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Topic: John A. Davison: The Case for Instant Evolution
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nosivad
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Member # 767
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posted 06. May 2004 08:01
Evan
All I can say is that, as far as I am concerned, reality is very "clear cut". Ring species are a very special case and in no way support the Darwinian scheme generally. I realize in advance that I am still unable to communicate with Darwinians just as I have been unable to communicate with fundamentalist creationists. I am convinced both are dead wrong and have presented my views in hard copy. What more can I say?
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Evan
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posted 06. May 2004 09:12
I understand that you have firm convictions, and that these are not generally shared by most scientists (including many IDists), and I didn't post with the intention of trying to change your mind. I am, however, interested in the general topic of how the tools of our knowledge (math and langauge) map to reality, and that is why I made the comments I did.
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peter borger
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posted 06. May 2004 11:35
Davison not only has strong convictions, he is right.
peebee
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nosivad
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posted 07. May 2004 13:17
Evan
I never meant to suggest that nature was a binary system. I was referring to a binary key which proceeds by a series of choices. Such a key would be inconceivable in a Darwinian world. I am also on record in favor of instant speciation and published a paper "The case for instant evolution" which was introduced here on brainstorms. I would be happy to further defend it if the thread could be reopened. In any event I do not believe there is any direct evidence for the gradual transformation of one species into another which lies at the heart of the Darwinian model.
[ 07. May 2004, 13:24: Message edited by: nosivad ]
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XenoSapience
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posted 07. May 2004 16:44
Just because we're the most intelligent design evolution has come up with so far there is no concievable reasoning to say that evolution has stopped. Major species aren't popping up everywhere because most of the species on the planet are well adapted to their environment. Sooner or later the global environment will change and there will be a mass extinction and out of the mass exctinction new species will emerge that have the correct coding to survive in the new conditions, there will be alot more space for them to grow and multiply due to the massive loss of competitors. The organisms will keep struggling until natural selection fully does its job and the organisms can live easily, causing evolution to slow down. Humans are the most intelligently designed organisms on earth so far but i believe it can be taken so much farther. We aren't perfect... yet.
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nosivad
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posted 08. May 2004 06:05
Xeno
Not only are we not perfect yet, we are running down hill genetically at an alarming rate due largely to the relaxation of the one thing that natural selection can do, which is to maintain the status quo. I would have died if it had not been for surgical intervention on three separate occasions, two of which were due to strep infections, the other requiring appendectomy. These all preceeded my reproductive period, so I am sure I passed on my genetic weaknesses to my children. Civilization brings with it the seeds of our extinction.
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Evan
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Member # 164
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posted 08. May 2004 07:37
What nosivad says about humans may be true, because modern civilization has removed some of the "natural" pressures that other organisms are subject to.
But this is really only true about humans - other organisms are still subject to the same level of environmental pressures as they have always been (even though now many of those pressures are a consequence of human impact on the earth.)
I ask nosivad a hypothetical question (although I will understand if he wishes not to speculate): if humans were eventually to cause enough environmental damage, either through long-term effects or through catastrophic impact, and to become extinct along with a sizeable proportion of other life forms, do you think evolution would happen and news organisms would evolve to fit the new conditions and niches? Or do you think evolution is so "over" that evolution wouldn't happen even under those circumstances?
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nosivad
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posted 08. May 2004 08:15
Evan
That is a very good question. I asked the question "Is Evolution Finished? I see no mechanism by which evolution could start up again unless it did so from the very beginning. Even that seems highly improbable. Everything we know about evolution indicates that it was an ascending and irreversible process. I also believe it has been goal-directed with man (Homo sapiens) as the ultimate product. In other words I subscribe to the Anthropic Principle. Of course these are nothing but beliefs. I believe these things because it gives me pleasure to think they are so. Isn't that a primary reason for most beliefs? Evolution remains a great and unsolved mystery.
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Scott
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posted 08. May 2004 15:39
Evan,
There seems to be an underlying assumption here that there are no "new conditions and niches" in existence today for evolving organisms to take advantage of.
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Evan
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posted 08. May 2004 16:26
No, that was not an assumption I was making; but then I am not someone that thinks evolution has stopped. I offered my hypothetical catastrophic scenario to nosivad in order to see how thorough-going his contention was that evoluton has stopped for good, and he gave me a very candid answer.
I believe that evolution is going on as we speak,and that changes in conditions (including those caused by humans) are inevitable and will continue to provide an incentive fro evolution to occur until such time as the earth becomes totally uninhabitable by life.
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nosivad
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posted 09. May 2004 11:27
Evan
The key word is "belief". As long as there is no hard evidence for the production of new life forms, all one has is "belief". Beliefs are not testable. The fact remains that the formation of a new "kind" of diploid organism has not been observed directly or produced through any form of artificial selection of mutations even when those mutations have been artificialy produced. The fossil record demonstrates a steady decrease from what seemed to be the virtual instantaneous production of several Phyla in the Precambrian to the progressive loss in this order of new Classes, Orders, Families, Genera and finally, as at present, new species. Even some of the first Phyla were doomed to early extinction, thereby becoming the first and most general of the taxonomic categories to disappear. This is the complete opposite of what the Darwinian model would predict, if it in fact could predict anything! The fossil record is the history of extinction. It in no way explains the creation of the taxa I have enumerated. To assume this highly ordered tree of life was a product of chance is beyond my comprehension. That does not mean it was not the result of perfectly natural cytogenetic events. I have proposed one such natural cytogenetic event in the form of the semi-meiotic hypothesis, an hypothesis which remains not only untested but, as yet, unrecognized by the evolutionary establishment, an establishment still dominated by the Darwinian ideology, an ideology which seems to me to be unalterably opposed to any alternative view of a phenomenon about which virtually nothing is known with certainty, namely the scientific basis for evolutionary change.
"Science commits suicide when she adopts a creed"
Thomas Henry Huxley
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Janitor@MIT
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Member # 125
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posted 11. May 2004 19:03
Initialize a random population and run to convergence. Now imagine that the individuals are populations. (A common theme in evolutionary thought--and even to be found in the Bible!) There is really nothing in evolutionary thought that requires the “persistence of memory.” A theory of selection does not require it. It is purely a theory of proximate causes. It does not imply in any way the “persistence of memory.” (Remember, memory is highly selective. LOL)
That all extant populations could be converged in a matter of only a few hundred million years is accepted. (On phylogenetic analysis!) That’s what Darwin thought.
Evolutionary thought involves a definite “temporal paradox.” (And not just one.) If we extend it beyond all reasonable analysis. But, our “metaphysics” are, by definition, beyond “reasonable analysis.” Unfortunately, it is so deeply embedded in our “mindset” that it is “heretical” to even suggest that LUCA could have existed “yesterday.”
[I'm adding this because I got myself thinking. (Usually I avoid "initiative" (not that "thinking" requires it), now that I'm retired. Convergence is a significant and largely neglected issue in evolutionary thought. If (our theory of) evolution is as powerful as we suggest, then convergence is a naturally expected outcome. We should expect populations to converge on solutions, even if it does complicate phylogenetic inference. Actually, that’s the only reason we should expect our phylogenetic models-inferences to be complicated—because of divergence and convergence. Divergence has definitely been emphasized in tradition. Convergence has been neglected as a complicating factor. (We’ve also said that it is a rare factor. Has anyone actually demonstrated that? Or have we just assumed it?)
I have asked, e.g., if technology, as it becomes more complicated and sophisticated, must necessarily converge upon existing biological solutions and strategies, and how that may complicate simplistic distinctions between “evolution” and “design.”
That there is a “solution” means that all methods to solve must converge upon it. And if there is not a solution? If evolution is all about the “method” (or lack thereof) and not about the solution, then in what sense do we even call it a “theory”?]
[ 11. May 2004, 19:24: Message edited by: Janitor@MIT ]
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nosivad
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posted 12. May 2004 06:58
Janitor
I am retired too but I must say I have no idea what you are talking about.
[ 12. May 2004, 11:04: Message edited by: nosivad ]
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Ron Okimoto
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Member # 1012
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posted 12. May 2004 12:32
Nosivad:
Just hawk your idea over at sci.bio.evolution to see if it generates any interest. The comments that you get back will be closer to the comments that you would get from NSF reviewers than you can get around here. If you can't address the deficiencies of your ideas that is a good reason why scientists are not taking you seriously.
Why don't all the droves of scientists that are coming into the ID fold support your ideas and write grants for funding? You keep complaining about not being able to interest scientists in your ideas, but you don't seem to be able to generate enough interest among ID proponents to get them to try out your ideas.
Scientists have finite lifetimes and most grants that are ever written are not funded. If you have submitted your ideas for funding you know the drill. You can't just keep repeating your claims and expect the evaluation of your work to change. You have to address the criticisms of the reviewers or they will have an excuse to kick out your resubmission for that reason. I've resubmitted a couple of grants three times before giving up on them. Each submission I had more experimental data and supporting evidence, but they just didn't interest the review panel enough to make the cut. For one of these project I had funding drop out of the sky because another researcher had gotten funding to do what I wanted to do, and I got to do it. The project was a success and we got the kinds of results I had claimed that I could get. So even if you don't get funding it doesn't mean that the project won't fly. How many times have you approached a funding agency about your project?
Why don't you apply to the Discovery Institute for a grant? I'm not joking when I say I'd expect you to have zero competition in that regard.
I've scanned your stuff and I don't find anything special about it. At best it would seem to be something that could be an additional mechanism to be added to the existing list of things associated with the evolution of life on earth. It has been known for a long time that speciation can occur due to meiotic mess ups. New plant species are routinely inferred to have arisen by this mechanism. Soybeans and Maize are examples of amphidiploidization (allotetraploids) sometime in their past. Two species generated a hybrid and there was a doubling of the chromosome number to create a meiotically stable hybrid. The common ancestor to all vertebrates is thought to have been a tetraploid with a full genome duplication. We haven't figured out if it was an allotetraploid or just a regular tetraploid. Meiotic mess ups generating new species isn't a new concept. There are parthenogenetic vertebrate species that generate stable meiotic chromosome complements without sex. Some of them are triploid and are new species because they do not interbreed with their progenitor species.
There is a parthenogenetic turkey line that I know of that generates males without the normal fertilization. These examples are rare because you have to have a genome that has no recessive lethals in it before you can just double the chromosome complement during meiosis. Just think about it. If you want to double one set of chromosomes to form your new species or fix your chromosomal variant all the chromosomes must be free of recessive lethals. You will also be stuck with a highly inbred population with limited genetic variation. This might not be so bad because things like chromosome fusions are much more likely to be fixed in small populations by drift and you expect inbreeding to be involved in fixation of any chromosome variant. Obviously, relatives have to breed to generate the homozygotes, but you aren't generating the homozygotes from single genomes. Wright worked out the probabilities of fixation of chromosomal variants in the 1930's or 40's.
When you complain about not seeing new phyla or classes emerging I don't understand what you are complaining about. We don't expect evolution to return to the more free wheeling days when the metazoan phyla were evolving. When these new phyla were emerging they would have just been sub species of existing species until they had diverged enough for scientist to claim that they were different. The ID Cambrian explosion occurred over millions of years and the molecular evidence indicates that the ancestors of those metazoans were evolving separately for tens of millions of years before they emerged with hard parts in the fossil record.
With periodic mass extinctions why don't you expect a random loss of phyla? Why would you expect new phyla to emerge at the rate they did in the past, when competition for niches is so much greater and filled by the existing phyla that have a half a billion year headstart on any new competition?
How would you identify a new phyla emerging if you saw it? A hundred million years in the future will the decendents of whales have their own class or will they still be mammals? Why are they still classified as mammals today? When will the descendents of penguins or ratites be given their own class designation.
What do you think that the common ancestor of molluscs, arthropods, cordates etc looked like? What did the different closely related species that turned into the ancestors of these groups look like for million of years? No one claims that there is no difference today than there was when these phyla were evolving. At that time there were no arthropods to compete against, or vertebrates or clams or squids or earthworms etc. There weren't any birds or fish to eat all the worm like closely related species that would evolve into the different animal phyla. Today there are, but what hasn't changed is that evolution is dependent on what has gone on before. Hominoids are restricted in their immediate evolutionary paths by previous evolution. You wouldn't expect australopithicus to change into a rat, you expect it to evolve into something like itself, but a little different. You don't expect a monkey to change into a human, you expect the new species to be like a monkey. The sponge like or worm like common ancestor to all the existing meazoan phyla would have generated closely related species not much different from the parent species. There may have been more genomic flux allowed because competition and development were probably not as complex, but any new species would have still been considered a sponge or a worm depending on how far back you want to go, and what phyla you are talking about. It would only be after multiple speciation events that we would call them something different.
You can't claim that evolution has stopped. If you do you don't know what evolution is.
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nosivad
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posted 12. May 2004 17:24
Oh, but I can claim that evolution has stopped, just as Robert Broom, Pierre Grasse and Julian Huxley did. I can claim whatever the facts demand and there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do about it. Get used to it. To assume evolution is in progress is without foundation. It is only a necessary assumption for an aimless, purposeless view of the universe (neoDarwinism).
[ 12. May 2004, 17:46: Message edited by: nosivad ]
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