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Author
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Topic: John A. Davison: An Evolutionary Manifesto: A New Hypothesis For Organic Change
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Pim van Meurs
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Member # 541
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posted 10. June 2003 23:25
Davison: those who have recognized and revealed the total failure of the most tested hypothesis in the history of science
WHich suggests even more that your position could benefit from considering the more recent data which strongly undermines your claims about Darwinism. If you chose to ignore where science is taking us then you are left to attack the strawmen of early / middle of last century.
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nosivad
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Member # 767
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posted 11. June 2003 00:03
Pim, Darwinism was undermined long before me by the very biologists you describe as "strawmen". Bateson was ridiculing Darwinism in 1894, and for very good reasons. The Darwinians have traditionally ignored their critics. The great strides that have been made in recent years continue to expose the total failure of what Soren Lovtrup described as a myth. As to those who would dismiss the views of my sources let me quote Thomas Carlyle:
"No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men"
If you or anyone else thinks I have been unduly critical of neoDarwinism, I can only recommend that you consult the works of Pierre Grasse, Leo Berg, Otto Schindewolf and the others to whom I have dedicated the Manifesto. Compared to them I am a Caspar Milquetoast. I am happy to respond to specific questions but I see no further benefit in attempting to dismiss the contributions of the several Darwinan critics simply because they are no longer able to respond themselves. I doubt very much if Berg or the others I cited would be compelled to alter their studied evaluation of Darwinism in the light of recent research. nosivad
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Pim van Meurs
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Member # 541
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posted 11. June 2003 00:46
Davison: Pim, Darwinism was undermined long before me by the very biologists you describe as "strawmen". Bateson was ridiculing Darwinism in 1894, and for very good reasons.
You seem to be confusing ridicule with undermining. Whether the ridicule was for good reason seems doubtful given the fact that Darwinism has withstood not only the ridicule but also the scientific criticisms.
Davison: The Darwinians have traditionally ignored their critics.
Meaningless and unsupported. Darwinians may ignore critics who reject the theory based on less than scientific reasons.
DavisonL The great strides that have been made in recent years continue to expose the total failure of what Soren Lovtrup described as a myth.
What great strides I wonder is Davison refering to?
And why should I take Davison's use of out of quotes of others as serious criticims of Darwinism? Could Davison perhaps attempt to make his case in his own words and not rely on the words of those who did not have the benefit of the plentitude of additional knowledge and facts gained since then?
I am btw not dismissing the views of your 'sources'. Their opinions may have made sense in their days but I am merely pointing out that refering to them as authorities on Darwinism as it stands right now is doing them a disservices imho.
Thus when Davison concludes "I doubt very much if Berg or the others I cited would be compelled to alter their studied evaluation of Darwinism in the light of recent research"
he has no supporting evidence other than his own doubts but I presume that he is not claiming to be speaking for these researchers? If they truely were great researchers then the increased knowledge about evolution should not have led them to stick to their original views.
Let's not do these great man of their time a disservice by pretending that they speak in present day with the same authority.
Science moves on.
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nosivad
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Member # 767
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posted 11. June 2003 06:51
Pim, I see no point in continuing this dialogue. It is contributing nothing to the purposes of this forum. You apparently are satisfied with the Darwinian model, I, among many others, am not. I have offered my objections in my papers. What more can I do? nosivad
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Rex Kerr
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Member # 632
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posted 11. June 2003 07:28
And people (such as me, in my first post) have raised concerns with your objections, and these concerns have in large part not been directly addressed.
We could just leave the disagreements open, or we could try to discuss them in detail.
Arguing about generalities such as whether one or another historical figure's complaints about Darwinism is or is not still worth listening to is, I agree, pretty pointless. Especially since I'd suspect that most of us are not very familiar with these biologists' works. Certainly, I am less familiar with what any of them have written than I am with Darwin's writings; and I have never bothered reading Darwin's writings since I consider them historically relevant rather than scientific relevant (and hence ignorable until I have the luxury of indulging my curiosity about history).
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gordon
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Member # 781
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posted 11. June 2003 08:36
Dr.Davison: quote:
Pim, if we had relied on the conclusions of Berg, Broom, Bateson, Punnett, Grasse, Osborn, Schindewolf, Goldschmidt and the many other skeptics of the gradualist, Darwinian hypothesis, I would never have found it necessary to add my name to that long list of those who have recognized and revealed the total failure of the most tested hypothesis in the history of science.
One of the conclusions of Grasse was that chromosomal rearrangements had nothing to do with speciation, which is in stark contrast to at least Goldschmidt. How do you reconcile your implication that such rearrangements are part and parcel of speciation, which upon reading your manifesto seems to be little more than an assertion, with Grasse's fairly well documented claim that, for example, there are intraspecies variations in chromosome number that are of no consequence to the individuals or to their ability to continue to produce offspring?
In addition, you made a commont on the speed at which mutations occur and the implication of this is counter to "gradualism." Could you explain what the speed of the physical act of mutation has to do with, say, the alteration of phenotype?
Thanks.
[ 11. June 2003, 08:37: Message edited by: gordon ]
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nosivad
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Member # 767
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posted 11. June 2003 10:30
Gordon, I have no idea where you got the idea that Grasse was at odds with Goldschmidt. Here is what Grasse has to say on page 97 of his book :
"Gene variations are not the only ones which modify the cell structure. Mutations due to chromosomal rearrangements (translocations, inversions of segments, exchange of segments between chromosomes, breaking and reunion of chromosomes) are hereditary and play a part in the differentiation and separation of races, of subspecies, and even of species. They produce new genetic arrangements without alteration of the genes."
This is followed immediately by:
"To insist that DNA copy erors are the only hereditary variations producing new characteristics is tantamount to admitting that biological evolution was not subject to determinism and occurred totally at random."
I assume you are referring to Grasse's rejection of Goldschmidt's notion of the "hopeful monster" which is quite a different matter indeed. I don't think Goldschmidt himself put much stock in it. nosivad
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nosivad
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Member # 767
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posted 11. June 2003 10:38
Gordon, in the Manifesto I clearly indicated that we know that many chromosome rerrangements have not resulted in speciation.
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Pim van Meurs
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Member # 541
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posted 11. June 2003 11:25
Davison: Pim, I see no point in continuing this dialogue. It is contributing nothing to the purposes of this forum.
I agree that rejections of Darwinism based on data and knowledge from early/middle of last century does not help to further either the ID focus of this forum nor does the rejection of Darwinism without concrete examples help us to establish its veracity or falsification.
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nosivad
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Member # 767
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posted 11. June 2003 14:27
I am a firm believer in Intelligent Design as I see it everywhere in the living world. I do not even regard it as debatable. Darwinism, as it is based on chance, cannot accept Intelligent Design. I also believe that, just as in ontogeny, the information for all of evolution may have been present from very early in the history of life. This not a mere flight of fancy but finds support in Berg's observations on what he called phylogenetic acceleration. I prefer to call it phylogenetic derepression thereby comparing it directly to the events of ontogeny. At present I see no mechanism by which significant new information can be introduced into the genome of higher organisms and Lamarckism still lacks demonstration. Accordingly I will adhere to this idea as I feel it remains compatible with much of what we know from molecular biology. In any event there is no evidence that chance has played a significant role in either ontogeny or phylogeny just as Leo Berg so wisely concluded in 1922. nosivad
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charlie d.
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Member # 159
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posted 11. June 2003 14:59
To get back to more serious - and empirical - issues, a good article about the actual mechanisms of speciation by Dembski's good friend ( ![[Wink]](wink.gif) ) Allen Orr is coming out tomorrow in Nature: quote:
Adaptive evolution drives divergence of a hybrid inviability gene between two species of Drosophila
DAVEN C. PRESGRAVES, LAKSHMI BALAGOPALAN, SUSAN M. ABMAYR & H. ALLEN ORR
Nature 423, 715 - 719 (2003); doi:10.1038/nature01679
Speciation—the splitting of one species into two—occurs by the evolution of any of several forms of reproductive isolation between taxa, including the intrinsic sterility and inviability of hybrids. Abundant evidence shows that these hybrid fitness problems are caused by incompatible interactions between loci: new alleles that become established in one species are sometimes functionally incompatible with alleles at interacting loci from another species. However, almost nothing is known about the genes involved in such hybrid incompatibilities or the evolutionary forces that drive their divergence. Here we identify a gene that causes epistatic inviability in hybrids between two fruitfly species, Drosophila melanogaster and D. simulans. Our population genetic analysis reveals that this gene—which encodes a nuclear pore protein—evolved by positive natural selection in both species' lineages. These results show that a lethal hybrid incompatibility has evolved as a by-product of adaptive protein evolution.
A News & Views is also available here, for those with access to Nature.
Pretty good timing, uh? ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
[ 11. June 2003, 15:03: Message edited by: charlie d. ]
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nosivad
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Member # 767
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posted 11. June 2003 17:51
Charlie. For the life of me I don't see how hybrid sterility can be demonstrated to be adaptive and to have separately evolved. Perhaps the authors could tell us which species gave rise to which, or did the original species somehow become extinct after it split? I have never subscribed to species splitting anyway as it makes no sense. A species could undoubtedly produce a new species but it certainly didn't have to disappear as a result. The critical issue is whether speciation is occurring now. This paper sure doesn't prove that by any means. nosivad
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Rex Kerr
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Member # 632
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posted 11. June 2003 19:43
The key word is "byproduct". The hypothesis is that the changes are adaptive in some unknown way (the statistical correlates of adaptation are observed in the coding sequence for the gene they're studying), but that, incidentally, this divergence also causes hybrid lethality now.
As to speciation occuring now, can you please comment on ring species? E.g., how can they even exist? I mentioned these in my post dated 06 June 2003 18:07 in this thread (first page).
You may also wish to read the talk.origins FAQ on observed instances of speciation. (The list is not exhaustive.)
[ 11. June 2003, 19:50: Message edited by: Rex Kerr ]
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charlie d.
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Member # 159
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posted 11. June 2003 20:25
Dr. Davison, what the paper shows is how reproductive isolation can be the result of relatively simple single gene changes, and how such changes may be due to selective pressures - which by the way may be entirely unrelated to the actual speciation event (so it's not like reproductive isolation is adaptive, but that adaptation can cause reproductive isolation). Also, if you disagree with any of the paper's conclusions, please comment on exactly which data you would interpret differently, and why - I find it hard to answer a scientific objection based on "for the life of me I don't see...".
As for speciation supposedly not occurring anymore (or in the last 2 Mya, or whatever), since the beginning of this thread you've actually been supplied with references to recent, even observed instances of speciation, incipient speciation etc, without once addressing the actual merit of the evidence. Again, it's hard to answer your objections if you never actually state any.
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