Guest Post: Follow-up to last night’s panel discussion on ID/Evolution
by Mark L. Psiaki
I have the following critiques of points made last night (April 5, 2006) at the Panel Discussion on Intelligent Design and Evolution in which Prof. Cornelius Hunter of Biola University represented intelligent design and Profs. Richard Harrison, chair of the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Department at Cornell, and Kern Reeve, professor in the Cornell department of Neurobiology & Behavior, represented evolution. I don’t think that Prof Hunter made adequate replies to some of the problems with points made by Profs. Harrison Reeve. The important additional responses, as I see them, are as follows
1. Prof. Harrison made an unusual and seemingly effective response to one of Prof. Hunter’s main critique’s of evolution. Prof. Hunter’s critique was that the genome provides evidence that not all life descended from the same original cell. He claimed that there is evidence of several distinctly different sets of DNA in known existing life forms that could not possibly have all descended from the same ancestor. Prof. Harrison did not dispute this assertion. Based on his failure to dispute it, I will assume that Prof. Hunter’s statement is an acknowledged fact. Prof. Harrison’s response was to say that this is not a problem because there could have been 25 distinct ancestors from which all life descended (I can’t recall whether he said 23 or 25, but it was some number on that scale). I have to admit that this is an effective counter-argument to Prof. Hunter’s critique of evolution, but it is an argument that raises many more problems for evolutionists than it solves. By using this argument to solve a biological evolution problem, he creates huge problems for pre-biological genesis of the first cell, for now one needs to independently generate not 1 cell but 25 (or was it 23?). If the likelihood that one cell arose by purely random coincidence is, say 10^(-100), which is essentially zero, then the likelihood that 25 independent first cells of 25 distinct genomes arose independently is 10^(-2500) which is much, much, much closer to zero. If there had been any Abiogenesis researchers in the audience, then I fear that they would have suffered cardiac arrest when they heard Prof. Harrison’s response. The problem of ever explaining how even one cell arose is hard enough without having to explain how 25 different cells arose.
To make an analogy, suppose that Prof. Harrison were assigned to defend Seattle from an atom-bomb-equipped missile that had been fired from North Korea. If he were to defend Seattle the way he defended evolution in his comment about the 25 different original genomes, then he would decide to destroy the incoming atom bomb by detonating a hydrogen bomb just above the city at the moment then the North Korean missile was approaching. He would have very effectively destroyed the North Korean missile without the need to have very accurately tracked it or hit it. The North Korean missile would have done no damage whatsoever to Seattle. Unfortunately, Prof. Harrison’s Hydrogen blast would have done far more damage to Seattle than the North Korean bomb ever could have done. In short, Prof. Harrison’s cure is worse than the disease.
2. Prof. Kern Reeve made some important points about prediction in science and about his work on the relationships of certain mating behaviors, presumably genetically encoded, to population patterns. I don’t recall all that he said about it, but I found it fascinating, even inspiring, and I felt that Prof. Reeve expressed the better grasp of the importance of the ability to do prediction in the realm of validation of scientific theory. Unfortunately, there were also some flaws in Prof. Reeve’s understanding of the interaction between prediction and theory.
A. The first flaw, if I understand what was said last night, concerns the relationship between the predictions that Prof. Reeve makes in his work and the validity of the theory of macro evolution. He implied that the two were intimately connected. In other words, he seemed to be saying that he could not have made the predictions that he made without the model that all of the complex forms of life, as we know them, arose from a single cell or set of single cells through much repeated application of the types of processes that he is studying. This is a non sequitur. It seems obvious that Prof. Reeve is studying and making predictions in the field of micro-evolution or even, one might say, in the field population dynamics. To say that, given a certain genome or given a certain predisposition to a certain type of behavior, we can predict a certain relative frequency of the sexes in a certain species is not to say that we can explain how that species came to be what it is, to have the genome that it has, to have the behavioral predispositions that it has.
Again, to make an analogy, one could call the science of apples falling "Micro-Newtonian mechanics" and the science of the planets orbiting the Sun "Macro-Newtonian mechanics." For Prof. Reeve to argue the way he argues about his research supporting macro-evolution would be the same as arguing for the acceptance of Newton’s explanation of the motion of the planets by doing predictions and experiments about the falling of peaches, bananas, and cherries. Suppose Newton had proceeded in this fashion. Suppose that Newton had merely reasoned from the falling apples to other types of falling fruit. He would never have bothered to develop calculus and to use it to solve the difficult 1/r^2 nonlinear differential equation that was needed in order to prove that the apple falling and the planets orbiting were one and the same thing. Suppose that he claimed that his successes with the other fruit constituted sufficient reason to accept his proposition that he had explained the orbiting of the planets around the Sun. If that had happened, then Newton’s name would not be a household word and I would not have the job that I have today.
Prof. Reeve may believe in macro-evolution, he may do good micro-evolutionary science or population dynamics science, and he may believe that his success in the lab or at the computer somehow support his macro-evolutionary beliefs, but his beliefs about this connection do not constitute an actual connection. Prof. Reeve correctly disputed Prof. Hunter’s argument that Newton’s success with F=m*a lent credence to Newton’s belief that F=m*a is true because there was an intelligent designer behind who decided that F should equal m*a. Prof. Reeve’s excellent point is that one can use F= m*a quite successfully without needing to believe that it arose because of intelligent design.
Isn’t it true, however, that one can believe in intelligent design rather than macroevolution and still do all of the same kind of laboratory and computer work that Prof. Reeve does with equal success? Based on what I heard from Prof. Reeve last night, I believe that I could do his kind of work, should I learn the necessary background material, without ever having to accept his supposition that all of the different biological forms came into existence by purely naturalistic processes. On the other hand, Prof. Reeve could never do the type of rocket science that I do if he did not accept that F = m*a. Thus, my ability to make successful predictions in the lab and at my computer constitutes real proof that F= m*a (that is, in the low-speed, low-mass limit that does require Einstein’s theory of relativity), but Prof. Reeve’s success at prediction does not constitute proof of macro-evolution.
B. The second flaw in Prof. Reeve’s presentation about prediction in science is that he demands too much of prediction. A theory has the right to define what it will predict. Its critics do not have to right to demand that it predict whatever they want to predict.
This touches on a very important subject in science, which I will call the humility of science. Good science has a sense of humility. It says that science can answer some important questions about the physical world in which we live. It does not say that it can necessarily answer any and every question that someone might like to ask about our physical world. Science has been very successful at answering some questions, and the number of questions that it can answer has grown steadily. Many people have mistakenly (sometimes arrogantly) misconstrued this progress to imply that science can answer any question than anyone might want to pose. The truth is that we do not know the limits of science, but it would be wisest to suspect that it may have definite limits. It appears that cosmology has certain limits when it looks at the early stages of the big bang, and certainly it can say nothing about anything that might have happened before the big bang. Behavioral sciences seem to have clear limits too. Why have we made huge progress on treating heart disease and minimal progress on treating mental disorders? One can’t help but wonder whether we are coming up against a limit of science. Of course, the people with a vested interest in the research and clinical treatment dollars associated with mental disorders will never admit that there are fundamental limits to their science, but the rest of the public suspects that they are not to be totally trusted on this matter.
As an example of the limitation of science, consider quantum mechanics. One of its fundamental tenants, known as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, is that certain questions of classical physics are unanswerable at the atomic and sub-atomic level: one cannot know exactly the position and velocity of a particle. This principle drove classical physicists, including Einstein, mad. They hated it. They were used to assuming that such questions could be answered, and the new quantum mechanics folks came along and told them that they had to stop asking the usual questions. This was purely a negative result, yet it was a key to making advances in this area.
The theory of intelligent design, or put better, the assertion that there exists irreducible complexity in certain biological mechanisms or biochemical processes, is similar. It makes few predictions. Its principle prediction is that there will never be found a naturalistic descent-with-modification (i.e., natural selection) explanation for how these irreducibly complex systems came to be. This is a negative prediction, and many evolutionary biologists don’t like its negativity. It is a prediction, nonetheless. It does not give power to predict about the sex ratios in certain populations, as Prof. Reeve would like it to, but that is not a problem, because it did not claim that it would make such predictions. Although it doesn’t make the usual predictions that certain biologists might like, its prediction is an important one. If true, then the assertion of irreducible complexity is on par with the assertion in physics of the conservation of mass/energy and the assertion in chemistry of the immutability of the elements in chemical reactions. One cannot develop all of physics or all of chemistry from either of these principles, but woe to the physicist or chemist who does not understand and accept them. That physicist is liable to start trying to build a perpetual motion machine; that chemist is liable to start trying to find a chemical recipe for turning lead into gold. It is the same with the evolutionary biologists. The principle of irreducible complexity does not give one all of biology, but if true, it serves to divert the biologist from wasting time by trying to answer a question to which there is no scientific answer.
______________
Mark Psiaki is a professor in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University and the faculty adviser of the Cornell IDEA Club
Other Responses to Hunter’s Panel Discussion
In addition to my response to Cornelius Hunter’s talk last night, Cornell IDEA club faculty advisor, Mark Psiaki (Assoc. Prof. of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering), who incidentally looks a bit like the IDer from the audience that I describe in my …
Trackback by A Concerned Scientist — April 6, 2006 @ 6:51 pm
No, you may not take something as fact simply because it was not directly rebutted. Please note that Hunter failed to support this assertion with any details; which proteins do not fit the pattern of common descent, authors or citations involved. Hunter made many unsupported assertions. Harrison and Reeve chose to make a case for evolution rather than knock down Hunter’s statements.
You missed something. He said there is no theoretical reason why there could not be 25 or whatever separate origins of life, but the data point clearly to one.
It ought to predict something, or else it does not deserve be called a theory. Hunter was pressed to name any prediction made by ID. All he could come up with was a reference to a science fiction movie.
Your comparison of Behe’s “irreducibly complex” argument to mathematically rigorous negative proofs is poorly founded. You should check out the scientific literature to see the progress made by those who were “wasting their time” working on answers Behe said could not exist. You should also read the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial transcripts to see how Behe’s various claims held up under cross-examination. You should also read up on existing evolutionary explanations for complexity such as scaffolding and Co-option
Comment by ivy privy — April 6, 2006 @ 7:37 pm
To your attention:
The commentary:
Science 312, 7 April 2006, pp 61-63
“Reducible Complexity”
Christoph Adami
The article:
Science 312, 7 April 2006, pp. 97-101
“Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity by Molecular Exploitation”
Jamie T. Bridgham, Sean M. Carroll, Joseph W. Thornton
Comment by ivy privy — April 7, 2006 @ 3:28 pm
Number of independent origins of life:
Harrison said there is no theoretical restriction to a single origin of life, but that is clearly where the data points. You seem to have missed the second half of his statement.
Comment by ivy privy — April 7, 2006 @ 3:30 pm
Ivy Privy,
I pointed out on the “Bankrupting ID” thread why the article on reducible complexity is flawed.
You said, “You should also read up on existing evolutionary explanations for complexity such as scaffolding and Co-option “. No rather you should try to refute the well reasoned issues posed by the displacement theorem and the improbabilities associated with large scale co-option. Evolutionary algorithms are limited in the kinds of structures they can resolve, and that is a mathematical fact. The presumption that biology is architected in a way that is amenable to evolutionary alogrithms is just a presumption, no where near a proven fact, and possibly quite wrong the more we learn about various molecular systems in biology. The case for the efficacy of blindwatchmaker evolution is far from closed.
Salvador
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 15, 2006 @ 3:30 am
Much is wrong with Psiaki’s claims but first let me congratulate Psiaki on his observation that The principle of irreducible complexity does not give one all of biology, but if true, it serves to divert the biologist from wasting time by trying to answer a question to which there is no scientific answer.. I could not better describe the scientific vacuity of ID itself.
Has Psiaki additionally forgotten that IC is an argument against Darwinian pathways?
Is Psiaki familiar with the fact that the Heisenberg principle was derived by Heisenberg in his 1927 paper as a fundamental outcome of quantum theory?
I’d say that Psiaki’s arguments fail on many levels although I appreciate his appeal to the Heisenberg uncertainty which I see as the best place for a supernatural deity to ‘hide’ itself.
Comment by PvM — April 16, 2006 @ 10:51 pm
Nice redirection from examples of IC systems arising by natural pathways to yet another poorly developed concept of ID namely the displacement theorem. While the displacement theorem once again shows that ID is all about the supernatural, it also shows that as long as the system is ‘open’ to external information, there are no real issues. In other words, whether the external information is the environment or some supernatural or natural designer, it does not help ID’s cause.
As to the probabilities of ‘large scale co-option’ I notice the
absence of much of any argument, calculations etc to support this claim.
An unsupported assertion
Again wrong, read up on evolvability
So what?
Comment by PvM — April 16, 2006 @ 10:55 pm
Vacuity of ID: Cordova comments on IC
On The Design Paradigm Salvador Cordova ‘responds’ (sic) to various claims about evolution and irreducible complexity. As I will show, the response further establishes the scientific vacuity of Intelligent Design. Salvador Cordova wrote: Y…
Trackback by The Panda's Thumb — April 16, 2006 @ 11:35 pm
Evolutionary algorithms (EA) can’t discover complex objects which give do not give the evolutionary algorithm any information as to how close the EA to resovling the object.
For example, you have a 30 character password which only you know what that is. Any guess as to how easily an EA will be able to solve what that password is versus random chance (answer: about the same)?
There are far more such situtations where the object in question does not give anticipatory information to the algorithm, unless the EA is rigged like Dawkins Weasal or Adami’s Avida.
Irreducible complexity is like a password trying to be solved by an EA. Sure it may get help from co-option, just like an EA trying to solve a 30 charcter password might get help from co-option, but then that just shifts the problem (displaces it) elsewhere, namely, what’s the probability of such a co-option happening. In Darwinian Logic, 100% is the assumed answer without any substantial proof.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 17, 2006 @ 2:24 am
Salvador wrote
Which is to say that on a flat fitness landscape, stochastic genetic drift is the only variable operating to change a population. That’s called a “trivial” point.Salvador went on
Salvador here misrepresents the case. In fact, fitness landscapes in nature are chock full of gradients — slopes — in both space and time. There is no shortage of “information” in nature to (locally) ‘guide’ an evolving population. Natural environments vary more-or-less continuously in a slew of respects — temperature, pressure, aridity, population density, predator and prey density, and on and on.Salvador’s misrepresentation is that veridically representing fitness landscapes with varying topography is “rigging” an EA. But it is not. Fitness landscapes in nature display varying topography. The Avida platform allows experimenters to control the topography of the fitness landscape to study its effects on the dynamics of evolution; Salvador seems to feel that’s some sort of cheating.
Further, Salvador’s conflation of Dawkins’ WEASEL program with Avida misrepresents them both. The WEASEL program is an illustration of the power of cumulative selection only, not an evolutionary algorithm, as Dawkins plainly pointed out when he first published it. Avida, on the other hand, is a versatile research platform in which one can directly test hypotheses associated with questions in evolution.
One need not depend solely on computer models, though. A recent example of research showing how a complex (so advertised by Behe, anyway) biochemical structure evolves is Bridgham, et al.’s, reconstruction of the evolution of hormone-receptor complexity, discussed in detail here. That paper directly invalidates Behe’s claims made in Behe & Snope (2004) and in his testimony in Kitzmiller.
Further, and more insidious, Salvador’s remark about “anticipatory information” contains a false presupposition to the effect that an EA (or evolution) is seeking something, anticipating something. That’s not the case. It’s a conceptual trap set by treating biological evolution as a goal-oriented search process. But biological evolution is not ’searching’ for anything in particular. It finds viable complex systems without searching for them, guided only by the local topography of high-dimensioned fitness landscapes.
RBH
Comment by RBH — April 17, 2006 @ 3:50 am
So I guess the question is– how would we test these, i.e., how would we detemine whether the “real world” gave, in all pertinent cases, the necessary information?
PvM– it seems you would claim that ‘the presumption that biology is architected in a way that is amenable to evolutionary alogrithms’ is more than just a presumption, and at least close to “proven fact” status? Is this correct? Would you make this claim for all systems, or just those that aren’t irreducibly complex?
Comment by Freawaru — April 17, 2006 @ 10:41 am
RBH–are you suggesting that it is legitimate to assume that something evolved in the first place, and then make up your fitness landscapes to see how that might best have worked? I won’t say rigging, but surely then you are, at the very least, in danger of circular reasoning?
We’ve all read the Bridgham et al paper, and it seems to say nothing about irreducible complexity– the only interesting claim (which doesn’t appear new, since I’ve been told it ever since I can remember) is that molecular exploitation might be a prominent theme in evolution. This seems to still be on “proposal” status with them. I would think the next step would be to determine the role which molecular exploitation really does have in systems more involved than the rather simple one in question (maybe a case where we were looking at actual novel function, for one thing)? Or do you think that, seeing life exists as we now see it, and it evolved–since it wasn’t designed– it is reasonable to assume that fitness landscapes are always consistent with that?
Comment by Freawaru — April 17, 2006 @ 10:59 am
Freawaru asked
Not quite. What I suggested is that given the hypothesis — briefly, that in replicators with heritable variation that ‘live’ in a varied environment, where some of the properties of that environment differentially affect the reproductive success of replicators, complexity should arise — one can ask the question experimentally. One can also explore the effects of varying fitness landscape topographies on the evolutionary dynamics of populations. That’s called “doing research”.That’s what an actual scientific research program is. It formulates and tests hypotheses derived from theory, building on prior research and extending it, sometimes in new directions. And as it turns out, such selective environments, in which irreducibly complex structures evolve by means of the mechanisms invoked by evolutionary theory, are not extraordinary. Lots of variables in the environment are relevant to the differential reproductive success of varying organisms. and their interactions drive the evolution of populations. IC structures can evolve by purely Darwinian mechanisms: see here for an example of the experimental exploration of the evolution of irreducibly complex structures in a controlled simulation study.
We can also explore the properties of selective environments by varying them experimentally and ascertaining the effects of the experimental manipulations on the evolutionary dynamics of the population. That’s also what one does in a genuine scientific research program.
Freawaru asked
Behe claimed under oath in in his Kitzmiller testimony thatThe Behe and Snoke paper explicitly (badly) modeled exactly the same sort of structure as the Bridgham, et al. paper. It sure seems relevant to IC given Behe’s sworn testimony.
I will say also that hypothesizing that “molecular exploitation” is a prominent theme and providing data showing an instance of it are two different (though related) things. The former is a hypothesis, the latter a research-based test of the hypothesis, and the Bridgham, et al. paper corroborates that hypothesis. Again, that’s what one does when one has a theory that generates a fruitful research program: one derives testable hypotheses and then goes out and actually tests them.
Freawaru remarked
The “simple one” is ubiquitous in biology and is thus not trivial. And what do you think those folks doing the actual research are doing? Just that. Is Behe? Nope.I will also note that the phrase “actual novel function” is a bit of a red herring. Evolution is descent with modification. Every “novel” function has its roots in something else that preceded it. The structures and processes that perform new functions do not appear de novo in Behe’s puff of smoke. They are sculpted by selection from pre-existing structures that perform different functions, the sculpting being under the guidance of the local topography of a multi-dimensional fitness landscape on which the evolving population dwells.
RBH
Comment by RBH — April 17, 2006 @ 5:33 pm
Freawaru,
I responded. Apparently my response is being held for moderation since it contains several inks.
RBH
Comment by RBH — April 17, 2006 @ 7:54 pm
Frewaru,
It is good that RBH has joined the discussion. He is a retired faculty chairman in Psychology and is very knowledgeable on these issues. It does not mean that I agree with him, but I am glad he is here to answer your questions.
However, because RBH’s said:
I should comment as I don’t think I misrepresented the situation at all. There is no question a fitness landscape is varying or that in theory a fitness landscape can lead to IC. The question is whether such landscapes exist in physical reality, and even in the remote chance they did, did they have to be designed.
Video games routinely model laws of physics that don’t exist, it makes it fun, but it’s not real. In like manner, the Avida platform, or any such platform is free to invoke selection forces and create fitness landscapes which have no basis in physical reality.
The Avida platform only restates a tautology: “if selective forces exists which can do such and such, then such and such can be done”. Lenski and Adami’s Avida models are essentially a tautology. It does not answer the questions of whether such selective forces can exist in physical reality.
Behe’s challenge remains unsolved by Darwinian evolution, namely, do selective forces exists which can evolve large scale biological innovation such as a flagellum.
The issue is not too far from the analogy I posed: if a search algorithm can solve a 2 character password (complexity 1 in 26^2), will it be effective at solving a 30 character password (complexity 1 in 26^30)? What is the likelihood a search algorithm can co-opt the pieces of the password (answer: nothing that would help the algorithm perform better than a random search)?
The analogies I’m offering are crude, but hopefully the relevance is obvious.
Salvador
PS
Royal Truman and I explored the issue here:
http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-6-t-000532.html
I made an amusing run with Avida which would be somewhat analogous to throwing an organism in a 10,000 watt microwave oven for 3 days and then asking it to reproduce. The amusing thing is it did. I just wanted to highlight, I was serious about Avida permitting things outside of physical reality. In the process of me running the experiment, the Avida developers were forced acknowledge that I uncovered a bug in their software and they had to repair it. However the repair they made did little to change that rather amusing feature of high radiation exposure and it continues to highlight several persistent flaws in Avida which Dr. Royal Truman rightly flagged.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 17, 2006 @ 8:21 pm
Salvador wrote
In fact, the “repair” was to change a comment to caution users not to set mutation rates to biologically unrealistic rates. Any experimental device can be pushed past its acknowledged limits and be driven to give anomalous results when it is. None of that speaks to the validity of the results when the device is used within its limits of applicability.I suggest that readers consult my comments on Truman’s critique. My very first comment on the first draft of that paper was
I still await the posting of my response to Freawaru.RBH
Comment by RBH — April 17, 2006 @ 8:57 pm
Once again, Salvador wrote
Thinking a bit more about that episode, it strikes me that Salvador’s “radiation” results are about what one would expect if biological mutation rates were in fact as high as he set them in his Avida run. What he got was something like a mutational catastrophe in which most offspring are non-viable, but once in a great while a feebly viable offspring occurred. No extended (in time) lineages were established due to the high frequency of lethal mutations. So in a sense, at least, Avida ‘broke’ in much the same way that a biological population would ‘break’ if mutation rates were that high.RBH
Comment by RBH — April 18, 2006 @ 6:13 pm
Cornell ID advisor on Intelligent Design
Mark Psiaki, Associate Professor at the Sibley School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering which is part of the Cornell University and advisor of Cornell’s IDEA club provides us with some insights into the minds of ID activists. I will…
Trackback by The Panda's Thumb — April 19, 2006 @ 4:24 am
ID, Heisenberg and Quantum Mechanics
Over on Panda’s Thumb PvM reaches some interesting conclusions from Prof. Psiaki’s guest post of 4/6. He seems particularly drawn to Psiaki’s final sentence:
The principle of irreducible complexity does not give one all of biology,…
Trackback by The Design Paradigm — April 19, 2006 @ 5:53 am
RBH said
At first I had to say I sympathized with RBH’s and Musgrave’s position, and so it is understandable that they interpreted Behe’s remarks regarding Bridgham as a rejection soley on the basis of a protein-ligand system, when the rejection was based on the lack of SEVERAL parts. I pointed out 2 amino acids are quite a stretch to be arguing for SEVERAL. Behe and snokes papers helped quantify what SEVERAL should mean in a context of single protein binding sites.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 19, 2006 @ 2:30 pm
Speaking of predictions, this is what Psiaki had to say last November:
Comment by ivy privy — April 19, 2006 @ 8:48 pm
Ivy - that’s funny! I wonder if he wrote that with a straight face, and if so, how he managed it. ;-)
Comment by Dan — April 19, 2006 @ 9:08 pm
“Evolution” by natural selection was promoted by the creationist Edward Blythe before Darwin. Evolution in that case was within limits of created and immutable forms, and natural selection was not the Blindwatchmaker of the major features of biotic reality, but rather something to keep the status quo. If Darwinism refers to Darwin’s grand claim of organic evolution, and does not include the territory staked out by Blythe, then Psiaki is correct.
Furthermore, the neo-Darwinian variety of Darwinism is dead.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 19, 2006 @ 10:05 pm
“Furthermore, the neo-Darwinian variety of Darwinism is dead.”
If by “dead,” you mean there’s a better theory with supporting evidence (peer-reviewed evidence, etc.), you’ve got to be kidding.
Is Gravity “dead” too?
Sorry in advance for the smart-ass comments, but STC’s just askin’ for it. ;-)
Comment by Dan — April 19, 2006 @ 10:18 pm
“Neo-Darwinism is Dead” Eric Davidson.
“The neo-Darwinist population-genetics tradition is reminiscent of phrenology, I think, and is a kind of science that can expect exactly the same fate. It will look ridiculous in retrospect, because it is ridiculous.” Lynn Margulis
Oh, and in regard to having better theories, the willingness to say one is wrong before having a replacement makes sense. If Kepler or everyone else continued to believed Ptolemaic epicycles were adequate and good enough, who knows where we’d be today. Skepticism is to be welcomed by science not rejected by it. Davidson and Margulis have reasonable doubts, and last but not least Pigliucci knows a neo-Darwinism is crying out to get fixed (if such a thing is even possible).
And regarding peer-reviewed evidence for evolutionary biology, don’ t you mean peer-sanctioned opinions?
And just out of curiosity, do you consider Kimura-Ohta-Jukes-King’s theories Darwinian?
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 19, 2006 @ 11:45 pm
No, I mean Peer-reviewed.
And thanks for taking a Lynn Margulis quote out of context. Her endosymbiosis theory has been suggested to be in opposition to the modern evolutionary synthesis, but if you look at them more closely, the two theories are not incompatible and the truth is likelier to be that natural selection works on many levels (genetic up to the ecosystem) and variation is introduced both at the genetic and the cellular level.
And as for the neutral theory of molecular evolution that Kimura developed, it absolutely fits with the modern evolutionary synthesis - think of it as the molecular basis for genetic drift.
Comment by Dan — April 20, 2006 @ 5:53 pm
No. I meant dead as in dead wrong, which implies any peer-reviewed literature supporting it is also dead wrong.
But regarding the issue of neo-Darwinism and neutral theory.
or how about Futuyma 1986:
So if natural selection is the main means of modification, the implication is that most changes ought to have a selective influence with respect to immediate fitness. But here is what the neutralists brilliantly demonstrated:
and Dan wrote:
And as for the neutral theory of molecular evolution that Kimura developed, it absolutely fits with the modern evolutionary synthesis
In neo-Darwinism Natural Selection was the main means of modification, and Kimura made a devastating argument to the contrary. Thus the assertion that neutral theory absolutely fits with modern synthesis is an admission that modern synthesis is ill-defined and will change it’s definition so long as it can assert “Anything But Design” (ABD).
But even with Kimura’s fine and devastating critique of selectionist evolution, neutral theory does not account for the formation of large scale biological innovation. Stochastic processes which are at the root of neutral theory can not account for large scale specified or irreducibly complex structures any more than a noise generator (also a stochastic process) can make a Rachmaninoff Concerto.
And finally, design advocates should take note, as did Geneticist Michael Denton, that neutralist and selectionist theories continue to identify fatal flaws in each others theories, leading to the inviting possibility that neither viewpoints of organic evolution are right, but are both are wrong.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 20, 2006 @ 9:09 pm
That’s still pretty funny - You wouldn’t happen to have any evidence of evolution being incorrect would you? But the Gaps, you say? LOL
Anyway, your Darwin and Futuyma quotes are quite correct. Natural selection is the primary, but not the only mechanism by which evolution occurs. That most genes are not actively being selected for or against is nothing more than proof for punctuated equilibrium - take Junco evolution for instance - this little sparrow has many, many genes and many traits for which those genes code - yet only a couple of them (size and white in the tail) are changing (at least as far as we can tell). Presumably, change in all other genes/traits could be occuring as well, but not by selection, by molecular drift as neutral theory describes it.
In short, I see no reason why both might not be acting at the same time (when looking at the overall gene pool of a species), in different regions of the genome.
Statements like…
…and…… are mere strawmen, mistakenly assuming that natural selection and molecular drift refer to the same phenomena.
Comment by Dan — April 20, 2006 @ 10:04 pm