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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Death of Darwinism
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Soror Magna
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# 9881
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Posted
Thanks for the link to the trial transcript - entertaining on so many levels. OliviaG
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Ken was just trying to give you the step by step process to get there. The absolute opposite of the blinding Behe uses
Sorry to dig up this bone after all this time but what blinding exactly?
Behe's basic argument is mathematical. Do you think yo have proved him wrong?
Not just me. Taking Behe's supposed mathematics apart has been done to death to the point that in the his testimony at the Kitzmiller vs Dover trial he himself accepted that even using his own conditions to make things as unlikely as possible, irreducibly complex systems would evolve and be fixed in a population in 20,000 years.
Behe's argument is not mathematical in the slightest. It's an argument from incredulity dressed up in the trappings of mathematics, and when actual numbers are plugged in the whole argument is shown to be fallacious.
Great Links!Thank you.
I still think Behe wins this argument despite what the court says.
I agree it is not about Mathematics (the trial)
However, Behe's book is about the impossibility of the mathematics if chance is allowed to be the arbiter of evolution.
I love the following quote from his introduction.
"The complexity of lifess's foundation has paralysed science's attempt to account for it." (Darwin's Black Box,P 4
Touchstone ed.ISBN 0-684-82754-9)
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
... However, Behe's book is about the impossibility of the mathematics if chance is allowed to be the arbiter of evolution. ...
![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif) But chance isn't the "arbiter". Natural selection is. No one, not even Darwin, thinks evolution is just "chance". OliviaG
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
But chance isn't the "arbiter". Natural selection is. No one, not even Darwin, thinks evolution is just "chance".
As Darwin put it in the title of the first edition of his book: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
"The complexity of lifess's foundation has paralysed science's attempt to account for it." (Darwin's Black Box,P 4
Touchstone ed.ISBN 0-684-82754-9)
At any given point in history, there are tons of things science can't "account for." Then foolish Christian apologists latch onto these things and use them to beat science about the head with, and then are made to look like complete asses when science finally gets around to accounting for them.
It's all in Lewis. All in Lewis. What do they teach them in these schools?
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pjkirk
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# 10997
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
I still think Behe wins this argument despite what the court says.
I agree it is not about Mathematics (the trial)
However, Behe's book is about the impossibility of the mathematics if chance is allowed to be the arbiter of evolution.
Too bad mathematics, science, logic, and reason disagree with him on all of it. That's usually the point when I stop listening, and would prefer to read the awesome remarks of the judge's decision.
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Dear God, I would like to file a bug report -- Randall Munroe (http://xkcd.com/258/)
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Justinian:
[qb]
I still think Behe wins this argument despite what the court says.
You are going to have to explain why because his arguments seem to make no sense from here.
Many people, including me, have posted reasons why he is wrong here and other places on this website. You haven't argued against what we said, or made any real reply, just asserted that you think there is some truth in this "irreducible complexity" stuff. You'd need to do a lot better than that to convince anyone.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
A pair of Huxleys for breakfast anyone?
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." Aldous Huxley
" Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact". Thomas Huxley
Behe's ideas are just that, ideas. After having had a run-in from a grade 10 science teacher who was trying to push Behe's ideas as an alternative, I read Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, which suggests that the ideas are promoted to at least a degree, as a shifted strategy when frank and direct creationism no longer was possible to promote directly. That it is about ideology, not science, and they see it as a war. In war propaganda may be less important than truth. Perhaps slightly over-stated at times, but certainly helps to understand when those promoting an ideology hold so tightly to repetitive argument.
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
Am I the only person starting to see similarities in style in the anti-Darwinists and the climate change deniers? "Gaps" in knowledge and explanations, totalitarian group-think among scientists, ignoring facts for the sake of argument, misrepresenting the opposing argument, repeated assertion of discredited arguments, ETA: lists of "scientists" that agree with them, often with no qualifications, expertise, or peer-reviewed publications in the subject ... OliviaG
[ 04. September 2011, 17:16: Message edited by: OliviaG ]
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
It's the same in history too, pseudohistorians wanting to prove that the Holy grail was hidden in Rosslyn Chapel by the Knights Templar do the exact same thing, so do holocaust deniers - the key is in the term 'denier'.
Modern creationists are really evolution deniers - because there's a ton of evidence and academic research from top-notch academic sources which they have to deny to maintain their view of things. They deny whatever doesn't fit with their theory. As they get desperate they end up also having to deny the integrity of almost the entire (relevant) academic profession all over the world.
This level of denial is something which professionals in these fields find absolutely gobsmacking. Sometimes it's the case that the deniers are so amazingly ignorant that they themselves don't need to deny very much - as they know bugger all about medieval history, biology, maths or whatever discipline is at stake, but very often they depend on people who, theoretically, really ought to know better and who have despite that, chosen denialism.
So they desperately latch onto any supporters of their cause with any academic credentials, but because they're not themselves knowledgeable, they're not very good at evaluating these types and why they have chosen denialism. The denialist fans like to cast their Pet Professors as Galileo versus the Inquisition. In fact most of them fit a couple of common profiles:
- Dino-Prof - the prof that time forgot. That word 'emeritus' you keep seeing when they cite their pet academics, it means 'retired but retaining an honorary title'. Lots of emeritus profs are still doing great work, but if you want to find the dinos who never managed to move on, keep up or to accept their cherished theory being overturned, then the Prof equivalent of the happy-hunting grounds is a good place to find them.
- A Little-Fishy Prof - needs an excuse for not being a big famous fishy. Mediocre scholars who prefer to be a big fish in the small pond of denialism to a small crappy fish in mainstream academe who didn't quite make it. Their not managing to get the Nobel Prize is, of course, due to dastardly persecution and not due to any lack of smarts on their part.
- Snake-Oil Prof: A scammer/fraudster who scents a quick buck in stoking denialism and aims to cash in. He/she has just the product to sell you for that, or maybe he/she'll just merchandise the dodgy book and the TV appearances... Capable of fiddling experiments/faking sources.
- Crusader Prof: the monomaniac true believer who wants to persuade you the holocaust never happened, that black people all have inferior IQs, that nation XYZ invented civilisation, that church XYZ was always blameless (funny how he/she belongs to those groups!) in denial of what would seem to everyone else to be a large pile of evidence to the contrary. Also prone to cooking the books like Snake-oil, but isn't doing it for the money but for The Cause
- Prof who's-not-really-qualified in this subject: eg. citing someone whose doctorate is in engineering as an authority on biology
Point any of these out, of course, and their adoring fans will scream blue murder about ad hominem, but the thing is that other researchers in the field have already established that Pet Professor is talking a pile of old toss contradicted by the evidence, we're simply wondering at this stage what possessed him/her to go and do it.
Of course what they'd like their Pet Academic to be is Galileo Prof but amazingly their chaps/chapesses are usually clinging to some old and discredited theory and never seem to find any experimental evidence to back them up or to make predictions which work. Funny that.
But anyway, playing Spot-the-Denialist is always a good bit of fun.
L.
[ 04. September 2011, 23:22: Message edited by: Louise ]
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Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
Am I the only person starting to see similarities in style in the anti-Darwinists and the climate change deniers?
No, but then I guess there's a not insignificant overlap between the two groups.
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"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."
Posts: 2314 | From: Croydon | Registered: Dec 2001
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
I still think Behe wins this argument despite what the court says.
I agree it is not about Mathematics (the trial)
However, Behe's book is about the impossibility of the mathematics if chance is allowed to be the arbiter of evolution.
Jamat. With all due respect, the idea that chance is the arbiter of the outcomes rather than something that helps generate that which is tested is a complete straw man. Chance is not and has never been the arbiter. Does something survive and reproduce? That is the arbiter. And that isn't a matter for pure chance.
If that's what you mean by chance being the arbiter of outcomes, then his book is about as relevant as one about the possibility of ships made of iron that dismisses the possibility because it makes the asumption that the ships are made of solid iron. It might be true. But it's not relevant to anything and to claim it "wins the argument" simply misses what the argument is. It is wholly and completely irrelevant to the argument.
You can claim he wins the argument all you like. But that reflects more on you and your understanding than the argument itself. Either he is wrong (the mathematical argument) or he is irrelevant (the chance being the arbiter argument).
And if you want to know about probabilities and why looking at an event after it has happened and claiming its probability is unlikely is completely mathematically spurious, try shuffling a double pack of cards. After you have shuffled, assuming a fair shuffle, the probability that the cards are in that specific order is around 1 in 10^150. Unless you predict in advance what the order will be, the fact that it is unlikely that it happened that way is utterly meaningless. It had to happen some way and all ways are equally unlikely. Which means that something horribly improbable has to happen.
quote:
I love the following quote from his introduction.
"The complexity of lifess's foundation has paralysed science's attempt to account for it." (Darwin's Black Box,P 4
Touchstone ed.ISBN 0-684-82754-9)
Argument from incredulity. All hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster! And for the record no it hasn't paralysed science's attempt. We just aren't certain yet of one outcome that happened billions of years ago.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Does something survive and reproduce? That is the arbiter.
Which says in effect that the fact of something is the reason for it...circularity...Something happened..it had to happen some way..we don't know how..Therefore we assume.. This begs the central issue of accounting for the thing's existence.
The idea in between the lines of course is that what happened had to occur through existing natural processes; the other idea is that neo Darwinian theory is adequate to account for what we see, for that final 'black box' the cell.
Behe says it isn't. He is right.
And Louise, the time honoured device of mocking those who disagree is not only dishonest it is pathetic.
Romans Ch 1 says it all.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Does something survive and reproduce? That is the arbiter.
Which says in effect that the fact of something is the reason for it...circularity...Something happened..it had to happen some way..we don't know how..Therefore we assume..
I don't understand what you mean here. Can you explain? It doesn't make sense.
We have got a very good idea about ordinary life processes such as reproduction, growth, feeding, death and so on. Those are the kind of things we are talking about here, not any weird mystical philosophical stuff. There is no neccessary concept of "it had to happen that way" in evolutionary biology - quite the opposite, what we are saying is "it happened like this".
quote:
This begs the central issue of accounting for the thing's existence.
That's a different question from the fact of evolution. I don't think any biologist anywhere is claiming that they know for certain how life came into existence. Lots of them think that its a question that can be studied by science, and many of them think they have plausible ideas that might turn out to be true.
quote:
The idea in between the lines of course is that what happened had to occur through existing natural processes
That's not "between the lines" that's explicit and its the fundamental idea behind studying things scientifically in the first place. That's what science IS. If you did not believe that something was a natural process, if you thought it was some sort of intervention into the universe from outside and not subject to the natural processes we see at work in the universe, then you could not study it scientifically.
quote:
...the other idea is that neo Darwinian theory is adequate to account for what we see, for that final 'black box' the cell.
What do you mean by "final 'black box'"? The word usually means something that we can't see inside of. We have lots of knowledge about what happens inside of cells.
And yes I'm pretty sure that natural processes such as reproducction, inheritance, selection, genetics and so on can describe how the first living things evolved into the first cells, and how those cells evolved into us and the other life we have around us. If that's what you mean by "neo Darwinian theory" then you are wrong.
quote:
Behe says it isn't. He is right.
But why do you think that? You've not explained what it is about what he writes that makes you want to agree with it, just asserted that you think he is right. Plenty of people have pointed out why he is wroing but you haven't yet engaged in any real discussion with them, just repeated your assertion.
[ 05. September 2011, 16:20: Message edited by: ken ]
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Which says in effect that the fact of something is the reason for it...circularity...Something happened..it had to happen some way..we don't know how..Therefore we assume..
That just shows your ignorance of certain hypotheses. That there are ideal kinds of animals and they merely reflect the platonic ideal. That things are genuinely random. Cloning. And there is a hell of a lot of luck involved in natural selection.
Survival of the fittest and common descent is not circular. It merely seems so to you because there are no other challengers that have lasted.
quote:
This begs the central issue of accounting for the thing's existence.
Oh, you want to talk about abiogenesis. That's a different field. And has about as much to do with evolution as stellar formation has to do with geology. Now stop trying to change the ground rules.
quote:
The idea in between the lines of course is that what happened had to occur through existing natural processes; the other idea is that neo Darwinian theory is adequate to account for what we see, for that final 'black box' the cell.
You know what? There are predictions made of what we will discover with modern biology before we discover them. DNA was discovered with significant help from guessing it was more or less the same in all creatures.
Or are you trying to drag abiogenesis into this argument again?
quote:
Behe says it isn't. He is right.
Behe's evidence and claims when tested all come down on the Darwinian side. It is possible he is right. But only on the same grounds that a stopped clock is. As things stand plenty of evidence has been presented that whenever testable, what Behe says is either in line with contemporary biology or wrong. You know Behe is wrong on just about every point of fact that's been tested. So why are you lashing yourself to the mast of a sinking ship?
quote:
And Louise, the time honoured device of mocking those who disagree is not only dishonest it is pathetic.
Almost as old and pathetic as the tactic of jamming your fingers in your ears at any contrary evidence, sticking to your guns despite it being pointed out that your arguments are threadbare, and taking any authority you can find. At that point the temptation to mock is almost overwhelming because you have demonstrated that you are both incapable of constructive debate and unwilling to put the work in to actually have a clue what you are talking about.
"... blinding me with Science which admittedly is not difficult." Then why the fuck don't you admit that you do not have a clue what you are talking about and aren't willing to take the time to understand it. At that point, why put fingers to keyboard?
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
And Louise, the time honoured device of mocking those who disagree is not only dishonest it is pathetic.
Romans Ch 1 says it all.
I'd no idea that St Paul was fond of Holocaust Deniers, people who claim Jesus married Mary Magdalene and ran off to the South of France, ambitious history professors who claim to have consulted archival sources that don't exist, (and who when asked to show their notes claim they were all mysteriously destroyed in a flood), people who carried out unnecessary and painful tests for financial gain on children with autism (to flog their own proprietary single vaccine), racial supremacists who use pseudo-archaeology to show their culture is superior, racial supremacists who misuse statistics, people who cook up UFO theories to sell books...
I see the outliers a lot because they get a lot of media attention outside academia.
Pseudoscience and pseudohistory - denialism if you want a blanket heading for it - are real problems. When applied to subjects like vaccines, and master race theories they kill people. The academic standards which expose the medical quacks like Andrew Wakefield and the Neo-nazis like David Irving, are the very same standards which you seem to want to miraculously go away and not apply where creationism/intelligent design is concerned because they produce answers you don't like.
And yes, you can practically write a field guide to academic cranks, their psychology and the tactics they use, and no it's actually not very funny when you consider the damage that they do.
The same few cranks get cited over and over again. Ctrl-F finds 454 references to Behe on this thread alone. His stuff has been debunked over and over again. Now it's got to the stage where his partisans don't even bother to try and defend him - they just assert that in the face of all or any evidence that they think he 'wins' or think 'he is right'. It's beyond parody.
There is really no longer any point in trying to engage in scholarly terms. It's clear you don't deal in that.
So we're left with the meta-questions, why in the face of repeated rational disproof and evidence do people insist on parroting that 'X wins' or 'X is right' when it's clear that X does no such thing? How do we deal with denialism? Why is it that the Grail fancier, the neo nazi, the creationist and the anti-vax campaigner, though completely different in the subject of their enthusiasm, do pursue surprisingly similar tactics? Can we learn something from it?
What is it that turns someone into a denialist-type academic? What do they get out of it? Can we help people to recognise them better and to understand that not everybody with credentials is doing good work? Why do people faced with 999,999 honest academics doing good work, go crazy for the one fraud, quack or showman in their discipline?
Is it actually more of a media problem? That the media loves man bites dog/ Black swan type stories?
Is it an education problem? That we're not teaching critical thinking well enough?
Is it something in human psychology (it cant just be religion as the problem goes beyond issues of religious belief) which makes some people cling to a belief in the face of all external evidence?
It's something we need to understand soon, because the climate change deniers could end up killing us all, by voting for disastrous policies. There are enough of them in countries like the US where it really matters.
Maybe we need a separate thread for people who were creationists to explain what got them into it and what got them out of it.
I'm not laughing at you, Jamat, I'm holding my head in horror at the damage these dishonest or crazy or obsessed academics do and rolling my eyes at the way I see the same types turn up over and over. Maybe you should try as an exercise looking at a field where you reject the denialist position, and look at how they work, the tactics they use and what sort of authorities they try to co-opt.
Holocaust denial/ anti-vaccination are non religious ones which are worth studying.
L.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Maybe everyone should get a free copy of Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science" book!
Actually his Bad Science blog and the very wonderful Language Log blog do a very good job of debunking some of the crap that is said about science. Unfortunately it gets everywhere - the BBC is particularly bad (their science programs are often brilliant but their general news reporting of science includes heaps of rubbish)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
/tangent
It's a symptom of journalism everywhere, Ken. Thanks to cost-cutting, you have non-subject specialists covering things they know nothing about, and they have no time to check with people who do know what they're talking about, or to look things up, so basically you just see a lot of recycled press releases, especially on websites.
You should see how bad a lot of history reporting is across the board. Scientists have little idea how bad most of the humanities reporting is and vice versa. I got a rude awakening when I helped with a few science programmes, and discovered that most newspaper reporting of science is not fit to line a budgie's cage, even from so-called quality newspapers. It did however turn me onto more places to find science papers and where to find subject specialists blogging in some fields. But most people don't bother.
L.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Louise:
I'd no idea that St Paul was fond of Holocaust Deniers, people who claim Jesus married Mary Magdalene and ran off to the South of France, [snip]
Excellent post! You made connections that I had never seen before, but once I read them, make perfect sense. I have an excellent book on Holocaust Deniers (by that name IIRC) -- is there a more general book about these kind of truth deniers in general?
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I have an excellent book on Holocaust Deniers (by that name IIRC) -- is there a more general book about these kind of truth deniers in general?
How about How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World A Short History of Modern Delusions, by Francis Wheen. I've looked at it in a bookshop. It's by a journalist, not an academic, so it's pitched at that level.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Hmm, the one-star reviews have scared me off that one, although they do point to others that might be better.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Its basically a fogeyish whinge at the world in general. About half of it is very funny in a grumpy old Tory mumbling insults into his single malt sort of way, and about half of it makes sense. The two halves overlap.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
This news item caught my eye today:
NASA faces "intelligent design" lawsuitv from scientist
I guess the court will have to decide if he's being persecuted because he's a Christian, or because he's a prat. OliviaG
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by mousethief:
[qb] I have an excellent book on Holocaust Deniers (by that name IIRC) -- is there a more general book about these kind of truth deniers in general?
On a related note there's Merchants of Doubt which tracks a group of scientists who have managed to spew unwarranted doubt on everything from the dangers of Tobacco to climate change..
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I have an excellent book on Holocaust Deniers (by that name IIRC) -- is there a more general book about these kind of truth deniers in general?
How about How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World A Short History of Modern Delusions, by Francis Wheen. I've looked at it in a bookshop. It's by a journalist, not an academic, so it's pitched at that level.
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. It's written by a doctor rather than a journalist and pretty much sticks to its topics rather than being a "get off my lawn" rant. Chunks of it are Britain-specific (at least I don't think Gillian McKeith had much presence in America?) and it only handles scientific issues, even missing global warming denialism. But it's as good a book as I can think of.
Wheen on the other hand appears to be writing a "Get off my lawn" rant. Entertaining in places, correct in places.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. [...] it's as good a book as I can think of.
Its a fucking brilliant book. Ought to be part of the school curriculum. And compulsory reading for all journalists. I've bought it twice - when I lost my first copy I got another.
But it is about fake medical crap, not stuff like global warming denialism, young-earth-creation, or similar flat-earthery. And certainly nothing about Holocaust denialism, which is really a political strategy, not an argument about evidence.
Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog is worth keeping up with. Along with the lovely Language Log its one of the nodal points on the online fightback against pseudo-scientific handwaving bollocks. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
[ 13. March 2012, 16:13: Message edited by: Louise ]
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Does something survive and reproduce? That is the arbiter.
Which says in effect that the fact of something is the reason for it...circularity...Something happened..it had to happen some way..we don't know how..Therefore we assume.. This begs the central issue of accounting for the thing's existence.
The idea in between the lines of course is that what happened had to occur through existing natural processes; the other idea is that neo Darwinian theory is adequate to account for what we see, for that final 'black box' the cell.
l.
I think this is the hidden assumption which Nobel Prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson (Cambridge) pointed out in a letter to the Independent (Jan 12 1997). 'In books such as the Blind Watchmaker, a crucial part of the argument concerns whether there exists a continuous path, leading from the origins of life to man, each step of which is both favoured by natural selection, and small enough to have happened by chance. It appears to be presented as a matter of logical necessity that such a path exists, but actually there is no such logical necessity; rather, commonly made assumptions in evolution require the existence of such a path."
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
... Nobel Prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson (Cambridge)...
Oh, look, a letter to the editor from a physicist. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) His Nobel - awarded 1973 - was for his work in superconductivity when he was, remarkably, still a grad student. But that was then, this is now. In this century, he's into telepathy and the paranormal,as well as something called the "Mind–Matter Unification Project". OliviaG
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
I think this is the hidden assumption which Nobel Prize-winning physicist Brian Josephson (Cambridge) pointed out in a letter to the Independent (Jan 12 1997). 'In books such as the Blind Watchmaker, a crucial part of the argument concerns whether there exists a continuous path, leading from the origins of life to man, each step of which is both favoured by natural selection, and small enough to have happened by chance. It appears to be presented as a matter of logical necessity that such a path exists, but actually there is no such logical necessity; rather, commonly made assumptions in evolution require the existence of such a path."
I think he's confusing two senses in which something can be said to be necessary. There is logical necessity. As G.K.Chesterton puts it in The Ethics of Elfland,
'For instance, if the Ugly Sisters are older than Cinderella, it is (in an ironic and awful sense) necessary that Cinderella is younger than the Ugly Sisters. There is no getting out of it. Haeckel can talk as much fatalism about that fact as he pleases: it really must be. If Jack is the son of a miller, a miller is the father of Jack. Cold reason decrees it from her awful throne: and we in fairyland submit.'
In that sense, it is necessary that if humans evolved from the origins of life, there exists a continuous path. But that doesn't mean that it was a necessary fact that humans would evolve.
It wasn't necessary that a path existed from the origins of life to humans; the only necessity is that given we know that humans did evolve there must have been a path.
(Whether the path exists necessarily is another question: Dawkins, from the atheist end, and Conway Morris, from the Christian end, both seem to agree that given the existence of life something like humans is inevitable, while Jay Gould thought that it isn't.)
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
A path as such may well exist. Convergent evolution suggests that the similar physical and environmental factors determine the morphology of widely distant species.
Basically put, why do sharks and dolphins share many of the same morphological characteristics, despite one being a fish and the other a mammal? And to a lesser extent, penguins, even though that's a bird?
Because they have to hunt the same prey in the same medium. Fluid dynamics determines the shape, the type of prey determines mouth and eye location.
I know one of the leading exponents of convergence (Simon Conway Morris) postulates that a bipedal, upright creature with colour binocular vision and the ability to run long distances without tiring (I know, I know, look at most of us now...) were inevitable as alpha predators on the plains of Africa.
(x-posted with Dafyd. Who'd have thought?)
[ 25. March 2012, 09:16: Message edited by: Doc Tor ]
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Forward the New Republic
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
['In books such as the Blind Watchmaker, a crucial part of the argument concerns whether there exists a continuous path, leading from the origins of life to man, each step of which is both favoured by natural selection, and small enough to have happened by chance. It appears to be presented as a matter of logical necessity that such a path exists, but actually there is no such logical necessity; rather, commonly made assumptions in evolution require the existence of such a path."
And ignorant bollocks like that just goes to show that some physicists and philosophers should keep their mouths shut on things they so obviously don't know about.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Ramarius
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# 16551
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
A path as such may well exist. Convergent evolution suggests that the similar physical and environmental factors determine the morphology of widely distant species.
Basically put, why do sharks and dolphins share many of the same morphological characteristics, despite one being a fish and the other a mammal? And to a lesser extent, penguins, even though that's a bird?
Because they have to hunt the same prey in the same medium. Fluid dynamics determines the shape, the type of prey determines mouth and eye location.
I know one of the leading exponents of convergence (Simon Conway Morris) postulates that a bipedal, upright creature with colour binocular vision and the ability to run long distances without tiring (I know, I know, look at most of us now...) were inevitable as alpha predators on the plains of Africa.
(x-posted with Dafyd. Who'd have thought?)
Thanks for this (and to you Dafyd). I'd not come across Conway Morris. As I understand it, 'convergence' is an alternative explanation for similarities in species without reference to a common ancestor. Morris (if I understand him correctly) would put the inevitability of man down to a designing hand.
@Dafyd - yes, I think the point of the quote was to argue that the evolutionary process does not necessarily lead to the evolution of homo sapiens. We could run the process again and get different results.
I'm thinking my way through this undesigned/guided design question at the moment so will be posting some more thoughts for comment. Any input, gratefully received.
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
Thanks for this (and to you Dafyd). I'd not come across Conway Morris. As I understand it, 'convergence' is an alternative explanation for similarities in species without reference to a common ancestor. Morris (if I understand him correctly) would put the inevitability of man down to a designing hand.
Ooh, I'd be careful with that.
It's a subtle difference, perhaps, but an iterative minimum is not the same as active design.
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Ramarius
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# 16551
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Posted
OK - let's have another go at understanding Conway Morris.
Simon Conway Morris (Cambridge University) is, so I'm given to understand, part of a growing circle of popular science writers, (inc Paul Davies, Stuart Kauffman, and Michael Denton), who accept evolution but reject that it is haphazard and that, as the late Stephen Jay Gould put it, if we re-ran evolution, we may well get different creatures evolving.
Conway Morris argues that (although he accepts all life had a common ancestor) not every feature of biological similarity can be attributed to *descent* from a common evolutionary ancestor (the usual Darwinian position). Certain evolutionary features appear in creatures with different ancestors, which means these features must have been reinvented in the natural order multiple times. This is biological 'convergence.' Conway Morris documents numerous examples in a five-page, double-columned index of his book Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
One of the best known examples of convergence is the evolution of the camera-eye in vertebrates (humans) and cephalopods (octopus/ squid). These eyes are both highly complex and almost identical in every respect (the only obvious difference is the neural wiring— backwards in vertebrates with the nuclear layer being in front of the retina, which results in a blind spot). Since, according to evolutionary theory, humans and octopuses had separate evolutionary precursors of which neither possessed eyes at all we have to conclude that in the evolution of humans and squids, evolution required the reinvention of virtually identical camera-eyes 'from scratch' twice. And as Conway Morris shows in his book this is not only remarkable, but also the norm in the natural order.
For Conway Morris, biological convergence provides clear and decisive evidence that evolution is limited in its possible trajectories and is therefore not haphazard. On the face of it, this appears similar to the views of adaptionists who are happy to see the reinvention of certain structures as 'inevitable' in that they are simply the result of the best adaption
possible given the circumstances.
But there is a deeper disagreement. Neo-Dawinians take the view that evolution could take adaptations in any direction, and the results we find today are just the results of the best ones. Conway Morris disagrees. For him the trajectories in which evolution could go are actually quite tightly defined. The definitions are constrained by - as yet undiscovered - natural laws. As a theist he sees these laws entirely congruent with the view of a creator God. Whilst not a proof for God, he sees it as perfectly consistent with theism to say that these laws are built into the created order by God.
That's not to make Conway Morris a creationist. He rejects both creationism and intelligent design (although ID proponents complain that he misrepresents their position). So to take the example of the evolution of mankind, he sees this as the inevitable result of a process through which God intended humanity to be the pinacle of natural order. But this is not the result of special creation, or a guiding hand at work throughout the evolutionary process, but the result of these as yet undiscovered natural laws.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Have you ever actually read any of Conway Morris's books or papers?
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
... Simon Conway Morris (Cambridge University) is, so I'm given to understand, part of a growing circle of popular science writers, (inc Paul Davies, Stuart Kauffman, and Michael Denton), who accept evolution but reject that it is haphazard and that, as the late Stephen Jay Gould put it, if we re-ran evolution, we may well get different creatures evolving. ...
Chaos theory would suggest that Steven Jay Gould is correct.
quote:
Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.[2] In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.
Even a system without "random" events can lead to a multiplicity of possible outcomes, so it seems reasonable that adding random events - a meteor strike, bad luck, mutations, sunspots, whatever - would multiply the possibilities even more. OliviaG
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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
Ramarius - that's a reasonably fair summary, though his position is highly nuanced (I have corresponded with him, but not actually met him in person. He's an SF fan, too).
I think he's right about the inevitability of some structures and morphology. Reinventing the eye across many different classes is the obvious example, in that spotting your prey/predator is such an evolutionary advantage that higher order animals are almost always going to have some sort of light-detecting organ, even if they augment it with other senses.
Our - humans - inevitability is still controlled by wild chance. Initially, one famine, one disease, one volcano, could have taken Homo Sapiens Sapiens out. Morris is suggesting that something like us was inevitable. That SF staple of lizardmen is just as likely. Most dinosaurs weren't very big, occupied many different niches, ate a wide variety of food, etc. We could be them, postulating that if we'd have been hit by that massive asteroid instead of it making a really close approach, those funny rat-like mammals might have come to dominate the biosphere.
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
... Simon Conway Morris (Cambridge University) is, so I'm given to understand, part of a growing circle of popular science writers, (inc Paul Davies, Stuart Kauffman, and Michael Denton), who accept evolution but reject that it is haphazard and that, as the late Stephen Jay Gould put it, if we re-ran evolution, we may well get different creatures evolving. ...
Chaos theory would suggest that Steven Jay Gould is correct.
As does Lenski's work with long-term bacterial evolution. [Official website] In essence Lenski has devised an experiment where he can "re-run" evolution and he does get different results when he does so. The ability to freeze and preserve previous generations is one of the advantages of working with bacteria.
[ 26. March 2012, 14:15: Message edited by: Crœsos ]
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
... Simon Conway Morris (Cambridge University) is, so I'm given to understand, part of a growing circle of popular science writers, (inc Paul Davies, Stuart Kauffman, and Michael Denton), who accept evolution but reject that it is haphazard and that, as the late Stephen Jay Gould put it, if we re-ran evolution, we may well get different creatures evolving. ...
Chaos theory would suggest that Steven Jay Gould is correct.
As does Lenski's work with long-term bacterial evolution. [Official website] In essence Lenski has devised an experiment where he can "re-run" evolution and he does get different results when he does so. The ability to freeze and preserve previous generations is one of the advantages of working with bacteria.
Thanks for the link to Lenski (I'll try and find some reviews - any you can recommend?). Lenski would then support Gould's punctuated equilibrium. What do adaptionists (like Dawkins) make of it?
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Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055
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Posted
Not necessarily. The arguments between punctuated equilibrium and phyletic gradualism are basically about the speed and temporal regularity at which evolutionary change takes place. That's a different question to whether the results of evolutionary change, when it happens, are haphazard.
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"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
I'm pretty sure fossil dinosaur eggs are not transitional.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm pretty sure fossil dinosaur eggs are not transitional.
Then you'd be wrong. Why, what would you expect to see?
We all - as far as we can tell - carry mutations unique to us that are not inherited from either parent. Some are lethal, some are benign, most are unexpressed. A very, very few are advantageous.
The genomes of every living creature are altering with every generation. As it has been since C, G, A and T first met up.
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Forward the New Republic
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Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055
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Posted
No, I'm afraid Dafyd is right. Something that is transitional is in a position between, say, point A and point C. A dinosaur egg, or anything that gets eaten before it can breed, is a genetic dead-end and by definition cannot be transitional to anywhere.
It was a trick question (well, statement).
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"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
Again, no.
Nothing is fixed. Points A and C don't exist except in relation to Z and D.
If you're being pedantic and insisting that the individual egg, because it's fossilised before it hatches isn't in transition, then okay. But it represents transition in the same way that everything other fossil does.
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Forward the New Republic
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Again, no.
Nothing is fixed. Points A and C don't exist except in relation to Z and D.
If you're being pedantic and insisting that the individual egg, because it's fossilised before it hatches isn't in transition, then okay. But it represents transition in the same way that everything other fossil does.
But to be fair to Pre Cambrian 'transition' implies movement. By definition, a dead end isn't going anywhere.
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Again, no.
Nothing is fixed. Points A and C don't exist except in relation to Z and D.
If you're being pedantic and insisting that the individual egg, because it's fossilised before it hatches isn't in transition, then okay. But it represents transition in the same way that everything other fossil does.
But to be fair to Pre Cambrian 'transition' implies movement. By definition, a dead end isn't going anywhere.
What I'm trying to get over is the point that when Creationists witter on about the lack of transitional fossils, they're missing how evolution works (well, duh).
Species are not static, even during equilibrium conditions.
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Forward the New Republic
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
Yes. There aren't any fixed types in nature for fossils to be in transition between. But, really, the word 'transitional' is itself a sign of a misunderstanding - if you're doing actual palaeontology you don't use the word or concept. You only need to use the word to refute creationists who think there aren't such things.
[ 28. March 2012, 08:26: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Rex Monday
None but a blockhead
# 2569
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Posted
So you're saying, Dafyd, that there aren't any transitional fossils. Just like the creationists claimed all aloing!
What's that sound underground? The quote miners approach...
R
(Not that I disagree - 'species' is a useful static approximation to the state of a dynamic population, but not actually A Fact.)
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I am largely against organised religion, which is why I am so fond of the C of E.
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Ramarius
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# 16551
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
Not necessarily. The arguments between punctuated equilibrium and phyletic gradualism are basically about the speed and temporal regularity at which evolutionary change takes place. That's a different question to whether the results of evolutionary change, when it happens, are haphazard.
Is the discussion between the puncs and grads roughly this?
Gould suggested that sometimes mutations happen that have no immediate benefit; but that they nonetheless remain in the gene pool because they are not harmful. They remain in the gene pool and may subsequently become part of a later beneficial mutation. This is "Historical contingency” which simply means, “it depends upon something that happened in the past.”
Gould’s opponents say that the *environment* drives evolution to a particular solution, (so it doesn’t depend on past changes paddling away lazily in the gene pool) and that a mutation conferring no immediate benefit will probably disappear from the gene pool before it is eventually "needed."
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