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Author
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Topic: can some aspect of Darwinism be falsified?
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Zachriel
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Member # 1793
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posted 14. June 2006 11:43
peter borger: "The neutral theroy does not explain why we find distinct mutation rates."
It wasn't offered to explain differing rates of mutation in different sequences, but why more closely related populations appear to have higher mutational divergences. However, there is some accumulating evidence that the differing rates of mutation in different sequences may be due to structural stability in protein folding.
You may want to believe that because there are gaps in knowledge, the current evolutionary paradigm must be replaced by your preferred model. And there are certainly significant gaps in scientific knowledge of genetics, but nothing you have posted leads me to believe that your model is better at explaining the data than Ho's and other specialists in the field. There is a great deal of new data due to advances in gene sequencing, but any new theories must explain not only the new data, but the existing data as well.
peter borger: "Apparently NRM is not allowed in current evolutionary theory, although we observe it all the time."
There are a large number of factors concerning how mutation occurs and is expressed in genomes. There are genetic repair mechanisms. There are optimized transcription mechanisms. Some sites are more mutationally active than others. Some sequences are more active than others. I know this because I read the literature. It isn't being censored.
And reading the literature leads one to believe that scientists are pursuing every active lead, and that these leads all point to evolution from common descent with selection and drift being prominent mechanisms of change. Try
An integrated view of protein evolution
http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v7/n5/full/nrg1838.html
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jdt
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Member # 1988
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posted 14. June 2006 12:07
Question for Dr. Davison:
I posted your article, The Case for Instant Evolution here:
web page
One poster, fusilier, a professional biologist, responded:
>Individuals do not evolve, populations evolve.<
I responded:
In the Darwinian hypothesis of evolution, yes. Davison, I don't believe, accepts this as true.
>One thing that gets short shrift is that Davison has asserted that evolution happened in the past, but does not happen now. So Which Is It? Why?<
I responded:
I have not read or assimilated all that Dr. Davison has written. But when he says "evolution" he is meaning, "prescribed evolution", and that organisms were produced instantly in geologic time. Organisms were pre-detemined to be what they are, - perhaps by design? - and chance and natural selection had nothing to do with the origin of the species.
--------------------------------
I don't what to misrepresent your thinking, so if I have made any errors please correct them or clarify what was said.
Thank you.
-jdt professional chemist
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Bruce Fast
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Member # 924
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posted 14. June 2006 12:19
Zachriel, Stewart Kauffman, in "The Origin of Order"seems to be suggesting that there is a law of nature that obligates the development of complexity -- that complexity happens just as surely as apples fall to the earth. (I must say, I have not read his book yet, but only have reports about its contents, such as the reviews on Amazon.com)
Michael Denton, in "Nature's Destiny" seems to be suggesting that laws of nature, rather than contingency or agency, are responsible for all of biodiversity. My sense is that Kauffman has uncovered one of those laws of nature.
Are you expecting to find laws of nature, something beyond mere contingency (RM+NS), which plays a vital role in the development of biodiversity?
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Zachriel
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Member # 1793
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posted 14. June 2006 12:52
Bruce Fast: "Are you expecting to find laws of nature, something beyond mere contingency (RM+NS), which plays a vital role in the development of biodiversity?"
Of course they do. The adaptation of life to the effects of gravity (e.g. legs, wings) would be one such vital role. As far as complexity in biology, that is a natural result of filling available niches. As far as complexity in general, that and all questions about why there is something rather than nothing may not have answers in science.
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Shi
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Member # 1923
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posted 14. June 2006 13:22
quote:
That's not true. Fusion of hydrogen into helium is one of the most common events in nature, and is explained by Quantum Mechanics.
Yes. but you ignore the fact that the fusion only occur in stars but not on Earth. The hydrogen in your body never fuses to form helium. My point is that the condition or enviroment that make a hydrogen stable is distinctly different from those that make it unstable. Analagously, the condition that maintain the stability of a species cannot be the same as that which will fundamentally change a species. The random mutation plus natural selection mechanism so far has only been shown to accout for varieties within a species and is a mechanism for maitaining species stability. The mechanism for creating a species remains to be found. In other words, we have only found the equivalent of the condition that makes a hydrogen stable but we have not found the equivalent of the way that can evolve hydrogen into helium.
Random mutation, because of the cancelling out effects, is proven to be compatible with species stability and has been proven to cause nothing but to maintain the stability of species and species decay or extinction. Random Mutation is more assciated with disease rather than beneficial growth. An old person has more mutations in his genome than a young person and that is why the old person has more diseases (like cancer) than the young. No one is saying that the old person should be the seeds of new species but that would be exactly what would be predicted by NDE.
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Zachriel
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Member # 1793
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posted 14. June 2006 13:46
Shi: "Yes. but you ignore the fact that the fusion only occur in stars but not on Earth."
I didn't ignore it. I pointed it out.
Shi: "My point is that the condition or enviroment that make a hydrogen stable is distinctly different from those that make it unstable."
Different in degree. A matter of temperature and pressure.
Shi: "The random mutation plus natural selection mechanism so far has only been shown to accout for varieties within a species ..."
As varieties grade into species, there is nothing to stop continued divergence.
Shi: "...and is a mechanism for maitaining species stability."
Differing environments can result in either stability or instability. It depends on the environment. However, it can be observed that populations evolve and diverge in response to the environment.
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Shi
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Member # 1923
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posted 14. June 2006 13:47
A species is quite stable as far as we can tell. Animals, in respone to the hostile enviroment of human's exploitation, generally go extinct rather than change into a new species. The example of moth is a trivial case of adaptive change. The fact is that we only see extinction but rarely adaptive creation. It is almost as if species are determined to risk extinction rather than change. It is obvious there is a force that strives to maintain stability of a species. But it is equally obvious that species do change or evolve into new species, so there must be a creative force that is opposite to the force that maintains stability.
So here is a question for you guys to ponder, is the Darwinian mechanism a creative force or a maintanence force? It cannot be both because the two forces are opposite. As many have realized, NDE wants to explain both and hence explains neither well. When it explains one thing well, it cannot explain the opposite. When NDE is well suited to explain stability of a species or microevolution, it cannot explain macroevo. The creative force that is responsible for macro evo is opposite to the maintainence force that is responsible for specie stability. The NDE view that creative evolution is merely the same force (over long time) that is operating day to day in keeping species stable committs the fallacy of failure to see that there exist two opposite forces in evolution, one creative and one adaptive. NDE correctly identified the adaptive force. The creative force remains to be articulated.
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Bruce Fast
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Member # 924
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posted 14. June 2006 13:56
Zachriel, I enjoy your well educated perspective on this forum, but the most amazing thing you have said yet is, "As far as complexity in general, that and all questions about why there is something rather than nothing may not have answers in science."
Honestly, my hope is that the question about why there is something rather than nothing is answered by science. (Though I am not one, I guess that makes me a scientist at heart.) ID may feel well rewarded when such an answer is found. ID certainly feels rewarded by the current state of cosmology. Alas, ID will thrive in the gaps as long as science does not have this answer.
My current bets are with biology eventually looking much like cosmology -- given these precise conditions, and only these precise conditions, an inevitable flow happens which, of necessity, leads to the biodiversity that happened, including something surprisingly human-like.
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Shi
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Member # 1923
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posted 14. June 2006 14:09
quote:
As varieties grade into species, there is nothing to stop continued divergence.
yes there is. it is the inherent potential of the species. when a species has no potential to fly, no amout of gradual guidance by environment will make it fly. Varieties can go only so far and has a limit. That is why species go extinct. Species can adapt upto to limited degree and extinction will put a stop to continued divergence.
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Shi
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Member # 1923
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posted 14. June 2006 14:28
quote:
Differing environments can result in either stability or instability. It depends on the environment. However, it can be observed that populations evolve and diverge in response to the environment.
The fact which we observe today is that differing environment result in either stability or extinction. Populations do diverge in response to the environment but that is very limited and not creative evolution. The proof for this conclusion is the fact of extinction. Here lies a paradox for NDE. Small change in environment can only accomplish change within a species. Creative evolution must therefore requires a drastic change in environment. But what we found is that species go extinct rather than evolve into new species.
NDE then argues that creative evolution is the accumulation of small environmental changes along a particular direction. But as I argued before, if environmental change is random, the accumulative effects of those small changes will be no change along any direction.
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Melvin H. Fox
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Member # 1684
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posted 14. June 2006 15:14
Shi wrote:
quote:
But as I argued before, if environmental change is random, the accumulative effects of those small changes will be no change along any direction.
What statistical law do you point to in support of such a statement concerning random events?
-Mel
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Shi
Member
Member # 1923
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posted 14. June 2006 15:24
quote:
Suppose we have some sort of critter, let’s call it Sam. Sam is confined to a linear track. Sam is totally purposeless but it will move. It can move left or right. Since it has no purpose it can’t decide which way to move. Sam pulls out a coin and gives it a flip. If it lands heads, Sam moves one step to the right, if tails one step to the left. Sam continues to flip and move one step right/left each time corresponding to heads/tails. What will happen to Sam? Will it stay relatively close to where it started or will it move off to the left or right? As it turns out, on average, the longer Sam flips the farther away from its starting position it will move.
This is a curious development. The explanation is thus. As the number of flips tends to infinity the percentage of heads does tend toward 50%. However, the difference between the number of heads and the number of tails is increasing without bound. That Sam will move off in some direction is sure, which direction right/left is a 50/50 shot.
Interesting. Here is how I see it. After 10 flips, Sam may end up with 7 heads and 3 tails and is thus 4 steps from the middle. After 100 flips, Sam may end up with 70 heads and 30 tails and is thus 40 steps from the middle. Indeed as the number of flips increases, Sam will be more away from the middle.
But the relavent issue here is right or left rather than the distance. After 100 flips, Sam may end up on the right. But after 500 slips, Sam may well end up on the left. In evolution terms, whatever advandtage Sam gained before by landing on the right is now cancelled by his subsequent landing on the left.
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Shi
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Member # 1923
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posted 14. June 2006 15:49
quote:
What statistical law do you point to in support of such a statement concerning random events?
Statistical laws and math in general does not take into account of time. But time is key to evolution. Thus, none of the present math laws or equations can express evolution principles.
Let us say that the evolution of flying ability requires 100 favorable small environmental changes. If those favoralbe changes are random, then there must be an equal number of opposite changes or unfavorable changes. Unless you invoke miracle, the likely hood of the 100 favorable changes occur in a row is extremely small. But that is what NDE requires. In real life, it is much more common to have a few favorable changes followed by a few unfavorable ones which then cancel out each other. Random variation selected by a random environment will end up with randomness, which is no progress toward any meaningful pattern.
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Zachriel
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Member # 1793
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posted 14. June 2006 16:56
Shi: "Statistical laws and math in general does not take into account of time."
I can't possibly even begin to understand your point here. From Newton's calculus to Einstein's relativity, time has been a crucial element of mathematics and science.
Shi: "Let us say that the evolution of flying ability requires 100 favorable small environmental changes. If those favoralbe changes are random, then there must be an equal number of opposite changes or unfavorable changes."
Um, why should these changes be random or even favorable? Rather, geology indicates that there have been vast changes on the Earth over eons of time. These changes include everything from moving continents, mountain building, changes in the atmosphere, climate, etc.
Shi: "Random variation selected by a random environment will end up with randomness, which is no progress toward any meaningful pattern."
Well, certainly it will not result in adaptation (though you are wrong about pattern). However, the environment is not "random" nor does it change from one random configuration to another equally random configuration.
Consider a much simpler case. Life living in water and a lifeless land. Those organisms that lay their eggs in shallow water may find that more of their eggs survive from being eaten. Those that can drag themselves further onto the shore gain even more advantage. And so on. The environment doesn't change, but organisms adapt slowly over time in order to invade a new niche.
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Shi
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Member # 1923
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posted 14. June 2006 17:37
quote:
I can't possibly even begin to understand your point here. From Newton's calculus to Einstein's relativity, time has been a crucial element of mathematics and science.
Math is the art of abstraction. Because of abstraction, many information are left out and the most prominent is information about uniqueness and time. Nothing in this world equals anything else when no information is abstracted out. Everything is unique. 1+1 = 2 is only valid if you ignore the uniqueness of the first 1 and the second 1. The first 1 is unique and different from the second 1 because it appeared in my mind and writting first in time.
quote:
Consider a much simpler case. Life living in water and a lifeless land. Those organisms that lay their eggs in shallow water may find that more of their eggs survive from being eaten. Those that can drag themselves further onto the shore gain even more advantage. And so on. The environment doesn't change, but organisms adapt slowly over time in order to invade a new niche.
You have just illustrated a perfect case of NDE's fallacy in explain one aspect of life while failing to explain the opposite. The fish that live in deep water may have less eggs survive than those that live in shallow water. But NDE will predict that the deep water fish will evolved mechanisms to produce more eggs whereas the shallow water fish will evolve to produce less eggs. Plus, the fish that left water will make more room for the fish that stayed in water. Thus it is not all clear which fish survived better.
quote:
However, the environment is not "random" nor does it change from one random configuration to another equally random configuration.
You are refuting yourself or NDE. If the environment is not random, please explain how it is intentionaly and purposely created. After all, the opposite of random is intention and purpose. Whatever it is that purposely created the non-random environment such as the Earth is thus ultimately reponsible for life based on NDE since it is the environment, in turn the creator of environment, that selects what to be manifested in life. So, perhaps you are like Darwin who believe the ultimate cause is God or a purpose as he wrote in his last sentence of his book. But this position is really self defeating and contradictory. One the one hand, NDE insists that there is no supernatural force in action whereas on the other hand many believers of the NDE invoke God.
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