If you think creationism is a viable alternative to reality, you are wrong.
People who say evolution is wrong don’t understand it. It’s that simple. And now we have a relatively simple video that backs that claim up.
The example used is oversimplified of course (I think he should have had predators select for overall change in color, not just ones that were darker), but it tells the tale. Evolution is a mighty theory, and saying it’s wrong is, well, it’s just plain dumb.
Hat tip to Bay of Fundie.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Phil, I entirely agree that creationism is wrong, but I’ve never met a creationist who embraced it as “a viable alternative to reality.” You’re assuming they share your understanding and want to retreat from it for some reason. Not very likely.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Just plain dumb? Wow, now that’s a devastating argument. It’s almost as good as citing a YouTube video as evidence. Yep, there is some really advanced science on this website.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:15 am
So you , Stewart, attack Phil for ad hominem by using ad hominem, and then you sarcastically ad hominem the website, then you ad hominem Youtube.
But you don’t talk about the data on the video. You don’t address that.
Why?
January 24th, 2008 at 11:18 am
— So you , Stewart, attack Phil for ad hominem by using ad hominem, and then you sarcastically ad hominem the website, then you ad hominem Youtube.
Strange… I suddenly feel the need to do something really manly.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Jarrod, my sarcasm is just a product of random mutation and variation, just like Phil’s intellectual superiority complex. See the “data” on the YouTube video for evidence.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Jarrod and Quiet_Desperation already beat me to the “ad hominem” points I was dying to make… so I won’t belabor the point…
So please, Stewart… care to actually contribute an intelligent rebuttle to what you (unlikely) watched?
January 24th, 2008 at 11:35 am
This is still my most favorite evolution video ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcAq9bmCeR0
January 24th, 2008 at 11:35 am
On a more positive note… I originally saw this on Bay of Fundie and posted the following there, but I’d like to repeat it here because it’s sort of a big deal to me…
This is absolutely an outstanding, if not perhaps overly simplified, presentation of the basics of evolution. And I will say with some pride that I have since forwarded it to a friend of mine who has been decidedly on the fence regarding ID / creationism vs. evolution. The result? This friend made the following comment to me: “You know, Brian… I’ve never ever seen evolution explained to me in such a way before. And having seen this video and watched it 3 or 4 times, all I can say is… it seems so obvious to me now.”
Wow… hence the power of knowledge! THAT is exactly why this site and others like it is SO VERY IMPORTANT. Most of the problem is that so many people just don’t understand the basic principles behind evolution. We are SO far behind with basic education in this country that most people I ask about evolution respond with “Oh, yeah… that’s the Darwin thing… he said we came from monkeys”. And that’s the amount of thought that goes into it. And most of them will simply not buy the concept based on that simplistic and crass an observation. It’s on some leve repugnant to them.
But SHOW them this… and then you can actually get them to understand how evolution works… and as my friend stated… it seems so obvious!
January 24th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Barton, can you elaborate on that? I thought the whole point of creationism (in whatever form) is that it’s proponents think it is a description of reality that is better (i.e., more accurate) than evolution. The video argues against this misconception.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Stewart, Phil’s ad hominem, which stems from his “intellectual superiority complex,” actually comes more from years of personal and shared frustration toward people promoting anti-scientific nonsense in the classroom and in society at large in favor of a theory with more than a century’s worth of detailed study and repeated confirmation simply because of the persisting belief in a cosmology that our ancestors dreamed up thousands of years ago to explain the world that they saw.
I love the video, though! It’s a great illustration of a simple population model! Phil, I do think the predators selectively chose the ones with the largest difference in color, not based on darkness. I’d like to see a demonstration of a model that includes several more traits and several more environmental factors.
This would be fun coding exercise.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
There seems to be plenty of closed mindedness on both sides of the debate. Since evolution cannot be proven fact or false; what makes believers in Darwin’s Evolution any less religious than believers in God’s Creation, which cannot be proven fact or false?
What makes creationism any less scientific than Darwinism?
There may be something to learn from both viewpoints.
It is doubtful that anything positive will come from dogmatism, regardless the source.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
“Since evolution cannot be proven fact or false; ”
Jeez Louise! Did you even WATCH the video before you made that statement? I think it laid out pretty clear PROOF that evolution should, has, and DOES occur. If you can refute what you saw in the video, please do so.
But since you made the statement that “evolution cannot be proven fact or false;” it must be true… and therefor everything you say braching off of it is true…
sheesh… sooo…. verrry… tired…
January 24th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Oh, and the guy who made the video above as well as the video I referenced has LOTS of incredibly good videos:
http://www.youtube.com/cdk007
January 24th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
frick writes:
[[What makes creationism any less scientific than Darwinism?]]
The fact that it starts with a predetermined conclusion and then tries to make the evidence fit, instead of starting from the evidence.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
You can preach evolution to the ID/creationism believers all you want, but, it’s ultimately a waste of time.
I’m reminded of this quote:
“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.” –Jonathan Swift
January 24th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I need to listen to that on mute. I was listening to Wagner all along.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Great video, wonderful visual example of (very simplified) Theory of Evolution.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
So what exactly does this video prove? What exactly am I seeing? It’s just an assertion masquerading as evidence. Species change over time? Yes, yes. So? And this proves Macroevolution how? This is called psuedoinformation. It explains nothing, and conveniently avoids the fact that this purported “mechanism” is completely invisible in the fossil record.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Oh dear, this didn’t take long, did it? Frick, evolution is falsifiable. Creationism is not. Evolution does not require the observance of any special rituals and is no more religious than the theory of gravity. Also, if one chooses, they can believe in God AND accept evolution. Whereas evolution can give us predictable scientific results, creationism cannot. Therefore, nothing scientific can be gained from creationism. Does this make sense to you?
And others here who think that Phil is suffering from an “intellectual superiority complex” (thought why one would around creationists is beyond me) you do realize that creationists are currently and actively engaged in very real attempts to replace science with creationism in public schools? Which is not only anti-scientific, but also unconstitutional – as well as plain DUMB. As a promoter of science, Phil has every right to be pished off about it – plus it’s his blog.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
That blind watchmaker video is brilliant.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Mark, the point is not to convince the staunch creationist, but to sway the audience to the debate. I also think Jonathan Swift was wrong, otherwise Enlightenment could not have happened in the first place.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Mark -
While completely understanding what you are saying, I disagree with you in this way: Although I would agree that the hard-core fundies and IDists will likely never be convinced, I don’t think it’s them we are trying to convince.
MOST people that I encounter who lean towards ID / Creationism are somewhere in the middle. They believe what they have always been taught to believe, but in many cases are intelligent and thoughtful enough to at least hear the evidence for evolution. They are the important group, I think… and I think if we continue to make the facts known, and continue to make valid, accurate, scientific arguments, they will listen… and the world will be that much a better place.
Like the example I gave in my previous post… some people just need to have things explained to them in a way they can process…
January 24th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
The video did prove that evolution is a theory, a pretty good theory at that. Evolution could work I suppose, it does in the simulation video anyway. But the video did not prove evolution to be fact.
Did you see actual fossils showing one life form transitioning to a different life form? Or any other physical proof. I didn’t either. There is none. Evolution supposedly has been happening billions and billions of times since life began, yet no physical proof. Still, a pretty darn good theory though.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
“What makes creationism any less scientific than Darwinism” you say??
How about the fact that the theory of evolution is based on observation and experimentation whereas creationism is based on an ancient tale? Our ideas about the evolution of life ARE CHANGEABLE in light of new evidence.
The only thing dogmatic about evolution is that it’s been so well established to be fact that it would an incredible experimental contradiction to refute it. Scientists would eventually have to accept this and reformulate their ideas of how everything works to explain the old and the new data.
The great thing about science is that it’s NOT dogmatic.
Politically, on the other hand…it’s tough to convince people to give you money to study something that is completely contrary to years of well-established fact, so there is some amount of dogmatism there, but it stems from a responsibility to not waste money.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Stewart, lookup “transitional fossils”. And “Tiktaalik”
Or could you tell us, what PRECISELY is the barrier between “macro” and “micro” evolution?
January 24th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
@Stewart : “It explains nothing, and conveniently avoids the fact that this purported “mechanism” is completely invisible in the fossil record.”
Go study actual fossils yourself for a few years and then come back and say that again.
Until then, how about you trust the people who’ve spent their lives actually documenting macro and micro-evolution in the fossil record that say that it exists.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
“Did you see actual fossils showing one life form transitioning to a different life form?”
Umm. .yes.
There are thousands of transitional fossils out there. Everytime I bring one up, though, creationists pretend like they don’t exist, and then attack the scientists or me.. because they know the evidence is unassailable.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html
January 24th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Steward, the video proves that with random mutations in the genetic code, and a well-defined fitness parameter, evolution happens. Get the code, or better yet, code it yourself: it’s fun and instructive!
The video does not prove “macro” evolution (a term made up by creationists) as such, it shows that the underlying logical rule works as advertised.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
frick… a quick search review of the many posts on the subject on this site will confirm for you how the fossil record and the many DNA studies across species and over thousands of years DOES in fact support evolutionary theory. As the video said, micro-evolution and macro-evolution have been observed both in the lab and in nature. These aren’t just “good ideas”, frick… they are the basis for decades of research, and have been proven time and time again to accurately predict evolutionary change within the fossil record… don’t dismiss the whole thing as “a pretty good idea” without really looking into it… that’s just lazy.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
OMG what is with you anti-evolution people?
Of course the video is not “proof” that evolution is real. It’s meant to be a demonstration (a great one at that) of a simple model of micro-evolution that is presented in a clear manner for people who have been confused by certain aspects of the idea.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Just found this article and couldn’t resist!
http://io9.com/347041/evolution-explains-why-lolcats-control-your-mind
January 24th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Hey, you convinced me. Evolution is no longer a scientific theory, but scientific fact. ‘Beleive’ in it or not.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
How some of you guys deal with this on a daily basis is beyond me! You are truly awesome for it.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Hey! I know that video! …Now where the heck did I see that first? It was ages ago.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Happily, frick, having done all the work I needed to to properly educate myself on the topic… having spent the time to look at the facts, learn the science, review the many, many articles… having done all that, “belief” is not requisite. Any more than knowing 2+2=4 requires my “belief”.
But thanks… I’m glad we could convince you…
See? I recognize and can mimc sarcasm.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
word.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Frick writes:
“What makes creationism any less scientific than Darwinism?”
Creationism starts with the premise, “Goddidit”. You are already starting with the conclusion. That makes no sense. Science is about the pursuit of knowledge and truth. To me this means examining the evidence, that which is observed, putting the facts together and reaching a conclusion. Sometimes those conclusions do change based on the discovery of more evidence.
Creationism does not do this. It says, “God did all this. He said so, therefore I believe it.) That is oversimplified of course, but that is the basic argument that I heard, and used in my 24 year foray in Evangelical Christianity.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
A lot of people make a lot of assumptions on this board. Not all evolutionary skeptics are outright “creationists.” Not all evolutionary skeptics are Christian fundamentalists. You can paint us all with that brush if you’d like, but you’re just painting a straw-man. In fact, the only fundamentalists here seem to be the evolutionists. If you dare question the theory’s veracity or point out many things it can’t explain, the scientific inquisition drops like a hammer. Anyone who dares to question the theory receives the evolutionary bull of excommunication.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
You ain’t been banned yet, Stu. So question away, and have your questions answered.
Or would you rather use the old straw-man argument about the “scientific inquisition”?
January 24th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
You’re right. We do tend to pick on people who pick on us for trusting the scientific method and reason. We’re sorry.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
The earth being round instead of flat was a theroy, until someone actualy proved it. I find the theory of evolution absolutly fascinating. But only the unscientific will state something to be fact before it can be proven. Thus closing the mind and limiting his chances of ever finding the truth. Just because evidence and trends point in a certain direction, don’t assume that direction leads to where you wish it to. I am not saying evolution is false. I think science should continue to study and research the idea. Maybe someday it will be proven. But the fact is, there aren’t enough facts that actualy prove evolution beyond the theory. Trying to convince science without the proof is pure unscientific folly.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
My favorite evolution video. That’s all the convincing I need.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
So, Stewart, care to provide examples of people who have suffered this “excommunication”, and what exactly their punishment was?
January 24th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Stewart: “In fact, the only fundamentalists here seem to be the evolutionists.”
Uh oh, we have a disqualification.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
What creationists demand is a “broken” in-between animal. Well, you’ll never see one for the same reason you’ll never see a “broken” half-cart-half-pocket-watch. The same mechanism is used to new purpose, but that doesn’t mean a form exists that does both poorly…or worse, does neither.
Transitional forms? Look at the Galapagos flightless cormorant – it can’t fly, has stubby wings – but the wings of all other cormorants allow them to fly just fine. Large wings are a hindrance when diving extensively for seafood – and without large land predators, the need versus energy and risk expense of flight was tilted towards conserving energy and away from flight injury risk. Obviously, the penguin does it better – but the penguin also has no visible flight feathers. You can see the transition – cormorants are seabirds that dive, flightless cormorants spend much more time underwater, penguins are a more “refined” version — so how did the flightless cormorant evolve when there are penguins nearby?
Penguins are experts at survival through diving in cold water, but not so expert at scrambling over rough rocks, and a bit overdressed for life at the equator -especially with the occasional el Nino. Cormorants are better at scrambling over rocks, and can negotiate the rocky and volcanic terrain better, but can’t stay down as long and aren’t as insulated.
The race is on! And with introduced rats, cats and dogs, more factors have been introduced.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Stewart, please remember that it was YOU that came in here in the first place with a very combative and dismissive tone. In case you forgot, review your initial post. We will not be baited into the “science bully” debate.
You want to combatively and dismissively question what you’ve been shown, and come here, unprompted, to do so? Then be prepared to defend your position.
Like Darth Robo said, ask your questions… I urge you… intelligent discussion and debate between intelligent and thoughtful persons is encouraged… but don’t paint us as bullies for defending what you initially belittled…. and without so much as an ounce of factual argument, I might add.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
That may well be true. I suspect the likes of Ann Coulter to be politically motivated saboteurs, who not so much disagree with evolution or believe in YEC, but love to rile “the left” (forgetting, of course that science is neither “left” nor “right”, and that if they win we ultimately all lose). By implication, you need to convince us that you are not a troll, Stewart…
January 24th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Frick, so my (and I would think our) question to you, then, is this:
In your opinion, based on what you know about what we know, what is the best working description that we have of how life operates? If you were to ascribe a name to this idea, what might it be?
January 24th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Stewart (and all other “but that’s not macro evolution” people).
If you have a pile of sand, and grain by grain you move it, at what point do you have two distinct piles? That’s the only difference between micro and macro evolution.
You start with a single population. They spread, and over time are significantly separated geographically. They are exposed to a different set of varying conditions. First, you start off with two distinct varieties of the same species. Example: Chili peppers: Habaneros and Bell peppers are the same species, and produce viable seeds when bred, but are extremely different in some minor respects.
Over many generations, those conditions produce profound enough changes that you have two different species that closely resemble each other. Example: horses and donkeys: can still breed, but are different enough that it is extremely rare that their offspring can reproduce.
It’s not that difficult to see the logical progression. Over time, The intrinsic variations cause species to drift apart due to differences in environment. Drift long enough, and you then have two different species. Keep up the splitting for a couple of billion years, and you have a an environment of vast diversity. So where’s the problem?
January 24th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
That video is briliant
January 24th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I have to agree with Celtic. A lot of people have just never looked into the subject, having other things to worry about. They’re perfectly willing to listen if they are treated politely and like adults. Not all will be convinced, but some will be. I hasten to add that the Dawkins approach of evolution-proves-there’s-no-God will be worse than useless to someone who has taken up creationism on religious grounds.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
frick, you sound reasonable and scientific, but what do you think Darwin did in his Origins of Species? Evolution has been refined and improved ever scince, based on experimental data! At some point the folly is to maintain the “skepticism”.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
(sigh)
Okay, yes frick, you’re right. Evolution is a theory. We will never have 100% proof of evolution because science is always open to new evidence which may require changes in current scientific theories. Until then, our current theories are the best we have. If we find new evidence that warrants a change in a particular theory, it will be taken on board.
Gravity is also a theory, remember that. Why don’t all you people out there kick up more of a fuss over the theory of gravity, dammit?!? You gravitationist fundamentalists! Teach the controversy! Stop the inquisition!
January 24th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
“Evolution is a mighty theory, and saying it’s wrong is, well, it’s just plain dumb.”
That’s why even creationists believe in it. Exept the real evolution is too slow, so they got SUPER (!) evolution. That’s like evolution, but it’s SUPER!
January 24th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
frick, you don’t seem to understand how science works. Nothing is ever “proven” in science, in fact the way science is set up guarantees that proofs are impossible. Everything is tentative, everything is potentially open to being disproven at any point. It is conceivable that we could find evidence tomorrow that the world isn’t round. The possibility that this could occur is so small as to be negligible, but it is nevertheless not absolutely impossible. There is just so much evidence supporting the conclusion that the world is round that it can treated as though it is effectively certain. Evolution is in the same category, the evidence supporting it is so overwhelming that it can be trusted with as close to 100% confidence as anything possibly could be under science.
That is what people sometimes refer to when they say something is a scientific “fact”, although that is not using fact in its scientific sense. A scientific fact is simply an observation, something that you can see or measure. That the sky is blue is a fact. It is a wrong, or rather incomplete, fact since the sky is not always blue, but it is a fact nonetheless. That species an change over time, and that one species can change into another, is a fact. It is neither wrong nor incomplete, although it would be good to specify the conditions under which this occurs.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Ooooh, that reminds me! I’d love to see the same sort of simulation run with more traits and environmental factors, but also stick in some sort of wall or boundary in the middle and then change the relative environmental pressures.
Then, bring them back together. I wonder how often you could simulate an invasive species?
January 24th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
[...] allesammens Bad Astronomer har gravet en interessant video med en simplificeret evolutions-simulation op på sin [...]
January 24th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Ahhh… perfect example, BlackCat… the Earth, in fact is NOT perfectly round… it’s an oblate spheroid…
Guess how we figured that out… anyone wanna guess? Anyone?
January 24th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
frick posts:
[[Evolution supposedly has been happening billions and billions of times since life began, yet no physical proof. Still, a pretty darn good theory though.]]
The fossil record is the main proof; the Earth was peopled by very different life-forms at different times. Since we know we can artificially select creatures and change them that way — farmers have been doing it for centuries — it stands to reason that natural selection might have the same effect. That was Darwin’s argument in 1859. Since then the amount of evidence for the theory has only increased.
If you want to learn about evolution, don’t depend on creationist literature. You can get a good popular overview of the science in Donald Johansson and Maitland Edey’s “Blueprints” (1989). There’s a first chapter where they try to talk about theology, but they get out of their depth pretty quickly, and the chapter can pretty much be ignored. But the rest is really useful. I’d also recommend the late Stephen Jay Gould’s essays, which have been collected into a number of books, e.g. “The Panda’s Thumb,” “Hens’ Teeth and Horses’ Toes,” “Eight Little Piggies,” etc. Your local library should have at least some of them, if not, ask the librarian why not! : )
January 24th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
And oblate spheroid is still round. It is not a sphere, but it is definitely round. It doesn’t have any corners. Similarly an egg is round, even though it is far less spherical than the earth.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Point taken, BlackCat… I know it’s semantics… and I wasn’t really picking on you so much as pointing out, just as you did, that what we KNOW scientifically is updated as we continue to put it to the test, observe, retest and update.
That’s all… no offense intended.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
I like Pat on 24 Jan 2008 at 1:08 pm.
What he is describing, flightless cormorant compared to other cormorants, is adaptation. Still cormorants though. Not a transition from cormorant to say a jackass. Not proof of evolution. Missing links.
The half cart half pocket watch idea is good. I like the ‘57 Chevy to the ‘67 Chevy analogy better. Might look like evolution but too many missing links. The missing links might suggest that something else may have been going on. Maybe an outside influence perhaps?
Further scientific analysis needed before coming to such an outrageous conclusion can be proven. Further scientific study also required before the evolution conclusion is proven. You self proclaimed scientists getting the idea?
January 24th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
I like Pat on 24 Jan 2008 at 1:08 pm.
What he is describing, flightless cormorant compared to other cormorants, is adaptation. Still cormorants though. Not a transition from cormorant to say a donky. Not proof of evolution. Missing links.
The half cart half pocket watch idea is good. I like the ‘57 Chevy to the ‘67 Chevy analogy better. Might look like evolution but too many missing links. The missing links might suggest that something else may have been going on. Maybe an outside influence perhaps?
Further scientific analysis needed before coming to such an outrageous conclusion can be proven. Further scientific study also required before the evolution conclusion is proven. You self proclaimed scientists getting the idea?
January 24th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I just found this article posted at truemors.com. It shows the problem with Creation “Science.”
“Creationists have launched the Answers Research Journal, which is dedicated to the latest research on “recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical framework”. You would think the “biblical framework” part would automatically negate the science part, and whilst the scientific community will largely ignore the publication, those without a science background may not be able to tell the difference between the ARJ and a traditional science publication. The journal will also be peer-reviewed, but only by those holding a similar view.”
Do you see the problem? The journal will be peer reviewed, but only by those holding a similar view. Therefore that excludes all mainstream scientists. So who is stacking the deck?
January 24th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Sorry for the double post. Here is an article I was looking for earlier, but my computer was very slow in loading the page.
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/ecology/elephants-evolve-smaller-tusks-due-to-poaching/711
January 24th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
“Everything is tentative, everything is potentially open to being disproven at any point.”
The statement implies there are no absolutes.
Yet, the statement itself, is an absolute.
So there are absolutes? But only this one?
Gravity is a theory?
Jump off your roof if you need proof that gravity is more than a theory.
Evolution is a fact.
Realy? And what proof do you have?
Flightless cormorants and other cormorants, still cormorants. Not evolution but adaptation. Cormorants to say, donky. Now that would be evolution. But the missing link?
Take the ‘57 Chevy to the ‘67 Chevy analogy.
Looks like evolution. But the missing links?
Focus on the missing links for a second.
Might the missing links suggest something else may have been going on? Outside influence of some sort perhaps? Better keep researching before coming to any conclusion.
Evolution? Better keep researching before coming to any conclusion.
Get the idea?
January 24th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Forget “only by those holding a similar view,” they state up front that they will only accept papers reaching a particular conclusion. From their website:
January 24th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
“Stewart, please remember that it was YOU that came in here in the first place with a very combative and dismissive tone”
Celtics, Unprompted? I believe Mr. Phil is getting the responses he sought. The video itself wasn’t meant to insult and belittle the skeptics. So, spare me the self-righteousness.
Life from non-life. Non-sentiency to sentiency. Asexual to sexual reproduction. Interdependent internal organs evolved simultaneously. Ethics, language, reason, love, hate, beauty, art, music, honor, Self-sacrifice. And it all came from a pool of simple amino acids. And I’m the “dumb” one for not believing that your theory explains all that it on its own?
It takes ideological commitment to believe that. What you have is a philosophy, not a scientific theory. The video is only convincing for those who are already prepositionally committed to the theory. Psalm 19 is accepted by Christians as “proof.” It’s the same thing.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Well, between the Nazi music, the overt message that light-skin is better than dark-skin, and the fact that it never showed any examples of macroevolution (his boxes never became circles!) all this video proves is that Darwinists are both racists and wrong that “evolution” can produce more than minor changes within species. And, of course, this program had an Intelligent Designer.
Ok, not really, but you can bet that that’s what a certain breed (specifically, the breed that doesn’t bother watching to the point where the environment’s color begins bouncing up and down) of creationist would/will say when shown that video.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Re Stewart, frick
I think there is considerable confusion as to the difference between hypotheses, theories, and facts. The so called theory of evolution actually consists of five elements (kudos to the late Ernst Mayr), three of which are facts, 1 of which is an inference from the first three facts, and 1 of which is a theory that provides a partial explanation of the first 4 elements. This is much like the theory of gravity in which it is observed that the planets go around the sun in elliptical orbits (fact – Kepler) and the theory that explains the fact is the inverse square law of Newton (theory).
Element 1. The earth is very old, some 4.5 billion years old. This is a fact which is supported by overwhelming evidence from physics, astronomy, and geology.
Element 2. There are fossils that belong to no animals currently living. For example, Tyrannosaurus not longer stalks the Earth, fortunately for humans as we would not be here if it did. This is a fact.
Element 3. There are living animals today that did not exist at the same time as Tyrannosaurus. This includes all of the large mammals, including humans. This is a fact.
The first three elements correspond to the astronomical observations of solar system heliocentricity.
Element 4. The inference from Elements 1 – 3 is that animals currently living descended from animals that lived long ago but are no longer here. This is supported by both morphology and genetics and is a virtually a fact as there is no other scientific explanation for what is observed.
Element 5. The theory of evolution, which is natural selection, provides an explanation for the first 4 elements. This corresponds to the inverse square law of gravitation.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
God created evolution.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Jon, no, dark matter did.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I have been banned.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I have been banned.
Censored!
January 24th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
This video is apparently unconvincing to you Stewart, as are all our comments. So here is the question: what evidence, if any, would you find convincing? It needs to be specific and testable. If you use a term define it. “Macroevolution” and “kind” are key words that, if they appear in your question, must be defined.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/
January 24th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
“Life from non-life. Non-sentiency to sentiency. Asexual to sexual reproduction. Interdependent internal organs evolved simultaneously. Ethics, language, reason, love, hate, beauty, art, music, honor, Self-sacrifice. And it all came from a pool of simple amino acids. And I’m the “dumb” one for not believing that your theory explains all that it on its own?”
Leaving aside the fact that much of the above has little to do with evolution, how do YOU explain these, Stu?
January 24th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
“Life from non-life. Non-sentiency to sentiency. Asexual to sexual reproduction. Interdependent internal organs evolved simultaneously. Ethics, language, reason, love, hate, beauty, art, music, honor, Self-sacrifice. And it all came from a pool of simple amino acids. And I’m the “dumb” one for not believing that your theory explains all that it on its own?
It takes ideological commitment to believe that.”
Oh, Stewart… where to even begin… OK… let’s start here… I don’t remember in this conversation anywhere anyone making the claim that “it all came from a pool of simple amino acids”… don’t stae something never spoken as a fact that was presented in this argument… it wasn’t. There is still healthy debate over the exact origin of life… that is one theory, but is completely non-sequitor to the discussion of speciation as a result of evolution. I believe the video even makes allowance for this by stating “evolution is the theory of how one form of life changes into another. NOT the theory of how life originated”. So let’s first stick to the issue being discussed, and not one you’ve introduced.
Second, “It takes ideological commitment to believe that.”… No, actually, it takes ideologocal commitment in order for YOU to believe that. All it takes for me is the ability to understand the brilliant works of those who have given us scientfic explanations for why our brains have evolved the way they have… to understand the FUNCTIONS of the brain that allow for us to comprehend, understand, and philosophise about the world around us. These are wonderous traits of humanity and we OWE those traits to evolution. In fact, what you at some point will need to put your arms around is the fact that it is evolution that gave you the ability to even conceptualize a “God” in the first place.
Now I expect that last statement will turn you off completely… so I don’t expect it will be well received. But it needed to be said to refute your claim of necessary ideological belief as a pre-requisite to accept humanity as a result of evolution.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
“Everything is tentative, everything is potentially open to being disproven at any point.”
The statement implies there are no absolutes.
Yet, the statement itself, is an absolute.
So there are absolutes? But only this one?
Gravity is a theory?
Jump off your roof if you need proof that gravity is more than a theory.
Evolution is a fact.
Realy? And what proof do you have?
Flightless cormorants and other cormorants, still cormorants. Not evolution but adaptation. Cormorants to say, donky. Now that would be evolution. But the missing link?
Take the ‘57 Chevy to the ‘67 Chevy analogy.
Looks like evolution. But the missing links?
Focus on the missing links for a second.
Might the missing links suggest something else may have been going on? Outside influence of some sort perhaps? Better keep researching before coming to any conclusion.
Evolution? Better keep researching before coming to any conclusion.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Methinks Stewart REALLY doesn’t understand a damn thing about evolution. It ain’t worth arguing with him.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
The evolving watch simulation is the best one he’s done, I think.
Oh, and Stewart:
Not only did it all come from a pool of amino acids, it’s all run exclusively by chemicals in your brain. There’s no outside force directing it, it’s the way the physical and chemical structure of your brain is put together. Amazing, isn’t it?
January 24th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
usagibrian, so what’s the difference between your love for you mother and your love for cookies? Well since it’s only a chemical reaction, it’s almost really indistinguishable from fizzing Pepsi cola can. If that’s what you believe then I’m scared of you.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Blackcat, my comments were not necessarily designed to convince you that evolution isn’t true. I don’t believe any amount of “neutral” evidence can do that because “neutrality” is impossible. All evidence is filtered through the rose colored glasses of our presuppositions, and in the end all reasoning is circular. For example, your commitment to scientific empiricisms stands unproven.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Re frick
Apparently, Mr. frick is ignorant of the difference between facts and theories. Gravity is both a fact (i.e. bodies attract each other) and a theory (the inverse square law of Newton or its generalization, the General Theory of Relativity of Einstein. Just for the information of Mr. frick, the evidence in support of the 5 elements of evolution is far greater then the evidence supporting the General Theory of Relativity.
January 24th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
frick -
Yes… Gravity is a theory. If I were so inclined, I could imagine all sorts of alternate reasons why I fall when I jump off a roof. Maybe I don’t fall… maybe the earth is magnetically attracted to me and I actually pull IT back to me. Maybe God’s weight from above pushed me down… dunno.. all sorts of ways you could go. Point is, simply saying that the result of jumping off the roof PROVES gravity as a fact is missing the point…
As for your other arguments against evolution… cormorants to donky? Did that happen? I missed that… ‘57 and ‘67 chevy… nevermind the fact that you’re comparing a natural process with man-made mechanics…
In the words of The Man in Black (Princess Bride)… “Truly you have a dizzying logic”.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
frick, the ‘57 to ‘67 Chevy analogy does not work because evolution does not work that way. Evolution deals with LIVING systems, not inanimate objects.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Frick is, quite obviously, just in this for the fight. The theory of gravity has many unanswered questions, just as does evolution. Why is it so weak? Why doesn’t it seem to work on subatomic levels? etc. People don’t have a problem with the idea because it has a very obvious effect. Evolution has quite a bit more verifiable and varied evidence than does the theory of gravity. However, because the predictions it makes aren’t immediatately (within 10 seconds) obvious, people fight the idea. Not because it’s wrong, not because they can’t understand the ideas, but because they want to fight. They realize that gravitational theory, or optics, or electric or auditory theory is difficult to fight because any contrary arguments are easily refuted. Evolution, even though shown to be happening constantly (go search for pitcher plant mosquito if you want a current example) all around us is not immediately obvious. Thus, people fight the idea. Just as they did the idea that the earth circled the sun. And they will continue to. People would rather argue than think. This becomes dangerous when the arguments start involving guns… or suicide bombs. THAT is the reason Phil keeps bringing this up. When people would rather fight than think, it becomes very, VERY dangerous.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Ryan, I agree. Ideas have consequences. Google the word Eugenics.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Uh, Stu and frick, you’re both STILL welcome to provide us with your “alternative” explanations. “Neutral” or otherwise.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
You ignored the “in science” part.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
just want to chime in on this one, and let Stew know that I agree with him… evolution is a crock of the highest order..
its a religion, …
high priests = scientists,
houses of worship = university ,
sacred texts = origin of the species
creation mythos = big bang and primordeal soup
church acolytes = people like Phil Plait
sheepish followers = general public who give us links to talk origins for “explanations” on what they “BELIEVE” like a preacher quotes the bible
oh yeah, and both creationism and evolution both require the belief in unseen, untested things..
for instance, talkorigins says that a “primordeal soup” began the evolution process… but no one has ever seen, tested, or even proved the existence of this soup…. therefore you “believe” in the soup… therefore the primary foundation of evolution is a belief, not a fact… thus it’s a religion w/ followers/believers
January 24th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Ryan, I agree. Ideas have consequences. Do a web search for the word Eugenics.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
@ Stewart:
I didn’t ask you to convince me that evolution isn’t true, I was asking what evidence would convince you that evolution is true. Please answer the question. Before you ask, I can provide numerous examples of what would convince me that evolution isn’t true but I want to hear yours first.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Ryan, I agree that Ideas have consequences. Check out the Eugenics.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Ryan, I agree that Ideas have consequences. Check out the Margaret Sanger and the movment she supported. it start with an EU. The filter here won’t let me post it for some reason.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Ryan, I agree that Ideas have consequences. Check out Margaret Sanger and the movment she supported. it start with an EU. The filter here won’t let me post it for some reason.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
SLC, I’d disagree with you there, but not in a hostile manner. GR and quantum mechanics as predictive theories are the most accurate descriptions of nature we’ve ever come up with (for the range of conditions where they are applicable, of course), especially QM.
As I understand it, because of the complexity of life processes, evolutionary theory isn’t necessarily predictive in the sense that GR or QM are, but instead provides a reasonable way for us to order and understand our observations of the evolution of live over the ages.
But, to remind everyone who doesn’t already understand, even GR and QM will be supplanted with better descriptions as we explore new territories where they start to not work so well and the observations don’t match what is predicted by theory.
Stewart, of course we view the world through a particular filter. You’re not saying anything new here. But for rational people, our colored glasses change shade as we learn new things and incorporate them into our understanding of our world. It’s the process of learning. And it’s wonderful.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Gravity is a theory?
Jump off your roof if you need proof that gravity is more than a theory.
No, gravity is a theory. It is a good explanation that fits the observable facts. However, there is much that we do not know about gravity, such as:
1. How is gravity related to the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces? Solving this problem would be the creation of the Grand Unified Theory and is pretty much considered the brass ring of physics.
2. How is gravity transmitted? The strong nuclear force is transmitted by gluons. The weak nuclear force is transmitted by W and Z bosons. The electromagnetic force is transmitted by photons. But so far, gravity is transmitted essentially by magic, although the theory predicts something like gravitons. No gravitons have ever been detected and people have spent a lot of time and money looking. Realistically, we know it’s not magic, we just don’t know how it works. Related to this is “why does mass have gravity”? Relativity gives some hints, but they don’t really jive with quantum mechanics. This is a big issue.
3. How fast is gravity transmitted? Experiments are zeroing in on this as a speed somewhere near the speed of light, but it hasn’t been confirmed.
I’m sure there’s more, but those are the three big questions.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Thank you Philip for enlightening us with this video.
I am now convinced about the evolution theory, as you have proven on your video, after the first level of mutation it clearly shows that if the organism is black, then it is bad, and if it is white, it is because it has been improven. As the bad organism stands out of the crowd, it gets destroyed, but because nature is not perfect, the disgrace happens again, and again, and more black organisms play a role in this our nature, therefore evolution stops.
It is even clearer when a larger scale experiment is used, the darker the population, the slower the evolution (in extreme circumstances “too many black organisms around” evolution not only stops, but it can devolve -to degenerate or deteriorate gradually-)
The only problem with this video is that there is no need to watch it to realize what it is trying to portray, one just need to stare out of the window.
The video is a demonstration of global evolution using the larger scale of a social study on any of the periferical areas of any big USA city. But as someone points out on this blog, more coloures should be brought to the experiment to represent the whole picture of all useless parasite organisms stopping the normal white evolution.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Well, for one thing, I can’t really think of a cookie or other food I “love,” at least in the way a love a person. Food certainly doesn’t set off the same set of neuroreceptors my reaction to people I care about does. I also seldom salivate when I see a person (although, there may be an exception or one or two from a few years ago, but that’s a story for another blog).
A puppy would have been a better comparison. I have an irrational love of most puppies that makes me want to hold them and pet them (and call them George). See xkcd #231 for a description of the phenomenon with cats. But I’ve never wanted to pet my mother’s hair, so I’d bet that viewed with an MRI imager, different areas of my brain would activate if stimulated by my mother versus by a puppy (especially an unbearably adorable puppy like a corgi or a beagle).
Cola fizzes due to pressure change when the top is popped (the CO2 inside the liquid is free to expand). That’s a very straightforward chemical reaction. Neurochemical reactions are more complex and less understood, but the preliminary indications are that understanding and perhaps even inducing the chemistry to generate feelings is quite possible (see http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/08/neuroscience-and-god.html). So, the difference is easily distinguishable because the chemistry in the first example is well understood and reproducible while the second example is complex and not fully understood. That doesn’t change the fact it’s still chemistry. Humans have been working to alter it since they discovered fermentation (or do you think Dionysus/Bacchus is responsible for that feeling of euphoria/sadness after you’ve knocked back a few beers?).
January 24th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
No, evolution is highly predictive.
A cool example is working backwards from current versions of a gene to learn about an earlier version. You take a number of organisms with varying degrees of relation to each other that all have different versions of the same gene. For instance looking at the gene in various types of yeast that codes for the enzymes that produce and consume alcohol. Then, by comparing the sequences of the genes, mutation rates, and how closely related the different organisms are they work backwards to the ancestral version of the gene that all existing copies evolved from. Then they can use genetic engineering to produce this gene and see what the enzyme does. And, shockingly, when they do this the enzyme actually works (if this was just chance then there is no way the enzyme would work). This is not that different conceptually than using physics for instance to calculate the trajectory of space probe, for instance. In the case of yeast it was able to tell them additional details about the ancestral gene, giving them additional information about the enzyme’s functionality.
Another cool example, as someone pointed out earlier, is a “fishapod” called tiktaalik. Basically, paleontologists had found a number of fossils cataloging the transition from fish to land animal. However, these were either clearly fish or clearly land amphibians (although with varying amounts of transitional features). They lacked an animal that was truly straddling the line between fish and land animal. Looking at the fossils they predicted what features that transitional animal would have. Further, by looking at the age of the existing fossils they predicted when this animal would have lived within a fairly narrow time window (just ten or twenty million years). Finally, thinking about the environmental conditions that would prompt such an evolutionary change and comparing that to the world at the time they predicted where such an animal would live. So they just looked for places today that, do to plate tectonics, where in the correct place at that time to have the environments they need and also have rocks from that era exposed, they were able to figure out where they would find this particular animal. So they went there, dug around, and there it was. They found three of them, all with precisely the features they predicted, in the right geographic area, surrounded by fossils indicating the right ecosystem, and in rocks from the correct time and place.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
“I am now convinced about the evolution theory, as you have proven on your video, after the first level of mutation it clearly shows that if the organism is black, then it is bad, and if it is white, it is because it has been improven.”
Is ‘evilutionist’s’ prediction coming true?
January 24th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
(Sorry if someone else mentioned this, I coudn’t read through all the above comments.)
“People who say evolution is wrong don’t understand it. It’s that simple.”
Well, this is a bit of a straw man. This video doesn’t explain *evolution*, per se, this video explains the mechanism behind *natural selection*.
And no evolution opponents (that I am aware of) have an objection to the kinds of small variations within populations that we see demonstrated here. Instead, modern arguments against evolution (as the sole explanation for the variety of life we see around us) take some of the following forms:
* Objections to the ability of small gradual changes to account for the appearance of new types of complicated structures. (”Darwin’s Black Box” by Behe)
* Objections to the extrapolation of “microevolution” (natural selection) to “macroevolution”. (Behe’s latest book: “The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism”)
* Objections to the frequency or nature of mutations (beneficial vs harmful, etc.)
Now, DON’T respond to tell me why you think that Behe’s books are wrong, because YOU JUST MISSED MY POINT. My point is that even the anti-evolution, pro-ID groups acknowledge that natural section is going on. The debate is in how (or if) these variations can accumulate to explain the variety of life we see around us.
(Disclaimer: I am sure there are *some* out there who object to Natural Selection, and those people probably need to watch this video. But that is *not* the nature of the current debate.)
January 24th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Frick says:
Let me ask you this: how often do you need to see the sunrise before you start to suspect that this may be a daily recurrence? If it were up to you, the scientific method would be crippled by a lack of commitment.
January 24th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
So now you’re saying the video is racist, or promotes racism? Puhleeeese!
January 24th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
@frick
The fact of evolution has been established through logical deduction and the actual observation of speciation (the creation of new species through evolution). Wikipedia has a good article on Speciation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation). An example of speciation that I like is the bacteria usually called Sphingomonas chlorophenolica. These feed on a chemical called pentachlorophenol (PCP) that is highly toxic and used as a wood preservative. PCP is not known to occur in nature and has been used since the 1930’s. See the following blog for a fuller explanation: http://stewiethegreat.blogspot.com/2005/12/how-to-eat-pcp.html
The theory of evolution (or more exactly the theory of the mechanism of evolution) starts with Charles Darwin but has been refined and expanded over the last 150 years. In particular the evolution theory has been used to predict (and locate!) a transitional link between fish and the first amphibians (Tiktaalik roseae).
January 24th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
@BlackCat:
Cool! Thanks for that.
Yeast is the best, isn’t it? As an astronomer/physicist, I was trying to make the point that QM makes predictions to a ridiculous number of decimal places. I gotta get out and read some Stepen Jay Gould sometime!
January 24th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Fishapods are all manufactured in museum back rooms by seasoned fossil fakers, filling the very lucrative transitional fossil niche market. At least they are more convincing than the plastic trilobites being paraded on The Bay lately. Or the fake rare coins and other artworks. My young nephew got a real fossil trilobyte from me recently and his older brother still tries to convince him it is a fake. At least it is real rock.
OTOH the paper reported today that national parks are being looted of genuine fossil, prehistoric and historical artifacts, so somebody must be able to tell the difference. Hope they at least marked down the provenance before smuggling them out (doubtful, as this would be a clue to the perps’ hunting grounds, and themselves).
I have a few very carefully thought out ideas about the origin and evolution of language, but I’ll boil them down here to their essentials: Charles Sanders Peirce showed that signs can be split into (at least) icons, symbols, and indexes (indices if you’re a purist). The first have some connection to their referent, be it imitative, or abstract (for instance a diagram retains the connectivities between elements, but not necessarily the elements themselves). Symbols seem to have an arbitrary connection between the sign and the referent. Indexes point to a referent.
In the cyclic evolution of morphosyntax, it has been clearly established (by other linguists) that icons>symbols>indexes. A non-Peircean 4th stage involves the pregnant environment in which the other three float, where microfeatures can dissolve and reform, involving a prosodic continuum (which controls phrase/clause structure and recognition- also well established by others) and conversational interjections, which are regulatory elements that control the flow and ebb of interlocution.
Onomatopoieas and ideophones (similar words that refer to plays of light, movements of all sorts, emotions, gaits, postures, shapes, textures, etc.) fill the icon slot. These have been shown to be able to evolve into normal ‘arbitrary’ lexemes over long stretches of time, lowing their algebra like diagrammatical meaning motivation, which attaches to the structure of the phonology itself, feature for feature.
There is always major attrition/selection during this transition.
Lexemes (lexical roots), which are ’symbols’, can (again with much attrition/selection/canalization) evolve into grammatical morphemes (such as affixes), also again with loss of motivation and structure. Such ‘grams’ point to time, space, person, number etc. quite abstractly, and are on the road to pure indexicality (for instance, as with distance demonstratives, pronouns, etc.).
Finally, whatever is left in terms of segmental phonological structure can completely dissolve into the clausal/phrasal prosody, leaving behind only the ’smile’, and affecting the way the latter is used.
At this stage we also have the conversation-managing interjections, notoriously difficult to define phonologically- ums, ahs, unhnns, and so on. They are underspecified, acting like little seed crystals. Some evidence as well for a bit of iconicity.
The final link is hypothetical, but testable and observable (just nobody has done it yet): these seeds then expand and grow into the ideophone systems mentioned above. Some languages have TENS OF THOUSANDS, all forming an algebra-like system, taking up a major chunk of the total number of ‘words’ in the language.
The icon>symbol>index etc. cycle runs in parallel with the also well-known linguistic morphosyntactic cycle, where allowed numbers of primary terms (roots, affixes) increase in fully formed ‘words’ (analytical/synthetic), then decrease again, as does the recognizability of boundaries between the primaries (fusion/fission).
Pretty complex, isn’t it? But that’s what’s been established (except for my tie in with prosody, recrystallization out of the soup).
How did we get to such an ongoing enterprise from animal communication? Ape vocal signals are under the control of involuntary processes in older parts of the brain. They have no choice but to vocalize (though they do KNOW they do it- and may even seek to actively suppress a food call (by covering their mouths) when they find a small supply of something they’d rather keep to themselves. Call types for different sociophysical stimuli are phylogenetic, and relatively static, unlike modern languages which change rapidly.
However, even here we see the beginnings of true language: The different recognized calls (which are growing as research continues) quantize different aspects of their relevant reality- food, rank, mating, outside threats, emotion, etc. Interestingly, though, it is INTERNAL VARIATION of the call ‘types’ that allows the ape to vary features of temporal length, intensity, repetition, quality/quantity of food, and so on. Similar to but much more involved than English ‘biiiiiiiiig’ (rhetorical lengthening). These variations are ICONIC. Many of the basic call types, though seem to have heavy INDEXICAL flavor- a kind of pointing.
What is missing, by and large, is any SYMBOLIC collection- they don’t really have a lexicon. They can point, and describe the CONNOTATION of some phenomenon in excruciating detail, but have no quick and easy linkage to a convenient NAME for it.
Similarly, apes lack any kind of easy PHRASAL/CLAUSAL mechanism- they can’t combine base forms into more complex ones that convey more specific identification- but they don’t need to because of the iconicity of internal variation.
Its been shown that modern human ‘protolanguages’ (such as pidgins) can get along fine with a minimum of indexes and icons, but in short order will build up BOTH. WHY??????? Indexes (affixes and other grammatical chunks) let you streamline and speed up communication- backgrounding time, space, force, etc. as a backdrop. Otherwise you’d have to spell it all out with full lexemes, which takes time. Icons, on the other hand, often require some sort of demonstration (like gestures), and don’t really add any vital info to the mix, but they do add to the ability to make the listener feel what the speaker was conveying. This is why they are often used in more relaxed circumstances, where there is no pressure for efficiency, for humor, etc.
In the languages of the world, in any particular utterance, and over different phrase/clause structures and language types, icons and indexes tend to be in complementary distribution, due to their opposite functions.
(AND THIS IS THE SHORT VERSION FOLKS!)
In the brain of the ‘average’ right handed human (whatever that is…), indexes are processed in the motor/front left hemisphere, while symbols are ‘in’ the left sensory area in the back. When lexemes change to affixes, organized activity has to jump from the left sensory to the left motor regions.
Icons and conversational interjections, on the other hand, are processed in the RIGHT hemisphere. We KNOW the interjections are in the motor areas (and evolve FROM the indexes in the LEFT motor areas, their nearest neighbor across the bay). What is still not clear (lack of research) is whether the icons are processed in the right sensory area, but everything I’ve seen so far hints at it. So the trail of cycling if complete would be a clockwise one if you had a God’s eye view from above the head.
Apes simply don’t have the corpus callosum and other interhemispheric cortical connections to make this cycle possible, in addition to the calls being involuntary and controlled by centers lower than the cortex.
To make the transition from their system to ours would require changes of both, and this doesn’t even cover the oral/nasal/laryngeal/pharyngeal changes that have taken place as well at the effector areas.
I’ve worked on all this for 25 years without publishing, but stay tooned.
BURMASHAVE!
January 24th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Not all evolutionary skeptics are outright “creationists.” Not all evolutionary skeptics are Christian fundamentalists
No, but they’re all wrong. And idiots. That’s a theory and a fact.
January 24th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Good, simple models. I didn’t like the “equations” as they are nothing but, they are just a summary of a missing argument.
How do you define, in a testable manner, “small variation”? How do you show that it stays small as per your definition? And how do you guarantee that this never, ever not lead to speciation?
There was in fact a visible speciation in the video, but it wasn’t pointed out. As the population moves into a landscape with light and dark patches, you would end up with two isolated light and dark species.
As anti-scientists of the creation bend deny speciation (what they, wrongly, call “macro-evolution”) they do indeed have objections to variation. Small or large doesn’t come into it as they never define “small”. The science shows that any source of variation can lead to speciation, so in terms of testable biology creationists claim there is no variation.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Hmm…I have an honest question. When does adaptation quit being adaptation, and become evolution.
The way I understand macro-evolution, is one species transforms into a completely new species. To prove this, you would have to have the fossil record and a complete DNA workup to prove that it was a new species. Because bone structures are shown to change (adapt?), doesn’t prove its a new species, correct? Or am I mistaken?
Sincerely,
CT
January 24th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
“Element 5. The theory of evolution, which is natural selection, provides an explanation for the first 4 elements. This corresponds to the inverse square law of gravitation.”
I’m actually amazed at the ignorance of many of the so called “evolutionists” in that the overwhelming majority of them believe that Charles Darwin (and Alfred Wallace) created the theory of evolution. They did NOT. The theory of evolution goes back thousands of years to the Greeks and maybe even beyond them. Democritus, Empedocles, and the rest of the Greek atomists firmly believed in the evolution of life forms.
The Darwin/Wallace contribution was the theory of natural selection – a proposed mechanism to explain why evolution happens. Now, I would firmly accept the fact that life forms have changed over geological time. The fossil evidence is clear on that issue. But I would be interested to know what evidence is there that Darwinian natural selection was the only mechanism or the primary mechanism? It seems most of the evidence for this is due to reasoning by analogy – we humans do artificial selection on plants and animals. Therefore nature must do selection on plants and animals also. But one must remember that human induced artificial selection is teleological and persistent. We have an idea in mind for the breed of cattle we want and we perform our selection always adhering to that idea in our heads. Nature is not like that. There is no teleology involved. The environment flip-flops at random with no set idea of what organisms should be produced. So how is natural selection a valid analogy with human-induced artificial selection?
There have been many attempts to revise the original Darwinian theory including Stephen Jay Gould’s punctuated equilibrium. The suggestion that only Biblical fundamentalists have major objections against the theory of natural selection is just not true. Stuart Kauffmann of the Santa Fe Institute doesn’t believe in natural selection as the primary cause of evolution and he’s certainly no creationist. The alternative he proposes is self-organizing complexity based on previously unknown principles of science.
So the backers of Darwin/Wallace/Huxley/Dawkins must provide evidence not just of evolution, but of natural selection specifically. BTW, was the original video removed from this post? All I see is a white blank area. Maybe my firewall is blocking it or something.
January 24th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Chris Taylor: “When does adaptation quit being adaptation, and become evolution.”
Answered by more cdk007 videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRhD_hv5Y1k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnu-O5x_pRU
January 24th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
It takes a racist to see racism where none previously existed.
Amazes me how creationists jump into debate without a simple grasp of the difference between the phrases “Scientific Hypothesis” and “Scientific Theory”, and then throwing around the word “Proof”. Also amazes me how they assume that the entire field of evolutionary biology and in all its various forms is a handful of guys in white labcoats reading Darwin as opposed to the reams and reams of original research (much of which attempted but failed to disprove the hypothesis) that has been produced over a dozen decades. The amount of original research supporting creationism? Zeeeeeerrroooo. The number of times Creationism has been successfully tested? Zero. The number of times it has been observed? Zero.
Layman’s hint:
Science doesn’t market in ultimate proofs the way mathematics does. The ultimate is to take an hypothesis, test it, and observe the facts. When the facts do indeed explain the observed phenomena, then you have the answer, which is called “theory”. In science, the word “theory” is NOT USED the way it is in everyday language*. It does NOT mean “best guess”, or “might be this”. It’s a full-blown researched, tested and testable answer built on observable evidence. If Evolution hadn’t been tested and observed, it would be called the “Hypothesis of Evolution”. The end goal in science IS to formulate a theory. OF COURSE you continue to gather more info: the point is that it remains testable. The object is not to move on, but to always keep all answers open, so they can be improved and added to. If you didn’t, it wouldn’t be science. The body of knowledge supporting evolution is so vast, it would be a MAJOR upheaval if something (or, in this case, millions of things) came to light and threw Evolution Theory away. So far, nothing has, guys. The great new stuff that throws a wrench in causes modification of the old ideas about evolution but new evidence continues to fit into the actual model, further supporting it. It’s not like there’s just a little bit of professional research from a century ago. There’s REAMS AND REAMS and it continues to be produced. Lives have been spent testing the theory. Sometimes I wonder if the average Creationist assumes the field is small, having never been exposed firsthand to research or evidence outside of a magazine, church pamphlet or the internet.
*Kinda like how we use the word “film” when we mean “shoot video”.
Phil, you’re right to be concerned. Take away the teaching of evolution and you have a whole generation of dummies who don’t have a basic grasp of biological science. Imagine taking away mathematics, history, etc. Take away any of it and you have dummies. Dummies do crazy things.
January 24th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
You know, as much as I love that video, I can’t help but think of the argument that many creationists would present. They would claim that the video is representative of microevolution, and that there is no proof of macroevolution (the fossil record be damned). For some reason, the majority of creationists that I’ve argued with seem to think that there is some difference in the mechanism that controls evolution, making it impossible to evolve new species.
Regardless, thanks for the video Phil!
January 24th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Nazi music? Wagner was an anti-semite and a generally abhorable guy, but that’s not what the music is about at all.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
@ bjswift
Funny you should bring up the number of decimal places when comparing physics and biology. You might find this article interesting:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#independent_convergence
Short version:
Here is a brief list of the number of decimal places various physical constants are known, as well as the phyolgeny of 30 major groups of organisms built by two different and largely independent techniques:
Charge of an electron: 7 decimal places
Planck’s constant: 8 decimal places
Mass of an electron: 9 decimal places
Mass of a proton: 9 decimal places
Mass of a neutron: 9 decimal places
Universal gravitational constant: 3 decimal places
Phylogeny: 38 decimal places
You read that right, 38 decimal places. That is more decimal places than we know the mass of the 3 building blocks of atoms, the universal gravitational constant, and the charge of an electron combined. Now who do you think really makes the better quantitative predictions?
There is no such distinction. Adaptation is one form of evolution. It doesn’t matter how large or how small that adaptation might be. The distinction between the two is a fabrication by creationists who don’t want to have to deal with the fact that adaptation can be easily and trivially induced experimentally.
Not even creationist seem to agree on what macro-evolution is.
All we would have to do is show one example of a species becoming a new species. Someone has already pointed out a list with a bunch of examples. Although we cannot directly prove that two organisms are different species, if one population lived at one point in time and another population lived at an different enough point in time we can be confident that they were genetically isolated and thus it would be pretty much impossible for them to not be a different species. The same cold be accomplished by morphological or geographic barriers where no intermediate forms existed to allow gene transfer.
It is true that in some animals that have been selectively bred for wide variation in traits, like dogs, we can have animals that are the same species but look extremely different from just their skeletons. But such a thing is extremely rare if not unheard-of amongst adult animals in the wild. Such wide variation tends to induce speciation in the long term since it creates reproductive barrier between the population.
January 24th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
I don’t have the time right now to read all 116 comments so if someone has already said this please forgive the repeat…
The video is great, I loved it and watched the entire thing. It is logical, presents the facts, and shows the truth. The problem is, it is not understandable by average people.
As I was watching it I had a friend standing over my shoulder. She was watching with great interest right up to the point the video started talking about all of the detailed genetic stuff (the scene where he describes the makeup of his binary creature). As soon as the biology terms kicked in she walked away.
When I saw the documentary about the Intelligent Design court case that ran on PBS not too long ago I noticed a big difference between the ID crowd and the science side of things. The ID side has a publicity firm that produces slick ad campaigns with easy to understand slogans. The publicity firms are used to producing things that sell ideas to average Americans. The scientists kept saying, “Teach the science, teach the science.” The reality is “the science” is not understandable by most modern day people (at least Americans). The result: people will buy the ideas in the slickly produced advertisements produced by the intelligent design people.
If anyone out there can produce a video similar to the one above, without all of the technical stuff it would be a great help. Use pictures of cute little moths of different colors (dark and light). Then show them in dark vs. light environments. Next have birds come in. Which one will the birds see and be most likely to eat? Something along those lines.
As much as it pains me to say it. If we want people to understand the truth, we must meet them where they are at and take it to their level.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Does the guy who made this video have a proper homepage or blog? I’m really impressed and intrigued by some of those simulations and would love to read more about them.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Stewart,
It’s late, I’m tired, but one of your comments struck me as bizzare.
“Ideas have consequences, google eugenics.”
You repeat this many times.
Yet, I fail to see your point. Eugenics is not evolution, it has to do with inherited traits, yes, but not natural selection. It is, instead, selective breeding, something that’s been around as long as agriculture (ever wonder why you never see wild dairy cows?)
So, it has nothing to do with evolution.
Also, you seem to think that if an idea has bad consequences, it must be false.
This is patently absurd.
Gravity has devastating consequences for everyone who has ever been in a plane crash, does that make it false?
Combustion has resulted in countless deaths throughout the history of mankind, from this can we conclude that fire is a lie?
Air is an ideal medium for diseases to spread through, does this mean that it must not exist?
The fact that you don’t like the possible conclusions of a theory doesn’t make that theory wrong.
January 24th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I’ve been battling the anti-science crowd in the comments of youtube for months now, including this video; I go by “smartmusicfreak” on Youtube. Other great videos are produced by users Thunderf00t, potholer54, and ExtantDodo.
“But such a thing is extremely rare if not unheard-of amongst adult animals in the wild. Such wide variation tends to induce speciation in the long term since it creates reproductive barrier between the population.”
Don’t forget that we probably haven’t been selectively breeding dogs for long enough to generate a speciation event. However, there are some who would argue that we already have speciated different dog breeds, since some physically cannot breed with others (think chihuahua and mastiff).
January 24th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Stewart & frick: Seriously, read a Biology textbook or visit a Natural History Museum for Christ’s sake! Your ignorance is shameful.
Tentative list of vertebrate transitional fossils (found in 2 seconds on Wikipedia) :
* Nautiloids to Ammonoids
o Bactritids
* Fish to Amphibians
o Tiktaalik roseae
o Osteolepis
o Eusthenopteron
o Panderichthys
o Elginerpeton
o Obruchevichthys
o Hynerpeton
o Tulerpeton
o Acanthostega
o Ichthyostega
o Pederpes finneyae
o Eryops
* Amphibians to Amniotes (early reptiles)
o Proterogyrinus
o Limnoscelis
o Tseajaia
o Solenodonsaurus
o Hylonomus
o Paleothyris
* Synapsid (mammal-like “reptiles”) to mammals
o Protoclepsydrops
o Clepsydrops
o Dimetrodon
o Procynosuchus
o Thrinaxodon
o Yanoconodon
* Diapsid reptiles to birds
o Yixianosaurus
o Pedopenna
o Archaeopteryx
o Changchengornis
o Confuciusornis
o Ichthyornis
* Evolution of whales
o Pakicetus
o Ambulocetus
o Kutchicetus
o Artiocetus
o Aetiocetus
o Dorudon
o Basilosaurus
o Eurhinodelphis
o Mammalodon
* Evolution of the horse
o Hyracotherium
o Mesohippus
o Parahippus
o Merychippus
o Pliohippus
o Equus
* Non-human apes to modern humans
o Pierolapithecus catalaunicus
o Ardipithecus
o Australopithecus
o Homo rudolfensis
o Homo habilis
o Homo erectus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils
January 24th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
@SirJonah
Do not feed the trolls! =P
January 24th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
[...] video is excellent, and there are many others (the Bad Astronomer likes this one); I recommend them to anyone who is looking for simple, compelling examples of how this complicated [...]
January 25th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Jeffersonian, I hope you are not accusing me of being a racist for my comment? I merely pointed out the fact that it appeared that the person who made the post about the colors used in the video was insinuating that the video was racist, and the argument of evolution was racist. Sorry if you were confused!
January 25th, 2008 at 2:09 am
@TheBlackCat
I thought your statistic was pretty strange so I checked the link and you (and they) have kind of misused it. There, they say “There are over 10^38 different possible ways to arrange the 30 major taxa represented in Figure 1 into a phylogenetic tree … speaking quantitatively, independent morphological and molecular measurements such as these have determined the standard phylogenetic tree, as shown in Figure 1, to better than 38 decimal places.”
Because we’ve determined the arrangement of taxa on the phylogenetic tree from observing relationships between them doesn’t mean we’ve actually calculated anything to high precision. Yes, there were many possible arrangements, but it doesn’t mean much more than “we figured out how the branches fit together.” The article is pointing out that we’ve reached this same conclusion independently from morphological and molecular studies to a high degree of statistical significance. Out of the many possible arrangements, we’re damn certain that this one is the correct one.
Now, I’m not knocking evolutionary theory here. I love it. Hooray evolution! Hooray biology!
However, I’m pointing out that the tools of quantum mechanics actually make calculable predictions of the interactions between fundamental particles which in some cases are as good as one part in 10^12, something which no other physical, chemical, or biological theory can claim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_tests_of_QED
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200006/history.cfm
I can’t think of an analogous situation in a biological context, but imagine sitting down with a QM book, some paper, and a computer and calculating the fine structure constant, alpha, then going out to measure it in your lab and having them agree to one part in a trillion!!! Now that’s a successful theory!
Biological systems are so exceptionally complex that it simply impossible to make calculations of that precision, even for simple systems. Imagine predicting how many bacteria you would grow in a (albeit, large) petri dish to one cell in a trillion, for instance. (Okay, so I did think up a biological example.)
I like this little side discussion of ours.
January 25th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Explaining evolution to creationists goes like this.
http://notafront.org/~agit/compilation/imgpages/image395.html
January 25th, 2008 at 3:36 am
Stewarton wrote on 24 Jan 2008 at 3:18 pm
“Ryan, I agree that Ideas have consequences.” You seem to be implying that if someone holds certain ideas and they did something terrible then the ideas they held are to blame. Ok. Let me play this game.
Ever heard of the inquisition? The crusades? They were institiuted by people who claimed they were carrying out the will of god. How did they know this? Oh that’s easy…they could quote the bible to support their action. Therefore by your reasoning the bible led to these people doing terrible things so the bible must be responsible. Correct?
January 25th, 2008 at 3:39 am
Oh & please DON’T use the old sawhorse “those people weren’t REAL christians” Or “They didn’t REALLY believe in the bible”. Why shouldn’t you use this argument? Ever heard of the no true scotsman fallacy?
January 25th, 2008 at 4:04 am
I still don’t think that creationists and IDers should be allowed on juries. It would be much better to have people who are able to look at facts and make informed decisions decide someone’s fate than people who see everything as stuff that needs to be rationalized away to fit their preconceived notions.
January 25th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Mike J, no no no no NO! BAD Mikey! Bad, bad, bad, bad! You ran away here:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/18/ben-stein-hat/
And here’s what I said:
“And alas, it seems that Mikey has done his disappearing act again, no doubt to spout off the same crud again at some point in the future despite the fact it was already debunked here. Fundies are nothing if not predictable.”
And now you’re here! So I repeat my question (again) to frick, Stu, and to you Mikey – what scientifically testable ALTERNATIVE do you propose to evolution?
January 25th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Re bjswift
Apparently, Mr. bjswift is making a distinction between the numerical predictions made by physics and the non-numerical predictions made by evolutionary theory.
1. The General Theory of Relativity predicts a relativistic contribution to the precession rate of the orbit of Mercury of 43 seconds of arc per century which is in agreement with observational measurements.
2. Quantum electrodynamics predicts a value for the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron that agrees with observational measurements to 1 part in 10 trillion.
3. The inference of common descent for apes and humans predicts that 2 of the 48 ape chromosomes will be found to have merged into 1 of 46 human chromosome. Sequencing of the human and chimpanzee genomes indeed found that human chromosome 2 can be identified as a fusion of ape chromosomes 2 and 12.
I would argue that item 3 above is every bit as scientifically rigorous as items 1 and 2.
Re Tom Marking
1. I would have to take some issue with the inference by Mr. Marking that the sole contribution of Darwin and Wallace was the theory of natural selection. It is quite true that others previously had speculated on the issue of common descent (e.g. Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, and St Hilaire) but Darwin and Wallace were the first to provide evidence in support of the notion of common descent.
2. Other factors, such as genetic drift have been proposed as mechanisms of speciation. However, I think that the overwhelming consensus in the biological community still favors natural selection (sometimes described as a change in allele frequencies) as the major factor.
3. The theory of punctuated equilibrium effectively differs from conventional evolutionary theory only in the claim that allopatric speciation can proceed more rapidly then is presumed in the latter theory. Even Gould admitted that natural selection was the major force behind his theory.
4. Actually, the most vigorous debate in the biological community is not over the role of natural selection but over issues such as adaptation, evo-devo and whether natural selection is aimed at the phenotype or the genotype. For instance, Michael Shermer in his book, “Why Evolution Matters,” describes the debate between extreme adaptationists such as Richard Dawkins and the extreme non-adaptationists such as Larry Moran.
January 25th, 2008 at 7:31 am
I think there is a misconception here of Intelligent Design proponents and /or creationists. We don’t throw out the “baby with the bathwater” so to speak. I think most creationists/ID(ers) would acknowledge that evolution occurs within a species. But there is no proof for a man from atom (or man from single cell organism). We can come up with presuppositions all day and theories and use things we observed (fossil records such as posted above) and theorize that its only a “small step” to apply such evolution to humans and other complex creatures.
But there is no transitional fossil record that maps bacteria (or pick any simple organism if you like) to man (or any animal).
Now, if you want to suggest the shared DNA between all species, perhaps thats the basis for a complex organism. I theorize that God created Humans and animals without recreating the wheel so to speak.
He used something that “works” in all his creation. So we share common DNA with animals and other living things. Perhaps that shared genetic structure is the very basis of complex organisms.
January 25th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Also, I would recommend to all persons involved in this debate (for that is what it is), that snide and sarcastic remarks are the very signs of intolerance that many on here purport to abhor.
This goes for both Creationists/ID(ers) and Non-Creationists/ID(ers).
January 25th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Wish I could edit my posts…Instead of theorize or theory above, I probably should have used hypothesize or hypothesis…My bad.
January 25th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Yes there is. The fossil record is, in fact, remarkably detailed on most of the steps needed to get from simple pre-cambrian worms, for instance, to humans. It is not 100% complete, but most of the steps are there and are constantly being filled in with more detail.
Yes, we most certainly can. See this paper:
http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/v7/n7/abs/ncb1276.html
January 25th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Re C. Taylor
Evolutionary biologists are no more required to perform an experiment to to fuse 2 chromosomes together to form a new species then astrophysicists are required to preform an experiment to create a black hole. The fact of the matter is that the inference of common descent makes a specific prediction. If the prediction is not verified (i.e. no such fusion is found), that constitutes a falsification of the notion that apes and humans had a common ancestor. The genomes of chimpanzees and humans are sequenced and lo and behold, the fusion of ape chromosomes 2 and 12 is found in human chromosome 2. That doesn’t prove common descent, it is merely another test which the inference passed. It is, however, a very significant test which, had it failed, would have thrown great consternation in the field of evolutionary biology. By the way, ID makes no prediction in this regard. The finding is explained in ID by a statement that that’s the way god did it.
Attached is a link to a video of a portion of a presentation that biologist Ken Miller gave at Case Western Reserve University shortly after the Dover trial. This video provides an excellent description of the aforementioned ape/human relationship.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1931326780443499411&q=ken+miller&total=441&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=6
January 25th, 2008 at 8:56 am
http://cectic.com/069.html
January 25th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Well, I can’t read the full article as I’m not a subscriber. But I’ll have to assume that the Telomere Fusion referenced in this article occurred naturally in the environment without any intervention of man or that it is provable that it would occur in nature normally?
Hmm…
You say:
“Yes there is. The fossil record is, in fact, remarkably detailed on most of the steps needed to get from simple pre-cambrian worms, for instance, to humans. It is not 100% complete, but most of the steps are there and are constantly being filled in with more detail.”
Thats a contradiction to what I posted. You actually support what I posted instead. I’m not trying to split hairs here, but you say there is a fossil record that maps simple cell organisms to man (or animal) but then you say its not 100% complete? How incomplete is it? 1%? 5%, 50%? 90%? is there anyway to know? How do you know “most of the steps are there?” Is that scientific? I’m asking, not trying to inflame.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Dunc = ignored (sorta)
@SLC:
I appreciate the way you present that information. If I understand you correctly, the fusion of the chromosomes doesn’t prove a common ancestor, but adds strength to the argument. Whereas, a missing fusion would have detracted from the support of evolution.
So, what I’m getting at is, that right now its impossible to prove a common ancestor, but we can prove a set of commonalities.
You sound like you leave the option available that evolution from a common ancestor can still be proven false? Any good scientist should always be prepared to have any hypothesis damaged/supported by new evidences.
Now this leads to the problem that creationists have with evolution being taught in school. Is that its being taught without that aspect. Without the aspect that there are missing pieces. That there are gaps and science can neither prove/nor disprove evolution from a common ancestor.
Or do you think I am mistaken?
January 25th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Yes, it was induced with gamma radiation.
The chance of a specific organism fossilizing is almost zero. First the organism must die in such a way that it is mostly intact (i.e. predators and scavengers don’t break and scatter the bones). That means it generally must be covered up by dirt, sand, ash, or something similar pretty soon after dieing. Then it must be buried further and further without being eroded away. Then it must be replaced with rock and not broken up by geological events and not subducted back under the earth. Then it must be eroded away so that it at the surface. And it must be found in an area where people are actively looking for fossils and where they can be easily found (usually areas with little or no vegetation and obviously not underwater). And then it must either be dug up or found very quickly before the erosion destroys it. So considering how improbable having all of those events happen that fact that we have more than a handful of fossils is mind-blowing to me, yet we have nearly complete fossil records for most major groups of organisms. Remember, for independent events you must multiply the probabilities, so for a large number independent, low-probability events that all must happen in sequence and in a particular time window then you are looking at extremely low total probabilities.
So demanding a absolutely complete and unbroken fossil record for some arbitrary species (like humans) is and absurd and impossible requirement. You are just setting an arbitrary standard that is unachievable by any stretch of the imagination and using that as an excuse to discard the mountains of evidence that we do have. And no matter how detailed the fossil record becomes, and it is becoming really detailed, you can always just demand two more fossils on either side of every transitional fossil. This is really no different from criticizing physics for not being able to predict the path of a cannon ball to sub-atomic precision. We can’t measure the path of a cannoball to sub-atomic precision, just like we can’t find fossils of animals that were never fossilized in the first place. You are demanding evidence that is impossible to produce.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Who created the execellent computer program?
January 25th, 2008 at 9:47 am
BC – I know that I am (we are) demanding evidence that is impossible to produce. Without that evidence though, does it not remain a theory/hypothesis?
Thats the missing piece – thats the problem with teaching it in schools as a given fact versus a theory that is in itself ‘evolving’ as new evidence becomes available.
I have no problem teaching the theories of evolution in school as long as children are taught it as theory. I’m not sure how you can do that without offering opposing views though.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Oh and where did the gamma radiation come from in regard to the telomere article?
Also, thats how creationists feel. Demanding evidence that cannot be produced I mean.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:52 am
It appears I keep hitting the spam filter.
Oh and where did the gamma radiation come from in regard to the telomere article?
Also, thats how creationists feel. Demanding evidence that cannot be produced I mean.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Which under the guise of “fairness”, people will use that as an excuse to try to put their “God-of-the-gaps” into school science class.
For people like C. Taylor (or others), remember that evolution does NOT say that God didn’t do it.
January 25th, 2008 at 9:57 am
“2. Other factors, such as genetic drift have been proposed as mechanisms of speciation. However, I think that the overwhelming consensus in the biological community still favors natural selection (sometimes described as a change in allele frequencies) as the major factor.”
When I was going to college many decades ago I learned that prior to Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” published in 1859 there was a French naturalist named Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744 – 1829) who proposed a different theory of evolution based on the inheritance of acquired characteristics. But Lamarck’s theory was obviously wrong. If a giraffe stretches its neck trying to eat leaves at the top of trees it’s elongated neck is not passed down as a trait to its offspring. Lamarck’s theory was castigated by later evolutionists and thrown into the dustbin of history.
But lo and behold! The 1980’s come and we discover the first retrovirus – HIV which can inject its own DNA into the human genome and this modified DNA is passed down to the next generation. This is a perfect example of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. It turns out that Lamarck was right. Inheritance of acquired characteristics can and does happen. There is even proof of the existence of injected viral DNA as part of the human genome.
Along comes the 1990’s and the concept of the epigenome develops. The actual control structure for what genes are turned on and off exists outside of the DNA itself and can be passed down from parent to offspring. The epigenome can be influenced by environmental factors which is yet another vindication of Lamarck’s idea.
Lamarck’s concept of evolution is contradictory to Darwin’s theory of natural selection and yet we see mounting evidence that Lamarckian evolution can and does happen. So do you still think Darwin’s theory of natural selection is the only mechanism that can explain evolution?
January 25th, 2008 at 10:01 am
An absurd and impossible requirement? For a scientific hypothesis/theory? Who defines absurd?
I think thats the difference between theoretical science and real/physical science (for lack of a better word).
Oh and where did the gamma radiation come from in regard to the telomere article?
Also, thats how creationists feel. Demanding evidence that cannot be produced I mean.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Christopher writes:
[[Oh & please DON’T use the old sawhorse “those people weren’t REAL christians” Or “They didn’t REALLY believe in the bible”. Why shouldn’t you use this argument? Ever heard of the no true scotsman fallacy?]]
Who wants to bet that if someone argued atheists in the USSR and PRC killed 140 million people during the 20th century, Christopher would say they weren’t REAL atheists?
January 25th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Well, it appears all my posts have been removed for the time being.
Not sure why that would happen. I wonder if I should take offense?
January 25th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Re C. Taylor
“Now this leads to the problem that creationists have with evolution being taught in school. Is that its being taught without that aspect. Without the aspect that there are missing pieces. That there are gaps and science can neither prove/nor disprove evolution from a common ancestor.”
1. The problem with this statement is the concept of “proof.” Unlike mathematics, it is not possible to “prove” a scientific theory. There is no such thing as a scientific theory that has ever been “proven”. There are only scientific theories which have greater or lesser degrees of evidence supporting them. Thus we have theories such as the inverse square law of gravitation that are almost certainly true and theories such as astrology that are almost certainly false. In between, we have theories which have a certain plausibility but thus far have little evidence supporting them, such as the theory of primordial hydrocarbons of Thomas Gold. All we can say is that a scientific theory has passed every test to which it has been subjected. In the case of evolutionary common descent, it has thus far passed every test and has a massive amount of evidence supporting it. Until such time as it fails to pass a test, the scientific consensus is that is is almost certainly true. As a matter of fact, the evidence supporting evolutionary common descent is far greater then the evidence supporting the General Theory of Relativity.
2. The issue of “gaps” in the theory of evolution, specifically common descent, is a diversionary tactic spread by creationists. All scientific theories have “gaps.” For instance, there is a massive gap in physics between the theories of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity which in no way detracts from the success of those theories in explaining observed phenomena. Common descent is the only inference that has been proposed to explain why currently existing animals (with a few exceptions such as crocodiles) are absent from the fossil record and the absence of animals, such as Tyrannosaurus from todays fauna.
3. Creationism and ID are not only bad science but bad theology. The very notion of extinction and poor design (e.g. the human spine) implies a supreme being who is either malicious or incompetent, not a popular idea among the religious.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Tom Marking writes:
[[This is a perfect example of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. It turns out that Lamarck was right. Inheritance of acquired characteristics can and does happen. There is even proof of the existence of injected viral DNA as part of the human genome.]]
That does NOT prove Lamarckism. Lamarck didn’t just say evolution worked by inheritance of acquired characteristics, he said the characteristics in question were acquired and inherited because of the organisms’s purposeful “striving.” The environment induced the organism to try to fit it, and the organism inherited characteristics based on the effort it made. (Clearly this worked better for animals than for plants, fungi, or microbes). His classic example was the long neck of the giraffe — the leaves were too high to get, so the giraffe stretched its neck all its life trying to get at those leaves, and as a result its young were born with longer necks.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:28 am
This Blog is an example of evolution in action.
We have a selection of “traits” in the posters. Those who believe in I.D. and disavow rational approaches to comprehending the universe vs. those who are willing/able to put in the brain sweat to understand this complex system we call reality. Now, it’s pretty obvious who the predators are,,,those willing to lie, cheat and steal the resources of any sucker,,,er, believer,,,and it’s also pretty obvious such “predators” will find nothing to steal from the rational. Given enough time and environmental separation(keep the later in mind), the predators will prevail over the suckers and those will become extinct, while the rational will develop into a species completely impervious to the predators. Now, if we can just find a way to separate the rationalists from the suckers,,,(anyone for space colonization???)
GAry 7
January 25th, 2008 at 11:01 am
@ Tom
Modern taxonomy is based on something called cladistics, were organisms are organized solely on their evolutionary relationships to each other. They try to fit these into older pholgenetic levels but this is more for ease of communication than due to any real significance of these level names. This is obviously revised whenever we gain new understanding of the evolutionary relationships between organisms. Depending on the two organisms you are looking for this ranges from constantly to never. For instance the relationship between mammals and birds has not been revised in a long time, nor has the relationship between humans and chimpanzees or animals and bacteria. On the other hand the relative relationship between hagfish, lampreys, and other chordates is not certain. What the taxonomy on the link I provided shows is the evolutionary relationship between different organisms based on their morphology. This is then compared to their taxonomy based on molecular comparison of their respective versions of a protein called cytochrome C. It matches perfectly, even though there is no reason it should since cytochrome C is involved in metabolism and is found in every organism on Earth. If you had read it you would also should see that achraea was not included in this particular tree (although the consensus tree puts archaea closer to eukaryotes than bacteria) and that the data was taken from a 1997 paper (so obviously using post-1978 taxonomy).
They were able to predict the location of tiktaalik to at least 5 decimal places and probably far more.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:35 am
w/regard to Tom Marking:
Lamarckian inheritence was pretty much disproven by looking at injured persons. If it was based on what happened during the lifetime of the organism (somatic inheritence), one-armed blacksmiths injured by accident should have one-armed children. This is clearly not the case. There were a number of trials using smaller organisms to deliberately determine this, so it wasn’t dismissed out of hand but suffered the same fate of many on the surface promising but ultimately testible hypotheses.
The gist is that while what happens during an organism’s lifetime can affect its germ line, it [i]has[/i] to affect its germ line. While more mechanisms of inheritence might exist than just the main organism genes (organelle genetics for instance), it is still restricted to germ line cells. Your memory is not imprinted in your gametes (one presumes) so consequently you cannot have racial memories.
Additionally, Lamarckian inheritence does not account for variation due to mutation. Sudden mutation would have to have a “will” or “yearning” or “striving” of some kind – and what parent wants to be accused of wanting their child to suffer?
Darwinian evolution had no mechanism other than germ cells – at first. It was a theory that these variations were carried somehow as information in the germ cell line, apart from the somatic organism. Mendel established rules for how germ cell traits were inherited in child organisms, the discovery of cell structure and the nucleus provided a possible mechanism of differentiation, and so on. It has been refined, but so have many other theories.
Like chemistry which started out with alchemy and the atomist theories, moved through to particle physics.
Should we throw out particle physics because alchemy didn’t predict and cannot provide a plausible mechanism to explain superconductivity? No.
For the same reason we can’t up and chuck out modern biology because Darwin didn’t know deoxyribonucleic acid was a double-helix and carried genes for the construction of complex protiens in “words” of three base pair letters. But without Darwin we would not have though to look for a heritable mechanism to prove or disprove germ cell inheritence.
And creationism explains nothing, provides no mechanism to differentiate it from a [i]de novo[/i] creation ten minutes ago, and no testable hypotheses whatsoever. It’s a reversion to pre-Pasteur days and asserting that flies arise out of meat with no precursor (say, other flies) which used to be an accepted “fact.”
I for one prefer my supermarket foods to have Pasteur’s knowledge applied rather than ignored.
January 25th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Wow, my posts got removed. I’m hoping this is only temporary, as it strikes me as decidedly anti-scientific
January 25th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Well, it appears the spam filter (or some other entity) removed my posts and has prevented me from posting more. I’ll assume its the spam filter and not some anti-creationist scheme to rule the world
January 25th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
The creator of the computer program was very intelligent to design such an excellent example of how evolution works. Thanks you, you have re-affirmed my beliefs.
January 25th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
“Lamarckian inheritence was pretty much disproven by looking at injured persons. If it was based on what happened during the lifetime of the organism (somatic inheritence), one-armed blacksmiths injured by accident should have one-armed children. This is clearly not the case.”
I’m not sure if you’re the one who mentioned this but I thought there wasn’t supposed to be such a thing as proof in science, only evidence of various degrees of reliability. Yes, it is true that Lamarckian inheritance does not work in the case of the one-arm blacksmith. But if you take a cell from the body of a child whose parent is suffering from AIDS and examine its nuclear DNA you will find the HIV genome embedded in the human DNA. An environmental influence (in this case a disease) has altered the human DNA which is now passed down to the offspring. This is essentially the inheritance of an acquired characteristic. Darwin says that this is impossible. How do you account for this discrepancy?
I believe the pro-evolution folks in various posts here asked for an observation in contradiction to Darwin’s theory of natural selection (mistakenly referred to as the theory of evolution). Well, there you have one. What are you supposed to do with theories whose predictions are contrary to observational evidence? I believe you are supposed to either throw them out or revise them.
BTW, don’t lay that creationism BS on my doorstep. That’s not what I’m espousing. What I am espousing is that nature may be more complex than Darwin, Huxley, …, Plait think it is.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Re Tom Marking
Not being a biologist, I’m probably operating above my grade level here but I willing to give it a go. Hopefully, a biologist in the audience will do better.
What Mr. Marking describes here is a change in the genetic makeup in either the unfertilized egg or the sperm. Mr. Marking points to such a change being caused by the HIV virus. There is nothing whatever new here. A change in the genetic makeup can be caused by radiation. This is known as a mutation, which in the case of inheritance of the HIV virus would be a deleterious mutation. The victims of such mutations would undoubtedly die before leaving any further descendants, in the absence of medical treatment. Thus, natural selection would quickly eliminate such mutations from the population. This is because natural selection favors the portion of a population that leaves the most descendants and untreated HIV infected infants leave none.
From this discussion, it can be seen that the example proposed by Mr. Marking is entirely consistent with Darwinian evolution and has nothing to do with Lamarkian evolution.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
I have a feeling that Darwin, and Huxley knew that nature is much more complex than most people understand… and I’m absolutely certain that Phil Plait knows how complex, and wonderful, nature is. It is the complexity and the coming to understand it that drives most scientists.
January 25th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
@Tom:
First, you cannot disprove a negative. You can, however, discount a positive assertion as to a definite expectation. Lamarckian inheritence can be shown to be a false assertion with regards to organisms on Earth currently. It is not the same as saying Lamarckian inheritence has not ever nor will ever occur.
This is the philisophical argument for anything that can be imagined must exist, because it can be imagined. Opposite to the if it cannot be observed or tested directly by the person questioning the assertion it cannot be asserted (solopsism). The former is the bastion of people who insist on angels being real, the latter is the fortress of those that insist the moon landings were fake.
In practice, neither contributes to real evidence-based inquiry. You test as much as you can, then assume that everything in the universe operates by the same rules until shown otherwise (and probably expanding your rules). Test, refine, repeat.
Lamarckian inheritence states that somatic traits are passed on in a way heritable through multiple generations, building on one another over time. They are not. Getting a disease that infects your germ cell line is not the same as Lamarckian inheritence: it is an infection of the germ cell line. If the disease does not infect germ cells, it will not be passed on. Similarly, if a disease is passed through blood or milk, it is still not somatic inheritence; a father can’t pass on a blood borne disease to his offspring. Removed from the parent, these traits will not be passed.
Limited somatic inheritence can be demonstrated with placental mammals in that some child cells and maternal cells are exchanged, which is why my mother suddenly developed my father’s Avacado allergy, and had it persist for ten years. But my mother could not pass this trait on to offspring that weren’t from the same father as the first. It ends, and is not true Lamarckian inheritence: it is somatic cell transfer.
You can’t simply say “there’s another possibility” then sneak Creationism into the chink: ask the Discovery Institute – they’ve been trying this for years.
January 25th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Oh, and Tom, regardless: your HIV example still doesn’t contradict Darwin’s theory of natural selection: whatever changes occur still have to be to the germ cells. For Lamarckian inheritence to occur, a non-germ-cell change would have to be propagated to offspring, and a germ-cell-line infection doesn’t cut it as contradicting natural selection.
Still germ cells, still the only way to inherit characteristics.
January 25th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Good show, PAt and SLC. You took the words right outta me,,,as an add on to this Lamarkian non sense, I contracted malaria as a child(a blood born disease) which I survived unaided for two years(apparently I’m too dang mean to die) but immunity to the disease was not passed on to my offspring, at least they never showed any anti-bodies to it,,,
Lamark was just trying to brown nose Stalin with a woo-woo approach to developing hardier food crops. Actually following the cross breeding approach practised in the West was anathema to Stalin. He was adamantly opposed to the idea that some critters were genetically superior. It was apparently a philosophical hangup he had,,,of course, Stalin REALLY hated the Naziis and eugenics was associated with them.
Gary 7
January 25th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
But if you take a cell from the body of a child whose parent is suffering from AIDS and examine its nuclear DNA you will find the HIV genome embedded in the human DNA. An environmental influence (in this case a disease) has altered the human DNA which is now passed down to the offspring. This is essentially the inheritance of an acquired characteristic. Darwin says that this is impossible. How do you account for this discrepancy?
I would account for it by the fact that most of us use gametes (eggs and sperm) to reproduce, not T-cells. Are you saying that some people do it differently or that you think that if you have a virus in your body it is in every cell? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way or you would be altering your DNA every time you got a cold!
January 25th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
frick said “The earth being round instead of flat was a theroy, until someone actualy proved it.”
Argh!!!!!! The Earth being flat has ***NEVER*** a widespread belief!!!! I HATE that meme! I hate it! I hate it! Bad meme! Bad, bad meme! Bring in the Narn bat squad!
Narn Bat Squad?
Observe yonder bad meme?
Now…. DEAL!
*WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM* *WHAM*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_mythology
Quote: As is expressed by Stephen Jay Gould, “there never was a period of “flat earth darkness” among scholars (regardless of how many uneducated people may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the earth’s roundness as an established fact of cosmology.”
Anyone else uses it, and I call in the Mord-Sith!
http://sot.wikia.com/wiki/Mord-Sith
Caspica?
January 26th, 2008 at 3:16 am
[usagibrian, so what’s the difference between your love for you mother and your love for cookies? Well since it’s only a chemical reaction, it’s almost really indistinguishable from fizzing Pepsi cola can. If that’s what you believe then I’m scared of you.] not all chem rxs are the same.
January 26th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Tom Marking writes:
[[This is essentially the inheritance of an acquired characteristic. Darwin says that this is impossible.]]
Charles Darwin said nothing of the kind; in fact, he speculated that Lamarck’s mechanism might be possible. Google “gemmules” if you want his take on it, or read The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
And it still isn’t Lamarckism. Having HIV in your genome certainly isn’t an adaptive trait, and Lamarck thought the acquired characteristics were always adaptive.
It wouldn’t surprise me if not all evolution was by natural selection. There is room for neutral selection or genetic drift, sexual selection, mass extinction events, etc. But the usual mechanism seems to be natural selection, and I’ve seen nothing to overturn that observation.
January 26th, 2008 at 7:26 am
Re Gary Ansorge
In fairness, Lamarck had been dead for over a hundred years before Stalin came to power in the former Soviet Union. I think Mr. Ansorge is referring to one Trofim Lysenko.
January 26th, 2008 at 10:58 am
There were several replies to my posting so let me take them one by one:
“What Mr. Marking describes here is a change in the genetic makeup in either the unfertilized egg or the sperm. Mr. Marking points to such a change being caused by the HIV virus. There is nothing whatever new here. A change in the genetic makeup can be caused by radiation.”
A retroviral insertion of DNA is not the same as a mutation. Mutations are entirely random. A retroviral insertion is not a random snippet of DNA but rather, one which is guaranteed to produce more viruses.
“I would account for it by the fact that most of us use gametes (eggs and sperm) to reproduce, not T-cells. Are you saying that some people do it differently or that you think that if you have a virus in your body it is in every cell? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way or you would be altering your DNA every time you got a cold!”
Interesting, then I suppose there is no explanation for Human Endogenous RetroViruses (HERV). You can read all about them at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus. It turns out that 8 percent of the human genome is composed of fragments from ancient retroviruses. Now, how did they get there?
“And it still isn’t Lamarckism. Having HIV in your genome certainly isn’t an adaptive trait, and Lamarck thought the acquired characteristics were always adaptive.”
How do you know that the 8 percent of the human genome that came from retroviruses isn’t adaptive? Do you know that for a fact or is it just supposition?
“Lamark was just trying to brown nose Stalin with a woo-woo approach to developing hardier food crops.”
I believe you are confusing Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) of France with Trofim Lysenko (1898 – 1976) of the Soviet Union. Different guy, different century, different country.
Actually, I think the epigenome is the stronger argument for the inheritance of adaptive traits. I notice that no one has commented on that subject. Although this research has only started in the past decade or so there have been studies of identical twins where one twin comes down with a disease like diabetes and the other twin doesn’t. Examination reveals that the epigenomes are different presumably due to environmental causes.
But really, I’m not proposing Lamarckian evolution as a wholesale replacement of natural selection. I just wanted to open the eyes of some people on this board to other possibilities. I finally did see the computer simulation which is actually quite good and similar to a program I made many years ago.
One of the things I noticed was at the end where they varied the environment in a cyclical fashion with a period of 250(?) years. So the environment changes from light to dark in a sinusoidal fashion with a period of 250 years. Lo and behold, but the average genome of the population follows this sinusoidal pattern also with a period of 250 years. The graphs were a bit too small for me to tell if the genome curve had a phase delay relative to the environment curve.
But anyway, I digress. Now the important point of the last simulation was that when the environment reverts to some previous state the organism also reverts back to its previous state. This is a big problem for natural selection. We know from geological evidence that the earth has gone through environmental cycles of various lengths whether it be the Ice Ages of the Pleistocene (every 400,000 years) or the supercontinent cycle (period of 500 million years). So for example, during the Pleistocene (last 2 million years) the earth’s climate has gone from cold to warm, back to cold, then back to warm, and so forth.
Now, does the fossil record contain evidence that organisms reverted back to their previous state? In other words, is there any evidence of:
Species A –> Species B –> Species A (species A evolves into species B, when the environment reverts back species B evolves back into species A). I’m not a paleontologist but from what I’ve been able to read there are no major examples of this happening. When the climate switched from warm to cold several million years ago an elephant-like creature evolved into the Wooly Mammoth. When the climate switched from cold to warm 10,000 years ago the Woolly Mammoth did not evolve back into an elephant. Instead it became extinct. Can someone provide me with a single example of Species A –> Species B –> Species A? I’m not aware of any.
Also, when the ancestors of the cetaceans went back into the oceans 40 million years ago they did not evolve gills like their fish ancestors did even though gills would be more efficient. Instead, they remained air-breathing mammals and they were restricted to coming to the surface to breathe periodically. In almost no case when a species re-enters an environment that its remote ancestors occupied does it re-evolve the same adaptations that its remote ancestors used to cope with the environment. Can someone please explain how these facts jibe with the theory of natural selection?
January 26th, 2008 at 11:43 am
I believe that the video was illustrating the way a specific trait can fluctuate over time rather than actual speciation. In other words, the percent change over time in a trait’s appearance within a population due to environmental pressures. There are a bunch of examples of this happening.
January 26th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
“I believe that the video was illustrating the way a specific trait can fluctuate over time rather than actual speciation”
Well, then I guess the video really is correct when it says “The world is full of misinformation”. I thought the video was about evolution. If it’s only dealing with the fluctuation of traits within the same species then it really is a violation of “honesty in advertising”.
Actually, there was one thing in the video I found disturbing. I think it was at the end. Doesn’t it flash up some message like “Truth is not a democracy” or something like that? Of course, this just begs the question of who will decide which scientific theories are to be discussed, debated, taught in the schools, etc., etc. The scientific establishment? The National Academy of Sciences? Or some hidden scientific Illuminati?
January 26th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
This is part of the theory of evolution
January 26th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Also, the illustration was dealing with one set of traits over time… and added some mutation into the mix. Eventually, when you have natural selection, mutation and other factors thrown into the mix, you do get to a point where speciation occurs. The video was simplifying an aspect of the evolutionary theory… environment drives change… mostly to show the mechanism works without any kind of guidance.
To view some other illustrations that address other parts of the theory, I can recommend:
http://www.youtube.com/cdk007
by the same author.
Also, http://www.talkorigins.org/ can address your questions better than I can off the cuff. A very useful site for anyone interested in learning about evolution.
January 26th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
“Of course, this just begs the question of who will decide which scientific theories are to be discussed, debated, taught in the schools, etc., etc. The scientific establishment? The National Academy of Sciences? Or some hidden scientific Illuminati?”
Which scientific theories are to be discussed? I would guess that would depend upon the forum the discussion appears in, wouldn’t it? Remember, theories come up to model phenomenon found in nature. It is nature that drives the process to begin with.
What is debated? Well, generally theories are “debated” by the peers of the researcher… it is called “peer review.” Theories must be reviewed, tested, and duplicated to gain strength. In some cases the theory will be found wanting and discarded. Others will be modified as new information comes in, or as questions posed by peers are answered.
Taught in school? That seems to be the province of the school boards… and the communities and parents of the children that elect those school boards.
A hidden scientific illuminati? I’m still waiting my invitation!
January 26th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
“This is part of the theory of evolution”
Yes, but I am still waiting on an answer to my question. Natural selection predicts a reversion of the genome when the environment reverts to a prior state. This should be true whether you’re talking about minor changes in the genome (i.e., within species) or major changes in the genome (i.e., across species).
So please show me a case of:
Species A –> Species B –> Species A
It seems to me that speciation events are irreversible. At least that’s what the fossil record shows. How can that be if the environmental changes that cause them are reversible?
January 26th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I still don’t see where anyone is saying that SpeciesA -> SpeciesB -> SpeciesA, except for you of course. What I see is a phenotype — an outward, physical expression of a gene — that is varying. The genotypes that result in those phenotypes can exists beyond speciation events… in other words, SpeciesA -> SpeciesB -> Species C and still have the outward phenotype of these species go from white, through grays, to black and back without having to revert back to a previous specie.
Remember, this is a very simple illustration of the process here. In a real creature, there are other mutations going on at the same time and so the “creature” may be changing into a different specie over time, but we are only following one trait expression. The purpose of the illustration is to show that environment drives change without the need for a guiding hand.
So, I can’t answer your question. I don’t agree that the illustration is showing a specie that is in flux between two separate species.
January 26th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Tom -
I think it’s a little disingenuous to propose a broad statement as fact, as you did thusly:
“Now the important point of the last simulation was that when the environment reverts to some previous state the organism also reverts back to its previous state. This is a big problem for natural selection. We know from geological evidence that the earth has gone through environmental cycles of various lengths whether it be the Ice Ages of the Pleistocene (every 400,000 years) or the supercontinent cycle (period of 500 million years). So for example, during the Pleistocene (last 2 million years) the earth’s climate has gone from cold to warm, back to cold, then back to warm, and so forth.
Now, does the fossil record contain evidence that organisms reverted back to their previous state? In other words, is there any evidence of:
Species A –> Species B –> Species A (species A evolves into species B, when the environment reverts back species B evolves back into species A). ”
First of all, it’s pretty simplistic to think that the only relevant environmental factor for evolutionary change is global temperature… but that’s the only factor you site. That is simply preposterous. The earth over that time has gone through multiple changes, both climatic and geological… and many many other contributing factors. In fact I would submit that geological change and isolation as a result is a far greater factor than climate change, but I will accept that as a debatable point. Having said that, it is not just one factor that acts as a trigger for evolutionary adaptation. And geoligical changes simply don’t “revert”. No time in earth’s history is exactly the same as any time before, given all these factors. You’tr not going to SEE the Species A –> Species B –> Species A evidence you ask us to provide because the conditions to PRODUCE such a result simply don’t exist… and likely never will.
More to the point, however, is the issue that you presented something you invented throught your own interpretation as “fact”, despite the fact that no-one has ever made that claim, and then asked us to defend it and provide proof of it. I get really tired of this tactic…
January 26th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Whales.
Whales descended from cow-like animals. The ancestors of these animals moved to the land when the sea became more competitive than the land.
Then when the sea became less competitive, some of their descendants moved back, in the process they adapted to a similar body plan, not the same genotype, but a similar phenotype.
January 26th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Sorry for the double post… but I just want to add…
Furthermore, I would disagree that you are seeing in the simulation is truly Species A –> Species B –> Species A. As L Fuller stated, I also see that as Species A –> Species B –> Species C, where Species C is SIMILAR in trait and characteristic to Species A, but uniquely defined and different enough to still be a diffrent species.
As the video states, random genetic mutation is a key component to evolutionary change. That factor alone makes reversion difficult, if not impossible, even IF the conditions are precisely the same.
I wish I had a better example… the whale example Nicias gave is pretty good. I bet smarter people than me here can cite others.
January 26th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
@ Tom Marking.
I’m not a biologist, or any type of working or wannabe scientist. But I’ll take a stab at it.
1. The computer simulation was just that, a simulation. It had very finite environmental parameters and was designed to show the evolution of a very simple “form” using the basic tenets of natural selection. I believe it was successful in that. It was not designed to be an accurate analogy to our very complex real-life existence.
2. Species A -> Species B -> Species A does not occur because Species A came from Sub Species A, and not Species B in the first place. Also, it’s really quite likely that the process goes more like this: Species A -> Species B because of environmental pressure A (EP A) and predation. Then Species B -> Species B+ because of other factors including, but not limited to, EP A+ and predation. It’s very likely that Species B+ does not equal Sub Species A, therefore it would not make sense for Species B+ to de-evolve into Species A again, even if the exact same environmental factors and predation re-occurred.
Do I have proof of this? Of course not. But I believe it to be a logical answer to your question using natural selection. I am curious if I came close to any actual observations of actual biologists lurking here.
January 26th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Re Tom Marking
Apparently, Mr. Marking is asking whether evolution is a reversible process, like a Carnot cycle in physics. Since Carnot cycles don’t exist in the real world, why would one expect that evolution should be a reversible process in the real world? I believe that Stephen Jay Gould discussed this issue in one of his essays that appeared on one of the many books of essays which he had published. Unfortunately, I can’t remember which one but I do remember that his contention was that, although evolution was theoretically reversible, because the sequence of events that led to the evolution of a species was extremely unlikely to occur in exactly the reverse order, the reevolution of a species was also extremely unlikely to occur. In other words, once a species goes extinct, that’s it. It is extremely unlikely to reoccur.
January 26th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Another example besides Nicia’s whale example is myxozoa. This is a very fascinating group of apparently uniformly parasitic animals. They evolved from multicellular cnidarians (jellyfish, coral, sea anemones, etc). However, they are unicellular or nearly so (depending on the species and the stage of their life cycle), often containing just two to a handful of cells (with one main cell and one or more cells used to anchor that cell to a host and help it burrow inside where it then sheds them).
They were originally lumped in with protists, many of which form similar one or few-celled organisms. What is more, one group of myxozoa evolved back into multicellular organisms, although they form a quadralteral body plan that is completely different than any other known animals (amongst animals with symmetry the rest are either radially symmetric or bilateral). So here we have a single-celled organism evolving into a multi-cellular organism evolving back into a single-celled organism evolving back into a multi-cellular organism. So it is more like species a1 –> species b1 –> species a2 –> species b2.
Yeasts, a variety of often only distantly-related single-celled fungi, probably also evolved from multi-cellular species (although I am not as sure about this) and now, like myxozoa, live very much as protists do.
January 26th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
O.K. The responses seem to contradict each other. According to Celtic_Evolution “geologic changes don’t revert”. L Fuller’s initial response was that “there are a bunch of examples of this happening” – namely, A to B and then back to A, but apparently only at the below-species level. The famous case of the peppered moth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution would be an example of this. Apparently something changes dramatically at the species level and above and this is no longer possible, although what that change is, is not clear. According the Celtic_Evolution the peppered moth case shouldn’t exist since you can’t revert the environment.
And I am not able to follow DTdNav’s argument:
“Species A -> Species B -> Species A does not occur because Species A came from Sub Species A, and not Species B in the first place”
Consider human-induced artificial selection. Through human efforts a subpopulation of the wolf evolved into the household dog – let’s take the beagle as an example (and because it was the name of Darwin’s ship). This process took at most 10,000 to 20,000 years. Now let’s say humans got tired of beagles and wanted to change them back to wolves again, by selection. Does anyone have any doubt that we couldn’t do this by artificial selection? With modern breeding techniques we could probably develop an animal that was indistinguishable from the wild wolf in only a few centuries.
And if we perform a thought experiment – let’s say that we have total control of the environment and we can revert it back to the state it had at any time in the past. Let’s say we choose to gradually revert the environment of the earth back to what it was 10 million years ago. Is it the prediction of the theory of natural selection that the earth’s life forms would evolve back to the state they had 10 million years ago, when they were adapted to the environment at the time? If the answer is no then that means that the environment is not the sole factor in evolution – which is what I’ve been saying all along.
January 26th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Well, since Tom did not respond to my points, we’ll assume he accepts the refutation of Lamarckism on earth at this time. Moving on – this new canard or straw man that Darwinian theory says A => B => A is farcical. A population can drift – but speciation doesn’t walk backwards. The same trait can re-evolve if it’s adaptive or beneficial – but its not always guaranteed to use the exact same mechanism. Really, it’s never guaranteed, and claiming Darwinian natural selection predicts this is false. A straw man.
Take the plesiosaur and pliosaur. Both ocean-going predatory reptiles, the plesiosaur the long-necked kind, the pliosaur more like a paddled crocodile. Originally, it was thought that the plesiosaur survived an extinction event, until later data showed that the pliosaur had survived, and some had evolved into the same niche that the plesiosaur had occupied. The mechanism still works, but its not like the pliosaur had backtracked in its evolution to where it and the plesiosaur split originally. The mechanism was evolvable (snaking neck improving attack maneuverability of large sea predator) by the pliosaur, so it evolved – not “again,” but in a new species similar traits came about. Not the same DNA by a long shot.
A’ (A prime) may exist as an archtypical niche – the species are malleable and fluid, with some at any time occupying that niche. Don’t confuse terrain and walker.
January 26th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Re Tom Marking
Lets analyze Mr. Markings’ example of a wolf evolving into a dog by artificial selection and then back into a wolf by artificial selection. The point that I think others, who are far more competent to address questions of biological evolution then I am, are trying to make is that the wolf one ends up with at the end of this process is not the same wolf as one started with at the beginning of the process. In other words, the two wolves will, in all likelihood, be different species and will not be able to interbreed so as to produce breedable descendants. For instance, my information is that interbreeding wild wolves and German shepherds, which the Germans did during the Second World War to produce the guard dogs for their concentration camps, resulted in animals that were sterile.
January 26th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
I think the key thing tom is missing is that species are not uniform. If you look at humans, for instance, many traits (height, intelligence, athletic ability) vary to large degrees across the entire population. Now the degree to which any of my examples are genetic is unknown and not important, the important things is that many, if not most, genetically-controlled traits exist across a range in most populations. This is due to having different versions of the same gene present in the population. If one of those versions of the gene is lost for whatever reason it is almost certainly not coming back in exactly the same form, the probability is just too low.
Lets do another thought experiment. Imagine a species of insect that lives on flowers with red, white, and yellow varieties. This insect, for camouflage, has 3 different versions of a pigment gene: one makes the animal red, one makes it white, and the other makes it yellow (let’s assume the insect only has one copy of this gene, this would still work with two copies but would take longer). However, another species of flower is introduced to its environments that poisons and thus quickly wipes out the existing species of flower. This new flower is only yellow. Suddenly all the red and white animals are at an extreme disadvantage. These versions of the gene are suddenly at a huge selective disadvantage. Due to predation these two genes dwindle in number until they are completely removed from the population. This leaves only the yellow type of the gene in the insect population. Over the old species of flower develops resistance to the new species’ toxin at the border of a region where the old species can grow but the new species cannot for whatever reason (let’s just say it is too rocky for the new species). Suddenly the playing field is leveled and the old species, being otherwise faster-growing and hardier, pushes the new species out again. Now the insect is back in an environment with three colors of flower. Will it return to being a three-colored species? No, it can’t. Those genes are gone. Once a gene is gone it is gone for good. They may, by chance, mutate in such a way that the old colors re-appear. But that sort of mutation is really rare. It will not return to its previous state even though the recovery to the old environment was relatively quick as such changes go.
What is more, this is not the only gene that has been changing. There is something called “genetic drift”, which is basically where the genes in the population change over time just due to random fluctuations as opposed to natural selection where they change due to environmental pressure. Further, genes are constantly undergoing mutations, chromosomes fuse, split, duplicate, exchange bits and pieces, shuffle genes around, etc. While this adaptations are taking place a great number changes that are either neutral or at least of minor adaptive significance are also taking place that are changing the organism. Even if a trait that has a minor advantage or disadvantage chance events may overwhelm any such significance and either allow it to remain or prevent it from becoming common. By the time the environment is back as it was the population has changed considerably. It is possible that it could go back to its original state, but consider the total number of possible states that have equal or at least roughly equal fitness for that environment that chance of any one given state occuring is extremely small. Since there are a huge number of states that have not been tried yet and only one that matches the exact previous state probability states that it is far more likely that a new state will be the one that occurs. If irreversible or nearly-irreversible changes have occurred (like mutations being fixed in the population or versions of genes being lost) it is effectively statistically impossible to return to the previous state.
So yes, what you propose is possible. But it is extremely unlikely. Now what can happen, and what actually happens fairly often, is a given organism fills the same “niche” that a previous organism filled, or even returns to a niche that it once held but evolved away from. That is called “convergent evolution”, but we have already provided a number of examples of those. That will not produce the same organism, although it may (and sometimes does) produce an organism that is superficially so similar that you can’t tell the difference without looking at its DNA or proteins sequences. The example I gave about of myxozoa, they were not identified as animals until they looked at their biochemistry and realized it matches that of animals not protists.
January 26th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Tom:
You were asking if species A turn back into species B, and the answer is no. Celtic_Evolution and I in no way contradicted each other. If anything I was guilty of keeping my answer too simplistic since there are other sites, such as talkorigins.org and http://www.pandasthumb.org that already provide the answers all your questions to a much fuller extent. Celtic_Evolution did not say that the dominant genotype within a population can’t change. He was saying that Specie B cannot become Specie A again… and I agree.
A couple of definitions:
Genotype: the actual coded genetic information carried by an organism. A species can have several genotypes within its population that controls one or more traits.
Phenotype: the outward, physical manifestation resulting from inheriting a specific genotype. Depending on the genotypes inherited from the parents, the phenotype of an organism can change… for example, the organism could be white, a shade or gray, black, etc. as in the illustration that started this thread to begin with.
A single specie can exhibit a huge variation amongst the phenotypes depending on the genotypes present in the population … just because one genotype predominates due to environmental pressure does not mean the other genotype’s simply cease to exist. Given a change of environment, the other genotype may be of more survival value and so the creatures with those genotypes would become more populous. Therefore, one specie, different variations. Variation within a species does not make a new species!
The specie can “evolve” to a new specie and still have the genes that allow for the color variation. Considerable variation exists within populations. But it is possible for the new specie to have completely lost the genotype for white fur, for example, and only have the genotype for the black fur in it’s population. If it is not closely enough related to another specie to mate with it (genetic flow), it cannot regain the lost gene. However, through mutation, an organism may develop another compensating trait, or it may develop a gene that allows for a similar phenotype to that of the lost genotype. The example of dolphins and whales developing flippers which function much like fins, for example. Dolphins and whales did not regain the lost genetic information for fins… over time beneficial mutations modified land-limbs into serviceable water locomotion.
“Is it the prediction of the theory of natural selection that the earth’s life forms would evolve back to the state they had 10 million years ago, when they were adapted to the environment at the time?”
No, the theory of natural selection does not say that life forms will revert back to the state they had 10 million years ago… especially if you mean that the exact same species will be duplicated. There may be similar adaptations evolved for certain niches in the environment. There may even be novel adaptations. However, any specie that has gone extinct will not be re-evolved due to the environment changing.
Again, I urge you to use talkorigins.org and pandasthumb.org to research answers to your questions.
January 26th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
My argument was that Species A originally evolved from a species that was not Species B. In my example Sub Species A. Since Species B has attributes that most likely are new in relation to both Species A and Sub Species A, it does not follow that you would get Species A to evolve again from Species B. I further refined it to the likelihood that Species B would have “drifted” to Species B+, which would be even more genetically removed from Species A and even less likely to produce Species A from an environmental reversion.
An argument that I think was covered in much better detail by several other posters.
January 26th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Pat: “Well, since Tom did not respond to my points, we’ll assume he accepts the refutation of Lamarckism on earth at this time.”
Funny, I don’t remember any refutation coming from you concerning epigenetic inheritance. Here is some reading material for you:
http://www.fmv.ulg.ac.be/genmol/Department/Recommended_reading/PDF_files%5CSurani_Nature_414_122_2001.pdf
https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/0/b360905554fdb7d985256ec5006a7755?OpenDocument
http://www.cshl.edu/AnnualReport1999/rh5.html
January 26th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
The Black Cat: “Will it return to being a three-colored species? No, it can’t. Those genes are gone. Once a gene is gone it is gone for good.”
L Fuller: “No, the theory of natural selection does not say that life forms will revert back to the state they had 10 million years ago… especially if you mean that the exact same species will be duplicated.”
O.K., interesting stuff. So even if we could reproduce some previous state of the environment perfectly the life forms will not revert back to their previous state. A gene is just a sequence of nucleotides (e.g., ATCCGTAATTC…) but apparently once it’s gone it can never be regenerated again. There seems to be no biochemical prohibition against this happening.
Assuming we accept this as true, what this means is that knowledge of the environment (even total knowledge) at some time T does not allow us to predict the course of evolution at time T + dT.
January 26th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Correct Tom! Very good.
January 26th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Yes, but you realize what this means. It means that the theory of natural selection has now been reduced to something like the Weak Anthropic Principle:
“Human beings exist because the universe is structured in such a way to allow them to exist”
Well, duh! An evolutionary corallary would be as follows:
“The horse evolved from a smaller ancestral species (Eohippus) because the environment acting in conjunction with the existing genotype and a bunch of random and unknowable factors caused it to happen.”
What kind of a useless theory is that? We want to know what environmental factors caused Eohippus to evolve into Equus. What were the roles played by the existing distribution of genotypes, phenotypes, etc.? What was the role of genetic drift? What was the role of co-evolving species? I doubt whether the theory of natural selection will ever be able to give any conclusive answers to any of these questions.
But Stuart Kauffmann has an even more devastating critique of natural selection. More on that in my next post.
January 26th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Stuart Kauffmann, a researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, wrote an interesting book back in 1995 entitled “At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity”. I would urge all of the dedicated evolutionists on this board to get a copy and read it. By the way, there is no creationist or intelligent design part to the book. There is no invocation of a deity or an intelligent designer at all. Turning to page 152 we find the following passage, a direct broadside into the H.M.S. Beagle:
“It is fair to say that Darwin simply assumed that gradual improvement was possible in general. He based his argument on the selection carried out by breeders of cattle, pigeons, dogs, and other domesticated plants and animals. But it is a long, long step from selection by hand for alteration in ear shape to the conclusion that all features of complex organisms can evolve by the gradual accumulation of useful variations.
Darwin’s assumption, I will try to show, was almost certainly wrong. It does appear to be the case that gradualism always holds. In some complex systems, any minor change causes catastrophic changes in the behavior of the system. In these cases, as we will soon discuss, selection cannot assemble complex systems. Here is one fundamental limit to selection. There is a second fundamental limit as well. Even when gradualism does hold in the sense that minor mutations cause minor changes in phenotype, it still does not follow that selection can successfully accumulate the minor improvements. Instead, an “error catastrophe” can occur. An adapting population then accumulates a succession of minor catastrophes rather than a succession of minor improvements. Even with selection sifting, the order of the organism melts silently away.”
January 26th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
The video didn’t live up to its sales pitch in my opinion.
The video said that a color change in the population will show
evolution, then a program was written that shows color change in a
population. Hence, it claimed to be a simple, wonderful example of
evolution.
What I saw was not evolution, but natural selection. The DNA bits that
expressed color had the ability to display 256 colors. The fact that a
particular organism was 11111111 or 00000000 were both expressions
of the color.
Hence, the video was a useless as a simplified example of evolution.
January 26th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Unless things have changed, I had heard that Maynard Smith had convinced Stuart Kauffman that his views are consistent with modern Darwinism, which would mean that, if supported, Stuart Kauffman’s ideas would be a refinement of modern Darwinism… which is how the scientific method works. I have no argument there.
Stuart Kauffman presents some interesting ideas. However, I had also thought that Natural Selection was not replaced by the laws of self-complexity he is looking for… that Natural Selection and self-complexity kind of ‘tugged’ against each other.
I do not see how his views, even if correct, would mean that given the same conditions, the exact same genetically identical species would evolve, or that a species would backward-evolve to an earlier species. But then, I’m trained as a geologist and know more about the fossil record than the inner workings of biology. There can be more than one “correct” answer to a complex system.
January 27th, 2008 at 4:47 am
[...] Wie Evolution wirklich funktioniert – ein informatives 10-minütiges englisches Video (via BA). [...]
January 27th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Confusing Natural Selection with mutative genetic evolution is a common red herring argument of Evolutionists.
The question is not: Did species change over time?
The question is: Why?
“Scientists” don’t even try to address that particular question.
Robert
January 27th, 2008 at 8:27 am
BTW, has anyone noticed that the argument is ALWAYS “Creationism is wrong, therefore Evolution MUST be right!” This is known as the False Dilemma Fallacy.
Robert
January 27th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Actually Robert, no, I have never noticed that argument. The argument has always been that overwhelming evidence supports the modern theory of evolution so it is the best model describing evolution.
Nice try though
January 27th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Robert:
>”Confusing Natural Selection with mutative genetic evolution is a common red herring argument of Evolutionists.”
It is? For what purpose exactly?
>”The question is not: Did species change over time?
The question is: Why?”
So you accept that species DO change. If so, why are you arguing?
>”BTW, has anyone noticed that the argument is ALWAYS “Creationism is wrong, therefore Evolution MUST be right!” This is known as the False Dilemma Fallacy.”
Actually Robert, it is usually the creationists who argue that “Evolution is wrong, therefore Creationism MUST be right!” And as already been pointed out before, evolution has NOTHING to say as to whether or not a “creator” created everything. However, if we are talking about a “literal, 6000 year old Earth” style creationism, virtually every science known to man shows it to be wrong.
Tom:
>”Instead, an “error catastrophe” can occur. An adapting population then accumulates a succession of minor catastrophes rather than a succession of minor improvements. Even with selection sifting, the order of the organism melts silently away.” ”
This to me also still seems to be part and parcel of the theory of evolution. I am no scientist either, there are others here who have done a much better job of explaining things than I could. But evolution does predict that not every species will be successful, and some may even find themselves in an evolutionary dead-end, while others will survive and carry on.
Your arguments seem to me to be not that evolution doesn’t happen, but more like how exactly did it occur? And while this is something that evolutionary biologists likely deal with every day, I would say the specifics of this go far beyond school level education, where a detailed “debate” like this would be more of a hinderence than a help, before school kids have even learned the basics.
January 27th, 2008 at 9:22 am
“Unless things have changed, I had heard that Maynard Smith had convinced Stuart Kauffman that his views are consistent with modern Darwinism”
If you could provide some URL with Kauffmann’s supposed Conversion on the way to Damascus it would be much appreciated. If we call the theory of natural selection Darwinism and the theory espoused by Kauffmann, Kauffmanism then there are a whole bunch of differences in the predictions they make about the biological world. I just have the one book by Kauffmann and it’s been several years since I read it, but based on my memory some of the biggest differences are as follows:
1.) Origin of Life
Darwinism: No explanation
Kauffmanism: Explanation – Life results from a phase shift and is inevitable once the planet in question achieves the threshold level of complexity (i.e., diversity) in its chemical reactions.
Observation: Darwinism has no explanation so Kauffmanism wins by default
2.) Minimum size of a living organism
Darwinism: Does not specify a minimum size to a living organism
Kauffmanism: There is a minimum size to a living organism below which the system is not truly alive.
Observation: There does appear to be a minimum genome size for living organisms. The current champion is Nanoarchaeum equitans with a genome size of 490,885 nucleotides and 552 genes although Craig Venter of the Minimum Genome Project has successfully created living organisms with even fewer genes.
3.) Increase in complexity over geological time
Darwinism: Complexity does not have to increase over time
Kauffmanism: Complexity generally increases over time – more species, more biochemical diversity, more complex organisms, etc., etc.
Observation: With the exception of mass extinction events the number of species, genera, families, etc. appears to increase over geological time. Also the organisms tend to increase in brain size.
January 27th, 2008 at 9:28 am
Darth Robo
I agree… and I wish that Tom had come right out and said what was on his mind at the beginning… it would have saved a lot of time though it was an interesting exercise in its way. I still feel that the simulation is a good starting point for illustrating a very basic part of the Theory of Evolution without muddying things down with possible refinements. As the old doggerel goes, “You must crawl before you can run” or something along that line.
After folk understand the basics of evolution, then they can better understand some of the implications and possible refinements to the model that describes the evolutionary process.
January 27th, 2008 at 10:36 am
“If we call the theory of natural selection Darwinism”
That is a very big if you have there… The Theory of Natural Selection is a portion of the modern Theory of Evolution, and an important one, but not the whole of it. Mutation, genetic drift, co-evolution, sexual selection… the list goes on.
And, you are right… the Theory of Evolution doesn’t try to explain the origins of life. That is Abiogenesis theory.
Darwin didn’t specify a minimum size of an organism. I believe you are right and Darwin didn’t specify a minimum size of an organism. I wouldn’t be surprised if modern evolutionary biologists haven’t, or haven’t at least tried. If not, I’m glad somebody is thinking about it.
Complexity tends to increase over geologic time… We all see that in the geologic record and in other areas of science. I don’t think modern evolutionary theory would argue that, though I could be wrong.
As I said before, if Stuart Kauffman’s model can help refine those areas, so much the better. I still don’t see how a refinement invalidates the basics. Kauffman said that he doesn’t believe that Natural Selection was the sole motivator to evolution… he didn’t say it doesn’t exist.
January 27th, 2008 at 10:46 am
@ Tom:
Stop using “Darwinism”. The word is “evolution”. Nobody accepts Darwin’s theory of evolution anymore, not for almost a century. The modern theory of natural selection is similar to Darwin’s theory, although not identical, but modern evolution includes a whole lot more.
Of course evolution has no explanation for the origin of life. That is handled by a completely different field of biology called “abiogenesis”. It is like criticizing volcanology for not being able to explain earthquakes. They are two completely different branches of geology that explain different phenomena. Claiming that a (possibly) different theory is better because it explains something that evolution is specifically formulated to not deal with is absurd.
Define “living organism”. You can’t predict the minimum size of a living organism until you have some criteria to determine what is and is not a “living organism”. If you define a living organism as having the properties of modern-day living organisms, a DNA-based genome, RNA-based protein synthesis, a phospholipid cell membrane, electron transport chain-based metablism, the ability to divide, and other such things then there is definitely a lower limit to the size of an organism. However, if you define an organism as “alive” merely if it is something able to self-replicate, passing on its traits to its ancestors, then it could be a single fairly simple molecule. You don’t even define “size”. What is size? Number of genes? Why does an organism need to have any genes? Number of nucleotides? Why does an organism need nucleotides? Molecular weight of the genome? Mass of the organism? However, if I reading you right you are saying that anything that is below a certain size, whatever criteria you use for size, cannot be truly alive. If that is the case then of course that is the minimum size of an organism. If you say that anything below a certain size cannot be truly alive, then by definition anything below a certain size is not alive. But that is only because you are defining life that way.
January 27th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Tom Marking posts (at great length):
[[Can someone provide me with a single example of Species A –> Species B –> Species A? I’m not aware of any.]]
Probably because there isn’t any. That you think this is a “problem” for natural selection only shows how little you understand about natural selection. Even if an environment became like an earlier environment, the population of animals or plants or whatever would not be starting from the same place. You’ll never get the same species twice. This has been known for a long, long time.
If you’re trying to say things never “devolve,” and therefore that something other than natural selection is driving evolution, you’re still wrong. Evolution procedes by losing traits as often as it procedes by gaining them. Cave fish have lost their eyesight, apes have lost their tails, leeches have lost independent motion, humans can’t manufacture vitamin C in their bodies any more. There’s no intrinsic drive or direction to evolution; it’s just a statistical sieve whereby creatures best suited to eat and mate in a given environment are more likely to contribute offspring to the next generation.
January 27th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Tom Marking insists:
[[Natural selection predicts a reversion of the genome when the environment reverts to a prior state.]]
No, it does not. Quote a source for this bizarre contention. It’s not in any evolutionary biology text I’m familiar with.
January 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
“Of course evolution has no explanation for the origin of life. That is handled by a completely different field of biology called “abiogenesis”. It is like criticizing volcanology for not being able to explain earthquakes.”
Kauffmann’s theory can explain both the origin of life and its evolution with the same theory. That was the only point I was trying to make.
“Define “living organism”. You can’t predict the minimum size of a living organism until you have some criteria to determine what is and is not a “living organism”. ”
Take any definition of life you care to whether it be metabolism, genetic code, etc., etc. And take any definition of size you care to whether it be number of nucelotides, number of genes, total mass, number of atoms, etc., etc. Kauffmann says there is a minimum size below which there will be no living organism. Does the theory of evolution say the same thing? If so then please cite me a URL where someone like Gould, Dawkins, etc. says such a thing.
“Evolution predicts that there will be an overall increase in complexity.” That is not what Stephen J. Gould said in “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”.
The point, of course, is that Kauffmann’s theory and the theory of evolution make different predictions concerning the biological world. We should be able to go out and make observations to determine which theory is better supported by the evidence. I thought that’s what science is supposed to be about.
January 27th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
“[[Can someone provide me with a single example of Species A –> Species B –> Species A? I’m not aware of any.]]
Probably because there isn’t any. That you think this is a “problem” for natural selection only shows how little you understand about natural selection.”
The simulation which began this post clearly showed reversion of the genotype with a cycle of 250 years. If you don’t want people to comment on predictions that are not in your theory, then God damn it, don’t put them into your God damn simulation. Got that?
January 27th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Tom, how are you completely incapable of understanding that if, say, a dark moth turns light to better fit with its environment, and then turns dark again when the environment changes again, that this does NOT mean that it has completely reverted to being the old species? Lots of different species are similar colors without being the same species. Are you REALLY incapable of understanding that???
January 27th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Tom… epigenetic inheritance still has to go through the germ cell line. Technically, mitochondrial inheritance is “epigenetic.” Darwinian natural selection makes no mention of DNA, so “epigenetic” inheritance is meaningless to Darwinian natural selection. Germ cells, not somatic cells. Would you consider the shell of an egg an “inherited” somatic trait from the mother hen? The blueprint for laying an egg is inherited, not the egg itself: and given the right mutation, the offspring might not even be able to lay eggs. The only somatic trait passed on is survival: if the parent doesn’t “have” that before propagating, the offspring won’t have it either (because, of course, there won’t be offspring).
In the meantime, the myth of “devolution.” Natural selection does not walk backwards – the best you can get is relative stasis, such as the cockroach and the horseshoe crab: they’ve suffered mutation, but they are versatile or in enough of a generalist niche to have survived relatively unchanged. If you end up going in a circle, you’re not the same as when you started, regardless of being in the same position. (Think of the old philosophical argument that you can never step in the same stream twice.) This is not an absolute so much as a relative probability: it is unlikely in the extreme for an organism to “devolve” exactly to a previous state, more so because it would have to encompass a population.
January 27th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
“The simulation which began this post clearly showed reversion of the genotype with a cycle of 250 years. If you don’t want people to comment on predictions that are not in your theory, then God damn it, don’t put them into your God damn simulation. Got that?”
That is where you are erring, or at least misinterpreting the simulation… the simulation was not showing the reversion of a “new” genotype into an “old” genotype, but the decrease of the proportion of one genotype and the increase in another… with a proportionate decrease and increase in the expressed phenotypes in the population. If you look closely at the simulation, you see that there are still creatures in the environment with varying expressed phenotypes, thus all the genotypes that result in all the shades are still present within that population. All the creatures don’t turn black and all don’t turn white.
Again, it is only the proportion of the phenotypes, the external expression of the genotypes, that are changing in the organism. Sometimes new genotypes are introduced through mutation… such as for a darker creature.
NOTE: An introduction of a new genotype does NOT mean the older genotype simply disappears from the population. Eventually it may, or may not, but it will not just magically disappear as soon as a new genotype occurs. Understand this and perhaps you will understand the simulation.
And for this simulation, it doesn’t even matter if this variation is happening within one specie or an evolving specie. It does not in any way indicate that the specie is “de-evolving”… period.
January 27th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
“That is where you are erring, or at least misinterpreting the simulation… the simulation was not showing the reversion of a “new” genotype into an “old” genotype, but the decrease of the proportion of one genotype and the increase in another…”
If you think that simulation helps your case I think you’d better think again. What is the genotype in the simulation and how many genes is it? Is it one gene with values from 0 to 255 (00000000 to 11111111 binary) or 8 binary genes in a row? What is the phenotype in the simulation? Is it the same as the genotype? What are the species in the simulation if any? What is the mutation rule, a new random number or a random difference from the existing number? What is the predation rule and the rule of being unlucky? None of these were adequately explained. Moreover, even if they were explained what is their correspondence to the real world? So if people only knew what evolution was they would accept it, according to Mr. Plait? How does this simulation help them understand what it is when its parameters are so vaguely defined?
If we take the last part of the simulation which apparently involved a sinusoidal change in the predation rule from wanting to eat 00000000 preferentially to wanting to eat 11111111 preferentially with a period of 250 years (I’m assuming that’s what it was), then when the tendency to eat 11111111 is at its maximum (sinusoidal peak) then 00000000 should proliferate. To be sure, other alleles will still exist, but something like 00000000 should be the top allele in the population. Half a cycle later when the tendency to eat 00000000 is at its maximum then 11111111 should proliferate and should be close to being the top allele in the population. So acknowledging that other alleles are present does not really change the fact that the top allele cycles approximately from 00000000 to 11111111 with a period of 250 years. How is that substantially different than what I have claimed before?
January 27th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Pat: “Tom… epigenetic inheritance still has to go through the germ cell line.”
Round and round we go. Did you happen to see the Nova episode on epigenetics last year?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3411_sciencen.html
“NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: In fact, it’s the epigenome that tells our cells what sort of cells they should be. Skin? Hair? Heart? You see, all these cells have the same genes. But their epigenomes silence the unneeded ones to make cells different from one another. Epigenetic instructions pass on as cells divide, but they’re not necessarily permanent. Researchers think they can change, especially during critical periods like puberty or pregnancy.
Jirtle’s mice reveal how the epigenome can be altered. To produce thin, brown mice instead of fat, yellow ones, he feeds pregnant mothers a diet rich in methyl groups to form the tags that can turn genes off.
RANDY JIRTLE: And I think you can see that we dramatically shifted the coat color and we get many, many more brown animals.”
So now diet is not an acquired characteristic because the characteristic is transmitted via the germ cells? So even if the one-armed blacksmith were somehow to have one-armed offspring as long as the transmission of that trait was through the germ cells it’s not Lamarckian inheritance? Somehow I don’t think that’s what Lamarck had in mind.
January 27th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
“Tom, how are you completely incapable of understanding that if, say, a dark moth turns light to better fit with its environment, and then turns dark again when the environment changes again, that this does NOT mean that it has completely reverted to being the old species? Lots of different species are similar colors without being the same species. Are you REALLY incapable of understanding that???”
Another thought experiment is in order. Consider a 2 dimensional trait space or perhaps phenotype space would be more correct with the value of one trait plotted on the x-axis and the value of the second trait plotted on the y-axis. In reality this would be something like a 30,000 dimensional space for humans but we’ll stick with 2 for simplicity sake. Now, consider a population which represents a species. Suppose there are 1,000 memeber of the species. That will be 1,000 separate points on the 2 dimensional trait space. Now, since these individuals all belong to the same species the points should cluster in a certain region of the space, perhaps they all fall within the same circle. In any case, it is possible to define the average X and the average Y for the species as a whole.
So let’s record that average X and average Y for the species at time T1 and call it Pt. P1. Now let’s allow the population to evolve. What this essentially means for this model is that the average X and average Y of the species moves in the two dimensional space so let’s say that at time T2 the new average is Pt. P2 which is different than Pt. P1. A certain curve has been traced out in going from Pt. P1 to Pt. P2. What I am hearing from the folks on this board is that the return journey from Pt. P2 to Pt. P1 is physically impossible. Keep in mind that the return journey does NOT have to be the reverse of the initial curve from Pt. P1 to Pt. P2. In fact, there are infinitely many return paths starting at Pt. P2 that arrive back at Pt. P1.
Now, if the environment were the only driving factor then we could think of the forward journey from Pt. P1 to Pt. P2 as being caused by the force vector F12 in strict analogy to Newtonian dynamics. Therefore the return to Pt. P1 is always possible by multiplying the force vector F12 by -1 and applying it over a time period of (T2 – T1). That was my mistake. It’s a much more complicated system than that. The actual path from Pt. P1 to Pt. P2 depended on much more than simply the environment. It depends on which mutations are encountered along the way and a host of other largely unknowable factors. This essentially makes the exact path taken from Pt. P1 to Pt. P2 unpredictable.
Furthermore, even if we can navigate a return path back to Pt. P1 the genotype has been changing in other ways independent of the phenotype so that we don’t end up with the same species. So a return Pt. P1 and the original Pt. P1 are not the same species.
But if you acknowledge this then exactly how is the theory to be verified? What predictions does it make that we can actually go out and test? How can we know that the theory of natural selection is the correct theory as opposed to other theories that explain the same phenomena? It can predict no evolutionary paths in trait space for the future. Any evolutionary paths in trait space in the past are the product of fossil evidence and have nothing to do with the theory per se.
January 27th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Sure it can make predictions. It had made a lot of predictions and they have held up under constant scrutiny. You seem to now be mixing up genotype and phenotype. I will readily admit we are not able to predict, on a nucleotide-by-nucleotide basis, what the precise genome will be of an organism in the future, or of an as-of-yet undiscovered organism from the past or present. That does not mean we cannot make predictions about the phenotype, that is the overall structure of the organism, nor does it mean we cannot make predictions regarding the relationships of the genomes of various organisms. People have already given you a number of examples of large-scale changes in creatures’ form over time, the exact sort that evolution predicted. The fact that we don’t know the exact genetic sequence that lead to those structures does not mean they were not predictions of evolution. Similarly, even if evolution cannot predict the exact sequence of, to use my earlier example, the cytochrome c gene in a given organism it can still predict that certain organisms will have cytochrome c sequences that are more similar to that of one organism than to that of another. Scientists can and do apply selective pressure to fast-breeding organism and they evolve exactly as they have predicted. We don’t know the exact genetic sequence of every individual in the population at every point in time, but we can still predict how certain aspects of the creature’s overall form will change and they do, in fact, change in precisely that manner.
January 28th, 2008 at 7:26 am
Well, I’m a little late getting back into this discussion due to the site blocking my posts but I just wanted to recap my points:
Givens:
a.) I understand that evolution doesn’t necessarily preclude God
b.) I understand that evolution does occur within a certain framework
c.) I am _not_ trying to get creationism taught alongside evolution
d.) I would like to see evoution taught within certain guidelines
1.) Creationists have an issue with evolution tought in school as an absolute fact versus a theory. Many school textbooks make broad and sweeping statements about the beginnings of life and the “evolution” of man that haven’t been proven (and cannot be proven or disproven at this point in time.) I think we can all attest that many elementary & middle grade science textbooks are filled with “bad science” or inaccurate
2.) Evolution on a small scale does exist – evolution within SPECIFIC boundaries imposed on it (the organism) by each the organisms own genetic structure.
Example: Moths being dark/light to avoid predators. Now if the moths started developing claws and teeth to defend themselves, it would be a much better example of large scale evolution. But it CANNOT. Its genetic makeup imposes limits on its ability to change that has been proven over and over.
3.) Evolution cannot account for “life from non-life”. There has been no successful experiments to generate “life”. So evolution of man from non-life is not falsifiable. Agreed? Evolution of man (or any animal) from a single celled organism is not falsifiable. Agree or disagree?
Now, I know we can look at the fossil record and make assumptions about the missing pieces and try to infer what happened. But this is _not_ scientific. Agreed?
January 28th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Tom Marking writes:
[[Is it the prediction of the theory of natural selection that the earth’s life forms would evolve back to the state they had 10 million years ago, when they were adapted to the environment at the time? If the answer is no then that means that the environment is not the sole factor in evolution - which is what I’ve been saying all along.]]
It’s what everybody has been saying all along. No one but you thinks natural selection demands complete reversability (SP?). Stephen Jay Gould describes it by saying contingency is important in evolution. But if you’re trying to argue that there is some kind of intrinsic drive or direction to evolution (orthogenesis, racial life cycles, phyletic senility), or that organisms evolve by generating preferentially adaptive acquired characteristics (Lamarckism), then 100-200 years worth of field research and theory is against you.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Tom Marking cites a favorite pseudoscientist:
[[In these cases, as we will soon discuss, selection cannot assemble complex systems. ]]
This is what Behe said in Darwin’s Black Box. The refutation of it for Behe also holds for Kaufmann. “Irreducible complexity” doesn’t really exist.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Robert writes:
[[Confusing Natural Selection with mutative genetic evolution is a common red herring argument of Evolutionists.
The question is not: Did species change over time?
The question is: Why?
“Scientists” don’t even try to address that particular question.]]
Have you actually read anything on the question by scientists?
Species change over time because their environment changes over time and natural selection favors the body plans or biochemistries best suited to the new environment.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Some posters seem a bit confused over what evolution by natural selection actually means. It works like this:
1. Organisms have many more offspring than the environment (e.g. the food supply) can support. Oak trees drop thousands of acorns, fish and frogs and insects lay thousands of eggs. Even a human couple can have a dozen children. Most of them are going to die, always and everywhere.
2. Offspring vary. They differ in height, weight, strength, covering, color, digestive enzymes… thousands of ways. Even identical twins have different fingerprints.
3. This was the crucial insight of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace: The offspring whose suite of traits best suits them to finding food and mates, the “fittest,” will be the offspring most likely to survive.
4. A lot of those traits are heritable — they are coded by the organism’s genes. So the fittest organisms transmit their traits to their descendants.
5. Over time, this process can lead to the development of new species. (This is the step most creationists balk at). If some subpopulation of animals or plants winds up in a different environment from the rest of the group, and is separated from it, and subject to different conditions, the differing environments in each place will drive different adaptations. If the two groups come to differ to the point where they can’t interbreed any more, you’ve got a new species.
Pretty much every one of the five steps above has been observed, checked out, modeled and verified by millions of researchers over the past 200 or so years. Evolution happens, and natural selection appears to be the chief mechanism by which it happens.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:28 am
@Tom: You’ve still missed the point, confusing chicken and egg. I already mentioned transferred somatic cells – not a trait or some other esoteric genetic instructions: cells from parent and embryo are exchanged. The interplay introduced in placental mammals goes beyond the maternal fitness affecting offspring health of egg-laying animals. Would the yolk be considered “epigenetic inheritance?” Would a seed’s nongerminating cells that provide nutrients be considered “epigenetic inheritance?” A parent does more than fling a cell to the wind; the parent’s fitness does affect the offspring chance for survival, which is why some parents even take care of their children.
This is not, however, Lamarckian inheritance through “striving.” As much as the mother might try, she can’t change her germ cells. Yes, cells get instructions from other than the DNA – but it’s still the germ cells that have to pull their weight. It’s about populations, and populations can’t inherit one mother’s somatic traits. She was well-fed, so she has many healthy offspring; unless the reason she was well fed is somehow a heritable trait, it’s a one-time advantage, and will not spread through the population. Kangaroos take this a step further, and have a joey out of the pouch, a joey in the pouch, and one in “stasis” fertilized but at a suspended state of development. If pressed, mom will ditch the joey in the pouch to save herself; she’s got another ready. The joey, as discarded bait for pursuers, contributes to the mother’s somatic fitness – is she inheriting this from the offspring? Will her ancestors benefit somehow?
January 28th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Tom Marking posts:
[[1.) Origin of Life
Darwinism: No explanation
Kauffmanism: Explanation - Life results from a phase shift and is inevitable once the planet in question achieves the threshold level of complexity (i.e., diversity) in its chemical reactions.
Observation: Darwinism has no explanation so Kauffmanism wins by default]]
Aside from the fallacy of bifurcation in the last sentence, Darwinism isn’t supposed to come up with how life originated. The first organisms could have been created in a flash of light by the direct intervention of God. Evolution only describes what happens after that. You have evolution confused with abiogenesis.
[[2.) Minimum size of a living organism
Darwinism: Does not specify a minimum size to a living organism
Kauffmanism: There is a minimum size to a living organism below which the system is not truly alive.
Observation: There does appear to be a minimum genome size for living organisms. The current champion is Nanoarchaeum equitans with a genome size of 490,885 nucleotides and 552 genes although Craig Venter of the Minimum Genome Project has successfully created living organisms with even fewer genes.]]
Do you realize how this sounds? What’s the difference between this and saying, “Darwinism has no prediction for the minimum weight of an organism. But [insert favorite crackpot theory] proves that an organism must weigh an unspecified minimum amount! And here’s the latest observed minimum.”
Of course it has to have a minimum complexity. It has to have a minimum mass, too, and a minimum linear size. How is this a “prediction?” Do you think Darwinism allows organisms to have zero complexity or to be made of something other than matter?
[[3.) Increase in complexity over geological time
Darwinism: Complexity does not have to increase over time
Kauffmanism: Complexity generally increases over time - more species, more biochemical diversity, more complex organisms, etc., etc.
Observation: With the exception of mass extinction events the number of species, genera, families, etc. appears to increase over geological time. Also the organisms tend to increase in brain size.]]
The biosphere will drastically decrease in complexity when the sun goes off the main sequence. But since Darwinism envisions populations splitting into greater numbers of populations, how is it that Darwinism predicts “complexity does not have to increase over time?” This looks like another straw man.
So far you’ve shown me no reason to take Kaufmann’s theory seriously.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Odd that the end of the video talks about Micro and Macro evolution, but the video only covers the former. I want to see some squares break off and form a new species, unable to mate with the other kind of squares, dammit!
January 28th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Pat, I seriously doubt whether somatic cells versus germ cells was ever part of the Lamarckian theory of evolution. Now why do I say that? Because Lamarck died in 1829 and the Cellular Theory of Life was not promulgated until 1839 by Theodore Schwann, Matthias Jakob Schleiden, and Rudolf Virchow. Thus Lamarck wouldn’t have known a somatic cell from a hole in the ground, unless you are telling me he was clairvoyant and knew about a theory that wouldn’t be published until 10 years after his death. What he did talk about is the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
Now what does that mean? Something happens to the animal or person during their lifetime which gets passed down to the next generation. The blacksmith loses his arm in an accident and this change gets passed along to his sons and daughters. The giraffe stretches its neck and the elongation in the neck gets passed along to its offspring. Now Lamarck was fully aware that the acquired characteristic was passed down to the new generation via the normal copulation mechanism and hence the germ cell route as you say. Give him credit for at least some intelligence. You think he thought the giraffe’s elongated neck was passed down via some neck-to-neck transference? So the whole germ cell / somatic cell topic is a complete red herring unless you can show me some documentation where Lamarck talked about somatic cells.
Now, let’s consider the case of the mice in the study which was mentioned in the NOVA piece. You take a parental generation which are all genetic clones of one another so there is no genetic difference among them whatsoever. Mouse A and Mouse B of this generation are both pregnant. Mouse A has a normal diet. Something HAPPENS to Mouse B – it is fed a diet rich in methyl groups. The offspring of Mouse B are different than the offspring of Mouse A even though Mouse A and Mouse B are genetically identical. The offspring of Mouse B are brown colored and thin. The offspring of Mouse A are yellow colored and fat. The event which happened to Mouse B (i.e., being fed a particular diet) has resulted in a specific trait (i.e., brown color and sleek physique) being transmitted to the next generation. It is a perfect example of Lamarckian inheritance which according to most folks on this group is impossible.
January 28th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
“That does not mean we cannot make predictions about the phenotype, that is the overall structure of the organism”
How will you make predictions about the future course of the phenotype since it depends on mutations that are essentially random? Unless your prediction is a random number generator I don’t see how that’s possible.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Tom Marking posts:
[[You take a parental generation which are all genetic clones of one another so there is no genetic difference among them whatsoever. Mouse A and Mouse B of this generation are both pregnant. Mouse A has a normal diet. Something HAPPENS to Mouse B - it is fed a diet rich in methyl groups. The offspring of Mouse B are different than the offspring of Mouse A even though Mouse A and Mouse B are genetically identical. The offspring of Mouse B are brown colored and thin. The offspring of Mouse A are yellow colored and fat. The event which happened to Mouse B (i.e., being fed a particular diet) has resulted in a specific trait (i.e., brown color and sleek physique) being transmitted to the next generation. It is a perfect example of Lamarckian inheritance which according to most folks on this group is impossible.]]
Nope. It’s not Lamarckian because it’s not adaptive and wasn’t created by striving. And, by the way, did the trait persist in the next generation? All your example seems to prove is that you can introduce congenital changes in embryonic animals, which we knew already and which has nothing to do with genetics. You’ve shown no evidence that the mouse pups’ genes were affected.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
“Aside from the fallacy of bifurcation in the last sentence, Darwinism isn’t supposed to come up with how life originated.”
That’s fine. No one said that it had to. The point was to compare two theories. One has an explanation in this area and the other does not.
“But [insert favorite crackpot theory] proves that an organism must weigh an unspecified minimum amount! And here’s the latest observed minimum.”
And what if Kauffmann’s theory can tell us what that minimum size is? And what if we go out and observe that the smallest organism we can find agrees with Kauffmann’s theory? Will you still be saying that it’s a crackpot theory?
“But since Darwinism envisions populations splitting into greater numbers of populations, how is it that Darwinism predicts “complexity does not have to increase over time?””
Natural selection predicts that organisms become better adapted to their environment over time. That does not necessarily mean that they become more complex. It may be the case that the fossil record shows an increase in complexity over geological time but is this an inherent prediction of natural selection like it is with Kauffmann’s theory?
January 28th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
First, as we have already explained ad nauseum, mutations are not the only issue. It also involves, or rather involves more, changes in the relative frequency of existing traits. Further, the mutations are random but which mutations are beneficial and which ones are not is far from random. There are often a variety of mutations than can lead to similar morphology. In the long run these mutations that are beneficial tend to be preserved while those that are detrimental tend to be deleted. We won’t know which of the probably huge number of mutations that could lead to a particular trait will actually do so, all that is important is that in the long run one of these mutations is likely to occur at some point (if it isn’t in the population already). That means all we need to know is which traits will be beneficial. Time, probability, and the wide variety of traits already available will take care of the rest.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Then it is an irrelevant comparison. It makes no difference to the validity of evolution nor does it make any difference to the validity of Kauffmann’s hypothesis (I see no reason to call it a theory). Creationism also has an explanation for the origin of life, as creationists love to point out. Does that mean creationism is superior to evolution? Based on your statements so far I cannot see the reason brought it up in the first place since you repeatedly state it is irrelevant to the relative validity of two explanations.
What if? What if? What if? Please provide some specifics or these “what ifs” are irrelevant.
No, it doesn’t. It means they become better adapted than other organisms around at the same time, but there is no reason that they have to become better in an overall sense. Evolution is only about competition between peers. It is fully possible that an organism that lived 100 million years ago is far better adapted to a given environment than a creature living there today, but since the creature living there today can only compete with creatures also living there today then the creature that lived 100 million years ago is irrelevant. This has been confirmed experimentally, I might add.
Yes, it is. As I and several others have already explained, once a new feature evolves it is likely that it will remain evolved. That means the collection of features available will increase over time. Further, evolution of new features will lead to other organisms also evolving new features, either the same feature or countermeasures to that feature. This will lead to an overall increase in complexity.
And before you criticize me for contradicting myself, higher complexity does not automatically mean higher fitness, as bacteria easily demonstrate. Complexity often involves a cost. But if complex creatures are only competing with other complex creatures, they may lose characteristics that would allow them to compete with simpler, earlier animals. Features are not always easy to lose, since other parts of the organism will evolve around that feature and may render it essential to survival.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
“which we knew already and which has nothing to do with genetics. You’ve shown no evidence that the mouse pups’ genes were affected.”
Well, duh! I guess that’s why they call it EPIGENETICS because it’s NOT genetics. No DNA is modified whatsoever. It’s still responsible for the transmission of traits from one generation to the next as the mouse experiment shows. And yes, the epigenetic traits will be inherited by the third generation of mice and so on unless there is some chemical reset that happens during the lifetime of the 2nd generation mice.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
“We won’t know which of the probably huge number of mutations that could lead to a particular trait will actually do so, all that is important is that in the long run one of these mutations is likely to occur at some point (if it isn’t in the population already). That means all we need to know is which traits will be beneficial. Time, probability, and the wide variety of traits already available will take care of the rest.”
Perhaps the silliest thing you’ve said yet, BlackCat. Surely supersonic flight would be very advantageous to the bald eagle – it’s definitely a beneficial trait allowing the bald eagle to travel from London to New York City in only three hours. And surely some mutation will come along someday that will achieve this. Therefore time, probability, and the variety of traits already available will take care of the rest. Therefore, bald eagles will defintely become supersonic someday. Don’t hold your breath.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
A good website on Kauffmann’s book “At Home in the Universe” can be found at http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho32.htm containing both praise and criticism for Kauffmann’s theory in equal measure.
Apparently in another book Kauffmann proposes a minimum limit of 6,165 different molecules under favorable circumstances and 34 million different molecules under unfavorable circumstances for the minimum size of a living thing. I’m not sure how these numbers would relate to genome size or if we can even measure the number of different molecules in a living cell.
On page 109 of the book Kauffmann’s theory predicts that the number of different cell types in an organism equals the square root of the number of genes. If we take humans as having 100,000 genes then the square root is 317 which is close to the actual observed number of 256 cell types. It would be nice to find data on the number of cell types for other organisms and compare Kauffmann’s prediction across multiple species. Does anyone know where this information can be found?
January 28th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Populations aren’t dependent on one mother’s diet. If anything, this is an entire selected trait much like rabbits changing to white in winter – it’s a malleable trait, but it’s one whole switchable trait (alternate apparent phenotypes), not two which are alternately passed.
Epigenetics are *more* susceptible to Darwinian selection: mother mice pass a severely reduced number of mitochondria, specifically because it reduces the chance of passing on damaged or nonfunctional mitochondrial DNA. The offspring are more likely to die outright or not carry deleterious mutations. Again, germ cells. Maternal mechanisms of survival, just because they aid offspring, are still part of the blueprint, and the mother can only pass on the blueprint for future offspring to use in reproduction.
Germ cells. All comes down to that. If it isn’t in the germ cells, it isn’t passed on.
January 29th, 2008 at 5:27 am
C Taylor, no, no-one takes creationist arguments seriously. No other explanation needed really.
Tom
“Surely supersonic flight would be very advantageous to the bald eagle – it’s definitely a beneficial trait allowing the bald eagle to travel from London to New York City in only three hours. And surely some mutation will come along someday that will achieve this. Therefore time, probability, and the variety of traits already available will take care of the rest. Therefore, bald eagles will defintely become supersonic someday.”
Yes, and mutations will probably allow them to communicate with air-traffic control towers, so their flight paths don’t cross those of other jet planes. Srsly.
January 29th, 2008 at 7:16 am
Tom Marking posts:
[[Natural selection predicts that organisms become better adapted to their environment over time. That does not necessarily mean that they become more complex. It may be the case that the fossil record shows an increase in complexity over geological time but is this an inherent prediction of natural selection like it is with Kauffmann’s theory?]]
The theory of evolution by natural selection was created in order to explain why there was such a diversity of life-forms. You don’t need more than a couple of dozen, at most, to keep a human-centered economy going. There’s certainly no need for a dozen different species of Galapagos finch.
Have you, in fact, read The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (Darwin 1859)?
January 29th, 2008 at 7:19 am
Tom Marking posts, about the mouse experiment:
[[And yes, the epigenetic traits will be inherited by the third generation of mice and so on unless there is some chemical reset that happens during the lifetime of the 2nd generation mice.]]
Prove it.
January 29th, 2008 at 7:23 am
Tom Marking posts:
[[Apparently in another book Kauffmann proposes a minimum limit of 6,165 different molecules under favorable circumstances and 34 million different molecules under unfavorable circumstances for the minimum size of a living thing.]]
I believe Manfried Eigen and others showed in the early 1980s that RNA strands could self-reproduce under some circumstances. That would be a number of molecules N = 1, which is less than 6,165. It’s also difficult to envision how 6,165 different molecules (or is it types of molecule?) come together in the first place. At one stage wouldn’t you have just 6,164, and before that 6,163, etc.? What process is putting them together? Why aren’t they living before that?
January 29th, 2008 at 7:26 am
Tom -
You criticize BlackCat’s quite logical and scientifically backed explanation as “the silliest thing you’ve said yet”, and then follow it up with Bald Eagles and supersonic flight?????? Are you freakin’ kidding me?
Does it even OCCUR to you that supersonic flight within our atmosphere is only possible due to mechanical thrust? That’s as non-relevant to this discussion as the earlier 57 checy to 67 chevy goofy analogy.
Right… and BlackCat’s statement was silly.
But, to address your goofy question seriously… I’ll say this… there’s no evolutionary benefit for Bald Eagles to develop super-sonic flight. Does their food source travel at super-sonic speeds? Do their environmental conditions favor super-sonic flying creatures? No! Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no survival benefit to…
Good GRAVY… what am I doing? Trying to rationalize an answer to that ridiculous supposition. I’m sorry…
January 29th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Don’t feel bad, Celtic. Tom’s flailing at this point, apparently in deeper water than he anticipated. The argumentum ad absurdum, taking a statement to a false absurd extreme, is something of a lean-to in the various refuges for arguments.
It’s designed to evoke response due to its dismissive nature, and distract from the previous failure to properly understand or achieve points in the argument.
January 29th, 2008 at 7:59 am
I know, Pat… I know… and I’m pretty sure it falls right in the “weak analogy fallacy” wheelhouse…
I was baited… and i bit… I should know better.
On a positive note… Tom’s arguments have given us all a new reason to study up on our logical fallicies.
January 29th, 2008 at 11:48 am
“You criticize BlackCat’s quite logical and scientifically backed explanation as “the silliest thing you’ve said yet”, and then follow it up with Bald Eagles and supersonic flight?????? Are you freakin’ kidding me?”
Yes, I did criticize what he said which was that you take any beneficial trait that you can conceive of. Then you wait for the mutation or sequence of mutations to come along and the trait will become a reality given enough time. I chose an absurd example as a counter-argument which is quite fair in a debate. Of course, now I will be hearing from BlackCat that that’s not what he said, or that was not his intention. There are obvious limits in what mutations are possible, yata, yata, yata… But of course, these limitations are not part of your theory.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
“It’s also difficult to envision how 6,165 different molecules (or is it types of molecule?) come together in the first place. At one stage wouldn’t you have just 6,164, and before that 6,163, etc.? What process is putting them together? Why aren’t they living before that?”
First, a point of apology. I have been misspelling the dude’s name in every single post of mine. It’s Kauffman with one N, not two. My bad on that.
I am certainly not an expert on Kauffman’s theory but from what I gather the number 6,165 refers to the number of types of molecules or molecular species. As to why 6,164 types of molecules isn’t alive but 6,165 is, it has to do with his definition of life which is a closed auto-catalytic set. So if you take any chemical reaction from the set, say A + B –> C there is another chemical in the set that catalyzes that reaction, say D. The set of 6,165 chemical species is set up in such a way that every chemical reaction is catalyzed by some chemical in the same set. If you dropped out one of the chemicals and only had 6,164 chemical species then one of the chemical reactions would not be catalyzed. So the product of that reaction would not be produced at least not in any reasonable amount of time. At least that’s my understanding of how it’s supposed to work.
Concerning the number 6,165, I got that off of the web site. It’s not in the “At Home in the Universe” book so I don’t know how reliable that number is, or if Kauffman has subsequently revised it. As to how the 6,165 chemical species come together in the first place, Kauffman proposes nothing other than random chance. There is no deity or universal mind controlling the process.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
And yet these people wonder why they’re not taken seriously when they start crying “Teach the controversy!”
January 29th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I would wholly disagree that an absurd example is a fair counter-argument in any debate if you want to be taken seriously.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
What makes you think having supersonic flight would be beneficial? It would entail a huge amount of energy expended while decreasing their ability to hunt effectively.
And what makes you think that limitations on what is possible biologically are not part of the theory of evolution? Once again you just assert that without any evidence, but all the theories of evolution I have seen are based on the idea that we are dealing with living organisms that are constrained by what living tissue can do and by their past evolutionary history. Perhaps Darwin didn’t deal with that, although I would be surprised if that was the case, but I know for a fact the modern theory of evolution does take that into account and in fact it is a central component of the theory.
January 29th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Tom Marking posts:
[[The set of 6,165 chemical species is set up in such a way that every chemical reaction is catalyzed by some chemical in the same set. If you dropped out one of the chemicals and only had 6,164 chemical species then one of the chemical reactions would not be catalyzed.]]
Sounds a lot like “irreducible complexity.”
January 29th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
First, what makes him think that all of those reactions are necessary? Why couldn’t an organism get by with fewer reactions?
Second, why can’t the organism make use of chemicals that catalyze multiple reactions, or chemicals tha
t are auto-catalytic (catalyze reactions involving themselves)? Third, all that is required for a closed auto-catalytic set is a chemical that is capable of self-replicating. In that case you would have A –> 2A, which would be a closed auto-catalytic set involving just one chemical. As someone else pointed out, RNA is capable of doing precisely this (and DNA probably too, but I don’t think there are no known naturally-occurring DNA catalysts although they have been synthesized in the lab). So under his definition this would be a living organism with just one molecule.
January 29th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
“Sounds a lot like “irreducible complexity.””
Yes, I know it does and I know you claim that’s impossible. So perhaps you could share with the group here what are the properties of half an electron.
January 29th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
“And what makes you think that limitations on what is possible biologically are not part of the theory of evolution?”
Since apparently the limits of what is possible biologically are contained in the theory of evolution (although I don’t remember reading about them in On the Origin of Species – yes, someone asked if I had read the book, the answer is yes), allow me to ask you a set of questions on what are these limits:
1.) What is the maximum velocity of an organism in flight at sea level?
2.) What is the maximum altitude of an organism during flight?
3.) What is the maximum velocity of an organism through the water?
4.) What is the maximum velocity of an organism on land?
5.) What is the maximum mass of an organism on earth?
6.) What is the minimum mass of an organism on earth?
And by organism I am, of course, referring to any possible organism which could evolve under the laws of natural selection on the planet Earth. Of course, a derivation of these numbers using the theory would be much appreciated as well.
January 29th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
“First, what makes him think that all of those reactions are necessary? Why couldn’t an organism get by with fewer reactions?”
The 6,165 number refers to the number of chemical species for the minimum sized organism under favorable circumstances (I’m not clear myself on what favorable circumstances mean). For the minimal organism if one of the reactions was not necessary or let’s say we had an extra catalyst that was not necessary (e.g., A + B –> C is catalyzed by both Y and Z) then we could drop one of them out (e.g., Z) and we would be down to 6,164 chemical species. So the minimal autocatalytic set would be 6,164 chemical species, not 6,165.
“Second, why can’t the organism make use of chemicals that catalyze multiple reactions, or chemicals that are auto-catalytic (catalyze reactions involving themselves)?”
Kauffman’s theory would allow that, in which case the minimum autocatalytic set would have fewer chemical species.
“Third, all that is required for a closed auto-catalytic set is a chemical that is capable of self-replicating. In that case you would have A –> 2A, which would be a closed auto-catalytic set involving just one chemical. As someone else pointed out, RNA is capable of doing precisely this”
I seriously doubt whether if you put an RNA molecule by itself in a vacuum chamber it could self-replicate since this is a violation of conservation of mass. At the vary least it would require free floating adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil molecules to assemble a copy of itself. So that would be 5 molecular species at the very minimum. And what would the little beasty do for energy? It would probably require some sort of metabolism of glucose into other molecules so that would add more molecular species to the mix.
January 29th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Tom Marking posts:
[[“Sounds a lot like “irreducible complexity.””
Yes, I know it does and I know you claim that’s impossible. So perhaps you could share with the group here what are the properties of half an electron.]]
Tom, an electron isn’t a very complex object. In fact, it’s as basic as a particle can be. It’s irreducible, but it’s not irreducibly complex.
If Kaufman has really bought into Behe’s ideas on irreducible complexity, then he’s going to have his ass handed to him by the biochemistry community in the same way it happened to Behe. The whole idea is just wrong.
January 29th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
I believe in God, personally, but I think the entire crusade to refute evolution is founded on ignorance and misunderstanding. In a majority of cases, I think that those who are against evolution simply don’t understand what evolution actually is, and they feel threatened by it because of this warped conception of the theory. When a person feels threatened by something, they naturally tend to retreat from it, rather than attempting to better understand it. This is why it is very difficult to correct the misconceptions about evolution and why said misconceptions tend to be self-perpetuating. I know this first-hand; I’ve been trying to convince my father of evolution’s accuracy for years now, but still he feels hostile toward it.
January 29th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
“I seriously doubt whether if you put an RNA molecule by itself in a vacuum chamber it could self-replicate since this is a violation of conservation of mass. At the vary least it would require free floating adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil molecules to assemble a copy of itself. So that would be 5 molecular species at the very minimum. And what would the little beasty do for energy? It would probably require some sort of metabolism of glucose into other molecules so that would add more molecular species to the mix”
You seriously doubt? Can you back that up with any factual research? Because a great deal of research has been done on this subject and I’m not entirely sure you can back up what you just stated… I think much of the research contradicts that… research done by noted biologists like Eigen and Cech and Crick… things you COULD look up yourself. Can you back up your statement? Or are you just guessing? And are you guessing based on research and observation? Or do you just “seriously doubt”?
We give you researched, studied and independantly confirmed studies, and you give us “I seriously doubt”… Not sure there’s any way to convincingly argue “I seriously doubt”.
January 29th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Celtic_Evolution: “You seriously doubt? Can you back that up with any factual research? Because a great deal of research has been done on this subject and I’m not entirely sure you can back up what you just stated”
ROFLMAO
Actually, I was being quite flippant by saying “seriously doubt”. The more accurate phrase would have been “know for a fact that it can’t happen”. A RNA molecule by itself cannot generate a copy of itself. Where would the atoms for the new copy come from? It’s a principle called conservation of mass. In case you have not heard of it before I encourage you to read all about it on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass
January 29th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
“If Kaufman has really bought into Behe’s ideas on irreducible complexity, then he’s going to have his ass handed to him by the biochemistry community in the same way it happened to Behe. The whole idea is just wrong.”
I don’t know much about Michael Behe but from what I can gather on Wikipedia the definition of irreducible complexity is:
“Intelligent design advocate William Dembski gives this definition:
A system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, nonarbitrarily individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensable to maintaining the system’s basic, and therefore original, function. The set of these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system. (No Free Lunch, 285)”
It seem like Kauffman’s theory of emergent complexity is somewhat different. Once you have life there is no concept of irreducible complexity for particular features such as organs, etc. as far as I am able to tell. The auto-catalytic set is indeed irreducible in the fact that once you get below the autocatalytic set threshold the system is no longer alive. However, the components are not well-matched – they can be random. You could swap in chemical species for other chemical species and not change whether the system is alive or not. So I’m not sure how close the autocatalytic set concept is to Behe’s ideas. There appear to be significant differences.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
“I believe in God, personally, but I think the entire crusade to refute evolution is founded on ignorance and misunderstanding. In a majority of cases, I think that those who are against evolution simply don’t understand what evolution actually is”
The debate I am engaged in has nothing to do with evolution. I fully accept evolution. What I don’t accept is the theory of natural selection as the primary mechanism that explains it. There has been nothing posted on this board which inclines me to change my mind about that. And if you have been paying attention then you know that I have never once invoked God, a deity, or intelligent designer in any of my posts. I have not stated my personal belief or lack thereof in a deity as you have seen fit to do, since it is irrelevant to the debate. I have not seen a creationist post on this thread for quite some time so it appears they have already bowed out of this one.
“This is why it is very difficult to correct the misconceptions about evolution and why said misconceptions tend to be self-perpetuating. I know this first-hand; I’ve been trying to convince my father of evolution’s accuracy for years now, but still he feels hostile toward it.”
Well, gee, why don’t you have him watch the simulation on this web page. But remember to tell him he’s not watching a species evolving but rather the distribution of alleles within the same species change in response to an environment with a changing predatory rule. That ought to convince him!
January 29th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
>”So perhaps you could share with the group here what are the properties of half an electron.”
Perhaps you could share why evolution would have to explain this?
January 29th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
”’So perhaps you could share with the group here what are the properties of half an electron.’
“Perhaps you could share why evolution would have to explain this?”
The Irony is, Super-Conductivity Theory May Already HAVE The Answer …
To Account for High-Temperature Super-Conductors, One Kinda-Far-Out Theory Calls for Electrons to Almost Exclusively Exist as Holons and Spinons …
Holons would Carry Only Charge and Spinons Only Spin, Unfortunately this Tends to Lead Right Back to The Boxes-within-Boxes Problem, That The Very Idea of a Point-Particle was Intended to Solve in The First Place!
January 29th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Yes, I understand that. I am asking why 6,1565 is the magic number. You throw this number out there, but you provide us no reason to think that you cannot have a closed autocatalytic set with 6,164, 6,163, or 6 chemicals.
But it doesn’t have fewer chemicals, it has exactly 6,165 chemicals. Not one more or one less. So the hypothesis (it isn’t a theory) obviously does not allow that.
How long do you think a human would survive in vacuum chamber? Does that mean humans aren’t alive? How about your average bacteria, how well do you think it would be able to self-replicate in a hard vacuum? Are bacteria not alive?
Humans need to be provided with considerably more than 5 molecular species. Ignoring the numerous minerals we need, oxygen, water, and the energy-containing molecules that feed us, there are also about a dozen organic vitamins that we must have a constant supply of or all sorts of nasty things will happen. Therefor we are less auto-catalytic than the RNA molecule I mentioned. Under Kaufman’s definition there is no way we can be alive but the molecule I described isn’t.
The nucleotide triphosphates it built its clone out of would have provided all the energy such an organism would need. Even in modern organisms the RNA and DNA synthesis pathways get all the energy they need from the bases that those molecules are built out of. There is no reason to think the first organism would not have behaved in the same manner. In modern organisms those molecules are synthesized or obtained from other organisms, but in the very early oceans they (or something similar to them) would likely have been freely available.
January 29th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Great video.
You need to do a a review of this book some creationist guy at my part-time job keeps telling me about: Creator and the Cosmos (or maybe it’s Creator of the Cosmos, I really can’t remember). I’m a biology guy not an astronomer. I can handle his incessant challenges to Evo but I don’t know squat about cosmology.
Keep up the hard work!
January 30th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Ah, Tom. RNA can act as an enzyme, because it (like the proteins that eventually it came to encode for) can twist up into three dimensional shapes. Actually, we still have some functional RNA snippets in our ribosomes that act as an enzyme. Two chunks, very short, no attendant proteins. We call these “Ribozymes.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribozyme
The folded proteins do enzymatic work better, and DNA is better at holding replication – but RNA does both.
RNA is its own enzyme. It’s a one stop shop, a swiss army knife. It’s a self replicating molecule, the basest form of life there is. It can twist and self-replicate using temperature changes alone.
Really, Tom – you should spend some time looking at what we know rather than focusing on the chinks: biology is really really fascinating on its own without making things up.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:09 am
“RNA is its own enzyme. It’s a one stop shop, a swiss army knife. It’s a self replicating molecule, the basest form of life there is. It can twist and self-replicate using temperature changes alone.”
Yes, I am fully aware of the RNA world theory. There is nothing preventing RNA from being part of an autocatalytic set. On our planet it probably was part of the first autocatalytic set. Even if RNA can function as its own enzyme it still must have other chemical species present from which to build a copy of itself. It cannot create atoms from nothing for its new copy of itself. These other chemical species are part of the autocatalytic set.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Okay, minimal set of chemicals for life:
RNA
H2O
ribose
phosphate ion
adenine
cytosine
thymine
uracil
8 molecules. Water is the solvent, the rest are nutrients, and the ribose can double as a source of energy. 8 << 6,165.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:23 am
“Yes, I understand that. I am asking why 6,165 is the magic number. You throw this number out there, but you provide us no reason to think that you cannot have a closed autocatalytic set with 6,164, 6,163, or 6 chemicals.”
As I said previously, that number came from the web site I cited which had a range from 6,165 to 34,000,000 so it’s really not such a specific number (a factor of 5,000 between the minimum and the maximum). There is great uncertainty about it. As to how this number was derived I have no idea. I could speculate that it has something to do with protein structure but I really don’t know.
As we speak Craig Venter is engaged in something called the Minimum Genome Project where he seeks to create the world’s smallest free living organism by selectively removing genes. That project should either confirm what Kauffman is saying or utterly refute it. We should know soon whether he runs into a lower limit and whether that lower limit agrees with Kauffman’s predictions or not.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/03/08/363705/index.htm
January 30th, 2008 at 10:30 am
“Okay, minimal set of chemicals for life:
RNA
H2O
ribose
phosphate ion
adenine
cytosine
thymine
uracil
8 molecules. Water is the solvent, the rest are nutrients, and the ribose can double as a source of energy. 8 << 6,165.”
Great, go and build it. Show it to me when you are ready. You can demo it to me in a petri dish. We’ll even name the species after you: Bacillus bartoni
January 30th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Tom Marking writes:
[[Great, go and build it. Show it to me when you are ready. You can demo it to me in a petri dish. We’ll even name the species after you: Bacillus bartoni]]
A single strand of nucleic acid isn’t a bacillus. And I think you’ll find that it was already done, repeatedly, in the early 1980s. Google Manfred Eigen.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Tom, and others…the lower limit so far appears to be the Spiegelmann Monster – a 218 to 220 base-pair RNA. There are supposedly others that, using other enzymes, are even smaller at 45 and 65 base pairs. It was this series of experiments that help to develop a theory of RNA auto-catalysis. Partly because one version of this experiment didn’t involve any proteinaceous enzymes, but the RNA kept on replicating…
I’m thinking that natural selection started with chemical stability: very stable molecules become rocks or gases. Unstable molecules are in a race to either permanent stability, or relative stability – and replication extends what otherwise is a brief half-life, and enables expansion from an initial event that otherwise would have to suffice.
Probabilities of chemical formation change drastically when enzymes are involved – after all, catalysts by definition alter the energy and concentration threshold of a reaction, which is normally based on high enough collision probability (concentration plus reaction temperature).
January 30th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Tom, you are the one who asserted that 6,165 is the minimum number of molecules an organism can obtain, the burden of proof is on you to show you are correct. “Some guy said so” is not a satisfying answer when there are fully plausible mechanisms to get an organism with far less. When you are proposing nothing less than the complete overthrow of all modern biology, we are not just going to take your word for it. You are going to need to provide something concrete and testable. A currently untestable prediction with an error margin of 5 orders of magnitude is not convincing.
This is ignoring the fact that they have already built synthetic self-replicating molecules in the lab that, if supplied with the right nutrients, are able to make duplicates of themselves with only handful of molecular species (as little as 3). These could be considered autocatalytic sets in the same way humans are but only contain 3 molecules.
January 30th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
“Tom, and others…the lower limit so far appears to be the Spiegelmann Monster – a 218 to 220 base-pair RNA.”
Kauffman has several objections to the RNA world scenario on pages 39 to 43 of his book, but I won’t bore you with them here since I guess most of you consider him to be a crackpot or a pseudoscientist. I don’t know much about the Spiegelman Monster or other such autocatalytic RNA’s produced by others like Manfred Eigen, but from what I can gather this is a specific sequence of nucleotides, is it not? Will any chain of 218 nucleotides be autocatalytic or just this specific sequence?
Assuming that the answer is that it’s only this specific sequence that is autocatalytic, then my problem with it is its biological relevance. It actually seems to fit Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity in that it’s parts have been specifically fitted to its task which implies a designer, which of course there is, namely Spiegelman.
Let’s perform a little calculation to show you what I mean. Consider the Spiegelman monster as some specific sequence of nucleotides of length 218, say AGUUCAAACCC… Now what are the chances that it could have originated randomly during the history of our planet? There are 4 possible nucleotides (A – adenine, G – guanine, C – cytosine, and U – uracil). So the number of possible RNA molecules of length 218 is 4^218 = 10^131. Let’s assume that every cubic micron of the earth’s oceans is used to try a separate RNA sequence of length 218 every microsecond. How long would we expect from the formation of the earth until the Spiegelman sequence is found? Well, a little math here…
Volume of earth’s oceans (from Wikipedia) = 1.3 billion cubic kilometers = 1.3*10^18 cubic meters = 1.3*10^36 cubic microns. So every microsecond there are 1.3*10^36 trials of RNA molecules. That comes out to 1.3*10^42 trials per second or 4*10^49 trials per year. In order to go through all 10^131 possible sequences would take 10^82 years. Thus, the probability that the Spiegelman sequence could have been hit on by chance at any time during the earth’s history is 4.5 billion divided by 10^82 or 1 in 10^73. So either we are incredibly lucky to have found the Spiegelman sequence or perhaps there is divine intervention needed. The odds get even worse if we consider that life was already going on earth by at least 3.5 billion years ago and probably even earlier.
Compare this with Kaufman’s autocatalytic set theory. Kauffman imagines an early earth teaming with all sorts of chemical species. Over time more and more new chemical species are introduced into complex chemical reaction pathways. Eventually the complexity has increased to a point where an autocatalytic set forms among the millions or billions of chemical reactions that are occurring. Kauffman calls this a phase transition and it is as inevitable as the phase transition from ice to water during heating. Thus, the probability that life will form given enough diversity in the chemical species equals one. It does not depend on some specific molecule such as RNA or DNA. Any batch of organic molecules of sufficient diversity will eventually form an autocatalytic set. This is another prediction of Kauffman’s theory which is, if we ever find extraterrestrial life on Mars, Europa, Triton, or somewhere else it will not be based on RNA, DNA, or even the 20 or so amino acids making up earthly proteins.
Another comparison between the Spiegelman monster and the autocatalytic set is as follows. What happens to the Spiegelman monster when you add a nucleotide? Is it still a catalyst? Probably not since its folding properties will have changed. What happens when you add a few chemical species to the autocatalytic set? Assuming that the new chemicals can be catalyzed by existing chemicals in the set or they catalyze other chemical species in the set there is no problem. The set has been increased but it is still autocatalytic.
January 30th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
“A currently untestable prediction with an error margin of 5 orders of magnitude is not convincing.”
The range 6,165 to 34,000,000 is actually a range of 3.7 orders of magnitude. Let’s take the logarithmic average of 460,000 – let’s call it half a million just for simplicity sake. Why is this number so large compared to the autocatalytic RNA examples of Eigen and Spiegelman?
I had to refresh my memory by rereading sections of the book, but the answer appears to be that the number is large because it has to take into account the random chance of assembling an autocatalytic set. There is no hand assembly using an intelligent designer of either human or divine origin. All of this has to come about by random chance.
So essentially the minimum size of an autocatalytic set has to do with the probability that a random molecular species in the set catalyzes one of the reactions. So if we assume that the probability that a given molecular species catalyzes one of the reactions as one in a million, then it will take something close to a million of them to guarantee that each molecular species catalyzes at least one reaction. So as we increase the number of molecular species in the system at a certain point a critical threshold is reached where each molecular species catalyzes at least one reaction. The system turns on and life is born. Kauffman refers to this as a phase transition from non-life to life.
So sure, you can hand tailor RNA systems with far fewer components and make them work, but the chances of them arising naturally on earth is infinitesimal as I showed in my last post.
The great uncertainty in the range of numbers from 6,165 to 34,000,000 has to do with the great uncertainty in the probability that any given chemical species catalyzes another reaction. This depends on so many factors such as molecular shape, composition, and polarity that only approximate figures can be given.
January 30th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Oh, Tom. There you go again: assuming that it is the only possible sequence. The only really valid issue is that it end up the right shape, and for that to happen it only really has to bend the right way, which takes only a few of those nucleotides to be in the right position. It’s the automatic assumption that the sequence is exact, rather than it being length plus a small part of the sequence.
In all likelihood, the hairpin shape probably only takes maybe twenty nucleotides of an “exact” nature – and in that case, they just have to pair up to link properly (one of two rather than one of four). So the probability is more like 2^20 or 10^6.
Seriously, you seem to want to phrase abiogenesis as impossible, which is your right, but it’s not that scientific. You want the conclusion to be that it is impossible, and that Darwinian selection is flawed to being nonfunctional. You’ve already reached your conclusions, so I’m not sure why you want to work backwards to data. That’s like flying into an island city and then demanding a return ticket on the train to the mainland.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:58 am
“Oh, Tom. There you go again: assuming that it is the only possible sequence. The only really valid issue is that it end up the right shape, and for that to happen it only really has to bend the right way, which takes only a few of those nucleotides to be in the right position. It’s the automatic assumption that the sequence is exact, rather than it being length plus a small part of the sequence.”
So give me the number of RNA sequences of length up to 218 that are autocatalytic. Will all of them still be autocatalytic when you add nucleotides to them? In Kauffman’s theory no RNA is needed at all – the fact that earth life is based on RNA and DNA is a historical accident. It could have been based on some completely different organic molecule. That increases the chances of life arising spontaneously dramatically since no specific organic molecule is needed.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:02 am
Uh, Tom – based on your stated interpretation of Kaufmann’s theory, you need an assortment of 6000 + molecules at a minimum, by your own estimation a much more unlikely event given random probability. You seem to want to believe that abiogenesis is impossible by setting up an a priori lower limit unsupported by experiment or really any math or coherent theory. And, uh, how is it that Kaufmann’s gone from 6000+ down to one?
Why assume RNA? Because RNA has shown itself, through competition, to be the best example we currently have for a self-replicating molecule capable of complex inheritence and error tolerance. In biology, the leaps often occur when an otherwise sufficient organism has failover ability through repeated sequences: the failover allows the organism to function despite variation. Look at segmented worms, which in earthworms have six segments capable of pumping blood rather than one. One fails, the organism doesn’t die outright: failover capacity. RNA has this repeating and failover capacity: an arbitrary cocktail of 6000+ molecules does not.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:47 am
I get the impression that one of the main things that critics of evolution don’t understand is that if a single population of organisms (a species) is split into two groups by some event, and then the two groups are subjected to different selective pressures, the two groups will eventually differentiate into two species. That is, at some point after the two groups split, they’ll be sufficiently different that it’s impossible for a male from one group to successfully mate with a female from the other group.
Now most critics don’t seem to have a problem with changes in selective pressures over an entire species, and so don’t have a problem with, for example, the peppered moth changing from generally speckled to generally black. But speciation is driven by splitting the population into two groups with no contact between them. Unfortunately, this isn’t illustrated in the video which heads this thread.
Perhaps someone might like to put their minds to creating such a simulation to explain this point better.
January 31st, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Tom Marking
Your probabilty calculation looks similiar to the debunked probability of abiogenesis calculations that creationists and inteligent designers come up with every so ofton. Look at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html for the flaws in the calcuation.
January 31st, 2008 at 6:40 pm
“Uh, Tom – based on your stated interpretation of Kaufmann’s theory, you need an assortment of 6000 + molecules at a minimum, by your own estimation a much more unlikely event given random probability.”
Not really. I think you’re not understanding the point. It’s really hard to explain this stuff without reading the book with all the diagrams but I’ll give it my best shot. There is no specific set of 6,000 molecules that form the autocatalytic set. The number 6,000 to 30,000,000 is so large because the probability that a random molecular species will catalyze a reaction is small. Let’s bump up this probability from something in the range 1 in 6,000 to 1 in 30,000,000 to something quite large, let’s say 0.1 so we can better see what happens.
So 0.1 is the probability that chemical species A catalyzes a chemical reaction X Y chosen at random. That means the probability that A does not catalyze reaction X Y is 0.9.
You add your first chemical species A chosen at random (all of the chemical species are chosen at random, there is no selection of any kind).
You add your second chemical species B.
You add your third chemical species C. Now there is a reaction that A can possibly catalyze, namely B C. The probability that it doesn’t is 0.9.
You add your fourth chemical species D. Now there are 3 reactions that A can catalyze, B C, B D, C D. The probability that A doesn’t catalyze any of them is 0.9^3 which is 0.729.
You add your fifth chemical species E resulting in 6 reactions: BC, BD, BE, CD, CE, DE. Probability that A doesn’t catalyze any of them is 0.9^6 = 0.53.
You add your sixth chemical species F resulting in 10 reactions: BC, BD, BE, BF, CD, CE, CF, DE, DF, EF. Probability that A doesn’t catalyze any of them is 0.9^10 = 0.35.
I think you can see where this is headed. So let’s just list the number of chemical species and the probability the A catalyzes none of them:
7 0.21
8 0.11
9 0.05
10 0.02
11 0.009
12 0.003
and so on.
So by the time you get to just 12 chemical species the chances that A catalyzes none of the other reactions is only 0.3 percent which means the chances that it catalyzes at least one of the reactions is 99.7 percent. The same probabilities apply to all the other chemical species. So by the 12th chemical species it is highly probable that each of the chemical species will catalyze at least one other reaction and an autocatalytic set has been formed. Life has begun.
I hope you can follow the example. At no time was there any “natural selection” of any chemical species. It does not have to be RNA, or DNA, or protein, or anything specific. Life originated spontaneously without any selection being necessary. One organic molecule is as good as another.
January 31st, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Tom, that’s not real science.
That sounds like a lambasting cartoon I did on probability titled “Ask Mr. Ology: Probability.” In it, a rabbit character explains that if you have multiple pairs of pantyhose, the chance of all of them running simultaneously shrinks as you increase the number of pantyhose, until as you near zero probability of all of them running you start to run into the probability that they will spontaneously form a black hole. By the time you are infinitesimally close to a zero intercept for probability of all running, you are virtually certain to form a black hole (intercept 1).
Spurious and unscientific daydreaming, which is what the comic was meant to mock. Oddly enough, that is why your explanation seemed so familiar.
The probability of a molecule catalyzing a reaction is more based on a combination of probabilities of either chemical species existing in the first place – the assemblage becomes less and less likely despite conjecture that two of them will react somehow, as does the probability of being able to obtain the *n* number of pantyhose necessary to risk forming a black hole.
February 1st, 2008 at 7:34 am
“The probability of a molecule catalyzing a reaction is more based on a combination of probabilities of either chemical species existing in the first place”
O.K. So now you’re questioning the diversity of chemical species on the early earth. I guess only RNA could have existed. BTW, catalysis depends on the molecular shape and binding sites. If chemical species D has the right shape for catalysis of A + B –> C then it will catalyze that reaction. It’s not a conjecture. It’s a well known fact.
BTW, I am still waiting for someone to provide me with the number of autocatalytic RNA sequences of length 218 or less. You claim that only a special sequence of 20 nucleotides is needed somewhere along the 218 nucleotide stretch. In which case why didn’t Spiegelman just simply snip out that 20 nucleotide sequence and create a Spiegelman monster of length 20? There is no mention in the literature of a Spiegelman monster of length 20.
You also claim “RNA has this repeating and failover capacity”. What are you talking about? Are you claiming that repetition of some nucleotide, say UUUUU is a failover mechanism? If so please explain how it works.
February 1st, 2008 at 8:29 am
Tom Marking posts:
[[Thus, the probability that the Spiegelman sequence could have been hit on by chance at any time during the earth’s history is 4.5 billion divided by 10^82 or 1 in 10^73. So either we are incredibly lucky to have found the Spiegelman sequence or perhaps there is divine intervention needed. The odds get even worse if we consider that life was already going on earth by at least 3.5 billion years ago and probably even earlier.]]
You are assuming that only one combination out of 10^73 will work. What justification do you have for that assumption?
[[This is another prediction of Kauffman’s theory which is, if we ever find extraterrestrial life on Mars, Europa, Triton, or somewhere else it will not be based on RNA, DNA, or even the 20 or so amino acids making up earthly proteins.]]
I wouldn’t be surprised if the nucleic acids or their equivalent were not the same, but I would be very surprised if no amino acids were involved. We’ve found them in meteorites. There might be a handedness problem (50% of aliens will have dextro- rather than levulo-rotatory amino acids), but I expect every ET out there to use glycine and to be able to drink the stuff. (It’s sweet, I understand.)
February 1st, 2008 at 8:39 am
And:
[[BTW, I am still waiting for someone to provide me with the number of autocatalytic RNA sequences of length 218 or less. You claim that only a special sequence of 20 nucleotides is needed somewhere along the 218 nucleotide stretch. In which case why didn’t Spiegelman just simply snip out that 20 nucleotide sequence and create a Spiegelman monster of length 20? There is no mention in the literature of a Spiegelman monster of length 20.]]
Probably because he doesn’t know which are crucial and which aren’t. It’s not that easy to tell, you know.
According to Futuyma (1982), they got RNA sequences as short as seven (7) nucleotide residues to replicate.
I agree with you, frankly, that the first replicator doesn’t have to be RNA, even on Earth. But that’s as true for standard theories of abiogenesis as it is for Kaufman’s theory. I wrote a paper about that in the ’80s. It wasn’t peer-reviewed, and so doesn’t count as an authoritative source, but it shows that you can believe in multiple possible early replicators without embracing Kaufman’s theory:
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/Combo.htm
February 1st, 2008 at 8:41 am
That link doesn’t appear to work, possible because the capital C in Combo should have been a small c. But you can just go to my main web page (http://members.aol.com/bpl1960) and click on “A paper on the origin of Life.”
February 2nd, 2008 at 9:47 am
Guys, I think I’m going to bag this topic for now. Phil has moved on to other stuff. I think there’s been a good exchange but as usual, no real persuasion on either side. Phil has some other posts on creationism that I haven’t checked out. Maybe I’ll see you on one of those.