>Reflectorites
>
>On Fri, 19 May 2000 11:13:52 -0700, Cliff Lundberg wrote:
>
>Re: The *Fact* of evolution!
>
>>>CL>Wow, a real Darwinian. Huxley's warning against this gradualist
>>>absolutism
>>>>wasn't heeded by Darwin and isn't heeded by you.
>
>Maybe its because Darwin (and Dawkins) had read Paley's "Natural
>Theology" (which I am just finishing)? They realised that *only* tiny, step-
>by-step changes could hope to explain the *fantastically intricate* layers of
>design that Paley documents.
>
>Saltationists solutions are just `hand-waving'. That's why they are popular
>with paleontologists who study bones, but never catch on among biologists
>who are intimately aquatinted with the living *details* of life's complex
>designs.
who believes in saltation? I was under the impression that it was discarded
nearly 100 years ago with the discovery of genetics.
>>SB>Obviously I didn't make myself very clear. Even very rapid evolution is
>>>glacial compared the the span of a human lifetime. "Rapid" can mean 1000
>>>years.
>
>And it could mean only 1 year, or even 1 generation!
to change an entire population? do you have anything to back up that
remark? 1000 years is enough to change a small, isolated population, but is
quite rapid as time is measured by geologists.
>CL>To me the question is, what can be accomplished in one mutation,
>>in one generation, one evolutionary step? Steady microevolution might
>>produce geologically instantaneous large changes through Darwin's
>>"insensible" gradations, but that is not proof that macromutations
>>did not occur.
>
>The problem with "macromutations" is there is no testable scientific
>mechanisms to explain them. They are the naturalistic equivalent of
>miracles.
<sigh> and you claimed to have read Gould's essay on "The Hopeful Monster"
which you quote from from time to time. If you had indeed read the entire
essay you would have learned that sometimes tiny genetic changes *do* make
large morphological changes and why.
>BV>I am an ardent admirer of Margulis. She once said "Darwinism will one
>day be
>>regarded as a quaint 20th century superstition." or something like that.
>
>Maybe it was this:
>
>"Margulis...wrote last December in American Zoologist, neo-Darwinism
>will ultimately be viewed as only "a minor 20th-century religious sect
>within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon biology." (Mann
>C., "Lynn Margulis: Science's Unruly Earth Mother," Science, Vol. 252, 19
>April 1991, p.380)
You should have read all the posts in this thread before you posted this
out-of-context snippet. Ted Hadly already provided these two quotes:
"I have seen no evidence whatsoever that these [evolutionary]
changes can occur through the accumulation of gradual mutations.
There's no doubt, of course, that they exist, but the major source
of evolutionary novelty is the acquisition of symbionts - the whole
thing then edited by natural selection. It is never just the
accumulation of mutations."
Science Vol. 252, 19 April 1991, p. 379
and
"Although I greatly admire Darwin's contributions and agree with
most of his theoretical analysis and I am a Darwinist, I am not
a neo-Darwinist."
http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/n-Ch.7.html
("Gaia Is A Tough Bitch", Lynn Margulis, 1995?)
Susan
----------
For if there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing
of life as in hoping for another and in eluding the implacable grandeur of
this one.
--Albert Camus
http://www.telepath.com/susanb/
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