it would be easy to criticise the
'extrapolation' if we didn't have any evidence, but there was a lot of
evidence that you didn't acknowledge in your earlier post. So to
continue with the 'extrapolation' metaphor, including all of the
sources of evidence helps when you want to 'join the dots of the
graph'.
> > > They looked like cousins, but there was neither a neatly graduated
> > > series of living links between them nor a converging fossil genealogy
> > > behind them. Darwin had to find processes by which the gaps could be
> > > bridged.
> > >
> > > Darwin entertained the very questionable opinion that animals and
> > > plants could vary in all directions and to an unlimited degree. In the
> > > first edition of The Origin of Species he said: "I can see no
> > > difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection,
> > > more and more aquatic in their habits, with larger and larger mouths,
> > > till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."1 He knew that
> > > this was not the common view, since as early as 1844 he had written:
> > > "That a limit to variation does exist in nature is assumed by most
> > > authors, though I am unable to discover a single fact on which this
> > > belief is grounded."2
> >
> > It is not necessarily a contradiction to believe simultaneously that
> > evolution can produce indefinitely many design variations and that it is
> > impossible for evolution to produce certain kinds of variants. The set
> > of prime numbers contains an infinite number of values, but doesn't
> > contain 4. So what exactly did Darwin mean in this quote? It seems
> > reasonable to me that he saw "no difficulty" because he could no reason
> > why any of the intermediate forms would be an impossible variant.
>
> Darwin saw no difficulty in a population of bears becoming in
> time more and more aquatic and as big as whales because he had a
> very strong belief/faith in the creative powers of Darwinian
> natural selection.
>
Did Darwin believe
(1) that evolution can produce an infinite variety of organisms, or
(2) that evolution could produce any conceivable organism?
There is a difference between these two positions which you don't seem
to have acknowledged and which is at the heart of the matter. In case
you're wondering, I believe (1) and not (2). If Darwin believed (2),
then that's his problem, but I am not convinced that he did. You can
believe that whales evolved from bear-like creatures without believing
(2).
>
> > > He neglected to add that he also could not discover a single fact on
> > > which an opposite belief might be grounded.* [*: One author whom
> > > Darwin must have had in mind was T. R. Malthus, whose _Essay on the
> > > Principle of Population_ influenced Darwin profoundly when he first
> > > read it in 1838. In chapter 1 of Book 3 of this work, Malthus took
> > > issue with those who contended that they could improve plants and
> > > animals as much as they liked. He pointed out that a variety of sheep
> > > had been bred for small head and legs, but that it could hardly be
> > > carried to a point where the head and legs disappeared entirely or
> > > were reduced to the scale of a rat. He added that a carnation would
> > > never produce a flower as big as a large cabbage. These statements are
> > > negatives that cannot he proved, but they are so reasonable that
> > > surely Darwin has the burden of proof when he takes the opposite
> > > position.]
> >
> > I think this is a red herring. Yes, there are constraints on form (see
> > D'Arcy Thompson's "On growth and form" on that issue), but I don't see
> > how this bears on the issue of speciation. Certain kinds of change
> > cannot occur. Yes, fine. Does that mean that speciation cannot occur?
> > No.
>
> I am not arguing that speciation (the arrival of organisms
> that can no longer interbreed) cannot occur. I agree with you
> that-- and think Macbeth would concur that-- speciation (the
> arrival of organisms that can no longer interbreed) can and does
> and has been observed to occur. At least 2 other creationists
> besides myself have acknowledged such:
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.10A.B3.9911082221330.16551-100000%40jabba.gl.umbc.edu
>
> You accept that "certain kinds of change cannot occur." Do you
> think arrangements of atoms and molecules changed in ways such
> that life came from non-life in the distant past apart from the
> input of intelligence?
>
Yes, I do believe that in the absense of any better explanation.
But it's important to point out that the theory of natural selection
is about what happened after the first replicators appeared. Natural
selection doesn't provide an explanation for how the first replicators
appeared and it is not intended to this any more than it is intended
to explain gravity. It's not a theory of gravity or the origin of life
- it's a theory of the origin of species, of the diversification of
variants into different niches.
>
> There are more varieties of faulty extrapolation than just
> linear extrapolation, as I discussed in
> better conception of faulty extrapolation
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0309142357280.7954-100000%40linux3.gl.umbc.edu
> which was a follow-up to
> fallacy of false extrapolation
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.4.44L.01.0309100834320.2240460-100000%40irix2.gl.umbc.edu
>
I understand what you mean, but what you mean is not the same thing
that "all
statisticians recommend caution" about.
>
> You discussed 2 explanations for, in your words, "why there
> appear to be discontinuities in the fossil record." Would you
> agree with me that the fossil record lacks confirmation of the
> neo-Darwinian theory of natural selection? (Should you think the
> fossil record contains confirmation of the theory of natural
> selection: what data/evidence makes you think this is the case?)
>
This is where the standard of evidence gets very high for you, but the
presence of ANY discernable pattern of variation from one type to
another in the fossil record is positive evidence in support of
evolution and would be very difficult to explain from a design point
of view. Why do you demand that EVERY apparent discontinuity be
explained? We aren't sure how much information we should expect to
find in the fossil record so how would a discontinuity be a problem
for the theory? Fossils certainly aren't common.
> Your use of the word "fleeting" in connection with the speed of
> alleged-blindwatchmaking changes in contrast to the slowness of
> geological changes
> reminded me of Ager's book chapter entitled "The Fleeting Fossil"
> and a quote therein:
> Ager, Eldredge & Tattersall
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.990509232910.38199A-100000%40umbc8.umbc.edu
>
> And Ager's comments remind me of a remark by Bateson:
> 1922 Bateson, Lerner, Orwell
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.990810225527.4089209B-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu
> Perhaps I will detail what made Bateson agnostic as to the
> mechanism of blindwatchmaking, difficulties he thinks laymen need
> not concern themselves with. Inquisitive laymen might think
> differently.
>
>
> > > The heart of the problem is whether living things do indeed vary to an
> > > unlimited extent or, to state it differently, whether micro changes
> > > cumulate into macro effects. The instinctive feeling of untutored men
> > > is against this. The species look stable. We have all heard of
> > > disappointed breeders who carried their work to a certain point only
> > > to see the animals or plants revert where they had started. Despite
> > > strenuous efforts for two or three centuries, it has never been
> > > possible to produce a blue rose or a black tulip.8 Darwin himself knew
> > > in 1844 that most authors assumed there were limits to variation, and
> > > he also knew that among pigeons the crossing of highly bred varieties
> > > was apt to provoke a reversion to "the ancient rock-pigeon." Was he
> > > discouraged when, in the sixth and last edition of _The Origin of
> > > Species_, he quietly excised the above passage about converting bears
> > > into whales?
> > >
> >
> > The version that is sold in bookshops today is the first edition. It is
> > generally regarded to be the best version precisely because Darwin
> > weakened his thesis in later versions by making changes like this. He
> > even started leaning towards a Lamarkian view of inheritance by the
> > sixth edition. This is really only of interest to biographers unless you
> > believe that Darwin's word on evolution should be final.
>
These views are no longer accepted within the modern theory. Darwin
can be forgiven for weakening his theory because certain pieces of the
puzzle weren't available to him in his time. He apparently hadn't read
Mendel's work and so lacked a plausible mechanism for how inheritance
works. Indeed something like Mendel's version of inheritance is
necessary to make the unwatered-down version of his theory work.
>
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > Mayr notes that animal populations have a certain persistence or
> > > inertia, in that they resist sudden or drastic change, and he gives
> > > this persistence the elegant name of "genetic homeostasis." He also
> > > provides a splendid example of what I had been groping for-- the
> > > corollary tendency of animals and plants to balk at being bred too far
> > > in any direction. This comes out in his description of some work in
> > > 1948 with the famous fruit fly, _Drosophila melanogaster_.14 Here is
> > > the gist of his account.
> > >
> >
> > I guess we can expect that species will come to occupy the most stable
> > regions of design space simply because the unstable variants will keep
> > changing until they become stable variants. The question is what could
> > lead to the big changes if small changes always lead to less stability?
> > One answer might be that an environmental change alters the fitness
> > landscape making a previously stable variant unstable. Another
> > possibilty is that genetic drift brings a design closer to an
> > evolutionary pathway that leads to another stable design.
>
> Your mention of "design space" and "fitness landscape"
> reminded me of my desire for concreteness. Please name three
> living and/or extinct organisms that you think lack
> genetic homeostasis.
>
I don't know of any personally, and I'm not qualified to speculate on
this but if I were to guess I'd say that the species that are most
likely to be evolutionarily unstable would be the ones that have
recently been introduced to environments that they didn't evolve in or
which have recently come into contact with species that have been
introduced. I'm thinking specifically of Australia and the effect of
species that have been introduced since the country was collonised by
the British. I suspect that the ecological changes that are still
occurring in Australia as a result are providing strong evolutionary
pressures on the wildlife there given that many are going extinct.
>
> > > [snip]
> > >
> > > Thus Eiseley says: "It would appear that careful domestic breeding,
> > > whatever it may do to improve the quality of race horses or cabbages,
> > > is not actually in itself the road to the endless biological deviation
> > > which is evolution. There is great irony in this situation, for more
> > > than almost any other single factor, domestic breeding has been used
> > > as an argument for the reality of evolution."19 Professor Deevey
> > > supplies terse phrases such as "the species barrier" and "the limited
> > > charter" to describe the situation, then confesses bankruptcy: "Some
> > > remarkable things have been done by crossbreeding and selection inside
> > > the species barrier, or within a larger circle of closely related
> > > species, such as the wheats. But wheat is still wheat, and not, for
> > > instance, grapefruit; and we can no more grow wings on pigs than hens
> > > can make cylindrical eggs."20 Thus my surmise about winged horses is
> > > confirmed in New Haven.
> > >
> >
> > As I said earlier, the inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical
> > eggs, etc. has no bearing on whether speciation can occur. That
> > evolution cannot produce some specific variant says nothing about
> > whether it can produce a different species.
>
> With which, if any, of these statements do you agree:
> a) The [Huck]"inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs,
> etc. has no bearing on whether speciation"/ the appearance
> of non-interbreeding populations can or cannot occur via
> neo-Darwinian natural selection.
> b) The inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs, etc.
> has no bearing on whether hens can become cows via
> neo-Darwinian natural selection.
> c) The inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs, etc.
> has no bearing on whether ferns can become oak trees via
> neo-Darwinian natural selection.
> d) The inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs, etc.
> has no bearing on whether bears can become whales via
> neo-Darwinian natural selection.
> e) The inability to breed hens that lay cylindrical eggs, etc.
> has no bearing on whether bacteria can become humans via
> neo-Darwinian natural selection.
>
I agree with all of those statements.
H.
Jack Crenshaw
>
<snip>
> Here's a short list that I like repeating:
>
> (1) Evolution accurately predicts that females of all species are
> generally more selective when choosing their mates than males.
> Arguments from design don't predict this.
> (2) Evolution accurately predicts that the likelihood with which one
> individual behaves altruistically towards another is proportional to
> the amount of genetic material they share (i.e. their relatedness).
> Arguments from design don't predict this.
> (3) Evolution explains the instinctive desire to care for and protect
> one's own offspring (and other cute little animals with big eyes).
> Arguments from design don't predict this.
> (4) Evolution predicts that life on earth has a long history.
> Arguments from design don't predict this.
> (5) Evolution accurately predicts that inheritance is a process
> involving the passing on of discrete packets of genetic material
> rather than a mixing/diluting process. Arguments from design don't
> predict this.
Sorry, I can't let these comments pass without challenge. To me, they
encapsulate, in a few short
bullets, everything that's wrong with the modern, emotion-driven rather
than scientific,
bullhockey that passes for evolutionary science. There is virtually
nothing related to science
in any of the points.
For starters, you begin each bullet with "Evolution accurately
predicts..."
Can we at least agree that Evolution doesn't predict _ANYTHING_???
Evolution just ... evolves.
You have made the usual mistake of anthropomorphizing it. Some days,
evolution can seem awfully
smart, selecting things and predicting things and confirming things the
way it does.
Of course, you may argue (with good justification) that you didn't
really mean "evolution, the process,"
but the Darwinian theory of natural selection. I'm sure that's what you
did mean, and I understand that
the term gets tossed around so often in S.S that a little shorthand may
be in order. But even this is
also wrong. The TOE, or TNS, also doesn't predict anything.
Here's the deal: Only _PEOPLE_ predict things. I think what you might
be trying to say is that if one
accepts the TOE, one can use it to predict things that can later be
observed to be true. But that also
is wrong.
Two things are wrong with the statement. First, "evolution" only
predicts the things you list if one is
completely sold on the theory, to the exclusion of all else. Fact is, I
doubt very seriously if it really
_DOES_ predict all the things you assert with such certainty. I
challenge you to show me one truly
scientific study in which "evolution" predicts "females of all species
are
> generally more selective when choosing their mates than males." I simply don't believe it.
Second, in the classical description of the scientific method, it's
better if the predictions that a given hypothesis makes get made
_BEFORE_ the experiment is performed, not after. Admittedly, since
evolution
takes millions of years, it's rather difficult to set up an experiment
we don't already know the answer to
(ridiculous claims of evolution occuring in a matter of months to the
contrary, notwithstanding).
Even so, if one is thoroughly sold on a given paradigm, and confident
that it predicts all things, one can
hardly be surprised to find that one finds fulfilled predictions under
every rock. To me, the thing that
most damages the credibility of the TOE is the maddening propensity of
its devotees to remark, AFTER THE
FACT, "Well, evolution predicted that."
Finally, having said that I didn't think your bulleted predictions of
predictions carry much weight,
I also must tell you frankly that I disbelieve every single one of
them. You say, for example,
> (4) Evolution predicts that life on earth has a long history.
> Arguments from design don't predict this.
I don't see anyplace in the TOE that "predicts" a long history for life,
except for the obvious
observation that evolution takes a long time. In fact, much _TOO_ long
to have been accomplished in the
time available. Show me the prediction, then we'll talk.
Further, the statement that "arguments from design don't predict this"
is flat-out false. The whole
point of the debate between naturalism and design theory is that the
outcome is virtually indistinguishable.
Let's stipulate that, at some time in the past, a species of sponge
evolved into a sea cucumber. You say
this was the work of Natural Selection. I say it was part of God's
design. Someone else might speculate
that it was the work of a giant mololith. Yet someone else, who saw
"Mission to Mars," might suggest
that the event was programmed into DNA by Martians. There is _NO_ way
to discern who's right.
Can you not see this? Are you so blinded by your faith in the TOE that
you can't see that the data
doesn't tell us enough to distinguish between the conjectures?
You may feel, and claim, that you are "more right" than the rest of us,
because your conjecture doesn't
require supernatural agents or other "exceptional" methods.
No. All it does is to require more time than the all the ages of all the
universes "predicted" by
String Theory, laid end to end. Plus a lot of luck.
I claim that the evolutionary step was planned by a designer, and it
happened in a miraculous way,
but I can't prove it. You claim that all it required was a little time
and a little luck, and the outcome was inevitable -- even "predicted."
Yet you can't provide even the slightest ghost of an outline of the
steps by which this miracle occurred -- only armwaving claims without
data.
Jack
Steven J.
"Jack Crenshaw" <jcr...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3FCAB8C6...@earthlink.net...
> Huck Turner wrote:
> >
> <snip>
> > Here's a short list that I like repeating:
> >
> > (1) Evolution accurately predicts that females of all species are
> > generally more selective when choosing their mates than males.
>
>
> Sorry, I can't let these comments pass without challenge. To me, they
> encapsulate, in a few short
> bullets, everything that's wrong with the modern, emotion-driven rather
> than scientific,
> bullhockey that passes for evolutionary science. There is virtually
> nothing related to science in any of the points.
>
> For starters, you begin each bullet with "Evolution accurately
> predicts..."
>
>
> Fact is, I doubt very seriously if it really
> _DOES_ predict all the things you assert with such certainty. I
> challenge you to show me one truly
> scientific study in which "evolution" predicts "females of all species
> are generally more selective when choosing their mates than males."
> I simply don't believe it.
>
females are generally more selective in choosing their mates than males."
To show that the theory of evolution predicted the thing, examination of
statements of the theory of evolution would be more in order. I must say in
this case that you are surely right to doubt the theory predicts any such
thing (or enables people to predict such a thing, if you will). Charles
Darwin, the original proponent of the notion of female choice, noted that
there were a few species in which males did the choosing:
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man/chapter_08.html
In general, any claim that evolutionary theory predicts that in *all*
species some rule will hold is surely suspect; there will always be species
with extreme circumstances of life and very odd selective pressures, making
for exceptions to general rules. All species are capable of reproduction,
but I hardly think that prediction could be unique to evolutionary theory.
>
> Second, in the classical description of the scientific method, it's
> better if the predictions that a given hypothesis makes get made
> _BEFORE_ the experiment is performed, not after. Admittedly, since
> evolution
> takes millions of years, it's rather difficult to set up an experiment
> we don't already know the answer to
> (ridiculous claims of evolution occuring in a matter of months to the
> contrary, notwithstanding).
>
But you don't have to wait for a new species to evolve in order to test a
prediction. It is perfectly possible to make predictions about the effects
(observable in the present) of events in the past. While I am suspicious of
Tucker's first claim especially, that females in every species are choosier
about mates, it is testable by examining females in various species as they
exist today, with no need to worry about what they might evolve into. The
same is true of Tucker's other examples; we can check here and now to see if
altruism is stronger and more reliable towards near kindred, for example.
It is quite routine to inspect gene frequencies in populations to see
whether their spread (in the past) is consistent with natural selection vs.
other causes of change in gene frequencies over time.
This is the routine method of testing predictions about common descent: do
the various traits of current species fall into the consistent nested
hierarchy predicted by the theory of evolution? Do species that ought (on
the basis of many shared homologies) appear closely related show signs of
shared history, like shared pseudogenes, endogenous retroviruses, and
vestigial morphologies? These are questions to which, in many cases, the
answers are not known, or were not known until the tests were done and
observations made.
>
> Even so, if one is thoroughly sold on a given paradigm, and confident
> that it predicts all things, one can
> hardly be surprised to find that one finds fulfilled predictions under
> every rock. To me, the thing that
> most damages the credibility of the TOE is the maddening propensity of
> its devotees to remark, AFTER THE
> FACT, "Well, evolution predicted that."
>
Well, there is a point, of course.
>
> Finally, having said that I didn't think your bulleted predictions of
> predictions carry much weight,
> I also must tell you frankly that I disbelieve every single one of
> them. You say, for example,
>
> > (4) Evolution predicts that life on earth has a long history.
> > Arguments from design don't predict this.
>
> I don't see anyplace in the TOE that "predicts" a long history for life,
> except for the obvious
> observation that evolution takes a long time. In fact, much _TOO_ long
> to have been accomplished in the
> time available. Show me the prediction, then we'll talk.
>
> Further, the statement that "arguments from design don't predict this"
> is flat-out false. The whole
> point of the debate between naturalism and design theory is that the
> outcome is virtually indistinguishable.
>
Yes, but that is because "design theory" is compatible with any set of
observations whatsoever, because "design theory" refuses to state anything
testable about the Designer, His purposes, and His methods of design. The
theory of evolution implies that living things fall into nested hieararchies
(or possibly, as is the case, one large nested hieararchy, with the
homologies shared by higher and higher taxa reflecting inheritance from more
and more ancient common ancestors). Human designers don't design suites of
artifacts that fall into consistent nested hierarchies (because they
cross-copy designs from one lineage to another) but a Designer of unknown
nature and design philosophy might. Or might not. Who can say? Descent
with modification by natural selection implies vestigial structures, as
ancestral organs part or all of whose former functionality is no longer
needed gradually lose functionality. An intelligent designer operating by
human logic, who was able to construct many different designs for most
functions, would not need to use similar designs when the functions are so
very different, or absent altogether. But an Intelligent Designer of
unknown purposes and values might, or might not, design that way.
>
> Let's stipulate that, at some time in the past, a species of sponge
> evolved into a sea cucumber. You say
> this was the work of Natural Selection. I say it was part of God's
> design. Someone else might speculate
> that it was the work of a giant mololith. Yet someone else, who saw
> "Mission to Mars," might suggest
> that the event was programmed into DNA by Martians. There is _NO_ way
> to discern who's right.
>
Well, we have examples of mutation and natural selection in the world today;
this contrasts with the paucity of observed design events (other than those
of human genetic engineers, who don't seem a good explanation for sponges
evolving into sea cucumbers), or of Martians, or of giant monoliths (some
monoliths, all apparently of human manufacture, are observed, but their
biological effects seem entirely passive and local). This seems to me an
argument in favor of natural selection. Note, also, that it is possible to
predict how natural selection ought to work; as noted, we can't say how God
ought to design, or how Martians or monoliths ought to engage in genetic
engineering. If natural selection were the mechanism, there ought not to be
intermediate steps requiring structures that would only be useful later, not
to the organisms that first had them, for example.
>
> Can you not see this? Are you so blinded by your faith in the TOE that
> you can't see that the data
> doesn't tell us enough to distinguish between the conjectures?
>
> You may feel, and claim, that you are "more right" than the rest of us,
> because your conjecture doesn't
> require supernatural agents or other "exceptional" methods.
>
> No. All it does is to require more time than the all the ages of all the
> universes "predicted" by
> String Theory, laid end to end. Plus a lot of luck.
>
I'm sure you've argued for this point in the past. I don't recall those
arguments, though I suspect they may involve the fallacy of trying to
calculate the odds of reaching the particular outcomes we observe, rather
than the odds of achieving some one of a vast number of roughly equivalent
outcomes.
>
> I claim that the evolutionary step was planned by a designer, and it
> happened in a miraculous way,
> but I can't prove it. You claim that all it required was a little time
> and a little luck, and the outcome was inevitable -- even "predicted."
>
No, the claim pretty clearly was that certain aspects of the outcome were
inevitable and predicted, not that the outcome in any detail was.
>
> Yet you can't provide even the slightest ghost of an outline of the
> steps by which this miracle occurred -- only armwaving claims without
> data.
>
> Jack
>
-- Steven J.
Kevin Aylward
> Huck Turner wrote:
>
> Further, the statement that "arguments from design don't predict this"
> is flat-out false. The whole
> point of the debate between naturalism and design theory is that the
> outcome is virtually indistinguishable.
> Let's stipulate that, at some time in the past, a species of sponge
> evolved into a sea cucumber. You say
> this was the work of Natural Selection. I say it was part of God's
> design. Someone else might speculate
> that it was the work of a giant mololith. Yet someone else, who saw
> "Mission to Mars," might suggest
> that the event was programmed into DNA by Martians. There is _NO_ way
> to discern who's right.
Ok, so you believe in in magic. If that makes you happy, go with it, but
dont try to makes all as daft as you.
http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/index.html
Kevin Aylward
salesE...@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.
"Understanding" itself requires consciousness,
therefore consciousness cannot be "understood"
without referring to itself for the explanation,
therefore the "hard problem" of consciousness,
is intrinsically unsolvable as it is self referral.
Kevin Aylward
Ok, this was a long referance, but the relevant bit seems to be a
mistaken argument. In my opinion, the example of females not being
choosy from this argument, is *false*. e.g.
"A few exceptional cases occur in various classes of animals, in
which the females instead of the males have acquired well pronounced
secondary sexual characters, such as brighter colours, greater size,
strength, or pugnacity. With birds there has sometimes been a complete
transposition of the ordinary characters proper to each sex; the
females having become the more eager in courtship, the males remaining
comparatively passive, but apparently selecting the more attractive
females, as we may infer from the results."
This is a completely different issue. I disagree, with that the fact
that females, simple by masquerading as a higher quality female, mean
that they are more *eager* to *mate*. They simply want to attract the
best mate, this does *not* mean that they are more eager to mate with
*any* male.
I address this here http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/fashions.html.
There are two separate issues. Being better quality, and pretending to
be better quality.
The argument for males not being choosy, and females being very choosy
is here http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/malefemale.html. This is
based on a further result based on gaussian distributions, that as
quality increases, the numbers at that quality falls faster,
http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/replicatortheory.html.
Other than the Darwinian axioms of, variation, replication, and
selection, the assumption that females carry the baby is all that is
required.
Kevin Aylward
salesE...@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.
http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/index.html
Lilith
<snip>
>
> Further, the statement that "arguments from design don't predict this"
> is flat-out false. The whole
> point of the debate between naturalism and design theory is that the
> outcome is virtually indistinguishable.
> Let's stipulate that, at some time in the past, a species of sponge
> evolved into a sea cucumber. You say
> this was the work of Natural Selection. I say it was part of God's
> design. Someone else might speculate
> that it was the work of a giant mololith. Yet someone else, who saw
> "Mission to Mars," might suggest
> that the event was programmed into DNA by Martians. There is _NO_ way
> to discern who's right.
8 hours ago, say you checked on me in Boston. I was at Logan airport.
Now, 8 hours later, you check on me again. I'm in Charles De Gaulle
airport, just outside of Paris.
Did I fly there on the plane? There's no "proof", other than my word
for it, and a few pieces of paper, that I flew from Boston to Paris on
a plane that happened to be scheduled from the start of that 8 hour
period of time, to the end. Let's call it Flight 888.
We could also conjecture that I teleported to Europe from Boston. A
giant space alien could have came down in his UFO and zapped me, and I
ended up in France, albeit with a plane ticket and boarding pass
(helpfully printed for me by the space aliens who hope to fool
everyone). I also have all the usual shwag you get in an overseas
plane flight. Not only that, but the aliens have helpfully deposited
me in the Charles De Gaulle airport just when you check on my location
8 hours after your check on me in Boston.
In all seriousness, how did I get to CDG from Logan? Someone could
claim I flew there with my arms flapping, or that I was zapped there
by a deity. Who's right? How do we know anything?
The point in all this is, for the sponge-sea cucumber mutation is that
we know the mechanism of mutation and genomic change, as in this case
we know that to get overseas in 8 hours these days most likely
requires a airplane flight.
We can predict what the sea cucumber genome must roughly look like, or
bear witness to, if it had evolved from sponges, just as we know that
if I take an overseas flight, I must have been given some evidence of
my boarding (pass/ticket).
We know where the sea cucumber's genome and protein sequences must
fall in an ordered phylogenetic study as compared to the sponges, just
as Flight 888 has an obvious trail from Boston to Logan in that 8-hour
period of time and will appear on a flight listing between earlier and
later flights.
We must also find the sea cucumber in an environment and with a
biological system in a believable state (ie, likely not walking up on
land with legs and a backbone after a few million years of divergence
from a sponge group with a close phylogenetic relationship) just as
you should find me in CDG after 8 hours, not Tokyo.
We should see genes in the sea cucumber that have nearly the same
sequence as those in sponges, but small but perhaps radical changes in
biological systems that have been jury-rigged from the sponge group
for the new function. The plane analogy closest to this is that I
should have passed over the eastern tip of Nova Scotia, south of
England more or less, and over to CDG in a recognizable route.
Anyway, the point in all this, is I can throw away ALL evidence and
claim that all possibilities are equal. But, deliberate ignorance is
very silly. We know the basic mechanism of getting sponge to sea
cucumber . Throwing away all genetic/molecular/ecological/biological
evidence and saying any solution is possible is just a game played by
those who are trying to fit reality into their own skewed perceptions.
However, facts, as observed, are apt to break such deliberate
ignorance, just as ice seeping into rock can shatter it. My suggestion
to anyone dallying with such ignorance is to check the data, consider
the overall picture, and do some science. Waving around ignorance as
an excuse that evolutionary theory is "just as good" as a space alien
is delusion, pure and simple.
I can make a prediction, now, in fact. I predict all sponges, and
animals that have close biological relationships to sponges, will fall
in a phylogenetic tree that makes perfect sense in light of the
biology. Sponges, so far, have not been deeply sequenced, though
someone I know is approaching JGI to work on something like that. Will
sponges group with cheetahs? No. Their proteins, and their sequences,
mutable as they are, will group strongly with other species that are
closer on the evolutionary tree, for several reasons, most of which
are covered in talk.origins faqs or in online resources.
> Can you not see this? Are you so blinded by your faith in the TOE that
> you can't see that the data
> doesn't tell us enough to distinguish between the conjectures?
Going back to the plane bit, I don't expect my mother is so blinded by
her faith in the aviation industry that she would out-of-hand dismiss
me being teleported by space aliens just by her faith in aviation. I
rather like to think my mother is more practical than that. She
dismisses all the other alternatives as unlikely, for the same reason
that we dismiss other unlikely events. No faith required.
Of course, you can argue with me that faith is required to dismiss
unlikely events, but then I ask you why you're not standing out in
your back yard with a laser pointer, trying to signal aliens to pick
you up and get you to some important meeting overseas. Is it your lack
of faith? Are your bags packed?
Lilith
Richard Smol
> >
> <snip>
> > Here's a short list that I like repeating:
> >
> > (1) Evolution accurately predicts that females of all species are
> > generally more selective when choosing their mates than males.
> > Arguments from design don't predict this.
> > (2) Evolution accurately predicts that the likelihood with which one
> > individual behaves altruistically towards another is proportional to
> > the amount of genetic material they share (i.e. their relatedness).
> > Arguments from design don't predict this.
> > (3) Evolution explains the instinctive desire to care for and protect
> > one's own offspring (and other cute little animals with big eyes).
> > Arguments from design don't predict this.
> > (4) Evolution predicts that life on earth has a long history.
> > Arguments from design don't predict this.
> > (5) Evolution accurately predicts that inheritance is a process
> > involving the passing on of discrete packets of genetic material
> > rather than a mixing/diluting process. Arguments from design don't
> > predict this.
>
> Sorry, I can't let these comments pass without challenge. To me, they
> encapsulate, in a few short
> bullets, everything that's wrong with the modern, emotion-driven rather
> than scientific,
> bullhockey that passes for evolutionary science.
Naturally, calling something "bullhockey" is not emotional
at all.
> There is virtually
> nothing related to science in any of the points.
Except for that they are scientific predictions, of course.
> For starters, you begin each bullet with "Evolution accurately
> predicts..."
>
> Can we at least agree that Evolution doesn't predict _ANYTHING_???
> Evolution just ... evolves.
Only if you mean that the evolutionary process itself changes
in the course of time.
> You have made the usual mistake of anthropomorphizing it. Some days,
> evolution can seem awfully
> smart, selecting things and predicting things and confirming things the
> way it does.
Which is, of course, way worse than anthropomorphizing natural
processes by attributing them to some "designer".. right?
> Of course, you may argue (with good justification) that you didn't
> really mean "evolution, the process,"
> but the Darwinian theory of natural selection. I'm sure that's what you
> did mean, and I understand that
> the term gets tossed around so often in S.S that a little shorthand may
> be in order. But even this is
> also wrong. The TOE, or TNS, also doesn't predict anything.
You paternalize much?
> Here's the deal: Only _PEOPLE_ predict things. I think what you might
> be trying to say is that if one
> accepts the TOE, one can use it to predict things that can later be
> observed to be true. But that also is wrong.
Except, of course, the numerous predictions based on the TOE
that have come true.
> Two things are wrong with the statement. First, "evolution" only
> predicts the things you list if one i completely sold on the theory,
> to the exclusion of all else.
Unfortunately there is no other scientific theory of life that
has even the slightest shred of predictive power the theory
of evolution has.
> Fact is, I doubt very seriously if it really
> _DOES_ predict all the things you assert with such certainty.
If you really doubt that, then try to address the specific
claims instead of trying to debunk a whole theory which has
avalanges of evidence in its favor.
> I challenge you to show me one truly
> scientific study in which "evolution" predicts "females of all species
> are generally more selective when choosing their mates than males."
> I simply don't believe it.
This argument from personal inrcedulity is very weak.
> Second, in the classical description of the scientific method, it's
> better if the predictions that a given hypothesis makes get made
> _BEFORE_ the experiment is performed, not after.
Bogus. You have to be able to predict observations, which
can easily have their causes in the past. Astronomy works
on the same principle.
> Admittedly, since evolution
> takes millions of years, it's rather difficult to set up an experiment
> we don't already know the answer to
Science doesn't only work with lab experiments. It is quite
impossible to have a supernova explosion in a lab, for example.
> (ridiculous claims of evolution occuring in a matter of months to the
> contrary, notwithstanding).
Those are not ridiculous. Did you ever hear of SARS... or the AIDS
virus?
> Even so, if one is thoroughly sold on a given paradigm, and confident
> that it predicts all things, one can
> hardly be surprised to find that one finds fulfilled predictions under
> every rock. To me, the thing that
> most damages the credibility of the TOE is the maddening propensity of
> its devotees to remark, AFTER THE
> FACT, "Well, evolution predicted that."
You have no idea how science works and how observations are matched
with theories. Before you post more drivel like this, you'd better
get your ass to a library.
> Finally, having said that I didn't think your bulleted predictions of
> predictions carry much weight,
> I also must tell you frankly that I disbelieve every single one of
> them. You say, for example,
>
> > (4) Evolution predicts that life on earth has a long history.
> > Arguments from design don't predict this.
>
> I don't see anyplace in the TOE that "predicts" a long history for life,
> except for the obvious observation that evolution takes a long time.
> In fact, much _TOO_ long to have been accomplished in the
> time available. Show me the prediction, then we'll talk.
For someone complaining about unfounded assertions, this is quite
a silly remark. Evolution can take place within time frames that
are geologically comparatively insignificant.
> Further, the statement that "arguments from design don't predict this"
> is flat-out false. The whole
> point of the debate between naturalism and design theory is that the
> outcome is virtually indistinguishable.
No, the whole point is that there is no evidence of any
act of design or the existence of desginers.
> Let's stipulate that, at some time in the past, a species of sponge
> evolved into a sea cucumber. You say
> this was the work of Natural Selection. I say it was part of God's
> design. Someone else might speculate
> that it was the work of a giant mololith. Yet someone else, who saw
> "Mission to Mars," might suggest
> that the event was programmed into DNA by Martians. There is _NO_ way
> to discern who's right.
Occam's razor: there is no need whatsoever to stipulate a designer,
so it is totally unnecessary to take one into account.
> Can you not see this? Are you so blinded by your faith in the TOE that
> you can't see that the data
> doesn't tell us enough to distinguish between the conjectures?
TOE is not a faith. It is a scientific theory. I don't "believe"
in TOE, but the huge mass of evidence leaves me no other choice
than to accept it.
> You may feel, and claim, that you are "more right" than the rest of us,
> because your conjecture doesn't
> require supernatural agents or other "exceptional" methods.
There is no need for those, so it's unscientific to bring them
into the picture. Occam's razor, remember?
> No. All it does is to require more time than the all the ages of all the
> universes "predicted" by String Theory, laid end to end. Plus a lot
> of luck.
Nonsense. Evolution doesn't take that long.
> I claim that the evolutionary step was planned by a designer, and it
> happened in a miraculous way, but I can't prove it.
You don't have to prove it. Providing evidence is quite sufficient.
> You claim that all it required was a little time
> and a little luck, and the outcome was inevitable -- even "predicted."
And supported by the evidence.
> Yet you can't provide even the slightest ghost of an outline of the
> steps by which this miracle occurred -- only armwaving claims without
> data.
Except, of course, for all the data which is evidence for the theory
of evolution.
RS
Chris Porter
Put that in your pipefish and smoke it!
(Sorry, I think it's not the gender, is what I'm trying to say.
It's the energy expenditure.My understanding is that the
male Syngnathidae are quite choosy about the females they
will mate with.So maybe it's actually "the assumption of which
gender carries the baby is all that is required")
btw, I really think something interesting would happen
synergistically if you got in contact with Peter F.from sci.bio.evolution.
--
Cheers, Chris Porter <http://home.comcast.net/~chrisporterillustration/>
Kevin Aylward
Maybe.
> It's the energy expenditure.
Not in my view.
I have explained in that paper,
http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/malefemale.html
*********************
Typical explanations as to why females are highly selective are often
based on the notion of limited resources. That is, a female invests for
more resources to an offspring than the male. This is shown to be an
invalid explanation as, although it is correct statement, this result
has been derived without this assumption. The fact that females can not
continually have offspring but have to wait until the offspring is born,
is sufficient for the conclusion. That is, it is a time per generation
limitation, not a resource limitation.
**************
Any explanation cannot be correct, if the *same* result follows without
that explanation.
>My understanding is that the
> male Syngnathidae are quite choosy about the females they
> will mate with.
>So maybe it's actually "the assumption of which
> gender carries the baby is all that is required")
>
Yes. I just looked this up. Strange creatures. Of course the argument I
used must be modified for this case. The basic mating part of the theory
is based on the "time before next effective mating can occur", not who
carries the baby. This particular assumption is *only* introduced at the
human *application* of the theory. As the male seahourse is carrying the
baby in *this* case, it limits new matings, hence the argument must be
reversed to account for this. This doesn't effect the theory in any way.
>
> btw, I really think something interesting would happen
> synergistically if you got in contact with Peter F.from
> sci.bio.evolution.
Who is he?
Hiero5ant
I'll be out of town for a good chunk of December, so I might as well
start nominating early...not that I wouldn't have nominated this anyway :)
"Lilith" <lil...@umich.edu> wrote in message
news:75200cbc.03120...@posting.google.com...
Huck Turner
Yes, this is what I meant. It would be obviously false to claim that
the process itself makes predictions.
> But even this is
> also wrong. The TOE, or TNS, also doesn't predict anything.
>
> Here's the deal: Only _PEOPLE_ predict things. I think what you might
> be trying to say is that if one
> accepts the TOE, one can use it to predict things that can later be
> observed to be true.
Yes, this is what I meant. It would be obviously false to claim that a
concept makes predictions without the aid of a sentient being.
> But that also
> is wrong.
>
> Two things are wrong with the statement. First, "evolution" only
> predicts the things you list if one is
> completely sold on the theory, to the exclusion of all else. Fact is, I
> doubt very seriously if it really
> _DOES_ predict all the things you assert with such certainty. I
> challenge you to show me one truly
> scientific study in which "evolution" predicts "females of all species
> are
> > generally more selective when choosing their mates than males." I simply don't believe it.
Just to make sure we're on the same page here, let's remember that
scientists test theories by looking at the predictions that can be
made from them. So for example, Einstein's theory of general
relativity makes a number of predictions like that a ray of light will
be bent by the gravitational attraction of very massive objects like
the sun. To test this prediction, scientists observed whether stars
get displaced from their usual positions when near the Sun in the sky.
They had to do this during a solar eclipse so that they could actually
see them and found that they were indeed displaced by the amount that
Einstein's equations predicted.
For a theory to be a *scientific* theory, it must make predictions
that can be tested. If the results of experiments or observations
don't match the predictions of the theory, then we know that the
theory is wrong or incomplete. So if a theory survives after more and
more of its predictions are tested, then we get more and more
confident that it is correct.
The theory of natural selection leads to the prediction that females
are generally more selective than males because there is an asymmetry
between the sexes when it comes to the costs associated with
reproduction. Females have to physically bear the offspring and males
don't. This frees up males to potentially impregnate other females so
for males, promiscuity could be an adaptive strategy for spreading
genes as widely as possible. Females on the other hand can only
produce a certain number of offspring so their genes are much more
likely to spread if they choose their mates carefully, by for instance
selecting mates that are healthier, or who are more likely to
contribute to the rearing of the offspring by virtue of their status,
commitment etc.. This places the reproductive strategies of males and
females in conflict. Read chapter 9 of Richard Dawkins's "The Selfish
Gene" to see the details of this prediction and some of the
observations that confirm that different strategies have indeed
evolved in many species. For more current research including research
about asymmetries in human reproductive decisions, you might try
digging into some of the articles in this journal:
http://www.science.mcmaster.ca/Psychology/ehb/p4.htm
>
> Second, in the classical description of the scientific method, it's
> better if the predictions that a given hypothesis makes get made
> _BEFORE_ the experiment is performed, not after. Admittedly, since
> evolution
> takes millions of years, it's rather difficult to set up an experiment
> we don't already know the answer to
> (ridiculous claims of evolution occuring in a matter of months to the
> contrary, notwithstanding).
It is presumably the case that massive gravitational fields have
always bent rays of light, even before we observed this phenomenon or
had a theory that predicted it. I'm not aware of any evidence that
suggests that Darwin proposed the theory of natural selection to
explain asymmetries in mate selection or that anyone realised that his
theory predicted this until much later. The point is, the predictions
still preceded the observations.
As in astronomy, evolutionary biology is a science that generally
tests predictions by making observations rather than by performing
experiments although you can perform certain kinds of experiments with
breeding over shorter time scales or by using computational models of
the process.
> Even so, if one is thoroughly sold on a given paradigm, and confident
> that it predicts all things, one can
> hardly be surprised to find that one finds fulfilled predictions under
> every rock. To me, the thing that
> most damages the credibility of the TOE is the maddening propensity of
> its devotees to remark, AFTER THE
> FACT, "Well, evolution predicted that."
>
> Finally, having said that I didn't think your bulleted predictions of
> predictions carry much weight,
> I also must tell you frankly that I disbelieve every single one of
> them. You say, for example,
>
> > (4) Evolution predicts that life on earth has a long history.
> > Arguments from design don't predict this.
>
> I don't see anyplace in the TOE that "predicts" a long history for life,
> except for the obvious
> observation that evolution takes a long time. In fact, much _TOO_ long
> to have been accomplished in the
> time available. Show me the prediction, then we'll talk.
>
An early problem for the theory of evolution was that it seemed to
require that the Earth be much older than it was thought to be and
this is, as you say, because the theory says that the process takes a
long time. The theory would be in trouble if the evidence suggested
that the Earth was very young, but it turned out that geological
evidence supports a much older Earth so the theory was subjected to
potential falsification by virtue of its predictions and survived.
This prediction is not a particularly strong one compared to the
others I listed because it would not be particularly unexpected for
the Earth to be old in the way that it would be unexpected for males
and females to have different reproductive strategies if evolution
hadn't occurred.
Given that we are talking about events that occurred in the past, you
are quite right to say that we cannot directly observe them, but keep
in mind that this is as much a reason to reject a design account as an
evolutionary account. It is also a reason to reject cosmology,
forensic science or any other endeavour that deals with reconstructing
past events based only on the evidence that those events leave behind.
> Further, the statement that "arguments from design don't predict this"
> is flat-out false.
Show me a traditional argument from design that leads to any
prediction about boundaries (upper or lower) on the age of the Earth.
> The whole
> point of the debate between naturalism and design theory is that the
> outcome is virtually indistinguishable.
> Let's stipulate that, at some time in the past, a species of sponge
> evolved into a sea cucumber. You say
> this was the work of Natural Selection. I say it was part of God's
> design. Someone else might speculate
> that it was the work of a giant mololith. Yet someone else, who saw
> "Mission to Mars," might suggest
> that the event was programmed into DNA by Martians. There is _NO_ way
> to discern who's right.
>
I am not saying that the argument from design is inconsistent with
observations. I'm saying that the theory of evolution by natural
selection has greater explanatory power than a design account because
it explains many phenomena that the alternative doesn't. Indeed, this
is essentially the same logic that Paley used in advancing the
argument from design in the first place. He dismisses that a watch
could have formed in the same way that rocks do, because if they did,
it wouldn't explain why the watch appears to be so delicately suited
to the function of telling the time. What I am presenting to you is a
kind of 'argument from the appearance of evolution' that says that an
explanation of the origin of species in terms of evolution is
preferable to one in terms of design because design doesn't explain
the branching taxonomy of living things, the arrangement of fossils
into layers with prerequisite forms appearing in lower strata, the
existence of fossils of extinct species at all depths, that females of
all species are generally more selective when choosing their mates
than males, that the likelihood with which one individual behaves
altruistically towards another is proportional to the amount of
genetic material they share (i.e. their relatedness), that we have an
instinctive desire to care for and protect our own offspring, that
life on earth has a long history, and that inheritance is a process
involving the passing on of discrete packets of genetic material
rather than a mixing/diluting process.
Furthermore, I am unaware of any phenomena that a design account can
explain that an evolutionary account cannot. I would be interested to
see some if you have any.
> Can you not see this? Are you so blinded by your faith in the TOE that
> you can't see that the data
> doesn't tell us enough to distinguish between the conjectures?
>
> You may feel, and claim, that you are "more right" than the rest of us,
> because your conjecture doesn't
> require supernatural agents or other "exceptional" methods.
>
> No. All it does is to require more time than the all the ages of all the
> universes "predicted" by
> String Theory, laid end to end. Plus a lot of luck.
>
> I claim that the evolutionary step was planned by a designer, and it
> happened in a miraculous way,
> but I can't prove it. You claim that all it required was a little time
> and a little luck, and the outcome was inevitable -- even "predicted."
>
It is one thing to say that it is inevitable that some specific
species like humans evolved and another to say, for instance, that,
given different reproductive pressures on males and females, it is
expected that they will evolve different reproductive strategies. I
wouldn't say the former, but I would and have said the latter.
> Yet you can't provide even the slightest ghost of an outline of the
> steps by which this miracle occurred -- only armwaving claims without
> data.
>
> Jack
Maybe the references I've given you today are enough to satisfy you.
Chris Porter
> Chris Porter wrote:
>
(snip)
>>btw, I really think something interesting would happen
>>synergistically if you got in contact with Peter F.from
>>sci.bio.evolution.
>>
>
> Who is he?
I don't keep posts around, so I can't direct you.
If you Google on Peter F. in the newsgroup
sci.bio.evolution, you should, after reading
a few of the posts, find out who he is, and
what theory he is advancing.
Huck Turner
I concede that this should only be a statistical prediction, a strong
tendency for females to be choosier which may not be true of
absolutely all species. This general tendency is explained by natural
selection and not by any design account.
By the way, my name's 'Huck' (not 'Tucker').
Roy
Jack Crenshaw wrote:
> Can we at least agree that Evolution doesn't predict _ANYTHING_???
> Evolution just ... evolves.
No, we can't. The nature of biological reproduction is such that some
behaviours will lead to more surviving offspring than others, and we can
thus deduce that evolution predicts that those behaviours will be
common, whereas their counterparts will not.
One example is regarding the amount of parental care provided to
offspring. In order for a creature to have descendants, it must produce
offspring that survive to breeding age. This can be achieved by feeding
and protecting offspring (directly or by proxy) or by producing
sufficient offspring that a few will survive, or both. Evolution
predicts that there will be a lack of species that produce few offspring
and provide no parental care.
--
Roy
Andrew Glasgow
Jack Crenshaw <jcr...@earthlink.net> wrote:
That is not accurate. When a theory or hypothesis entails a particular
outcome under a particular set of circumstances, we say that the theory
predicts that outcome. Whether or not that outcome actually occurs can
be used as a test of the theory.
> Here's the deal: Only _PEOPLE_ predict things. I think what you
> might be trying to say is that if one accepts the TOE, one can use it
> to predict things that can later be observed to be true. But that
> also is wrong.
Actually, that turns out not to be the case. TOE can be used to predict
many useful things in biology. For example, it predicted that humans and
chimpanzees would be the most closely related genetically, just as they
are the most closely related morphologically and behaviorally.
> Two things are wrong with the statement. First, "evolution" only
> predicts the things you list if one is completely sold on the theory,
To generate predictions from a theory, you assume it to be true (for the
time being) and then find statements about the world which are true if
the theory is true.
> to the exclusion of all else. Fact is, I doubt very seriously if it
> really _DOES_ predict all the things you assert with such certainty.
> I challenge you to show me one truly scientific study in which
> "evolution" predicts "females of all species are
> > generally more selective when choosing their mates than males." I
> > simply don't believe it.
Actually, this is an oversimplification; game theory as applied to
evolutionary strategies actually allows us to predict how choosy we can
expect females and males to be in a given set of circumstances.
> Second, in the classical description of the scientific method, it's
> better if the predictions that a given hypothesis makes get made
> _BEFORE_ the experiment is performed, not after.
Actually, it doesn't make a difference. 'Postdictions', that is,
explanations of already-observed phenomena, are as valid in confirming a
theory as are predictions, although predictions are somewhat better
known, as they satisfy our urge to fortell the future.
> Admittedly, since evolution takes millions of years, it's rather
> difficult to set up an experiment we don't already know the answer to
> (ridiculous claims of evolution occuring in a matter of months to the
> contrary, notwithstanding). Even so, if one is thoroughly sold on a
> given paradigm, and confident that it predicts all things, one can
> hardly be surprised to find that one finds fulfilled predictions
> under every rock. To me, the thing that most damages the credibility
> of the TOE is the maddening propensity of its devotees to remark,
> AFTER THE FACT, "Well, evolution predicted that."
It's how science works, Jack. Mercury's orbit was observed for years
before Einstein came up with General Relativity. However, it is still
true that General Relativity predicted the deviations from the orbit one
would expect using Newtonian gravitation (an orbit which was itself
predicted by the latter theory; those deviations were a problem for the
theory because they were *not* predicted by it).
> Finally, having said that I didn't think your bulleted predictions of
> predictions carry much weight, I also must tell you frankly that I
> disbelieve every single one of them. You say, for example,
>
> > (4) Evolution predicts that life on earth has a long history.
> > Arguments from design don't predict this.
>
> I don't see anyplace in the TOE that "predicts" a long history for
> life, except for the obvious observation that evolution takes a long
> time. In fact, much _TOO_ long to have been accomplished in the time
> available. Show me the prediction, then we'll talk.
Observed rates of evolution and mutation are incompatible with the
proposition that the planet earth is 10,000 or 100,000 years old,
therefore life on earth must be older than that. That's a simple way to
state it but it is a valid prediction (and when the theories of Lord
Kelvin on the age of the sun indicated an age of the earth only a few
hundred years old, it was a problem for Darwin who knew that that wasn't
long enough). If you feel that evolution is too slow to take place in
the time we now know to have elapsed, please support that.
> Further, the statement that "arguments from design don't predict
> this" is flat-out false.
A hypothetical, non-specific designer could have done anything,
therefore it doesn't predict anything.
> The whole point of the debate between
> naturalism and design theory is that the outcome is virtually
> indistinguishable.
Only because design 'theory' consists of observing known outcomes and
stating 'Ok, that's how the designer chose to do it.' Naturalism
actually attempts to explain things in terms of workings of the natural
world.
> Let's stipulate that, at some time in the past, a
> species of sponge evolved into a sea cucumber.
They didn't, not directly anyway. Sea cucumbers are echinoderms, the
same phylum as starfish and more closely related to humans than to
sponges.
> You say this was the
> work of Natural Selection. I say it was part of God's design.
> Someone else might speculate that it was the work of a giant
> mololith. Yet someone else, who saw "Mission to Mars," might suggest
> that the event was programmed into DNA by Martians. There is _NO_
> way to discern who's right.
There is no way to discern Natural selection by itself from natural
selection acting as a part of 'God's Design'; this is why scientists
don't bother with theology and just work with what we've got in front of
us.
However there are ways to determine if the pathway is possible under
Natural selection; if it is plausible that the differences changed as a
result of stepwise, minute changes in which each step was advantageous
to the organism possessing it, then it is possible that the pathway is
under natural selection. If there is evidence that some aspect of the
organisms could not have evolved in this way, then the pathway is
incompatible with natural selection.
> Can you not see this? Are you so blinded by your faith in the TOE
> that you can't see that the data doesn't tell us enough to
> distinguish between the conjectures?
There is no way to distinguish between God and no god using science; it
is not a question we need ask or attempt to answer. As for men from
mars, such a proposition carries particular assumptions. Martians would
presumably be material creatures with the ability to physically
manipulate the world. As such, and unlike the putative actions of
Deity(ies), their actions would leave traces. Perhaps they would not be
so obliging as to stamp (C) 19,000,000 BC Utopia Planitia into the DNA
molecules of the sea cucumber, but there would still be indications of
their activity, unless we assume them to be devious enough to try to
hide their actions by making them appear to be the result of natural
selection, and also assume that they are proficient enough to be
entirely successful in this ruse.
Leaving aside that assumption for the moment, what differences would we
expect between a genetically engineered organism and a naturally evolved
one? Well, we could expect it to resemble genetically engineered
organisms that we ourselves create. Our GMOs are generally chimeras,
combinations of genes from multiple organisms. We could plausibly
expect to find genes from other organisms mixed in if sea cucumbers are
the product of martian geneticists; after all, advanced though those
martians may be, they presumably still would have limitations and it is
easier to use existing, working genes from other organisms than to try
to generate entirely new genes from scratch.
> You may feel, and claim, that you are "more right" than the rest of
> us, because your conjecture doesn't require supernatural agents or
> other "exceptional" methods.
>
> No. All it does is to require more time than the all the ages of all
> the universes "predicted" by String Theory, laid end to end. Plus a
> lot of luck.
You do not support the claim that natural selection requires
> I claim that the evolutionary step was planned by a designer, and it
> happened in a miraculous way, but I can't prove it. You claim that
> all it required was a little time and a little luck, and the outcome
> was inevitable -- even "predicted."
Whether the outcome was inevitable depends on what the outcome was. You
are not clear on that.
> Yet you can't provide even the slightest ghost of an outline of the
> steps by which this miracle occurred -- only armwaving claims without
> data.
What miracle, exactly?
--
| Andrew Glasgow <amg39(at)cornell.edu> |
| "SCSI is *NOT* magic. There are *fundamental technical reasons* why it |
| is necessary to sacrifice a young goat to your SCSI chain now and then." |
| -- John Woods |