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Topic: John A. Davison: A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis
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John A. Davison
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Member # 1425
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posted 23. December 2005 12:04
Alan Fox has been posting in a most derogatory fashion at my blog prescribedevolution.blogspot.com/
He has also finally gotten around to reading the paper which is the subject of that blog, 51 days after the blog was introduced. I have no intention of interacting with him here or anywhere else since he has already established his pro-Darwinian bias beyond any doubt. I recommend all read my responses to Alan Fox at my blog.
As for my paper, I regard it as entirely self-explanatory and it requires no further explanation for any Darwinian especially Alan Fox.
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Alan Fox
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posted 23. December 2005 13:43
Hi Professor
Believe it or not, I was unaware of the existence of the ISCID forum until your comment on your own blog.
quote:
"A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis" was just published in Rivista di Biologia 98: 155-166, 2005. It is also available at ISCID "brainstorms," Trainor's Talk Origins forum and elsewhere.
a few days ago.
As John is unwilling to explain his ideas further, perhaps someone else could assist?
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John A. Davison
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posted 23. December 2005 16:18
I have explained my hypotheses (I have two) here, at EvC, at ARN, many other forums and most importantly in eight or nine published papers over the span of twenty one years. My convictions are transparently obvious to anyone with an undergraduate background in genetics, and basic cytology. If others do not have that background, they should not be commenting on my position until they aquire it. In any event I have no intention of responding to Alan Fox for reasons which would become obvious if one should go to my blog.
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John A. Davison
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posted 23. December 2005 18:22
Alan Fox does not exist just as I and my distinguished predecessors do not exist and for the same reasons. I have relegated him to the same oblivion that he and his cronies have relegated me and my intellectual predecessors. It is for ideological reasons alone. You see none of my heroes (and heroes they definitely are) never accepted a role for chance in either ontogeny or phylogeny. Those that still do are mystics who remain completely oblivious to the realities revealed by the experimental laboratory and the fossil record. They are called Darwinians, a dying breed soon to join those who believed in the Phlogiston of Chemistry and the Ether of Physics. Trust me, but of course you won't. Ideologues are like that.
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Alan Fox
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posted 24. December 2005 14:42
Professor Davison wrote
quote:
Alan Fox does not exist just as I and my distinguished predecessors do not exist and for the same reasons.
Solipsism?
Professor
Evolutionary theory is an undisputed fact among the legitimate scientific community. There is much research and debate going on as discoveries are made and their significance assessed. Intelligent Design (as espoused, for example by Michael Behe or Bill Dembski) is not considered science in the sense that the concept of science is accepted by mainstream scientists. There can be no meaningful debate until the Intelligent Design movement address the simple but crucial issue of the supernatural. Science can only look at natural causes. Non-natural causes are for philosophers and apologists. Unless the claim is that the non-natural can impinge on the natural, in which case, those effects should be scientifically measurable, testable and capable of being hypothesized.
[ 24. December 2005, 14:48: Message edited by: Alan Fox ]
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John A. Davison
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posted 24. December 2005 15:18
I am happy to let someone else repsond to that man. I wash my hands of him and his methods.
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Phillip L. Engle
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Member # 447
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posted 01. January 2006 22:37
To Alan Fox:
Intelligent design advocates (such as those associated with the Discovery Institute) have made it clear time and time again that evidence of intelligent design per se has nothing to do with introducing supernatural causation into science. For example, if, upon studying Mt. Rushmore, one were to conclude that it was the result of intelligent design and not (for example) wind erosion, one has not thereby said that Mt. Rushmore is due to a supernatural cause. Similarly, if the program searching for intelligent life off planet earth were to conclude that it had found such evidence of off-earth intelligent life, it would thereby NOT be introducing supernatural causation into science.
Interestingly, the Discovery Institute has made it clear that most of its scholars accept the idea of the FACT of evolution as descent-with-modification over millions of years. They do, however, doubt that neo-Darwinism is the correct THEORY of evolution. Neo-Darwinists are not satisfied, however: For over 100 years they have demanded that the FACT of evolution (FOR which there has always been overwhelming evidence) be bundled together with the neo-Darwinist THEORY of evolution (AGAINST which there has always been overwhelming evidence), and that the resulting bundle be accepted as-a-whole. Those who refuse to do this are blasted as ignorant, Biblical, young earth creationists, regardless of what their actual views may be.
Although I favor Robert F. DeHaan's hypothesis of MACRODEVELOPMENT as most likely to lead to a correct theory of evolution (rejecting the intelligent design hypothesis because it insufficiently "brackets out the subject" for my taste), nevertheless Judge Jones in his recent Dover decision got it exactly backwards: In that decision he said that "even a 12-year-old child" could see that intelligent design is really Biblical, evangelical Christian, young-earth creationism re-packaged. In fact, even a 5-year-old child can easily see that intelligent design has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with young-earth creationism, other than the fact that both theories are friendlier to a theistic point of view than to an atheistic point of view (contrary to neo-Darwinism).
So long as BOTH SIDES refuse to unbundle the FACT of evolution from the THEORY of neo-Darwinism (the neo-Darwinists in order to erroneously imply that the overwhelming evidence for the FACT of evolution conclusively proves the truth of Darwin's THEORY of evolution, and the creationists in order to use the overwhelming evidence against Darwin's THEORY of evolution to attempt to discredit the FACT of evolution itself), this hundred-year controversy will fruitlessly continue and doesn't even deserve to be called science. For science, AT A MINIMUM, requires that SOME attempt be made to establish facts as independently as possible from proposed theories, and only THEN to consider which proposed theory best fits the facts.
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Phillip L. Engle
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posted 01. January 2006 22:45
To Alan Fox:
Intelligent design advocates (such as thos
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Alan Fox
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Member # 1847
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posted 03. January 2006 07:40
Phillip Engle
If I am wrong in thinking that ID requires supernatural causes, then that is a huge misapprehension on my part. Michael Behe is partly responsible with his "puff of smoke" remark.
Re your points on evolution.
You say ID accepts the fact that evolution has occurred. That is good news and creates a good deal of common ground. But do I understand you to mean that ID proposes an alternative, entirely natural alternative mechanism to RM + NS?
Coul you elaborate?
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Phillip L. Engle
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posted 03. January 2006 09:39
It depends upon what you mean by "entirely natural". Traditionally physical science has sought to "bracket out" the subject as much as possible as part of its methodology, i.e., to mininimze any references to a "sky god" or "tree god", and mimimize any references to teleological causation (e.g., "the lightnng struck because the sky god got angry", or "the lungs take in air because that is their purpose -they were designed that way"). I fault intelligent design for NOT "bracketing out" the subject as much as possible.
Nevertheless teleological causation is NOT necessarily supernatural causation, since immanent teleological beings within the universe, such as human beings (and alien intelligences??) decide things, design things, etc.
Furthermore, mainstream biology has been especially deficient in general in "bracketing out the subject": Biological literature is rife with references to the "purpose" or "function" of this or that organ, the "information" content of DNA (information for exactly WHO?), etc.
I have stolen the term "tychistic" from Charles Sanders Pearce to designate nonlinear physical systems containing both order and disorder, where the order dominates over disorder (as opposed to chaotic systems where the disorder dominates over the order). I contend that the scientific vocabulary and methodology for dealing with complex tychistic physical systems (which includes virtually all biological systems) is severely deficient, which is why we are forever falling back into analogical teleogical vocabulary ("purpose", "design", "information") when dealing with them. Thus, unfortunately, a biological theory of "intelligent design" is not so far out of the mainstream of biology as it at first appears.
So far, the best SCIENTIFIC approach to tychistic systems which I have found is the approach of the late Ilya Prigogine and his associates in their studies of "far from equilibrium" nonlinear systems, especially what they call "dissipative structures". (See my book FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM.)
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Melvin H. Fox
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posted 03. January 2006 16:09
Alan
The story of evolution [from cosmic to micro] is disagreeable for one main reason. It evokes the god of chance as the driving force behind the changes that obviously occur. It reigns supreme over all science, from quantum probability distributions to stochastic processes responsible for the inception of life itself. We need probability to study and understand, all be it in a limited way, our universe. This does not mean that probability dictates to the universe how things are to be. I know chance is not the final cause; not because I can produce another cause in the laboratory, but because it is not a force in nature. Chance can’t do anything. Unless you define evolution as simply change over time and report no known cause, faith in it is nothing less than to worship chaos. You see, reporting no known cause is different than a report stating there is no cause.
Evolution, as defined in most academic circles, is a theological statement. That is, since there is no design [all things occur by random chance] then there is no designer. ID is simply a scientific attempt to dethrone chance as the driving force of change.
-Mel
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John A. Davison
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posted 03. January 2006 19:08
Evolution is most definitely NOT a theological statement. It is an undeniable reality of the past, the mechanism for which is as yet undetermined with certainty. That every living and non-living creature had an ancestor cannot be denied by any enlightened observer and to do so is the height of mysticism which has no place in science. The ONLY thing that remains to be determined is the MECHANISM by which evolution WAS effected.
One thing is established beyond question. Chance had absolutely nothing to do with it any more than it does with the development of a unique human being from a single cell, the fertilized egg. Ontogeny and phylogeny are two intimately related phenomena and, as nearly as can be determined, only the former still remains in operation. Both have been determined, preprogrammed by front-loading and then have proceeded entirely by endogenous means to their completion which for the individual is death and for the species is extinction. Ontogeny remains the best model for phylogeny. The parallels are not to be ignored at least by this investigator
That, in substance, is the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis to which I remain committed and I will until someone, somewhere, somehow presents a better explanation for the greatest mystery in all of science. I am not holding my breath.
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Scott A. Richardson
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posted 03. January 2006 19:09
nonlinear tychistic systems have been largely ignored by scientists because:
nonlinear = random/chaotic
tychistic = ordered/non-chaotic
nonlinear tychistic systems have been shown to produce boiling hot ice cubes that can only be seen in pitch black darkness.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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John A. Davison
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posted 04. January 2006 00:34
I agree that there IS no designer but that does not mean that there WAS NOT a designer. What the majority of the academic community believes is meaningless as it is largely dominated by ultra-liberal atheists anyway. I was a part of that academic community for over half a century and I know it well.
I will let Leo Berg, in my opinion the greatest evolutionary thinker of all time, speak for me. In the chapter in Nomogenesis with the running title "A Definite Direction:"
"We may summarize the present section in the following words: The laws of the organic world are the same, WHETHER WE ARE DEALING WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN INDIVIDUAL (ontogeny) OR THAT OF A PALAEONTOLOGICAL SERIES (phylogeny). Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance."
page 134, his emphasis
The error that both the Darwinians and the Lamarckians made and still make is that there was an exogenous identifiable cause for organic evolution. That cause has never been identified because it never existed just as it does not exist for the development of the individual from the fertilized egg. Both ontogney and phylogeny were driven from within by forces and mechanisms not yet understood. Furthermore, creative evolution is no longer in progress. Just as ontogeny terminates with the adult state so has evolution ceased as well.
I realize that few will agree with this assessment but it my conviction, a conviction shared by others as well, notably Robert Broom, Pierre Grasse and, of all people, the man who coined the expression "The Modern Synthesis," Julian Huxley. The extinction of the species is the counterpart of the death of the individual.
"Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for neoDarwinism."
"When all think alike, no one thinks very much."
Walter Lippmann
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John A. Davison
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posted 04. January 2006 00:50
Incidentally there is as yet no evolutionary theory. Theories are hypotheses that have recieved experimental and descriptive support. I have written a paper to that effect which will appear in the forthcoming issue of Rivista di Biologia. What we have are two failed hypotheses in the proposals of Lamarck and Darwin, neither of which ever had anything to do with the emergence and subsequent evolution of any paleontological series. That is precisely what led me to the PEH which continues to remain in complete accord with everything we are now learning concerning the role of the chromosomes in determining both ontogeny and phylogeny.
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