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Topic: Phillip L. Engle: New Evolutionary Theory: The End of Ideology
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nosivad
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posted 28. April 2004 16:19
If anyone thinks Darwinism is a real theory I can only conclude they have been reading the wrong literature. Theories are hypotheses that have been verified experimentally and thereby have fulfilled the essential feature of any theory which is predictability. Please someone tell me what can be predicted from any hypothesis based on chance? Mivart's devastating commentary on Natural Selection cannot be denied. How can Nature, or any other agency for that matter, possibly select for something that is not there? That is not an assertion and it is not subject to argument or debate. That is simple common sense. I can only surmise that good old common sense doesn't count for much here on "brainstorms".
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 28. April 2004 16:35
Nosivad: If anyone thinks Darwinism is a real theory I can only conclude they have been reading the wrong literature.
Much has been added to our knowledge since the early 20th century Nosivad.
NosivadL Theories are hypotheses that have been verified experimentally and thereby have fulfilled the essential feature of any theory which is predictability. Please someone tell me what can be predicted from any hypothesis based on chance?
Since Darwinian theory is not based on chance alone, I once again have to reject Nosivad's statements as irrelevant.
Nosivad: I can only surmise that good old common sense doesn't count for much here on "brainstorms".
Common sense seems to have been redefined here on 'brainstorms'. As I have shown many of Nosivad's musings to be erroneous I wonder if common sense is really that reliable? Especially when it seems to be based on strawmen?
Darwin's devastating rebuttal (sic) of Mivart states amongst others
quote:
“He who believes that some ancient form was transformed suddenly through an internal force or tendency into, for instance one furnished with wings, will be most compelled to assume, in opposition to all analogy, that many individuals varied simultaneously. It cannot be denied that such abrupt and great changes of structure are widely different from those that most species apparently have undergone.... To admit all of this is, as it seems to me, to enter into the realms of miracle, and to leave those of Science.”
These comments sounds quite relevant to this forum.
More about Darwin's response to Mivart
Darwin addresses some of Mivart's inclinations such as his belief that new species manifest themselves with modifications appearing at once. Given the evidence of transitional fossils such notions at a minimum suggest that gradual changes do exist. The question remains if Mivart's ideas bear any relevance to reality.
Fascinating to me is that Mivart argues that mimicricy, the process of the formation of the eye/ear present problems for Darwinian theory. We now know that Darwinian theory hardly seems to faced with problems in these areas.
See Butterfly Mimics Yield Secrets of Natural Selection
For the eye and ear I have presented various scenarios as well.
While Mivart's assertions may have been powerful in Darwin's days, much of his claims seem to have lost their relevance with our increase in scientific knowledge.
Mivart seems to have predicted much of this
quote:
It may be objected, perhaps, that these difficulties are difficulties of ignorance - that we cannot explain them because we do not know enough of the animals. But it is here contended that this is not the case; it is not that we merely fail to see how “Natural Selection” acted, but that there is a positive incompatibility between the cause assigned and the results.
[ 28. April 2004, 17:07: Message edited by: Pim van Meurs ]
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Rex Kerr
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posted 29. April 2004 01:19
quote:
Please someone tell me what can be predicted from any hypothesis based on chance?
Hypothesis: Rolling dice causes the different faces to come up randomly.
Prediction: If I roll 20 dice, they will not all come up 6. (Details: p(every die comes up 6) = 1/6^20 ~= 3*10^-16.)
That was easy.
Also, notice that every measurement and every observation is affected by noise. If one cannot make predictions in the face of fluctuation, one cannot make predictions at all.
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nosivad
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posted 29. April 2004 05:20
I have made a number of predictions based on real evidence or in some cases on a total absence of evidence. I presented them as questions which I asked. Here is a partial list:
1. Is evolution finished?
2. Is sexual reproduction capable of supporting evolutionary change?
3. Is selection, natural or artificial, incapable of producing new life forms?
4. Has evolution proceeded by means of leaps rather than gradually through intermediate forms?
5. Do internal factors have a role in evolution?
6. Is evolution irreversible?
7. Is the individual, rather than the population, the instrument of evolutionary change?
8. Are there laws governing evolution?
9. Is there compelling evidence that evolution (phylogeny), like the development of the individual (ontogeny), involves the release or derepression of preformed information?
I was able to answer yes to each of these questions based on real evidence from every avenue of both experimental and descriptive biology.
Those claims, all of which have been published, remain unanswered in the scientific literature. It is only on forums such as this one that they are all rejected out of hand. Until they have been exposed as false in hard copy, a possibility I now must regard as incredibly remote, I stand by them without reservation.
As for the eye, let me quote C.O. Whitman, another of my favorite sources of inspiration in exposing the total failure of the Darwinian scheme. This one is from 1904. I mention that because of course everything he says is now antiquated and accordingly meaningless. I present it nevertheless, confident that it will be ignored.
"To assume that the eye began in some different variation that fluctuated or mutated, chance-wise, into a state of incipient utility, and was then developed in a direct line to its present state of complex adaptations, either gradually or per saltum, would be hardly more satisfactory than appealing to a miraculous succession of miracles. It is impossible to believe that such a system of harmonious co-adaptations could ever have arisen by chance".
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nosivad
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posted 29. April 2004 07:55
I have on more than one occasion claimed that I, like Goldschmidt, Berg, Broom, Grasse, Bateson, Schindewolf and a host of other critics of Darwinism, simply do not exist. I have requested that my publication "The Case for Instant Evolution" be presented here as a thread for brainstorms. Not only has that not transpired, but my request has not been even acknowledged. That is truly unfortunate, but certainly further supports my contention that in fact I do not exist. I remain in good company nevertheless.
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nosivad
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posted 29. April 2004 10:52
I find it fascinating that Rex Kerr finds it necessary, in order to provide an hypothesis for which chance can be of predictive value, to choose the phenomenon of chance itself. Surely he can do better than that. But can he?
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Phillip L. Engle
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posted 29. April 2004 13:29
I am posting a reply to an earlier message by Pim which quotes this rebuttal by Darwin with respect to Mivart:
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“He who believes that some ancient form was transformed suddenly through an internal force or tendency into, for instance one furnished with wings, will be most compelled to assume, in opposition to all analogy, that many individuals varied simultaneously. It cannot be denied that such abrupt and great changes of structure are widely different from those that most species apparently have undergone.... To admit all of this is, as it seems to me, to enter into the realms of miracle, and to leave those of Science.”
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Here, I think, Darwin was mislead by the uniformitarian assumptions he took from Charles Lyell. Since all we see today are statistical changes in the distributions of varieties within species in accordance with the mechanisms of natural selection, Darwin erroneously assumed that such mechanisms must be the cause by which species, genera, families, etc. originally arose in the first place. Otherwise the 19th century "principle of uniformitarianism" would be violated.
Unfortunately for Darwin, all of the evidence we possess indicates that evolution DID in fact proceed in such a way that large numbers of individuals must have been influenced significantly more-or-less "at once". In other words, the evidence indicates that evolution is a holistic phenomemon that occurs at the level of the taxon AS A WHOLE, not at the level of statistical populations of individuals nor at the level of the single individual (though John Davison would probably disagree with me on this latter point).
For example, in my article "Symmetry in Evolution", which is posted here at ISCID, I prove that evolution has proceeded from the generic to the specific in a symmetrical way, such that a generic taxon essentially VANISHES, to be replaced by two more-specific taxons that share at least some of the generic features of the vanished taxon. The most noncontroversial proof of this is cladistics, which is currently THE orthodox and most scientifically accepted method of classifying living things. FUNDAMENTAL to cladistics is its assumption of this split of a single generic taxon into two more-specific taxons, the generic taxon itself vanishing as a separate entity as a result of the split.
If cladistics (and the other evidence I point out in that article) is to be squared with "the fact of evolution" (which, I think, we all agree on), then Darwinism must be discarded as a viable theory, since all varieties of Darwinism (including punctuated equilibrium) involve the assymetrical "splitting off" of individuals (or a subgroup) from a main group, which main group then continues (essentially) as it was before the split.
Contra Darwin, this does not necessarily put us in the realm of "miracles", but rather in the realm of a contemporary analogy that is far better than Darwin's "artificial selection" analogy, namely the analogy of evolution to the development of the individual embryo. For the development of the embryo is characterized by a movement of groups of cells from the generic to the specific via a process of symmetrical splitting that is significantly analogous to the evolution of the biosphere. In other words, evolutionary macrodevelopment mirrors the embryo's microdevelopment.
Of course there is much we don't know about both microdevelopment and macrodevelopment. An exciting world of scientific discovery awaits us, if we can only learn to think "outside the box" of our reigning ideologies!
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 29. April 2004 15:18
Engle: Of course there is much we don't know about both microdevelopment and macrodevelopment. An exciting world of scientific discovery awaits us, if we can only learn to think "outside the box" of our reigning ideologies!
I find the use of the term ideologies not very conducive to a positive discussion. I suggest that Engle uses the term paradigm as a replacement? In fact the assumption that thinking outside the box will always lead to new insights is quite fallacious, especially when the reigning paradigm is the correct one.
Engle may believe he has proven that evolution has proceeded from the generic to the specific in a symmetrical way, forgetting that science is not as much about proof (unless we include mathematics) but about proposing hypotheses to be rejected or supported by further evidence. To suggest that a hypothesis is 'proof' suggest a failure to understand how science progresses.
I am not sure if Engle's understanding of cladistics is of any relevance to the veracity of Darwinian evolution. I will do some research into cladistics versus Darwinian theory but in the mean time I will pose the following question
quote:
FUNDAMENTAL to cladistics is its assumption of this split of a single generic taxon into two more-specific taxons, the generic taxon itself vanishing as a separate entity as a result of the split.
Is Engle correct here?
From Cladistics in brief
quote:
The final assumption, that characteristics of organisms change over time, is the most important assumption in cladistics. It is only when characteristics change that we are able to recognize different lineages or groups. The convention is to call the "original" state of the characteristic plesiomorphic and the "changed" state apomorphic.
Sister taxa would be considered symmetrical splits but this is NOT fundamental to cladistics as the ancestor need not go extinct. Furthermore a cladogram is not a "evolutionary tree -- A diagram which depicts the hypothetical phylogeny of the taxa under consideration. The points at which lineages split represent ancestor taxa to the descendant taxa appearing at the terminal points of the cladogram."
I decided to look in more detail at Engle's paper on Symmetry in evolution. Some comments
Engle argues:
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The vast majority of these purely random microscopic changes are harmful, but a very few are helpful in promoting the survival of the individual and therefore of the species of which that individual is a member.
Actually the vast (sic) majority of these changes tend to be neutral, some are detrimental, fewer are immediately beneficial.
quote:
Now, a major problem with this formulation of neo-Darwinism lies in point 2. For it is evident
that concepts such as natural selection, survival of the fittest, and trial-and-error, as
stated, are really teleological concepts, rather than scientific concepts: Nature is being
personified as a conscious being who chooses (i.e., selects) by trial-and-error which individuals of the species are to survive in accordance with a goal (i.e., survival of the fittest).
I think the problem is that Engle is personifying natural selection when in fact the teleology in natural selection is not only obvious but to be expected.
Ayala presents the argument quite eloquently
quote:
The features of organisms that may be said to be teleological are those that can be identified as adaptations, whether they are structures like a wing or a hand, or organs like a kidney, or behaviors like the courtship displays of a peacock. Adaptations are features of organisms that have come about by natural selection because they serve certain functions and thus increase the reproductive success of their carriers.
Link
quote:
Nevertheless, neo-Darwinists almost always regard any elements of chance which
happen to arise at the macroscopic level due to such nonlinearities to be “merely subjective”,
an attitude which enables them to continue to view the macroscopic processes of
differential reproduction and differential mortality as being essentially linear and deterministic.
I would like to see Engle support his assertion that the neo-darwinist considers the processes to be essentially linear. While it is undoubtably true that simplifications in this manner have allowed for analytical solutions, I would argue that neo-darwinists are very well aware of the fact that these are merely approximations that serve a very specific and limited purpose.
quote:
Yet we have seen that all of the evolutionary evidence supports the symmetrical “splitting” of taxa, as shown in Figure 1, rather than the asymmetrical “splitting off” of taxa depicted in Figure 2
I would argue that this 'symmetrical' splitting off is based on confusion as to how to interpret cladograms.
Engle continues his paper with unnecesary and unsupported snipes such as
quote:
Yet we have seen, that, on the contrary, the hierarchical organization of multi-celled
biological organisms into real, clearly-defined monophyletic “groups within groups” is
simply a scientific fact which most neo-Darwinists adamantly refuse to recognize,
essentially for dogmatic philosophical reasons.
I was hoping to find some 'proof' but all we have found are interpretations. I hope that we all understand the differences and the complications involved.
Perhaps this is a good time to explain some of the arguments between cladists versus non-cladists. Cladists argue that neo-darwinistic approaches had not formal methodology and used homology and focused on innovations rather than on shared characteristics. Cladists argue that this approach can result in non-monophyletic taxa. Cladistics is argued to be a more objective way to classify taxa.
Cladograms help us understand why the following picture
is erroneous and should be drawn as follows
The latter one is quite well in agreement with Darwinian expectations. Engle seems to have quoted Denton's error in his paper
quote:
In other words, all contemporary eukaryotic multi-celled animals are typologically equidistant from the lowly bacteria, with
no paraphyletic “transitional forms” bridging this gap!
I think it is important to realize that cladistics is just another way to present relationships.
quote:
"Evolutionists have long maintained that contemporaries could not have an ancestral-descendant relationship but if related, they must have evolved from a common ancestor sometime in the past." (p. 116)
This is only true for populations, not for species in general. A population can be described as a (usually) reproductively isolated group of individuals which comprise a specific gene pool. Changes to that gene pool over time (the death of individuals, the birth of new individuals, mutations, etc.) all conspire to alter the genetic composition of the population so that the descendant population represents the original population plus the sum of the changes over time. Thus the descendant population cannot coexist with the ancestral population because the descendant population is the ancestral population, plus the sum of the changes over time. However, in the vast majority of cases, one population does not comprise the entire species. There are usually multiple populations spread out geographically, some interact, some do not. What happens in one isolated population is not mirrored in the species as a whole. Indeed, changes in isolated populations is one of the engines powering speciation. Whilst the descendant population cannot be contemporaneous with its ancestral population, it can be contemporaneous with the ancestral species. A good example is the polar bear, Ursus maritimus.
Link
[ 29. April 2004, 20:57: Message edited by: Pim van Meurs ]
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nosivad
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posted 29. April 2004 15:59
My semi-meiotic hypothesis does not involve a split. Quite the contrary, it provides for half of the semi-meiotic products to be like the original and the other half to be a new chromosomal homozygote. I think this is compatible with what the fossil record indicates. I also cannot imagine a unique cytological event simultaneously affecting large numbers of individuals. All heritable genetic change, evolutionary or otherwise, resulted from changes that occurred on a chromosome in a prereproductive cell of an individual organism. That lies at the heart of all that we know of genetics. As such I regard it as fundamental. In all fairness I should point out that Leo Berg believed that whole populations could respond evolutionarily, a point on which I cannot agree. The nature of genetics would indicate that every genetic change, once expressed, can only spread through a population. That is why population genetics must be rejected as a creative device. It was proposed in the first place when it became evident that individuals could not evolve. Ernst Mayr is one of its major exponents. It simply is not so.
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Scott
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posted 29. April 2004 19:20
quote:
Is Engle correct here?
From Cladistics in brief ...
Pim, I believe Philip is essentially correct here. Cladistics does not identify ancestors. Thus, "the generic taxon itself vanishing as a separate entity as a result of the split" is indeed the case.
What do you make of the following, from your provided link:
quote:
What assumptions do cladists make?
There are three basic assumptions in cladistics:
2. There is a bifurcating pattern of cladogenesis.
The second assumption is perhaps the most controversial; that is, that new kinds of organisms may arise when existing species or populations divide into exactly two groups.
From Wikipedia.
quote:
In a cladogram, all organisms lie at the endpoints, and each split is ideally binary (two-way). The two taxa either side of a split are called sister taxa or sister groups. Each branch, whether it only contains one item or a hundred thousand, is called a clade.
Note that when there is a split, there are now two sister taxa. There are now two new clades.
quote:
Furthermore a cladogram is not a "evolutionary tree -- A diagram which depicts the hypothetical phylogeny of the taxa under consideration. The points at which lineages split represent ancestor taxa to the descendant taxa appearing at the terminal points of the cladogram.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogeny
quote:
A phylogenetic tree is a tree showing the evolutionary interrelationships between various species or other entities that are believed to have a common ancestor. A phylogenetic tree is a form of cladogram.
Scott
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 29. April 2004 19:42
Thanks Scott, so is this an artifact of the approach used by cladistics? I would say that it is an artifact namely that once a branch happens the two branches have evolved away from their ancestral branch. Is this in contradiction with Darwinian theory? Or is this caused by comparing phylogenetic trees with cladistic trees?
Seems to me the latter.
quote:
For example, cladists always assume that new species arise by bifurcations of the original lineage (the lineage always splits in two). Most cladists assume that the original ancestral species no longer exists after this bifurcation, so each branching event results in two new species.
But if this is an assumption then one should not be surprised that cladograms give the impression that species always split. In other words, the split in species does not follow from cladistics but is enforced by cladistics.
versus
The monophyletic nature of life seems quite expected from Darwinian theory. Nested hierachies make for strong supportive evidence. But perhaps we are placing too much on a monophyletic nature based on an approach which enforces monophyletic trees?
quote:
Homologous molecules were discovered in different organisms, and it soon became evident that the basic biomolecular framework of all living things is the same; an observation consistent with the very Darwinian notion that all life is, ultimately, monophyletic.
Link
Some of the problems with the Typology model proposed by Denton are addressed by Korthof
quote:
Denton is consistent in that he accepts micro-evolution (evolution at the species level) and the standard Darwinian explanation for the origin of species and at the same time holds that the 'Typological Model' does not apply at the species level. It is clear that acceptance of micro-evolution necessarily excludes TM at the species level. For if gradations of intermediates between species exist, then the idea that species are isolated groups with unchanging essential characteristics is wrong. It is embarrassing that exactly in the domain of living species TM fails. The living species are the basis of the grand biological classification scheme. The level where evolutionary evidence is best. There must be something wrong with the very idea behind typology! Although Denton mentions the failure of TM at the species level only once (p105), it has great consequences: the Typological Model (TM) fails to describe adequately the classification of living species in nature, notwithstanding the fact that not all living species form a continuum (there are gaps). But there are more consequences: if Denton accepts the Darwinist non-typological explanation for the lack of distinct species borders, how does he escape extrapolation to higher taxonomic levels: that is macro-evolution? I have no problem accepting that TM does apply to the abstract above-species- classification-levels of genera, families, classes, orders and phyla. At those levels gaps are magnified: they are far greater than between species. [Imagine that if at those levels a gapless nature is demanded, thousandfold more species were forced to live together with the now existing species, side by side. There would be no ecological place on the planet earth for that amount of species].
Douglas Theobalt, in a rebuttal to Ashley Camp, describes some of the problems
quote:
As one of a myriad of examples, immediately preceding the paragraph quoted by Camp above, Denton writes:
quote:
"There is another stringent condition which must be satisfied if a hierarchic pattern is to result as the end product of an evolutionary process: no ancestral or transitional forms can be permitted to survive." (Denton 1986, p. 136, emphasis in the original).
This is false and nicely illustrates the wanton ignorance concerning basic evolutionary concepts displayed in this book. This passage is, additionally, directly pertinent to the present discussion of nested hierarchies. Denton immediately follows the above statement with:
quote:
"This can be seen by examining the tree diagram above on page 135. If any of the ancestors X, Y and Z, or if any of the hypothetical transitional connecting species stationed on the main branches of the tree, had survived and had therefore to be included in the classification scheme, the distinctness of the divisions would be blurred by intermediate or partially inclusive classes and what remained of the hierarchic pattern would be highly disordered." (Denton 1986, p. 136)
The absurdity of these statements is evident when one includes the ancestors X, Y, and Z in Denton's nested hierarchy figure. All the ancestors (including a hypothetical transitional connecting species, W) fit in the existing nested hierarchy just fine, without blurring the distinctness of divisions or contributing disorder to the hierarchical pattern. If the author could not even work out the simple evolutionary predictions based upon his very own figures and examples, it is no wonder that he wrote that "the hierarchic pattern is nothing like the straightforward witness for organic evolution that is commonly assumed."
I would also like to point out that Denton seems to have changed his views since his original book was published. It is unfortunate that Engle does not seem to mention this, especially since he quotes quite liberally from Denton's original book.
quote:
Interestingly, it appears that Denton has finally rectified his misunderstanding about nested hierarchies and common descent, since in his latest book he unconditionally assumes the validity of the nested hierarchy, common descent, and the "tree of life" (Denton 1998, pp. 265-298). For example, in the chapter entitled The Tree of Life from Nature's Destiny, Denton discusses the phylogeny of several closely related species (the primates) and directly contradicts his previous misstatements presented by Camp above:
"In the case of primate DNA, for example, all the sequences in the hemoglobin gene cluster in man, chimp, gorilla, gibbon, etc., can be interconverted via single base change steps to form a perfect evolutionary tree relating the higher primates together in a system that looks as natural as could be imagined. There is not the slightest indication of any discontinuity." (Denton 1998, p. 277)
[ 29. April 2004, 20:53: Message edited by: Pim van Meurs ]
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Claire
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posted 29. April 2004 23:55
Pim,
"To suggest that a hypothesis is 'proof' suggest a failure to understand how science progresses." Pim
Good one.
Claire
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nosivad
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posted 30. April 2004 05:14
Who challenged common descent or reproductive continuity? Certainly not me. It is only the MECHANISM that is in question. Darwinian gradualism is a failed hypothesis. Why it persists is a mystery.
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Pim van Meurs
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posted 30. April 2004 21:57
Nosivad: Who challenged common descent or reproductive continuity? Certainly not me. It is only the MECHANISM that is in question. Darwinian gradualism is a failed hypothesis. Why it persists is a mystery.
I appreciate Nosivad's positive contributions to this thread. While this may come as a shock, this thread is not about Nosivad but about Phillip Engle. Unless the two authors are one and the same person, my comments indeed involved not Nosivad but rather Phillip's comments.
That Nosivad is unable to present evidence that Darwinian gradualism is a failed hypothesis only serves to strengthen my opinion.
But enough about Nosivad, if Nosivad disagrees with Phillip's contributions let he speak. Unless of course Nosivad is Phillip. Shall we ever know ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
And no Nosivad I can still not tell you who this elusive 'we' really is.
[ 30. April 2004, 22:16: Message edited by: Pim van Meurs ]
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Scott
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posted 30. April 2004 23:04
quote:
Thanks Scott, so is this an artifact of the approach used by cladistics? I would say that it is an artifact namely that once a branch happens the two branches have evolved away from their ancestral branch. Is this in contradiction with Darwinian theory? Or is this caused by comparing phylogenetic trees with cladistic trees?
Seems to me the latter.
I think this is indeed an artifact of the approach used by cladistics. But that is the tradeoff for being "scientific."
The appearance of a nested hierarchy, if cladograms really do indicate a nested hierarchy (I have my doubts about this), would be an artifact of the approach.
I do not think there is any contradiction with Darwinian theory.
I do not think that there is any such thing as a cladistic tree. As indicated by the cited link, a phylogenetic tree is a form of cladogram and "a cladogram is not an evolutionary tree.
Imho, a cladogram is a cladogram. It is not a tree, and it is not to be interpreted as a tree.
So I would disagree with the following:
"This is caused by comparing phylogenetic trees with cladistic trees."
quote:
But if this is an assumption then one should not be surprised that cladograms give the impression that species always split. In other words, the split in species does not follow from cladistics but is enforced by cladistics.
I would agree with this. This is enforced so that the cladistic method can qualify as scientific.
quote:
The monophyletic nature of life seems quite expected from Darwinian theory. Nested hierachies make for strong supportive evidence. But perhaps we are placing too much on a monophyletic nature based on an approach which enforces monophyletic trees?
I disagree with the proposal that Darwinian theory expects monophyletic groups or that monophyletic groups in any way provide evidence for the truth of Darwinian theory.
I do not believe that nested hierarchies as as strong as is commonly supposed. I do not believe that cladograms present us with nested hierarchies. I think that the topic of nested hierarchies would require its own thread, and so will not comment further here, as we are probably already getting a bit off topic for this thread.
regards
[ 30. April 2004, 23:12: Message edited by: Scott ]
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