Reflectorites
On Tue, 25 Apr 2000 11:54:46 -0700, Tedd Hadley wrote:
[...]
>SJ>Tedd obviously hasn't been around long enough to know me. He
>>would find that I am happy to debate *anything*: "details, issues
>>and evidence and actually defending arguments raised...", and
>>even "out-of-context quotes."!
TH>Good. So what happened to the details, issues and evidence
>you deleted from this post?
Frankly I did not think that Tedd's "details, issues and evidence" added
anything new.
My records show that I debated this thread "the role of sex in evolution"
through four (4) iterations with Tedd:
On Fri, 07 Apr 2000 10:01:15 -0700
On Wed, 12 Apr 2000 09:56:02 -0700
On Mon, 17 Apr 2000 11:27:39 -0700
On Wed, 19 Apr 2000 17:33:19 -0700
As I had already stated before, and I re-state again, I haven't got
the time to continue debating the same threads endlessly. Two or three
iterations is my limit, and I am surprised I went to 4 and now 5!
[...]
TH>No, I included details, issues and evidence in this very post.
>You deleted them. It appears to me that you are seizing on this
>quote issue as an excuse to avoid discussing anything more
>substantial.
Not really. Frankly I did not find Tedd's "details, issues and
evidence...substantial".
And again I point out that it was *Tedd* who raised the "quote issue",
not me. Quite frankly I am not as inclined to take a message all
that seriously when I encounter an "out-of-context" quote allegation
or other ad hominem. If Tedd wants me to take him seriously, then he
will need to learn to repay the courtesy.
[...]
TH>Here is the part of my post you deleted:
[...]
TH>No, if there is a good supply of imperfectly replicating molecules,
>natural selection can act on them to produce levels of complexity
>logically limited only by time and energy supply. I would
>argue that complexity is a prediction of the laws of physics
>and Darwinism is merely one combination of those.
I rest my case! That is not even a prediction even of life. It agrees with my
quote from Popper saying that Darwinism would not be refuted even if we
found *no* species on another planet:
"For assume that we find life on Mars consisting of exactly three species of
bacteria with a genetic outfit similar to that of three terrestrial species. Is
Darwinism refuted? By no means. We shall say that these three species
were the only forms among the many mutants which were sufficiently well
adjusted to survive. And we shall say the same if there is only one species
(or *none*)." (Popper K., "Unended Quest," 1982, p171. My emphasis).
[...]
I've deleted the rest of Tedd's post because: a) it ignored my main point:
"Despite its biological importance, positive selection is seldom observed at
work in nature. A few well-known, and constantly cited examples are
industrial melanism in moths (Kettlewell, 1955, 1956, 1958), DDT
resistance in insects and antibiotic resistance in bacteria." (Kimura M., "The
Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution," 1990, p.118)
Even if "industrial melanism in moths...DDT resistance in insects and
antibiotic resistance in bacteria" were granted to be examples of "positive
selection" (which they aren't), if that's the *best* examples that Neo-
Darwinists can come up with, then it shows how weak is the evidential base
of their theory;
and (b) I have a major Biology assignment to hand in tomorrow!
Since this is the 5th iteration of this thread, this is my last post on it. Tedd
has ignored my main points, and tried to steer the thread into side-issues,
which I resist.
But he need not worry. He can be sure that I will post the above main points
again in the not-to-distant future! :-)
Steve
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"If deterministic constraints exist, then certain regularities or trends in the
large scale pattern of evolution should be evident. Yet very few studies
have addressed this problem. One main reason is that natural selection is
strictly a local mechanism (Saunders and Ho, 1976) and hence inherently
unable to account for any global trend or pattern (Vrba, Chapter 5).
Another reason is that evolutionary pattern itself is the product of inference
from available data. Where inference is habitually made under certain
presumptions, the resulting pattern becomes correspondingly biased. A
case in point is the phylogenetic classification of organisms" (Ho M-W. &
Saunders P.T., "Pluralism and Convergence in Evolutionary Theory," in Ho
M-W. & Saunders P.T., eds., "Beyond Neo-Darwinism: An Introduction to
the New Evolutionary Paradigm," Academic Press: London, 1984, p.7)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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