Reflectorites
On Fri, 27 Oct 2000 14:40:25 -0500, Susan Cogan wrote:
[...]
My quote was getting hard to read with all the ">>>"s so here it is
reposted:
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"Despite a close watch, we have witnessed no new species emerge in the
wild in recorded history. Also, most remarkably, we have seen no new
animal species emerge in domestic breeding. That includes no new
species of fruitflies in hundreds of millions of generations in fruitfly
studies, where both soft and harsh pressures have been deliberately
applied to the fly populations to induce speciation. And in computer life,
where the term "species" does not yet have meaning, we see no cascading
emergence of entirely new kinds of variety beyond an initial burst. In the
wild, in breeding, and in artificial life, we see the emergence of variation.
But by the absence of greater change, we also clearly see that the limits
of variation appear to be narrowly bounded, and often bounded within
species. ... No one has yet witnessed, in the fossil record, in real life, or in
computer life, the exact transitional moments when natural selection
pumps its complexity up to the next level. There is a suspicious barrier in
the vicinity of species that either holds back this critical change or
removes it from our sight." (Kelly K., "Out of Control: The New Biology
of Machines", 1995, p475)
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>>SC>I suspect the Kelly quote is out of context,
>SJ>>On what basis does Susan say this. Has she read the book?
SC>no, I'm looking for it, though.
So Susan does not have to have even read a book to suspect that my quote
is "out of context"!
SC>The reason I think it's out of
>context is because Gould says something similar.
How does what "Gould" says have any bearing on what Kelly says?
SC>What is *always* trimmed by the person quoting
How does Susan know, without reading the book, that *Kelly* did not say
it and I faithfully quoted it?
SC>its the fact that transitions are rare
>at the species level in the fossil record (they exist, there just
>aren't many) but they are abundant *above* the species level. It's
>possible that Kelly is simply wrong.
How can there be more "transitions" above the species level than there are
at the species level?
And Kelly is talking about "the exact transitional moments"
"in the fossil record". Is Susan saying that there are actual
"transitions" which document exactly one major transition to
another? If so, I would appreciate her posting what it is.
[...]
>>SB>but if not perhaps you
>>>or Kelly should do some facing up to reality:
>>>
>>>This article is on page 22 of the February, 1989 issue of
>>>Scientific American.:
>>>"Three species of wildflowers called goatsbeards were introduced to
>>>the United States from Europe shortly after the turn of the century.
>>>Within a few decades their populations expanded and began to
>>>encounter one another in the American West. Whenever mixed
>>>populations occurred, the specied interbred (hybridizing) producing
>>>sterile hybrid offspring. Suddenly, in the late forties two new
>>>species of goatsbeard appeared near Pullman, Washington. Although the
>>>new species were similar in appearance to the hybrids, they produced
>>>fertile offspring. The evolutionary process had created a separate
>>>species that could reproduce but not mate with the goatsbeard plants
>>>from which it had evolved."
>>>
>>>this is from the talk.origins archive which has two FAQ files that
>>>list observed instances of speciation. Here is one of them:
>>>http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html
>>
>SJ>If this is what Kelly meant by "species" then he is indeed wrong on this
>>particular point.
Actually I may have conceded too soon. First, I have now checked the
"February, 1989 issue of Scientific American" and there is no article at
"page 22" or indeed in the whole issue, on speciation of *anything*. It
seems that Talk.origins FAQ has got it wrong? Indeed the FAQ seems
garbled at that point. It is talking about "wildflowers called goatsbeards"
and then suddenly it is talking about "studies conducted on a fruit fly,
Rhagoletis pomonella..."
Second, none of the studies in the FAQ that I can see is of anyone who has
actually "witnessed" a "new species emerge" which is Kelly's point.
Third, as I posted to Chris, there was a recent article that said that
"scientists have assumed that it was all but impossible to witness the
evolution of a new species in nature":
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/24/science/24SPEC.html The
New York Times October 24, 2000 Scientists' Hopes Raised for a
Front-Row Seat to Evolution By CAROL KAESUK YOON .... For
more than a century, scientists have assumed that it was all but
impossible to witness the evolution of a new species in nature, a
process thought to be too long and drawn out to be captured in the
lifetime of any human researcher. ... Scientists critical of the work
said other factors, including interbreeding by one of the groups
with the small populations of native salmon known to live in the
lake, could cause the salmon to appear genetically distinct from
each other without the evolution of reproductive isolation. Others
said the genetic differences between the salmon were too
minuscule to require explanation yet...
so even if this turns out to be the first case of witnessing the evolution of a
new species in nature, Kelly was right when he said it in 1995.
>SJ>But it is possible he regards these as just "variation". There are other
>>examples too of speciation among plants, but the cases are so trivial
>>(remaining within the same genera) that they serve to underline the *real*
>>problem that:
SC>*all* evolution is at the species level.
This is trivially true. If a reptile's egg hatched and a bird emerged (as
Goldschmidt proposed), this would be a jump from one Class Reptilia to a
new Class Aves. The reptilian parent would be a member of a species and
so would the bird. However the bird would be simultaneously a new
Species, a new Genus, and a new Class!
And a mechanism that produces a new species in the sense of a variety of
plants or fruitfly is not necessarily the same as one that produces a new
Class.
It is hard enough evolutionists demonstrating the emergence of a new
Species, let alone that of a new Class!
SC>Anything above that is an
>accumulation of changes so that the decedent no longer resembles the
>ancestor enough to be classified in the same genus.
This doesn't make grammatical sense.
SC>The reason the
>speciation events described in the FAQ are speciation and not
>variation is because the daughter plant cannot interbreed with the
>parent.
This is true if the variation was by polyploidy (i.e. chromosomal
duplication). However this is only common in plants and not animals
because: a) they have an Alternation of Generations life-cycle; and b) they
can reproduce asexually. This is very rare in animals.
But while polyploidy causes reproductive isolation of the offspring from
the parent (and hence a new species) it is AFAIK always within the same
genus, and is a dead-end.
To claim that instances of polyploidy are anything to do with evolution, in
the sense of one thing changing into another quite different thing, is
misleading.
SC>At least for sexually reproducing organisms you can sometimes
>use that to discern speciation.
>SJ>See above. How many examples does the FAQ list where: "natural selection
>>pumps its complexity up to the next level" (i.e. above the species level)?
SJ>the "pumping its complexity" thing is a misunderstanding of
>evolution. The daughter species of goatsbeard in the example was not
>more complex than the parent--just different.
So, on the main point, Kelly was right then!
Steve
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"I remember perfectly well the intense satisfaction and delight with which I
had listened, by the hour, to Bach's fugues ... and it has often occurred to
me that the pleasure derived from musical compositions of this kind...is
exactly the same as in most of my problems of morphology-that you have
the theme in one of the old masters' works followed out in all its endless
variations, always reappearing and always reminding you of the unity in
variety." (Huxley T.H., (1895), in Gilbert S.F., "Developmental Biology,"
Sinauer Associates: Sunderland MA, Fourth Edition, 1994, p.3. Ellipses
Gilbert's)
Stephen E. Jones | Ph. +61 8 9448 7439 | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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