Reflectorites
On Sat, 12 Aug 2000 20:41:45 EDT, Bertvan@aol.com wrote:
[...]
>HX>I wasn't aware that Darwin said anything about mutations. How many
>>actual Darwinists do you know? You do realize, skepticism or no, there is evidence
>>for selection, right?
>BV>... Are you telling me "random mutation and natural selection" isn't
>Darwin's term? (It's not my bible and I don't keep a copy handy, but I'm
>sure someone else on the list knows whether Darwin actually used the term.).
Darwin did actually use the term "mutation" in the Origin of Species, but as
a term for change. It was not used of genetic mutations until after Darwin's
time.
Darwin did not use the term "random" either in the Origin. This was the later
term of Neo-Darwinism.
But Darwin did speak of "variations, however slight, and from whatever
cause" being naturally selected:
"All these results, as we shall more fully see in the next chapter,
follow from the struggle for life. Owing to this struggle, variations,
however slight, and from whatever cause proceeding, if they be in
any degree profitable to the individuals of a species, in their
infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to their
physical conditions of life, will tend to the preservation of such
individuals, and will generally be inherited by the offspring. The
offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of
the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but
a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which
each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural
Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection.
But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the
Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally
convenient. We have seen that man by selection can certainly
produce great results, and can adapt organic beings to his own uses,
through the accumulation of slight but useful variations, given to
him by the hand of Nature. But Natural Selection, as we shall
hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as
immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of
Nature are to those of Art." (Darwin C.R., "The Origin of Species,"
6th Edition, 1928, reprint, pp.66-67).
Darwin's relative indifference about how variation arose but only that it
was not itself biased towards adaptive improvement, is what Darwinists'
mean by "random":
"There is a fifth respect in which mutation might have been
nonrandom. We can imagine (just) a form of mutation that was
systematically biased in the direction of improving the animal's
adaptedness to its life. But although we can imagine it, nobody has
ever come close to suggesting any means by which this bias could
come about. It is only in this fifth respect, the 'mutationist' respect,
that the true, real-life Darwinian insists that mutation is random.
Mutation is not systematically biased in the direction of adaptive
improvement, and no mechanism is known (to put the point mildly)
that could guide mutation in directions that are non-random in this
fifth sense. Mutation is random with respect to adaptive advantage,
although it is non-random in all sorts of other respects. It is
selection, and only selection, that directs evolution in directions that
are nonrandom with respect to advantage." (Dawkins R., "The
Blind Watchmaker," 1991, p.312)
BV>Some form common ancestry was discussed decades before Darwin, and I believe
>Darwin's contribution was the theory that life's complexity was the result of
>small random changes, (without plan, purpose or design) , and that those
>organism with the most advantageous (complex?) changes thrived and produced
>progeny at the expense of those lacking such advantageous mutations. Thus
>natural selection supposedly (gradually) "designed" complex organisms. (If
>this is not your belief, we might not necessarily be in disagreement.)
This is correct. Dawkins recently expressed the Neo-Darwinian naturalistic
orthodoxy of gradual, continuous change in a review of Tattersall &
Schwartz' "Extinct Humans":
"But that's enough about the tone of the argumentative parts of this
book. What of their substance? What is actually at stake when
claims are made about numbers of extinct species of hominid?
Where fossils are concerned, rather little. Whether they belonged to
15 species or one, individual males mated with individual females
and had individual children. Some local populations were far from
other populations, perhaps separated by rivers or mountains, or
even just by cultural barriers, and so did not interbreed. There was a
continuum of variation among local populations scattered around
Africa, and later around the world. Names like "race," "subspecies,"
"species" and "genus" signify, in increasing degrees, the genetic
separation that tends to arise when populations do not interbreed
for a while. With one exception, such names are arbitrary, in the
same way as "tall" or "fat." Little therefore rides on statements like
"Fifteen species of hominid have gone extinct." We find it handy to
say "John Cleese is a tall man; Mickey Rooney is a short man." But
it is not clever to get embroiled in passionate arguments over how
many categories of tallness or shortness deserve a name (giant,
dwarf, average, etc.). Similarly, it follows from evolution that if all
the hominids who ever lived were available to us in a gigantic fossil
museum, all attempts to segregate them into non-overlapping
species or genera would be futile. No matter how richly branched
the evolutionary tree, every fossil would be indirectly connected to
every other by unbroken chains of potential intermarriage. The only
reason we can indulge our penchant for discontinuous names at all
is that we are mercifully spared sight of the extinct intermediates. In
the case of living animals, we see only the tips of the evolutionary
twigs. For paleontologists, the mercy is that so few individuals
fossilize. We may believe that the genus Homo is descended from
the genus Australopithecus. But it is ludicrous to suggest that there
must once have been a Homo child at the breast of an
Australopithecus mother. It necessarily follows from the fact of
evolution that discontinuous naming must ultimately break down."
(Dawkins R., "Branching Out," Review of "Extinct Humans," by
Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey H. Schwartz, A Peter N. Nevraumont
Book/ Westview Press, The New York Times, August 6, 2000,
http://archives.nytimes.com/).
This is why Dawkins' orthodox gradualistic Neo-Darwinism always trumps
those who, like Gould, now Tattersall and Schwartz, flirt with discontinuous
saltational change, because that is what the fossil record looks like. Unless
there has been supernatural intervention, it always comes back to the fact
that all organisms have had parents in the normal sense of the term, no matter
what the fossils say!
BV>The only person on the list I've asked if they believe random mutation and
>natural selection created life's complexity was Susan, and she proudly
>announced she did.
One of the most interesting things I found about the Reflector is how few
evolutionists actually believe the sort of evolution (i.e. Neo-Darwinian random
mutation and natural selection), that is compulsorily taught in schools.
And those who do claim to believe in RM&NS seem to have no actual hard
evidence in *nature* of why they do believe in it. For example Richard
claimed to believe in RM&NS but the best piece of evidence he gave was a
*computer simulation* (Nilsson & Pelger's) of the development of the eye,
but he had never actually read the original scientific paper!
It seems that those evolutionists who believe in RM&NS do so because it
seems so self-evidently true that no hard evidence is actually necessary?
Other evolutionists have given up on RM&NS but they still cling to
`evolution' (often defined as something so vague like "a change in gene
frequencies in a population" that it cannot be denied) without any actual
mechanism.
BV>Most who write about evolution acknowledge the term,
>"random mutation and natural selection". Certainly Dawkins does, as does
>Gould. Any biologist who questions "random mutation and natural selection"
>as the designer of life's complexity is promptly attacked as an
>anti-evolutionist, such as Denton or Behe. Both believe in common descent.
>Our own Steve Jones believes in common descent, as do most people supporting
>ID.
I don't think that most IDers believe in common descent but it might be fair
to say that many IDers (including probably Johnson) don't necessarily
disagree with it. For example Johnson seems untroubled that Mike Behe
believes in common descent. The funny thing is that the ICR don't seem to
worry all that much about it either-they sell Behe's book. The *real* issue
is, and always has been, the *mechanism*:
"Evidence for structural difference/descent does not constitute
evidence for the mechanism by which structural transformation
took place. Therefore, the sorts of evidence that simply indicate
relationship and/or descent from a common ancestor (e.g.,
molecular clock data, fossil sequences, chromosomal banding, and
other measures of similarity) are not relevant to this question unless
they indicate the nature of the creative mechanism that produced
novelty during that descent. Evidence of ancestry does not imply
knowledge of the morphogenetic mechanisms that are able to
produce novelty. This was perhaps better understood in the
nineteenth century than it is today (Muller and Wagner, 1991).
Indeed, by 1850, almost all researchers accepted common descent
(Gillespie, 1979; Desmond, 1989). The unique implication of
Darwin's theory was therefore not descent, but its suggestion that
the source of biotic order was to be found in the natural (material)
order. " (Wilcox D.L., "A Blindfolded Watchmaker: The Arrival of
the Fittest", in Buell J. & Hearn V., eds., "Darwinism: Science or
Philosophy?", 1994, p195.
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/fte/darwinism/chapter13.html)
BV>If anyone admits they don't know how life's complexity arose, I don't
>disagree with them. Yes, I know selection probably occurs. It selects
>traits and genes already in the gene pool. I question that it is responsible
>for creating complex, novel organs, systems and body parts. Those were
>"created" by the "mutations". I'm skeptical that those mutations occurred
>without plan, purpose, or design. Since that is something that can be
>neither proved nor disproved at this point, I insist that everyone is
>entitled to their own judgement on the matter.
[...]
I certainly agree with Berthajane on this. While I believe that design in
general, and ID in particular, are both true, and that therefore all theories
of naturalistic evolution which ignore or deny design are, to the extent they
do so, false, I do not believe that such evolutionists should therefore be
suppressed. To me the optimum situation is where all the assumptions and
facts can be laid out by all sides with people being free to make up their
own minds.
Unlike the naturalistic evolutionists, I am confident enough of my position
that if people were given *all* the assumptions, and all the facts for and
against both design and undesigned naturalistic evolution, a large number
(if not most), would chose design.
Steve
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"The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with
gradualism. What is remarkable is that, through a variety of historical
circumstances, even the history of opposition has been obscured. Few
modern paleontologists seem to have recognized that in the past century, as
the biological historian William Coleman has recently written, `The
majority of paleontologists felt their evidence simply contradicted Darwin's
stress on minute, slow, and cumulative changes leading to species
transformation.'" (Stanley, Steven M. [Professor of Paleobiology, The
Johns Hopkins University, USA], "The New Evolutionary Timetable:
Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Species", Basic Books: New York NY,
1981, p.71)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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