I think we are getting close to the end of this discussion. Response below the fold.
You may disagree with my point, if you truly understand it, but it cannot be because you disgree with my useage of the term theoretical. That's what you have tried to make "the point" but it aint, and never has been, mine. Call "natural selection" theoretical if it pleases you. I really don't care in the least what you "call" it in that respect. Either way the assertion of it's "existence" is a completely different issue than the issue of defining and explaining the exact role it plays in causing evolution.
I agree here too. Since my point is that theories can be as sure, as reliable, as supported as facts, and the issue of the role of a theoretical construct is a different discussion from it's existence, your point does not detract from mine.
Ok, finally we agree. Now, if we can just leave "natural selection" out of the process of creating novelty, we can perhaps make some progress on the issue I'm trying to discuss---the "mechanisms" by which genetic novelty is produced. Recombination aside (which itself "creates" nothing novel) do you agree that "mutations" are the sole source of genuine heritable novelty? If you say yes, then I will ask you about how the "randomness" part works.
That would almost be by definition, mutations are defined as heritable variations, unless you mean specifically mutations to DNA, in which case I would disagree.
Where, here again, I think we have two different understandings of what epistemology (whether used as a noun, an adjective, or whatever) is, so I suggest we quit using that term. Any meaningful statement of any kind will contain some "notions," but that does not make the nature of the claim itself epistemological (in the sense I think you are using it--which is not my sense). If I say "God is a big dude, probably at least 9 feet tall, who lives in the sky," I'm sure that claim must contain some element which you would call epistemological. The nature of the claim is nonetheless metaphyical.
We still need a way to categorize the difference between 'God is 9 feet tall', which would be a property God would have independent of the surrounding environment, and "God has helped me', which is a statement that only makes sense in a particular environment and is not just about God. I have accepted referring to both as ontological. If you want to call them both metaphysical, I think that is an abuse of term, since it allows the conclusions of science to be metaphysical, but I'm willing to live with it, as long as there is a way we can refer to the difference.
Yes, I do feel this is a very close analogy to the ways mutations are or are not considered random.
Well, in one sense of the term "metaphysical," it is precisely those assertions which are assumed as an unquestioned starting point which are "metaphysical."
It is always assumed that "metaphysical" claims are not subject to verification. In many places in this thread you seem to imply that the starting "axioms" of a theory are themselves empirically derived. This can't be the case.
This is why you don't understand scientific theories.
An assumption according to Asimov is...
At times you have also indicated that you think "scientific theory" is utterly devoid of any assumptions which have not been empirically proven (and at other times you seem to say you think otherwise). What is your stance on this issue exactly?
The assumptions of science include uniformitarianism (reactions that happen today are the same as those that happen yesterday, a million years ago, etc.), the ability to obtain objective measurements, and the actual existence of the universe to measure. I'm sure I could name more along those lines. They are metaphysical assumptions, not subject to verification.
Theoretical starting points like the constancy of the speed of light and the randomness of mutations with respect to the needs of the environment are inferential extensions based upon observation in a variety of conditions. They are not axioms in the sense a formal theory has axioms. They are always provisional.
I agree with your first paragraph. A naked hypothesis with no specific content, such as, matter is made up of atoms, is NOT a scientific theory,
That's not a hypothesis, it was a speculation (now I would say it is a fact).
even though, people may refer to the "atomic theory" of the ancient greeks as simply this. At a minimum, some specific content is require as an essential prerequisite for qualifying as a "scientific theory." That said, I do not think that mere fact that some claim has a semblance of "theoretical" overtones makes it a full-blown "scientific theory," and I take it that you don't either.
I'm not sure what you meant here, so I am assuming it is, 'I do not think the mere fact that some claim has a semblance of "theoretical" overtones makes it a full-blown "scientific theory," and I take it that you don't either'. I would agree that claims with theoretical overtones start as hypotheses. I would agree a claim that makes flat, simple assertion of mechanism is a poor theory in need of enrichment, and thus not a full-blown scientific theory. I'm not sure if that is what you meant.
This whole discussion relates to the NAS pamphlet and their equivocal use of the term "theory" in that pamphlet. I really don't care to dwell on semantics for semantics' sake. But when sophistical semantical tactics are used to mislead, I may take a greater interest.
I see the pamphlet as trying to communicate the idea correctly using language that would be imprecise in a discussion between science philosophers, but is understandable and communicates the idea correctly to laymen with far less exposure than us. I agree "factual" is less than ideal, but it does communicate the surety correctly.
In the next quote, you attributed your words to me. Please be more careful.
aintnuthin said: "Used in this sense, it is a mere hypothesis devoid of any broad explanatory content.
One Brow said :"It's a one-sentence summary of a long list of diseases to which the theory applies, the germs that cause them, the methods the germs have for entering and multiplying within the body, etc."
It could be taken as an (implicit) summary, but it doesn't have to mean that (that is simply the way you would read it).
I encourage you to email Orac at Respectful Insolence, or any other person who writes and thinks about such things, and ask them if saying 'the germ theory of disease is the theory that various germs cause various diseases' is the content of the theory or a summary of such as I described above.
That is the problem with the NAS pamphlet, they don't mean it the way you are interpreting it, but they know you are nonetheless likely to read it that way.
1) I am not the intended audience.
2) I believe that is exactly what they mean by 'germ theory of disease', or theory generally.
That's what they want you to do. They don't even attempt to clarify what they really mean, but they leave themselves an "escape route" if challenged, by claiming that if you take it the way they want you to, then you misread it. That this is exactly what they are doing only becomes fully exposed when you read other literature of theirs.
I have no idea what sort of exposing you think can happen.
As with germ theory, wiki has a generic definition of "atomic theory" which term basically serves to distinguish from the opposite hypothesis:
"In chemistry and physics, atomic theory is a theory of the nature of matter, which states that matter is composed of discrete units called atoms, as opposed to the obsolete notion that matter could be divided into any arbitrarily small quantity. It began as a philosophical concept in ancient Greece and India"
That is one defintion of "atomic theory."
Again, it is a summary, not a definition. I encourage you to email a few physicists who think about these things and ask them.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
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One Brow said: "Again, it is a summary, not a definition."
Sumthin that starts out as "atomic theory is" aint no definition, eh?
Sumthin that purports to summarize nuthin, beyond what it says, really means to refer to many things (call them 1, 2, 3,.....300), which it doesn't refer to, even indirectly, eh?
And, of course, there can be no question, in your mind, that what you, on your own, uninvited iniative, choose to read into a simple sentence is, in fact, what it means and "says." Anyone who understands it differently than you just doesn't understand what words and definitions are the way you tell it. Well, nice to know you're always right, I spoze.
There are two theories with respect to evolution, I spoze:
1. Evolution occurred, and
2. Evolution did NOT occur.
Each of these statements intends, no doubt, to incorporate by implication an elaborate set of reasoning on which those two theories, respectively, are based but which are left unspecified and unenumerated because everyone knows just what they are, without further comment.
Let me ask you, Eric...when Gould says that evolution is BOTH a fact and a theory, do you take him to mean that the very same thing is both a fact and a theory.
Like, he's saying that it is a theory that is fact (because it's both a theory and a fact). I'm guessin you do.
One Brow said: "I encourage you to email a few physicists who think about these things and ask them."
Save me the trouble, whaddaya say? Just forward me the batch of email correspondence, together with their responses, that you've already compiled from you extensive consultation with them, eh?
I quoted wiki: "In chemistry and physics, atomic theory is a theory of the nature of matter, which states that matter is composed of discrete units called atoms..."
Now, I'm curious, eh, Eric? What exactly is it about this sentence that convinces you that the reference to "atomic theory" can only be read as a summary of sumthin else (whatever that sumthin else is)? Is it the word "theory," that it? Would you read the whole sentence differently if it read, for example: "In chemistry and physics, the "atomic premise" is an assumption about the nature of matter, which posits that matter is composed of discrete units called atoms..."
Would that sentence still be a summary, and necessarily a summary?
One Brow said: "I have no idea what sort of exposing you think can happen."
I'll bet you don't! I've been talkin about equivocation, and you've been talkin like you think equivocation is impossible.
Sometimes I think that if you go to a dictionary, and see a word with 4 different meanings listed, you select the one you prefer, and pretend none of the other common/acceptable uses are even in the dictionary. That way, no one could ever use the same word to mean two different things, let alone do so in a fallacious fashion.
"Equivocation is classified as both a formal and informal fallacy. It is the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time)....the fallacious arguer does a semantic shift, slowly changing the context as they go in such a way to achieve equivocation by treating distinct meanings of the word as equivalent."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation
I said: "It is always assumed that "metaphysical" claims are not subject to verification. In many places in this thread you seem to imply that the starting "axioms" of a theory are themselves empirically derived. This can't be the case.
You responded: "This is why you don't understand scientific theories."
Elsewhere you said: "The assumptions of science include uniformitarianism...They are metaphysical assumptions, not subject to verification."
In apparent contrast, you said: "Theoretical starting points...are inferential extensions based upon observation in a variety of conditions....They are always provisional."
You imply that the quality of "being subject to verification" is the difference between an assumption in a scientific theory, is what makes such assumptions non-metaphysical.
How do we verify a concept such as "mass." Would you claim that this is an "empirical" concept? What is mass (apart from a book-balancing, "resistance to acceleration," I mean)? How do we verify the existence of "inertia?" What is inertia, anyway? What is a "force?" How does F=MA even work out without first assuming the abstract components (F,M,&A). These "starting points" are merely defined, they are not something we observe. No one has ever "seen" a force, per se, nor mass, nor acceleration. No one has ever seen "gravity," it is not an object of observation. So how do we "empricially verify" such things?
Is it by first inventing them as concepts, and then using these very inventions to "verify" themselves in application? How could we verify that F=MA without relying on the very notions themselves? Kinda circular, aint it?
If such concepts are not tantamount to axioms, theorems, postulates, or what have you, in a formal theoretical deductive paradigm, what are they?
Is the speed on light "really" constant? Are the postulated contractions of length and time with motion (remember this is only relative motion, not motion per se) real (factual) or merely apparent? The logic would seem to dictate the speed of light only appears (but is not "really) constant. The contractions are only necessary to explain explain why we measure something as constant which is, in reality, variable. The reason light doesn't "appear" to be approaching us faster or slower, depending on the relative speed of it sources, is only because our measurment instruments have changed, otherwise it would not be constant, and not measured as such.
Can the "constant speed of light" be verified, as an empirical matter?
Eric, do you remember the time that you kept referring me to a computer simulation of probablistic outcomes as proof that your mathematical conclusion was right? I said it was irrelevant, and you insisted otherwise, at least for a good long spell.
I said it was irrelevant for (to me) obvious reasons. The issue wasn't about which conclusions would follow from a given premise, but rather about the validity of the premise to begin with. Yet you felt very strongly that the conclusions proved the premises, and served to end all further discussion about the matter. I see that same inclination in your claim that we can be as certain of theories as we are raw, observable facts, ya know?
If I assume that the speed of light is constant, and then work out elaborate mathematical formulae which are consistent with that assumption, how can I use the implications of the math I create to "prove" the assumption? One can build a consistent, highly predictive mathematical and physical model of planetary motion whether one starts with the assumption that the earth is stationary, or not. Neither model can prove the correctness of it's assumptions, as a "factual" matter, by looking at the deductive conclusions the assumptions generate. Nor can the accurate predictions they generate (which you have seemingly said is the "proof" of a theory) serve to "prove" their accuracy.
I think you confuse subject certainty (dogmatism) with empistemologically justifiable "certainty." I find this especially perplexing when applied to "evolutionry theory." What is it about the theoretical propositions (the ones which purport to adequately explain cause and effect) of what you call THE theory of evolution (I still don't know what that is) that you think is indisputable?
To me, neo-darwinism, which has been touted as virtual fact by proselytizing scientists for many decades, is the most bogus puesdo-science to be given widespread support in at least 100 years (string theory may be right up there, though).
One Brow said: "Again, it is a summary, not a definition."
Sumthin that starts out as "atomic theory is" aint no definition, eh?
Sumthin that purports to summarize nuthin, beyond what it says, really means to refer to many things (call them 1, 2, 3,.....300), which it doesn't refer to, even indirectly, eh?
It refers to them indirectly by saying it is the theory that matter is composed of atoms.
And, of course, there can be no question, in your mind, that what you, on your own, uninvited iniative, choose to read into a simple sentence is, in fact, what it means and "says." Anyone who understands it differently than you just doesn't understand what words and definitions are the way you tell it. Well, nice to know you're always right, I spoze.
I try not to hold opinions I think are wrong.
There are two theories with respect to evolution, I spoze:
1. Evolution occurred, and
2. Evolution did NOT occur.
Do you mean the theory that evolution occured and the theory that evoution did not occur?
Each of these statements intends, no doubt, to incorporate by implication an elaborate set of reasoning on which those two theories, respectively, are based but which are left unspecified and unenumerated because everyone knows just what they are, without further comment.
Let me ask you, Eric...when Gould says that evolution is BOTH a fact and a theory, do you take him to mean that the very same thing is both a fact and a theory.
No. Evolution the fact is the measurable change we can see in different generations in a popuation, in different eras of life on earth, in defferent areas of earth today, in the shared ancetry of all life. Evoltuion the theory is the variety of mechanisms and explanation we use to discuss why these aformentioned changes exist.
Your turn: when Gould said that facts adn theories were not different levels of certainty in an increasing hierarchy, do you think he meant that facts are still more certain than theories can ever be?
Like, he's saying that it is a theory that is fact (because it's both a theory and a fact). I'm guessin you do.
You guessed wrong, again.
One Brow said: "I encourage you to email a few physicists who think about these things and ask them."
Save me the trouble, whaddaya say? Just forward me the batch of email correspondence, together with their responses, that you've already compiled from you extensive consultation with them, eh?
Will that convince you? If take the trouble to put together correspndence on the contents of atomic theory, whether the wiki quote is a definition or a summary, engage in a few clarifications, gather up all the responses, and they wind up in here, would you actually change your position?
I quoted wiki: "In chemistry and physics, atomic theory is a theory of the nature of matter, which states that matter is composed of discrete units called atoms..."
Now, I'm curious, eh, Eric? What exactly is it about this sentence that convinces you that the reference to "atomic theory" can only be read as a summary of sumthin else (whatever that sumthin else is)? Is it the word "theory," that it? Would you read the whole sentence differently if it read, for example: "In chemistry and physics, the "atomic premise" is an assumption about the nature of matter, which posits that matter is composed of discrete units called atoms..."
Yes, I would read that differently. Assumptions would be more like to be fact-type than theory-type constructions.
One Brow said: "I have no idea what sort of exposing you think can happen."
I'll bet you don't! I've been talkin about equivocation, and you've been talkin like you think equivocation is impossible.
I don't think the NCSE is above equivocating to some degree for the purposes of simplicity the advancement of ideas they see as scientifically correct. We disagree on the nature of the equivocation more than the existence. I've alreasy explained what I think theywere trying to accomplish with the use of the imprecise word "factual".
How do we verify a concept such as "mass." Would you claim that this is an "empirical" concept? What is mass (apart from a book-balancing, "resistance to acceleration," I mean)? How do we verify the existence of "inertia?" What is inertia, anyway? What is a "force?" How does F=MA even work out without first assuming the abstract components (F,M,&A). These "starting points" are merely defined, they are not something we observe. No one has ever "seen" a force, per se, nor mass, nor acceleration. No one has ever seen "gravity," it is not an object of observation. So how do we "empricially verify" such things?
We verify the concepts by measuring. One of the metaphysical assumptions was that we trust our measurements (I think I mentioned that one). We still don't know exactly what mass is, and we may never know; there always seem ot be deeper levels of understanding. However, we know how mass behaving. We know how inertia behaves. We metaphysically assume that the behavior of mass today matches the behavior of mass yesterday and 4 billion years ago, but that is an unverifiable assumption. The same for acceleration (which is actually a complex entitiy comprised of length and time). We don't have a metaphysical depiciton of what length is or what time is, but we have behavoiral descriptions we trust based on our metaphysical assumptions concerning empiricism. We we combine these descriptions in certain ways, they are acceleration. Force is then described in terms of mass and acceleration.
Is it by first inventing them as concepts, and then using these very inventions to "verify" themselves in application? How could we verify that F=MA without relying on the very notions themselves? Kinda circular, aint it?
The observation that mass, length, time, electrical charge, spin (in quantum mechanics), etc. exist does not seem circular, even if we can't define what they are. I would agree an attempts to define force as a separate entity, and than apply F=ma, are probably circular.
If such concepts are not tantamount to axioms, theorems, postulates, or what have you, in a formal theoretical deductive paradigm, what are they?
Is the speed on light "really" constant?
1) Constancy applies to a given medium. Light travles slower through water than air, slower through air than vacuum. Just to be clear.
2) No one "really" knows. It's an inductive leap based upon observations in differeing intertial conditions. It will be accepted as true because it hasn't been proven wrong, it explains observations previous theories could not, *and* it has allowed us successfully predict behavoirs for experiments not yet run.
Can the "constant speed of light" be verified, as an empirical matter?
There have been experiments, but I don't recall all the details. Here's how one hypothetical experiement might work:
You have a train moving 40mph with a Thrower A on a flatcar. Next to the tracks is Thrower B (they can be automated). When A reaches B, both throw a switch, each switch will fire a gun and turn on a light connected to that switch. The targets for the gun are 6oo feet away, the targets for the lights are further. Our light sensors are sufficiently delicate that we can sense a 40mph increase in the speed of light. The bullets do not arrive at the target simoultaneously, they show the 40mph difference. The light beams will or will not arrive simoultaneously (from our experiemental history, we currently expect that they will).
Would you consider tha an empirical verification? I'm sure the actual experimental history is online.
I see that same inclination in your claim that we can be as certain of theories as we are raw, observable facts, ya know?
I think that difference may more philosopical. If you recall, I did acknowledge I was wrong in the mathematical discussion.
If I assume that the speed of light is constant, and then work out elaborate mathematical formulae which are consistent with that assumption, how can I use the implications of the math I create to "prove" the assumption?
You can't. However, the constancy of the speed of light was an expderiemental result before Einstein derived special relativity.
I think you confuse subject certainty (dogmatism) with empistemologically justifiable "certainty."
I don't. However, that distinction is not relevent to the discussion of certainty in science, because neither facts nor theories can ever rise to the level of dogmatic certainty; both can only acheive epistemologically justificable certainty, which is the standard Gould means by "perverse to withhold consent".
What is it about the theoretical propositions (the ones which purport to adequately explain cause and effect) of what you call THE theory of evolution (I still don't know what that is) that you think is indisputable?
I think that it is not rationally disputable that natural selection (and a variety of ther mechanisms) operates, that species tend to expand their territory when they are able, that barriers arise which can separate members one population to create different populations. These are all mechanisms, all minor theories within evolutionary theory. I don't think we have a complete understanding of all the interactions or even all the mechanisms, or the science would stop. However, there are theories within the big theory that are as certain as any fact can be.
One Brow said: Yes, I would read that differently. Assumptions would be more like to be fact-type than theory-type constructions.
So the word "theory" does seem to be what you're focusing on. What if the sentence I contstructed said "atomic hypothesis" rather than "atomic premise?"
Here's everything they got online at websters re "theory," eh?
Main Entry: the·o·ry
Pronunciation: \ˈthē-ə-rē, ˈthir-ē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural the·o·ries
Etymology: Late Latin theoria, from Greek theōria, from theōrein
Date: 1592
1 : the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another
2 : abstract thought : speculation
3 : the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art (music theory)
4 a : a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action (her method is based on the theory that all children want to learn) b : an ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles, or circumstances —often used in the phrase in theory (in theory, we have always advocated freedom for all)
5 : a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena (the wave theory of light)
6 a : a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation b : an unproved assumption : conjecture c : a body of theorems presenting a concise systematic view of a subject (theory of equations)
synonyms see hypothesis
Given the specific content of the sentences in question, and the introductory elaboration, I see the wiki entries using the terms "atomic theory" and "germ theory of disease" in about the sense of 4b here, i.e.: "a belief, policy, or procedure proposed..." or perhaps 6b, "an unproved assumption" (at the time it was initially proposed).
These are legitimate, proper uses. You seem to be acting as though the term "theory" must always mean an elaborate scientific theory. At other times, you seem to take a much looser approach to defining the terms, too, though.
One Brow said: "Your turn: when Gould said that facts adn theories were not different levels of certainty in an increasing hierarchy, do you think he meant that facts are still more certain than theories can ever be?"
No, I didn't think about that either way. I just saw it as part of the explanation for the distinction he was trying to delineate. Facts are "data," theories are "ideas." Two different things.
I would wager good money that Gould definitely thought that, in general, sense data was much more certain than any theory, just given the totally different nature of the information. But, whatever he may have thought about particle physics, or some other discipline, he very clearly did not think that evolutionary theory was by any means "certain," at least at the time that passage was written.
No rational person will dispute the fact that an apple falls off of a tree. That is mere sense perception (with some inherent interpretation, of course). It's just not even arguable. Any theory is always debatable. Liebnitz, for one, argued vehemently against Newton's theory (and many still think Liebnitz was right about many points). Einstein argued against Newtonian theory too, of course. Many well-educated scientists today argue that Einstien's relativity theory was fallaciously derived, and offer what they claim to be simpler, better theories, which purportedly explain everything relativity does without the relativistic assumptions.
I'm not competent to judge their ultimate claims, but they makes some insightful points in opposition to relativity, best I can tell. Really, I'm very suprised that you think that any theory can be "just as certain" as a fact. I'm not surprised that the average person does, but I never suspected that you actually held that view (as opposed to just playing the devil's advocate from time to time).
One Brow said: "You can't (prove that) However, the constancy of the speed of light was an expderimental result before Einstein derived special relativity.
Well, yeah, which is to say we measured it as being constant, which seemed to pose a paradox. It is the explanation (theory) which we are talking about here as being "uncertain" (or "certain" if you prefer). He was trying to explain or solve that apparent problem, not trying to verify the experimental results. Basically, Einstein posited the speed of light as an absolute, essentially defining everything in the universe as being "at rest" with respect to light. Whether this is a "fact" or merely a postulation that can be put into a consistent mathematical form is still being debated.
Of course the issue here is about what parts of a theory are "empirically verified" and/or verifiable. The term "metaphysics" has a long history in philosophy and has several different meanings there. Here I am just using the term to mean "unverified" premises which are at the core of a given theory.
Einstein's theory simply makes the speed of light absolute by fiat. As I said before, there are other premises which could conceivably generate the same conclusions. He could have posited time as being absolute, and the mere slowing of time alone could have made the speed of light appear to be constant. He didn't purport to "prove" that the speed of light is constant, he merely asserted it as an assumption, from which other conclusions necessarily followed.
Every assumption, such as the ones you have mentioned (e.g., that we are capable of accurately measuring things, etc.,) has some "reasonable" or seemingly "factual" justification for it being adopted. The issue is really whether it can be verified, not whether or not we have some "good reason" for adopting it in the first place.
Something that might, in a different system, be verifiable, cannot be verifiable from within the very system which posits it as a starting point. From within that particular system, it is assumed to be true at all times, and all data is interpreted on the assumption that it is "true."
The "system" can be falsified, as a whole, but that still can't tell you which of the starting assumptions are wrong, or how (they) is/are wrong. Maybe that are all "really wrong." Maybe only one is "slightly wrong." Even "falsification" won't tell you that.
One Brow said: "I think that it is not rationally disputable that natural selection (and a variety of ther mechanisms) operates, that species tend to expand their territory when they are able, that barriers arise which can separate members one population to create different populations. These are all mechanisms, all minor theories within evolutionary theory. I don't think we have a complete understanding of all the interactions or even all the mechanisms, or the science would stop. However, there are theories within the big theory that are as certain as any fact can be."
Well, OK, I know what you're sayin there, but it's really not that specific to say things like "natural selection operates," ya know? I mean, it's not really the theory of evolution. The long-held, but never demonstrated, assumption that major evolutionary changed is caused by natural selection in the "same way" that fluctations within a species population are, is what I would call a "major" part of the neo-darwinian theory. I don't think there's anything "certain" about that proposition at all. I would therefore have to refrain from saying that the theory of evolution which incorporates that premise as it's "explanation" is "certain" or "well-documented," or giving any other such indication that I thought it was simply beyond question. On the contrary, it is the failure, despite a hundred years of attempts, to show that this "mechanism" causes macroevolution that makes it essentially a matter of faith to insist otherwise. I mean, it's possible, I suppose, but "certain?" I don't think so! Homey don't play dat.
One Brow said: "No. Evolution the fact is the measurable change we can see in different generations in a popuation, in different eras of life on earth, in defferent areas of earth today, in the shared ancetry of all life."
I agree with this, but disagree on the "shared ancestry" portion (although Gould probably sees it the way you do). It is obviously a "fact" in some limited sense (e.g., we know that each of us had parents, we know our parents had parents, etc.). But whatever "evidence" exists for "univeral common descent" or "near-univeral common descent," however strong it may appear to be, is still strictly inferential and based upon a number of unproven assumptions.
From my viewpoint, "change over time" is an indisputable fact. The rest is merely a logical deduction from certain (unproven, and seemingly disproven is many intances) premises, such as those which presuppose that similar form, similar genes, etc. implies "common ancestry (such as the teeth--or is is the ear?--of common land mammals implies that whales are descendants of those animals).
The old philosophical/metaphysical "great chain of being" notion, with its postulate of plenitude, would definitely "predict" that every conceivable gradition of biological life necessarily be given existential expression.
"...the principle of plenitude, claims that every possibility is actualized.“The result was the conception of the plan and structure of the world … the conception of the universe as a ‘Great Chain of Being’, composed of an immense, or... of an infinite number of links..."
http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g97814051067958_ss1-58
For more elaboration see, e.g. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/ren.html
Do so-called "transitional forms" serve to "prove" the great chain of being "theory," ya figure?
So the word "theory" does seem to be what you're focusing on. What if the sentence I contstructed said "atomic hypothesis" rather than "atomic premise?"
Than that would be a change to a different occurence of the word theory, and a replacement with a different word, than you offered previously, and not germane to the discussion.
Here's everything they got online at websters re "theory," eh?
4 a : a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action (her method is based on the theory that all children want to learn) b : an ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles, or circumstances —often used in the phrase in theory (in theory, we have always advocated freedom for all)
5 : a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena (the wave theory of light)
6 a : a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation b : an unproved assumption : conjecture c : a body of theorems presenting a concise systematic view of a subject (theory of equations)
synonyms see hypothesis
Given the specific content of the sentences in question, and the introductory elaboration, I see the wiki entries using the terms "atomic theory" and "germ theory of disease" in about the sense of 4b here, i.e.: "a belief, policy, or procedure proposed..." or perhaps 6b, "an unproved assumption" (at the time it was initially proposed).
Why, when discussing scientific theories, would you not select 5, which refers to science in both description and example. I have been referring to 5. Neither the defintiion for the examples of 4 or 6 reference science in any way.
These are legitimate, proper uses.
In particular contexts, certainly. In the context of science, choose 5.
One Brow said: "Your turn: when Gould said that facts adn theories were not different levels of certainty in an increasing hierarchy, do you think he meant that facts are still more certain than theories can ever be?"
No, I didn't think about that either way. I just saw it as part of the explanation for the distinction he was trying to delineate. Facts are "data," theories are "ideas." Two different things.
That was part of his point. However, he would have made that point even without the "differing heirarchies" addition. Why do you think he included it?
I would wager good money that Gould definitely thought that, in general, sense data was much more certain than any theory, just given the totally different nature of the information. But, whatever he may have thought about particle physics, or some other discipline, he very clearly did not think that evolutionary theory was by any means "certain," at least at the time that passage was written.
No broad theory is certain in every detail, and I think you would lose that wager.
No rational person will dispute the fact that an apple falls off of a tree. That is mere sense perception (with some inherent interpretation, of course). It's just not even arguable. Any theory is always debatable.
Any fact is debatable, including whether the apple really fell.
Many well-educated scientists today argue that Einstien's relativity theory was fallaciously derived, and offer what they claim to be simpler, better theories, which purportedly explain everything relativity does without the relativistic assumptions.
However, to predict the observatons as well as Einstein does, their non-relativistic theories get cluttered up with exceptions, conditions, and special cases (much like you could still describe the solar system with Ptolemic astronomy and enough epicycles). I recall one example where time does not slow down, but any clocks that attempt to measure time slow down.
I'm not competent to judge their ultimate claims, but they makes some insightful points in opposition to relativity, best I can tell. Really, I'm very suprised that you think that any theory can be "just as certain" as a fact.
I don't mind if you are surprised. It's good to have an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.
Well, yeah, which is to say we measured it as being constant, which seemed to pose a paradox. It is the explanation (theory) which we are talking about here as being "uncertain" (or "certain" if you prefer). He was trying to explain or solve that apparent problem, not trying to verify the experimental results.
That's one thing theories do, they explain experiemental results.
Basically, Einstein posited the speed of light as an absolute, essentially defining everything in the universe as being "at rest" with respect to light. Whether this is a "fact" or merely a postulation that can be put into a consistent mathematical form is still being debated.
For mainstream physicists, the constancy of the speed of light has proven robust, predictive, and essential to additional properties of the universe. Just think what it means to equations like E=m*c^2. If c is non-constant, pretty much all the atomic theory since Maxwell-Planck gets shelved, and the new theory will still have to explain the results of all the experiements run since then.
He didn't purport to "prove" that the speed of light is constant, he merely asserted it as an assumption, from which other conclusions necessarily followed.
Yes, it was an inductive leap based on experimental results. I fully acknowledge that as the nature of the assumptions of all scientific theories (after you get past uniformitarianism, etc.).
Every assumption, such as the ones you have mentioned (e.g., that we are capable of accurately measuring things, etc.,) has some "reasonable" or seemingly "factual" justification for it being adopted.
I disagree. There are no factual reasons, and probably can not be, for assuming measurments are accurate or the universe operates teh same way today as yesterday.
The "system" can be falsified, as a whole, but that still can't tell you which of the starting assumptions are wrong, or how (they) is/are wrong. Maybe that are all "really wrong." Maybe only one is "slightly wrong." Even "falsification" won't tell you that.
Unless the falsification is of a particular starting assumption. Accelerating an object past c would falsify a particular assumption of relativity.
Well, OK, I know what you're sayin there, but it's really not that specific to say things like "natural selection operates," ya know?
Natural selection is a well-defined mechanism, so I find that statement specific. it doesn't offer a percentge, if that's what you mean.
I mean, it's not really the theory of evolution. The long-held, but never demonstrated, assumption that major evolutionary changed is caused by natural selection in the "same way" that fluctations within a species population are, is what I would call a "major" part of the neo-darwinian theory.
That's a different part of the theory, and less certain, I agree.
One Brow said: "No. Evolution the fact is the measurable change we can see in different generations in a popuation, in different eras of life on earth, in defferent areas of earth today, in the shared ancetry of all life."
I agree with this, but disagree on the "shared ancestry" portion (although Gould probably sees it the way you do).
I find it the only reasonable expanantion for the near-universality of the genetic code, among other reasons.
It is obviously a "fact" in some limited sense (e.g., we know that each of us had parents, we know our parents had parents, etc.). But whatever "evidence" exists for "univeral common descent" or "near-univeral common descent," however strong it may appear to be, is still strictly inferential and based upon a number of unproven assumptions.
You can say that about any scientific fact, including the other two I mentioned.
From my viewpoint, "change over time" is an indisputable fact.
Creationists disputed it for over a century.
The rest is merely a logical deduction from certain (unproven, and seemingly disproven is many intances) premises, such as those which presuppose that similar form, similar genes, etc. implies "common ancestry (such as the teeth--or is is the ear?--of common land mammals implies that whales are descendants of those animals).
It's many things about those animals.
Do so-called "transitional forms" serve to "prove" the great chain of being "theory," ya figure?
I don't see how you can interpret them to show a specific level of spirit is present, but I'm just a silly old atheist.
One Brow said: "Why, when discussing scientific theories, would you not select 5, which refers to science in both description and example. I have been referring to 5. Neither the defintiion for the examples of 4 or 6 reference science in any way."
Who said it was "science?" That's the very issue in question. Suppose I'm a kid, and asked you "what is biology," or "what is alegbra?" Would I be askin you a scientific question? I mean, you could try to give me a strictly scientific answer, if you so chose, but would the question itself be a "scientific" one?
One Brow said: "Any fact is debatable, including whether the apple really fell."
I said "rational person," and of course I meant "reasonably debatable." I'm aware that you could "rationally" argue for an extreme solipsistical position, a al Berkeley, and write 500 pages tryin to make the argument, but the "points" of those arguments are not even literal ones. Even the guy makin em would admit, in everyday life that the apple "fell," given our meanings of fall.
One Brow said: "Unless the falsification is of a particular starting assumption. Accelerating an object past c would falsify a particular assumption of relativity."
We do it every day, don't we? We accelerate a particle to .999 times the speed of light, with respect to us. Of course we are moving within the solar system, the solar system is moving within the galaxy, the galaxy is moving away from all other galaxies, etc. and the electron we are accelerating is moving right along with us in those respect to too, in addition to the acceleration we gave it with respect to the building it's in. Add it all up, and...presto! Faster than light, I tellya! Of course I could not consider that to be the case if I started with the unquestioned premise that the speed of light is always constant.
One Brow said: "I find it the only reasonable expanantion for the near-universality of the genetic code, among other reasons."
Well, the fact that you, personally, find it reasonable, and can't conceive of other explanations which you personally find reasonable, does not make it "certain," or a "fact," does it?
I'm told that over 18 different genetic codes have been discovered (they're rare, but, still....). Do each of these "disprove" common descent? Are they evidence "against" common descent? Do they change your opinion at all?I'm sure they don't, but why not?
One Brow said: "I don't see how you can interpret them to show a specific level of spirit is present, but I'm just a silly old atheist."
Finally we get to the heart of the matter. I share your opinion on this particular matter, but that's not the real point. The point is that for those of with a religious outlook (or even a particular metaphysical outlook--the whole concept was contrived by atheistic greeks, like Aristotle) it is a very viable interpretation, and just more confirming evidence of their "starting point."
It what way do your (unproven) starting assumptions, whatever they are, whether "naturalistic" or supernaturalistic, determine what interpretations are acceptable and what conclusions you will consider "possible?" Do you really think that what you consider "evidence" for your biases is interpreted independently of those biases?
It doesn't take much (or anything, really) in the way of "evidence" to convince me of (or "prove") what I already know to be a fact. Likewise, any novel situation which I encounter, no matter how perplexing on the surface, cannot be inconsistent with what I already know to be fact. Once I know that my worthless brother in law offed some Babe in NYC, then, I don't care if he has 100 people giving him an alibi, I know that they are either lying or mistaken. The only challenge is to figure out the answer (mechanism, if you will) to the puzzling question of how so many people could be erroneously convinced that he was where they think he was.
One Brow said: "One Brow said: "Unless the falsification is of a particular starting assumption. Accelerating an object past c would falsify a particular assumption of relativity."
I disgaree that you can isolate one premise, independent of the "system" itself. Take this syllogism, or example:
1. All men are mortal
2. Socrates is a man.
3. Therefore Socrates is mortal.
Now spoze, as it turns out, that Socrates lives forever. Does that prove (1) that not all men are mortal, or (2) that Socrates is not a man? Does it even prove that is has to be one or the other? I mean, it's possible, aint it, that Socrates aint no man, and that not all men are mortal, either (Socrates just aint a case which proves the latter, that's all).
One Brow said: "That was part of his point. However, he would have made that point even without the "differing heirarchies" addition. Why do you think he included it?"
I don't remember his exact wording, but I thought he was just trying to pre-emptively counter certain common misconceptions, such as that a law is more certain than a theory which is more certain than a hypothesis, with perhaps "fact" being right up there with "laws" in the view of some people. I really don't think the degree of certainly has anything to do with what distinguishes those things from one another to begin with, and I don't think Gould did either.
Talkin bout Berkeley (the philosopher, not the town) brought another thought to mind. Berkeley was basically carrying Hume's insights about epistemology to their full logical conclusions (from that standpoint, his "metaphysics" was really just an epistemological analysis).
A guy like Berkeley (or Parmenides, and his crafty understudy, Zeno, who is famous for his paradoxes of motion), can argue that all motion is illusion. Even so, none of them deny "apparent motion." They just go to great lengths to try to convince you that you are deceived (or at least that there is no "rational" basis for asserting that your "delusions" are true).
Does this sound familiar, at all? I can't help but think of Dawkins, and the many books he has written to "prove" that the appearance of design in nature is simply that, i.e, mere appearance and not "reality." Of course such claims require a great bit of explaining, but, if you will just read closely, the design delusion and the god delusion will be conclusively exposed as fiction by Dawkins.
"Why, when discussing scientific theories, would you not select 5, which refers to science in both description and example. I have been referring to 5. Neither the defintiion for the examples of 4 or 6 reference science in any way."
Who said it was "science?"
Atomic theory, evolutionary theory, germ theory are all scientific theories, and the definition of a scientific theory reflects how they are built.
That's the very issue in question. Suppose I'm a kid, and asked you "what is biology," or "what is alegbra?" Would I be askin you a scientific question? I mean, you could try to give me a strictly scientific answer, if you so chose, but would the question itself be a "scientific" one?
No, but when I say a theory can be so confirmed that it is perverse to withhold consent, I am referring to definition 5 specifically, and not any other.
I said "rational person," and of course I meant "reasonably debatable."
However, many proponents of ID are not rational and do not believe in reasonable debate.
We do it every day, don't we?
No.
We accelerate a particle to .999 times the speed of light, with respect to us. Of course we are moving within the solar system, the solar system is moving within the galaxy, the galaxy is moving away from all other galaxies, etc. and the electron we are accelerating is moving right along with us in those respect to too, in addition to the acceleration we gave it with respect to the building it's in. Add it all up, and...presto! Faster than light, I tellya! Of course I could not consider that to be the case if I started with the unquestioned premise that the speed of light is always constant.
The physics required to make faster-than-light possible and still explain all the experiemental evidence is tricky, exception-loaded, and pretty much destroys not just relativity, but also quantum mechanics.
One Brow said: "I find it the only reasonable expanantion for the near-universality of the genetic code, among other reasons."
Well, the fact that you, personally, find it reasonable, and can't conceive of other explanations which you personally find reasonable, does not make it "certain," or a "fact," does it?
I'm told that over 18 different genetic codes have been discovered (they're rare, but, still....). Do each of these "disprove" common descent? Are they evidence "against" common descent? Do they change your opinion at all?I'm sure they don't, but why not?
They do change my opinon, and are one of the reasons the LUCA is no longer tenable. The differences are good evidences of different starts, the much more prominent similarities good evidence of lineage mixing. Remeber, teh genetic code is basically arbitrary. Among the various versions, the similarities dominate the differences, indicating common sources.
Finally we get to the heart of the matter. I share your opinion on this particular matter, but that's not the real point. The point is that for those of with a religious outlook (or even a particular metaphysical outlook--the whole concept was contrived by atheistic greeks, like Aristotle) it is a very viable interpretation, and just more confirming evidence of their "starting point."
Since it's not empirically verifiable, it's not science.
It what way do your (unproven) starting assumptions, whatever they are, whether "naturalistic" or supernaturalistic, determine what interpretations are acceptable and what conclusions you will consider "possible?"
Lots of ways.
Do you really think that what you consider "evidence" for your biases is interpreted independently of those biases?
I don't consider my biases to be evidenced, necessarily.
I disgaree that you can isolate one premise, independent of the "system" itself. Take this syllogism, or example:
Syllogisms are formal constucts and part of formal theories (definition 6). It is a different thing from a scientific theory.
I mean, it's possible, aint it, that Socrates aint no man, and that not all men are mortal, either (Socrates just aint a case which proves the latter, that's all).
It's possible that evidence which disproves a theory may not disprove a specfic axiom, but its also possible such evidence may. Proving Socrates is an immortal man would disprove the first premise specifically.
One Brow said: "That was part of his point. However, he would have made that point even without the "differing heirarchies" addition. Why do you think he included it?"
I don't remember his exact wording, but I thought he was just trying to pre-emptively counter certain common misconceptions, such as that a law is more certain than a theory which is more certain than a hypothesis, with perhaps "fact" being right up there with "laws" in the view of some people. I really don't think the degree of certainly has anything to do with what distinguishes those things from one another to begin with, and I don't think Gould did either.
I agree with all of that, and more.
A guy like Berkeley (or Parmenides, and his crafty understudy, Zeno, who is famous for his paradoxes of motion), can argue that all motion is illusion. Even so, none of them deny "apparent motion." They just go to great lengths to try to convince you that you are deceived (or at least that there is no "rational" basis for asserting that your "delusions" are true).
Does this sound familiar, at all? I can't help but think of Dawkins, and the many books he has written to "prove" that the appearance of design in nature is simply that, i.e, mere appearance and not "reality." Of course such claims require a great bit of explaining, but, if you will just read closely, the design delusion and the god delusion will be conclusively exposed as fiction by Dawkins.
The difference is that motion can be empirically measured. So far, design can not be so measured. I don't think design will ever be measurable, but I could be wrong.
One Brow said: "Atomic theory, evolutionary theory, germ theory are all scientific theories, and the definition of a scientific theory reflects how they are built."
I agree with this insofar as it is one way to look at them. Again, you seem to suggest that "theory" can only be used in the way you think it "should" be, given the "context" as you think it should be.
My point is simply that wiki wasn't looking at it from that point of view, and they weren't treating the term "atomic theory" in the scientific sense of a full-blown theory in that entry, or at least not in that initial portion of the entry (same with "germ theory of disease"). There are multiple (all acceptable) ways in which to use the term "theory." You seem to think that because the term "theory" is used, it MUST be in the sense of #5. But the context clearly suggests otherwise (especially with the contrast with the opposite "theory" being made as part of the same sentence).
You suggested I talk to "physicists," but what they thought in the abstract would would not be particularly relevant. If there is anyone who could shed direct light on this issue, it would be the author of the wiki article.
One Brow said: "The difference is that motion can be empirically measured. So far, design can not be so measured. I don't think design will ever be measurable, but I could be wrong."
Well, maybe you can "measure" it, and maybe you can't, but that (lack of quantifiablity) is not the gist of Dawkins' opposition. Dawkins readily concede the appearance, measurable or not, and believes it demands an explanation beyond mere "chance." I'm not convinced that "natural selection" can be measured, like motion can, either, but so what?
One Brow said: "It's possible that evidence which disproves a theory may not disprove a specfic axiom, but its also possible such evidence may. Proving Socrates is an immortal man would disprove the first premise specifically."
Well, proving that Socrates is an immortal man would require new assumptions, with respect to that proof, and the whole process starts anew. I just don't see where the falsification of the conclusion can itself tell which one(s) of the assumptions are wrong.
My own damn self, I would go with 2 being false, cause, looky here, I done told ya that all men are mortal. That means that the very essence of manhood includes mortality. An "immortal man" is impossible, by definition, see? Definitions, they RULE!
I saw someone quote Dawkins as having said that the amount of genetic information in a simple bacteria is more than could be contained in a 30,000 volume set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. If a guy could read and comprehend a full volume every day (most can't) he would have to live to be about 120 years old (assuming he started reading around age 10), just to read it all once.
Where did all this information come from, I wonder? Did it just explode outta some accidental collsion between sulpher and nitrogen atoms in a primordial soup, or sumthin?
My math mighta been a little off there, but it's a long-ass time to read all them volumes. Course the more pertinent question is how long it would take a a guy to write (not read) all them volumes. Well, mebbe the question is how long it would take a guy to write them, then another guy to read them, once they were finished. Good long while, I spect, specially if neither the guy doin the writin nor the one doin the readin has learned the language, yet, and aint even got no tutors.
I agree with this insofar as it is one way to look at them. Again, you seem to suggest that "theory" can only be used in the way you think it "should" be, given the "context" as you think it should be.
It's not the context as I think it should be, it's the context that it is. atomic theory is a theory of science, that's the context.
My point is simply that wiki wasn't looking at it from that point of view, and they weren't treating the term "atomic theory" in the scientific sense of a full-blown theory in that entry, or at least not in that initial portion of the entry (same with "germ theory of disease").
In both cases, the very first words after the "is" are "the theory". Since these are scientific theories, the normal procedure would be to use the definition of theory as it applies to science. The wiki article has a talk page, if you want to ask the authors.
I'm not convinced that "natural selection" can be measured, like motion can, either, but so what?
We can measure selection effects overall, and look to see if the type of selection is better prediction by natural, sexual, kin, random drift, etc.
Yes, if you interpret 1 as definitional, rather than as a property, only 2 can be falsified.
Where did all this information come from, I wonder? Did it just explode outta some accidental collsion between sulpher and nitrogen atoms in a primordial soup, or sumthin?
The usual explanation would be that it built up gradually over time.
Of course, the "guy" in question had 4 billion years to do the writing.
One Brow said: "The usual explanation would be that it built up gradually over time."
Yeah, I know. That's the problem. What the hell does that explain? Lotta time...there ya go, then! Like them Rollin Stones done said, and all...."Ti-yi-yi-yi-am....is on my side, yeah it is...."
One Brow said: "The usual explanation would be that it built up gradually over time."
Yeah, I know. That's the problem. What the hell does that explain?
It explains why you only need to add a very small amount of information at any given step. Proto-bacteria multiplied better than once an hour for over a billion years, building up their information a little bit at a time, here and there.
I had a homey tryin to tell me that his 6-year old child, who is 3 feet tall, could dunk a basketball with a 10-foot rim, without help, a tampoline, er nuthin. I said: Well, T-bone, ya know what? I don't believe ya, sorry. That just aint possible.
T-Bone said: I didn't think so either, but we gave him a lot of time to do it. We left him alone in the gym for 12 hours.
I said: Well, OK, then! That explains it, sho nuff. I didn't know he had a lotta time.
This microbiologist from Cornell seems to give a little different explanation is his peer-review article, entitled "Bacterial Evolution by Intelligent Design" in "Chemical Biology," eh? A little sample:
"Researchers should be able to mix and match the binding domains of AHL and DNA of the various LuxR homologues to construct proteins that bind to new DNA sequences that are chosen by the intelligent bacterial designer."
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/cb6003417?cookieSet=1
Accordin to this here article,
"Organisms usually possess mobile genetic elements called transposons that can rearrange the order and presence of any genes on the chromosome. Transposons may play a role in helping to accelerate the pace of evolution.... Most examples of antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria are not the result of a mutation that alters the protein that the antibiotic attacks, although this mechanism can occur. Instead, antibiotic resistance often involves the production by the bacterium of enzymes that alter the antibiotic and render it inactive. The major factor in the spread of antibiotic resistance is transmissible plasmids, which carry the genes for the drug-inactivating enzymes from one bacterial species to another."
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/48203/bacteria/272371/Evolution-of-bacteria
Plasmids and transposons, eh?
Nagging Old Lady: Bucky, why doncha git offa your lazy ass and git to writin them 30,000 volumes, eh? I know ya want the first word to be "the," and ya got the "t" part writ down, so go add on the "h" today.
Bucky the Bacterium: Just shut the fuck up, Girl, and git me another 40, why doncha? Sheeit, I gotz all kinda time to finish them encylopedias, cancha see?
T-Bone said: I didn't think so either, but we gave him a lot of time to do it. We left him alone in the gym for 12 hours.
I said: Well, OK, then! That explains it, sho nuff. I didn't know he had a lotta time.
You leave that kid in the gym for 12 years, and he averages adding 1/500th of an inch each day, then he'll dunk that baskeball before he's 15.
This microbiologist from Cornell seems to give a little different explanation is his peer-review article, entitled "Bacterial Evolution by Intelligent Design" in "Chemical Biology," eh?
There wan't anything in that article on the origin of infomation.
Plasmids and transposons, eh?
Absolutely. Why not?
Bucky the Bacterium: Just shut the fuck up, Girl, and git me another 40, why doncha? Sheeit, I gotz all kinda time to finish them encylopedias, cancha see?
A billion years is a long time, even to a bacterium. :)
One Brow said: "There wan't anything in that article on the origin of infomation."
Yeah, I know, I just had a perverse desirre to throw that in there, because I know you HATE ID for some damn reason, ya know?
Yeah, I know, I just had a perverse desirre to throw that in there, because I know you HATE ID for some damn reason, ya know?
Cool beans.
The inteeligent designers in that article are humans. I'm not not a misanthrope (well, not most of the time).
Many scientists and philosophers, including unabashed atheistic ones, have been highly critical of the Dover reasoning which uses the "not naturalism, therefore not science" rationale to justify the exclusion of ID from consideration. It is a hypocritical, self-serving line of argument in the view of many. Koperski, who we discussed, said this, if you recall:
"It borders on academic incompetence to pretend that science has strict boundaries and then gerrymander those boundaries to keep out the riffraff. Philosophers of science in particular should know better."
I hear you repeatedly assert the "party line" with respect to ID: It's not science, because it has supernatural premises...it's not testable...it's a science-stopper, because you just say "God did it," and that's the end of the inquiry, etc. These are not good reasons, and it just smacks of propaganda to advance them, if you ask me (or Koperski):
"We have examined two bad arguments used against ID. Both are rhetorically effective, persuading teachers and judges alike, and I fully expect to see them in the future. My appeal to those in the academy is this: Let us not use bad arguments as a means to an end....Surrounded by sophists, we are left without a Socrates"
I have tried, unsucessfully, no doubt, to bring you to this viewpoint. I really think that your inclination to treat orthodox evolutionary theory as "factual" is a product of your desire to forcefully refute "creationists," much more than it is reflection upon the possible merit of any arguments alleging inadequacies of the prevailing theory. I think the same is true of the activist scientists who, have, for decades, attempted to utterly destroy stupid creationists with their rhetoric.
As I've said, I'm not an ID advocate, in any literal sense, but I am sympathetic to Aristotle's suggestion that there is some "internal teleology" to biological processes, including those that contribute to evolution. Not because I think, a priori, that it must be so, but in part because I have concluded that the attempts to rigorously exclude that possibility from consideration ab initio have been unproductive in producing plausible, empirically verfied, explanations.
Biology is simply not physics, and living things are of a completely different category than inanimate matter. I guess I just don't see the deterministic, reductionistic, mechanistic, materialistic approach as being adequate for the task of explaining life. Some kinda self-organizing, self-directing abilities of the organisms seemingly have to be in play here, not that I would pretend to be able to identify them or explain how they operate.
I think your characterizaiton of my views is only partly correct. I do believe that ID is not science, but not based on its premises. It is based on its inability to provide an objective, testable means of design detection. I don't think ID is a science stooper per se, however the ID advocates do want to stop science after design detection. They want to claim you can't investigate the designer you have shown to exist, but you can'thave that both ways. If the designer(s) are detectable, they can be investigated.
My opinion of Koperski, and people who believe as he does, is that he shold absolutely maintain those standards in the academic arena, and let lawyers handle the courtroom. The goal is keep psuedoscience out of the classroom, not to show what honorable people we are. No one will stop a scientist from pursuing a testable ID hypothesis due to a courtroom ruling about high school biology. No one will stop a philosopher from supporting ID based on the ruling. If the ID people can't get funding, it's because they have nothing the test. Even the Templeton Foundation, which is actively seeking proof of supernatural influence in this reality, turned them down.
I do see life as being deterministic and materialistic, but I agree that a reductionist and mechanist approach is insufficient, and that the properties of the matierials do create emergent self-organizing, self-directing abilities.
I get the impression that was intedned as a farewell speech on this topic. It has been a pleasure and an aggravation discussing this with you. Hope to see you around on other topics.
One Brow said: "I get the impression that was intedned as a farewell speech on this topic."
Yeah, it purty much was, but it's an interesting topic, so I might always come back to it, ya know?
"My opinion of Koperski, and people who believe as he does, is that he shold absolutely maintain those standards in the academic arena, and let lawyers handle the courtroom. The goal is keep psuedoscience out of the classroom, not to show what honorable people we are."
Well, Eric, this is your first explicit admission that you approve of sophistry so long as you think it will lead to an end which you desire. Of course, I see that in just about every member of the PC enforcement posse. You're far from alone, of course. It seems like most committed advocates on each side of the issue take this attitude. To me it is unfortunate that so many high profile scientists display this approach, in spades. It certainly undermines their credibility as educators, in my mind.
Well, Eric, this is your first explicit admission that you approve of sophistry so long as you think it will lead to an end which you desire.
Really? I must be slipping. I've thought for a long time that what happens in a courtroom, or a high school classroom, is very different from what happens in the academic arena. The goals are different, the process is different, the methods are different, the standard of evidence is different, so naturally how you talk about a subject is different.
To me it is unfortunate that so many high profile scientists display this approach, in spades.
If they are displaying it in their roles as scientists, that is unfortunate.
One Brow said: "However, that's beside the point with ID. The real problem with ID is that is has no scietific theory. It makes no predictions. It is a metaphysical proposition trying to dress itself up as science. It should no more be in a science classroom than materialsim should be."
And I maintain that this is a bogus, hypocritical distinction. The Weismannian (neo-darwinist,) admittedly apriori, premise that there is, and can be, no "direction" to genetic variation is a metaphysical premise which makes no "predictions" either. It "predicts" (by fiat, not demonstration) that there can be no "lamarckian" variation. Design "predicts" that there is design, or some teleology in biological functions. What's the difference?
Even in Weissmannian times, the presumption of randomness was a result of observation, not an apriori assumption. Offspring did not always get bigger, but larger offspring were more successful. Offspring did not always have the correct color, but the correctly colored were more successful. Randomness predicts that we will see offspring both better and less well suited to the environment. What is the presdiction of design?
Further, the empirical observation of randomness is compatible with both the metaphysical position of being undirected and the metaphysical position of design. After all, unless we have knowledge of the goals and intentions of the designer, there is no way to know whether he wants any given species to flourish or perish (and most of them perish). The designer's behaviors could look just like randomness, and if the designer exists and is active, that is how his actions acutally look right now.
As Mayr said, and as I tend to agree, evolutionary theories boil down to 2 types:
1. Neo-darwinism, which excludes, as a fundamental presupposition, all possibility of direction or teleology, and
2. Theories, going by various names, which can be roughly, if not necessarily accurately, summarized under the rubric of "lamarckian," which posit some sort of "directionality," and active participation by the organism itself in the evolutionary process.
If you draw the distinction that way, it's become obvious that #1 is now dead and #2 has triumphed.
Gould thinks a lot of this was done with an inadequate empirical basis ...
As it turns out, Gould was correct, and even the fierce neo-Darwinians had to bow down to the ever-increasing force of real science being done by real scientists.
Gould laments what he called the "dangerous overconfidence" of the neo-darwinists and the suppression of views which (Gould believes) had substance. He notes that what is resisted as a "competing" theory in one generation is, once conquered, no longer even mentioned to the next generation of scientists, with the "teachers" basically pretending as though such alternative theories (and the evidence they were founded upon) never really existed at all in any meaningful sense.
It looks like Gould was overly concerned here, as the supression was unsuccessful. I think he may have overestimated the ability to herd scientists.
It is the very attempt to exclude all competing viewpoints which I find so objectionable. I see nothing inherently "religious" in ID theory.
The real issue is what is scientific about it, not what is religious about it.
Nor do I see it as inherently "supernatural," by any means. One can posit a supernatural agent as the "designer," but that is by no means required.
As long as you deliberately stop your chain of reasoning and insist it can go no further. However, the CSI formulation of ID says the information had to come from a telic source. Unless you accept a infinite chain of natural telic sources, at some point the supernatural has to put information into the system. Meanwhile, the IC formulation requires direct interference at the time an IC structure is created, leaving no trace we can detect. Either way, you have intervention by non-ntatural sources.
In my view (echoed by Woese and many others), neo-darwinism demanded a commitment to very narrow view of what is "real," what is "possible," what types of explanations are "acceptable" and what types of questions are even "meaningful." So narrow as to render it virtually impotent in trying to answer certain fundamental questions. Popper said it was a theory of genetics, whereas as what was needed was a theory of form.
No doubt that was a strong part of it's death.
Neo-darwinism does not even attempt to answer fundamental questions about how new variation and new information arises.
It did answer that, and we have gone over the answer before. If you want to go back to it again, we can.
Do you have any comment on Fisher's position that his mathematical tautology occupied the "supreme position" amongst "laws" in the biological sciences? I mean, they say it can't even be tested, due to confounding factors. What is "empirical" about this approach?
Very little. However, since that position is dead, I don't consider it more relevant to the current understanding of evolution than spontaneous generation.
I said: Neo-darwinism does not even attempt to answer fundamental questions about how new variation and new information arises.
You responded: It did answer that, and we have gone over the answer before. If you want to go back to it again, we can.
I don't call any ole response an answer to a question. If I ask a friend where he is going, for example, and he responds: "None of your damn bidnizz," that is a response, but not an answer.
Likewise, when I ask for an explanation, I don't take any ole response as an adequate explanation. If I ask "why?," then "just because" is not an explanation.
And, needless to say, inadequate explanations are not explanations, even if responsive. If I ask how a friend managed to buy a brand new Mecerdes, the response that he was known to have $100 in the bank is not an adequate "explanation," either.
To say that new information "arises" by mutation or natural selection explains nothing. It could be that no satisfactory explanation for the origination, perpetuation, and expansion of "information" will ever be settled upon, of course. Just because one can ask a question does not mean that a good explanation is available from the person you ask.
One Brow said: "Either way, you have intervention by non-ntatural sources."
Well, problems with infinite regress arise with any supposedly universal assertion, such as "every event has a prior cause," or "all life comes from pre-existing life." The term "non-natural" is basically empty and subjective. I would call whatever is in nature "natural," even if nature contains things that I did not expect to find and that I had previously deemed "impossible."
As I have noted, one could argue that abiogenesis is "supernatural," insofar as it violates the notion (which Lewontin claimed was a "fact") that, in nature, all life comes from pre-existing life.
I said: "As I have noted, one could argue that abiogenesis is "supernatural," insofar as it violates the notion (which Lewontin claimed was a "fact") that, in nature, all life comes from pre-existing life."
I mean, like, if ya wanna go believin that dead things can become alive, then why not believe that Jesus rose from the dead, know what I'm sayin? NAS takes the position that findin the proof that dead things came alive is inevitable. The onliest question is not if it will happen, but only when. Why would they seem so certain of that, I wonder, in the face of the fact, after that many decades of attempts to do so, scientists are left as bewildered as ever?
Faith, mebbe? But faith in what, exactly?
I said: "One can posit a supernatural agent as the "designer," but that is by no means required."
You responded: "As long as you deliberately stop your chain of reasoning and insist it can go no further."
Like "naturalism" does once they get back to the "cosmic egg" in which all the matter in the universe was collected in a speck smaller than an atom, ya mean? What "natural" process caused the speck? What "natural force" caused the thing to just kinda explode, alla sudden, contrary to all known "uniformitarian" princples of gravity?
Well, they just don't go there, of course.
Once ya go and assume one or two thing, then other things have to follow. Like, if ya assume that the earth is stationary, and that the planets always move in perfect circles, well, then, epicyles follow, ya know?
"In astronomy and cosmology, dark matter is hypothetical matter that is undetectable by its emitted radiation....The first person to provide evidence and infer the existence of a phenomenon that has come to be called "dark matter" was Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky, of the California Institute of Technology in 1933...He applied the virial theorem to the Coma cluster of galaxies and obtained evidence of unseen mass. Zwicky estimated the cluster's total mass based on the motions of galaxies near its edge and compared that estimate to one based on the number of galaxies and total brightness of the cluster. He found that there was about 400 times more estimated mass than was visually observable. The gravity of the visible galaxies in the cluster would be far too small for such fast orbits, so something extra was required. This is known as the "missing mass problem". Based on these conclusions, Zwicky inferred that there must be some non-visible form of matter which would provide enough of the mass and gravity to hold the cluster together."
So, lemme see here, sumthin that aint never been seen, and can't be seen is obviously "there" because...why? Because we believe in the "law" of gravity and in it's universal operation throughout the universe, that's why. Well, I guess we also believe in the "virial theorem," whatever that is.
Epicycles, anyone? "A minority of scientists have suggested that the existence of a vast amount of undetected matter is less likely than the possibility that current theories of gravitation are simply incomplete (much like the now discredited theory of ether, once thought to be the medium through which light travels, was overturned in the early 20th century)." <---- The heretics, them! My own damn self, I will believe sumthing that has never been seen exists before I will EVER question our theory of gravity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
This dark matter epicycle aint just no sideshow, neither: "As a unifying concept, dark matter is one of the dominant features considered in the analysis of structures on the order of galactic scale and larger."
This wiki article talks about "observational evidence" for dark matter in a few places. Turns out, though, that what they are calling "observational evidence" simply supplies premises for inferences, not any direct "observation" of dark matter. So, what's more "real" here, eh, Eric? What you see, empirically, or what you deduce from what you think you "know?" Well, for the majority of scientists, I guess that answer is the deductions, accordin to wiki, anyway. Are their conclusions "empirical facts," like fallin apples, ya figure?
Aristotle was right all along, I tellya!
"Data from a number of lines of evidence, including galaxy rotation curves, gravitational lensing, structure formation, and the fraction of baryons in clusters and the cluster abundance combined with independent evidence for the baryon density, indicate that 85-90% of the mass in the universe does not interact with the electromagnetic force. This "nonbaryonic dark matter" is evident through its gravitational effect."
This dark matter shit is impervious to electromagnetic forces, see! It's gotta be the immutable quintessence which Aristotle deduced many centuries ago.
One thing I like about empirical facts is that ya can always make some up. Turns out ya really don't have to make up dark matter at all.
"Some M-Theory cosmologists also propose that multi-dimensional forces from outside the visible universe have gravitational effects on the visible universe meaning that dark matter is not necessary for a unified theory of cosmology."
Multi-dimensional forces! I like the sound of that! Anything that comes from "outside the visible universe" is "natural" I expect, because it's still "in" the universe, ya just can't see it, that's all.
I really don't even follow these court cases about the teaching of evolution in schools. That said, it is my understanding that the Dover (or some other recent) case was all about the insertion into biology texts a statement to the effect that the currently promulgated theory of evolution is not a "certain fact" and that there are certain "gaps" in the theory.
I believe that was Cobb County, Georgia.
I don't think any legit scientist would actually deny these propositions,
Yet, this sticker is only applied to biology texts. No one is trying to apply stickers to physics texts that say atomic theory is not a certain fact, that there are lots of good theories of matter that don't use atoms. If the effort were really about distinguishing theory from fact, you'd want this sticker in chemistry books, physics books, etc. However, the effort is really about attacking evolution, even though shared ancestry is as confirmed as the existence of atoms and evolutionary theory is as certain as atomic theory. Thne proof of this comes from meeting minutes and the like, where the reasons given are invariably religious.
This statement "teaches" nothing about intelligent design, although it does provide access to a textbook IF they should desire a better understanding of it's claims. What's the big problem?
1) Pandas and People is a text full of pseudo-scientific objections and ill-founded attacks on evolutionary theory.
2) Intelligent design is not science, and doesn't need to be brought into a science class.
3) The reason for reading the statement is to cast doubt on evolutionary theory specifically. No one went into physics classes to promote books on Ptolemic astronomy.
4) The school board was acting with very specific religious goals in mind.
5) The statement tries to indicate that the status of theory means evolution can't be certain, which is false.
That's off the top of my head.
What is this fight really about? Scientists also want to prevent discussion of ID by students with their families, too, that it?
Probably some scientists do, but the position of the NCSE, AAS, etc. is to encourage such communication. However, Public schools officials should not be reading materials for the purpose of supporting religious beliefs. That's what happened here.
Students should not be allowed to "keep an open mind" about all theories (including ID theory)?
What is ID theory? Please name one mechanism or explanation in ID theory. to my knowledge, ID has only speculations.
The statement may go a little too far in asserting that there is "no" evidence for certain aspects of darwinian theory, because there is always some "evidence" for just about anything (including God), depending on interpretation.
If it had not accumulated substantial evidence, including proven predictive power, it would not be a theory at all.
If it is simply the "no evidence" portion that they find objectionable, why didn't their lawsuit simply try to correct that? What is their opposition "really" all about, I wonder?
To answer that, you first have to ask what the speech was "really" all about, don't you think?
To say that new information "arises" by mutation or natural selection explains nothing.
I'm not claiming that is the whole story, of course, but what is left unexplained, to you?
I would call whatever is in nature "natural," even if nature contains things that I did not expect to find and that I had previously deemed "impossible."
So, you would rule out the supernatural be definition, or claim there can be nothing that is both?
I mean, like, if ya wanna go believin that dead things can become alive, then why not believe that Jesus rose from the dead, know what I'm sayin? NAS takes the position that findin the proof that dead things came alive is inevitable. The onliest question is not if it will happen, but only when. Why would they seem so certain of that, I wonder, in the face of the fact, after that many decades of attempts to do so, scientists are left as bewildered as ever?
Scientists are proceeding with abiogenesis research under the assumption of uniformitarianism. Jesus' supposed resurrection would violate uniformitarianism. that's why the first can be science, and the second can't. Note I'm saying that makes either point true or false.
Like "naturalism" does once they get back to the "cosmic egg" in which all the matter in the universe was collected in a speck smaller than an atom, ya mean? What "natural" process caused the speck?
Our understanding of physical laws breaks down so that we can't even really know if the speck was there. However, there are lots of speculatuions, such as the Tegmark Sea. We will probably have no way ever testing them, so they'll never really be science.
Well, they just don't go there, of course.
Good scientists understand science has limits.
So, lemme see here, sumthin that aint never been seen, and can't be seen is obviously "there" because...why?
Because the assumption of uniformitarianism requires an explanation for this effect. Dark matter will not be a fact until it the theory that comes with it shows predictive value. It's just a popular speculation.
"Some M-Theory cosmologists also propose that multi-dimensional forces from outside the visible universe have gravitational effects on the visible universe meaning that dark matter is not necessary for a unified theory of cosmology."
Multi-dimensional forces! I like the sound of that! Anything that comes from "outside the visible universe" is "natural" I expect, because it's still "in" the universe, ya just can't see it, that's all.
It's all specualtion and hypotheses until it can be tested.
1) Pandas and People is a text full of pseudo-scientific objections and ill-founded attacks on evolutionary theory. ASSUMING THAT'S TRUE, WHICH I DON'T, SO WHAT?
2) Intelligent design is not science, and doesn't need to be brought into a science class. THEY ARE KEEPING IT OUT OF THE SCIENCE CLASS, THEY SAY.
3) The reason for reading the statement is to cast doubt on evolutionary theory specifically. No one went into physics classes to promote books on Ptolemic astronomy. YEAH, SO?
4) The school board was acting with very specific religious goals in mind. ASSUMING THAT'S TRUE, SO WHAT? DOES THE BRIEF STATEMENT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT RELIGION?
5) The statement tries to indicate that the status of theory means evolution can't be certain, which is false. HOW DOES IT "TRY TO INDICATE" THAT?
One Brow said: "What is ID theory? Please name one mechanism or explanation in ID theory. to my knowledge, ID has only speculations."
Well, assuming that's true, then if any student wanted to read it, I guess they would see that. What's the problem? Suppose the school library has a bible in it, a copy of the Koran, a copy of the Tanakh, and copies of other "holy books" of various world religions and the kids read them. Aren't they free to form their own conclusions, on their own (or with communication between them, their friends, and family)? Or should all so-called "religious" books be banned from school libraries too, ya figure? Any other "textbooks" which you disapprove and the existence of which should be concealed from impressionable teenagers? Any novels you don't like ya wanna put on the list?
One Brow said: "Good scientists understand science has limits."
So do good theists. Acquinas had a very good answer to the question of what moved the "Prime Mover," to wit"
"That's a mystery."
My point about the dark matter thing is probably obvious, but can you see how much of "scientific theory" is dependent upon inference from premises, which are themselves a product of inferences from premises which were themselves inferences from...
That whole wiki article is full of references to mathematically based formulae as providing "evidence" for dark matter. Is this really just "observation?" Now we have special "kinds" of matter, and there are special "kinds" of that kind, such as hot, warm, and cold dark matter---all created ad hoc to save the theory of gravity. Of course, no one can prove that the theory of gravity needs any saving--if not, unseen "special" matter MUST exist. Pick your poison: assume the existence of undetectable things (like God is) to explain it all, or give up on your pet theory. A real Hobson's choice there. No we must know how Kepler felt.
One Brow said: "I'm not claiming that is the whole story, of course, but what is left unexplained, to you?"
The question is about the development of highly complex, highly interdependent information, all of which seems to serve teleological ends.
If I asked you how the old apple PC's with 64k memory got developed into modern PC's you could of course simply tell me changes (mutations) were made since then.
Not much of an answer. If you went on to assert that these "changes" were the result of someone going into an apple pc and randomly making changes to the existing information, it would go from an "inadequate" explanation to a nonsensical one.
By "randomly making changes" in that post, I mean adding nothing, just changing the arrangement of the existing hardware. Of course, the changes in the available software would need to be explained too.
I mean, like, if I start with a bacterium, and then just started rearranging the gene sequences, could I expect to eventually turn it into a whale, without adding information, ya think?
One Brow said: "Scientists are proceeding with abiogenesis research under the assumption of uniformitarianism."
I see it as precisely the opposite. Lewontin has already informed us that it is a "fact" that all life comes from life. Abiogensis would be a gross, one-time (well, maybe thousands of times, but, either way) violation of that "law." That aint uniform operation of the law, is it?
I suspect that you are being "uniformitarian" in your devotion to the premise that blind mechanistic, forces, acting on matter in motion in the void, "created" all that there is, even if that entails the violation of the premise that those forces act uniformly at all times and places. If the latter were true, we should probably expect new life to be poppin up every day.
Simplistic examples like the one I'm about to give have no doubt been advanced thousands of times, but I don't feel like looking for a ready-made example, so....
Suppose I type out a one-paragraph dirty joke on a piece of paper. Now then....
If I repeatedly make a xerox copy of that page, then make a copy of the copy, then a copy of that copy, etc., there will come a time when the cumulative effect of the slight imperfections in each new copy (copying errors) make the whole thing illegible.
If I add to that process the act of just randomly taking a single letter from one word and changing it to another letter before I make each copy, it will eventually become not only illegible, but also incomprehensible.
What it will not do is turn into a copy of "War and Peace." To begin with, it's just not long enough. I would have to add a whole bunch of paragraphs to the original, at a very minimum. That would not be mere "variation," it would be the creation of entirely new information. An imperfect xerox machine can't add that.
I said: "I would call whatever is in nature "natural," even if nature contains things that I did not expect to find and that I had previously deemed "impossible."
You asked: "So, you would rule out the supernatural be definition, or claim there can be nothing that is both?
No, I aint sayin that--not sure why you think I am. Without knowing what all exactly is or is not "in nature" (without trying to define "nature," right now), it would seem that whatever is "in nature" could properly be called "natural."
It would only be if I knew with confidence the true ontological status of everything conceivable that I would feel justified in sayin what is, and what aint, "natural."
To me, human intelligence (such as it is) is "natural" because it exists in nature. I would therefore conclude that "intelligence" is "natural," not un-natural, or supernatural. My point was that calling something "supernatural" is a falible, subjective human judgment. Pantheism says God permeates all of nature, and all natural things. If pantheism is true, aint sayin it is, then God must be natural. The statement that something is "supernatural" is empty of empirical content and merely reflects one's ontological (pre-)judgment. It serves to express the brand of metaphysics which the speaker adheres to.
Although we (mostly I) have made many pages of posts on "evolution," that has not really been my topic of main interest at any time. We have also discussed epistemology, the philosophy of science, authoritarian indoctrination of belief systems, dogmatism, etc., which are all actually of more interest to me.
We have also mixed these topics up between different thread titles, and I start forgettin which one is bein discussed where, on any particular topic.
Anyway, back to dark matter for a second. Dark matter is posited to make our theory of gravity work out right. I take it from these articles that Newton's approximation is sufficient to pose the problem--no need of relativism. But, if 3/4 of the matter in the universe is dark matter, and if it is undetectable, why would we think Newton's formula is accurate? I mean, he was assuming that "dark matter" did not exist when he made his calculations, right? But how could he know that undetected dark matter was not influencing the results at the very time that he was attributing his measurements to be the product of only visible mass?
What is the starting assumption here? If he had started by assuming that 3/4 of all "gravitional attraction" was due to undetected "mass" then his formula would have been quite different, wouldn't it? On the other hand, if he had assumed the existence of dark matter, then he wouldn't need to invent dark matter of make his equations work out right. It's all kinda interdependent and circular, aint it?
How do we know what the "mass" of the sun, or mars, is? It's calculated (at least in part) by assuming newton's law is accurate, aint it? Maybe all mass calculations are, and always have been, off because the effect of "dark matter" was ignored. How much dark matter was affecting these mass calculations? 10%? 20%? 50%? Hard to say, because you can't detect it.
The point is, again, that your mathematical formulas are only as good as the assumptions used to derive them. We can solve the equation x + 3 = 10 because we know two of the three terms. The answer is 7. But suppose that one of those terms is wrong, and the equation should be x + 3 =12. Now x = 9. Which value of x is correct, 7 or 9? Well, it all depends, don't it? It all really just comes down to a tautology like this: IF one term (of 2) is 3 and the sum is 10, THEN x = 7. Symbolically: x + 3 = 10, if, and only if, x + 3 = 10.
How about this equation? x + y = z? What is the value of x in that one? Can't really say, can we, because we are not presuming to know 2 of the 3 terms. I can't even use x + y = 10 to conclude that x =7 and y = 3. I can't conclude anything until I assume some things. And, once I assume some things, I can't use the implications of those assumptions to prove those very assumptions.
So, now, assume a few things (which most scientists now do):
1. About 95% of the mass/energy in the universe consists of "dark" mass energy, which cannot be detected, and
2. This dark stuff is NOT uniformly distributed, some galaxies are full of it, some have none.
Now, starting with those assumptions, and given what you can see, give me a formula which desribes how all mass (including dark) interacts with all other mass.
Ya can't, can ya? How can you calculate anything which involves matter without knowing the quantity of the matter at any given location?
So, ya can't calculate a formula for gravity, if ya have dark matter. We do have dark matter. Therefore our formula for gravity can't be formulated. But, wait, it's our formula for gravity that tells us we have dark mattter....hmmmm.
If you want to ridicule religous people for inventing some deux ex machina to resolve any apparent contradiction in their explanations, why not hold scientists to the same standard? These guys will come up with any and every kinda new, exotic "particle," never seen by anyone, to "explain" just about every contradiction their theory generates, ya know?
There is no absurd speculation, whether it's 11 dimensions, alternate, unseen universes which are interacting with, and affecting ours, or what have you, which they are too timid to propose as representing "reality."
They are doin the old scholastic metaphyiscians proud, I tellya what! I bet they have now calculated, with final precision, how many angels can dance of the head of a pin, ya know?
I said: "I would have to add a whole bunch of paragraphs to the original, at a very minimum. That would not be mere "variation," it would be the creation of entirely new information."
This is the point I was making after reading the website you referred me to, where some blogger was using a mathematical theorem to "prove" that random mutations can add "new" information. Although the word "new" is often used to designate a mere substitution or difference (e.g.: "I just got a new truck, it's a '49 Hudson"), that is not "new" is the sense of newly created. Even though my car is then different, it is not really a "new" car just because I replace the worn-out floormats, either.
I don't want to repeat myself unnecessarily, Eric, but I repeatedly get the feeling that you do not understand the question I'm trying to pose. That website did NOT address it, best I could tell.
Woese and two colleages from the Physics department at the U of I, claim that the universality of the genetic code can NOT be explained (as hence could not be "evidence for") by common descent.
"the evolutionary dynamic that gave rise to translation is undoubtedly non Darwinian...biologists have seen the universality of the code as either a manifestation of the Doctrine of Common Descent or simply as a “frozen accident”. Viewing universality as following from common descent
renders unthinkable the notion explored here that a universal code may be a necessary pre-condition for common ancestry—indeed even for life as we know it...
The genetic code could well be optimized to a greater extent than anything else in biology, yet is generally regarded as the biological element least capable of evolving...the unambiguous conclusion is that vertical descent on its own is insufficient to explain the universality of the genetic code....Evolution of the genetic code, translation and cellular organization itself follows a dynamic whose mode is, if anything, Lamarkian."
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/q-bio/pdf/0605/0605036v1.pdf
What exactly serves as "evidence" for common descent? Well, just about anything, if you already know that common descent is a fact, I spoze. Like similar kinda teeth in a dog and a whale, for example, ya know?
This here guy might give ya some more blog fodder, eh, Eric? Gotta be some kinda creationist IDer, I figure.
"With the exception of minor deviations occasionally discovered, the same DNA code is found in all species. And that code is so efficient it is sometimes labeled as “optimal.” The near universality of the code means it was present in evolution’s purported universal common ancestor...It would be too unlikely (even for evolutionists) for the identical unique code to have evolved independently in the different evolutionary branches...evolutionists must explain the universality of the code as arising from a common ancestor, not from the repeated evolution of the code...
...evolutionists must say that evolution somehow created such an efficient code very early in the history of life. But evolutionists typically refer to these early stages of life as elementary, inefficient, crude and so forth...But if life was elementary and crude, how did such an optimal code arise—a code that is remarkably suited for the more advanced cells that had not even yet arisen?
Furthermore, the fact that the DNA code is so efficient means that evolution performed a tremendous search operation. Only by creating an abundance of such codes could such a good one be found. Remember, evolution is a blind process.
But while evolution must be very adept at creating new codes, it must paradoxically also be unable to create new codes. The code must be frozen, otherwise it would not be universally shared amongst the species. So evolutionists must say that at one time evolution was adept at evolving the code, but later it became inept at evolving the code.
If the code is so difficult to evolve these days, why was it so easy to evolve back then? Again, evolutionists often appeal to the mythical chaos of early life to explain why the code was once so malleable."
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/
Where does the new information come from.
The random (with respect to the needs of the organism) variations. If you take a string of code and alter it randomly, you tend to increase the amount of Komolgorov-Chaitan information on the string. The vast majority of fully randomized strings have teh highest information content, and are the least compressible.
Woese and others say it can't be evidence for common descent, because it could not have arisen via common descent.
I can see Woese saying there are other explanations besides common descent, although I am unaware of this being more than speculation. There have been experiements that code reduces the effects of random mutaion compared to a random code, but I'm not aware of any study that says a wholesale, across-the-board substitution between two letters would make the code less functional. If the four bases are interchangeable (and I am unaware of any reason to think otherwise), that's 24 different codes you can get just by such an interchange. Yet all life holds to one version of those 24.
At any rate, I would say Woese saying it did not come from common descent, because he interpreted common descent to mean a LUCA and did not believe it occurred at all. A LUCA would be a very good explanation for universality, if the LUCA existed. Shared ancestry also explains universal code without the LUCA, and shared ancestry is a feature of the net resulting from HGT.
A theist could easily claim that the near universality of the code is proof that it was created by God. Why not believe that?
The problem with invoking God is that it could explain any imagined result.
For the Marxist, every event that occurs just provides further proof of the truth of Marxism. For the Freudian, every act that occurs just provides further proof of the Freud's psycholanalytic theory. For the darwinist......
The discovery of Cambrian rabbits disproves "darwinism".
It's like if I needed to get around faster, "evolution" would find put a carburator on my porch, ... Everything I need always is--it just kinda "appears," ya know?
That sounds like magic. Evolution is much more like "I need a carburator, and this old hose already has a couple of lines feeding into it. It's not a great carburator, but it's the best I got for now." Jury-rigging is one of it's hallmarks.
... I spoze my next chile will have one. A couple more generations, and every person on the planet will have one, because it will be an "advantage," ya know?
That's Lamarckism.
One Brow said: "If you take a string of code and alter it randomly, you tend to increase the amount of Komolgorov-Chaitan information on the string. The vast majority of fully randomized strings have teh highest information content, and are the least compressible."
Say what!? I aint got no clue what that even means, but I know it's a bunch of crap if you're trying to suggest that more (meaningful) information will be available. I'm sure you have more characters with a string of 1,000,000 nonsensical letters strung together than with only 999,999, but it aint information. Meaning requires organization and structure, not random appearance.
Btw, Eric, I see them fools over at Jazzfanz are trying to disparage Sloan's 2004 COY award from Sportin News as something meaningless from an "obscure" rag, eh? Why doncha straighten they sorry ass out, eh? All (and only) NBA coaches vote for that award, not a buncha sportwriters from LA, NY, Chicago, etc. It's much better than what someone at Jazzfanz called the "official NBA award" (they aint no such thang).
One Brow said: "The problem with invoking God is that it could explain any imagined result."
Well, ya know, the same could be said for the claim that "it happened gradually," except that it still doesn't explain anything. Mount Rushmore was carved out gradually, to it does help explain that (no one would believe it was created in 10 seconds). But mere gradualness would not create Mt. Rushmore.
Nietzsche had a fanciful notion he called the "eternal return," which supposed that the universe had been created and destroyed an infinite number of times, and would continue in that cycle for eternity. He figured that unlimited time would guarantee that everything that happened once would happen again (including every second of his own existence, in identical duplication). Even all eternity and infinity would not produce that twice, unless there was some direction to it. Just as there could conceivably be infinite time, there are also infinite possibilities--no reason to expect a repeat performance, ya know?
Eric, I come to see more and more that you can't even begin to comprehend the question. You simply do not even begin to question the orthodox "explanations."
I take a microscopic bacterium, with its relatively simply DNA code, genome, etc., and if I just mutate that DNA enough, I will have a whale, eh? Yeah, right. Millions of bacteria can fit on the head of a pin, right? Well, there's millions a whale, right there, and them could feed a shitload of eskimoes, see? Just gimme a test tube, I tellya!
Say what!? I aint got no clue what that even means, but I know it's a bunch of crap if you're trying to suggest that more (meaningful) information will be available.
More information of every type, useful, neutral, or detrimental, will be available, very little of it will be useful. Of course, naurtal selection tends to remove the detrimental information and presever the useful stuff.
I'm sure you have more characters with a string of 1,000,000 nonsensical letters strung together than with only 999,999, but it aint information.
Why not?
Meaning requires organization and structure, not random appearance.
Natural selection does not care about meaning, it only cares about usefulness.
Btw, Eric, I see them fools over at Jazzfanz ...
I posted in your quote, since you expressed it as eloquently as I could.
Well, ya know, the same could be said for the claim that "it happened gradually," except that it still doesn't explain anything.
You are correct. 'It happened gradually' could describe the explanaiton, but it is not the explanation itself.
He figured that unlimited time would guarantee that everything that happened once would happen again (including every second of his own existence, in identical duplication). Even all eternity and infinity would not produce that twice, unless there was some direction to it. Just as there could conceivably be infinite time, there are also infinite possibilities--no reason to expect a repeat performance, ya know?
Infinity is a tricky thing. It's generally hard to discuss in probabalistic terms unless you have some very restrictive conditions. If the universe were to repeat an infinite number of times, and there an infinite number of possibilities, I have no clue how often prior occurnece be be re-enacted. Here, we don't even know how large the respective infinite sizes are.
Eric, I come to see more and more that you can't even begin to comprehend the question. You simply do not even begin to question the orthodox "explanations."
Just because I can explain them does no tmean I have no questions. My questions don't seem ot match yours. though.
I take a microscopic bacterium, with its relatively simply DNA code, genome, etc., and if I just mutate that DNA enough, I will have a whale, eh?
There are many other tings to change besides the DNA, or course. Outside of that, what is the inherent limitation to stop it from happeneing?
One Brow asked: "There are many other tings to change besides the DNA, or course. Outside of that, what is the inherent limitation to stop it from happeneing?"
1. Before I even start, I find the "no known inherent limitation" claim to be virtually meaningless. It's possible there's an omnipotent God, who has no inherent limitations, but so what? Even assuming she could do anything she wanted, what does that add (beyond mere possibility) to a claim that X or Y was in fact done? Such a God "could" have placed invisible 4-headed unicorns on the planet Jupiter, for example, but does that render the claim "more likely?"
2. The inherent limitations to mere random mutations (to DNA) gittin the job done seem obvious, in any event. New information must be brought in from an external source of variation. Mere butchering of the limited information there to begin with cannot turn it into a whale.
3. I aint sayin life didn't start out with bacteria and end up where it is now without divine intervention. Just sayin that random mutation to DNA (the venerable neodarwinist claim) aint gunna git it done. If some asks me what 47 is to the 33rd exponential power, I aint gunna have no clue. Even so, if the guy next to me asks "Is the answer 2?," Imma say "Hell no, fool." Know what I'm sayin?
One Brow said: "I posted in your quote."
Well, OK, then, good work! I see one of them chumps at least had the decency to retract his claims.
Don't nobody come round me dissin no Jerry Sloan, without but they git some retaliation, like, BIGTIME, ya know?
1. If you are using an argument from incredulity ('how can a bacterium give rise to something like a whle?'), I think it's fair to ask what the credulity barrier is.
2. Why does the external information source need to be one that causes variation, as opposed to one that selects useful information among variants?
3. We both agree that the neo-Darwinist paradigm is insufficient.
Phil Jackson, he might be a dumbass, and all, but he aint completely stoopid, eh, Eric?:
"Jackson, like all coaches in the league, has a ballot for a secondary coaching award, the Sporting News': "It's still sitting on my desk," he said. "I haven't made a decision - but I've voted for Jerry for six years in a row."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20040329/ai_n11448390/
One Brow asked: "2. Why does the external information source need to be one that causes variation, as opposed to one that selects useful information among variants?"
Well, it could be that there is a vast amount of hidden (to us) genetic information in every bacterium that allows "it" to select from millions of conceivable variations. If that were the case, then "new" information would not be needed, just new combinations of existing information.
But your question still displays the same assumptions as always, i.e., that the needed variation is just there, or will be there (otherwise it can't be selected from). But that's the question, to be answered, not begged. IF you have variation, THEN you can select, sure. It's it "IF" part that I'm focusing on here.
I said: "I'm sure you have more characters with a string of 1,000,000 nonsensical letters strung together than with only 999,999, but it aint information."
You asked: "Why not?"
Because more data aint more "information." That aint what information means.
"Main Entry: in·for·ma·tion
1. the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence."
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/information
Meaningless strings of letters are not "knowledge or intelligence," even assuming they are "communicated" by/to a transmitter/receiver.
The term "information" can be used in other ways, I spoze, but that aint the way I'm usin it. If there is no meaning, then there is no "information" in the sense I'm using it in that (and prior) post(s).
One Brow said: "If the universe were to repeat an infinite number of times, and there an infinite number of possibilities, I have no clue how often prior occurnece be be re-enacted. Here, we don't even know how large the respective infinite sizes are."
Well, tellya what, eh, Eric? You start countin, startin at 0, by 1/1,000,000ths (.0000001, .0000002, etc.), and, also startin at 0, I'll count by millions (1 million, 2 million, etc.) and we'll see who runs outta numbers first, eh? How can one infinity be larger than another?
That ho, she says to me, she says: "Aint, gimme dat $100 bill and my love for you will be infinite!"
I sez ta her, I sez: "Dat aint gunna cut it, Darlin...I wants infinity and a lil mo, see?"
Millions of generations of "random mutations" don't seem to generate much change, eh? Gould on the topic:
"The history of most fossil species [demonstrates] stasis - most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless...Every paleontologist knows that most species don't change. That's bothersome ... brings terrible distress. ... They may get a little bigger or bumpier. But they remain the same species and that's not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis... [T]he overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record, best left ignored as a manifestation of nothing (that is, nonevolution)."
http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/origins/quotes/Stasis.html
But your question still displays the same assumptions as always, i.e., that the needed variation is just there, or will be there (otherwise it can't be selected from). But that's the question, to be answered, not begged. IF you have variation, THEN you can select, sure. It's it "IF" part that I'm focusing on here.
So, you understand and agree that mutations and similar mechanisms create variation by changing the information available, and that once there are variations they can be acted upon from the outside, AFAICT.
"Main Entry: in·for·ma·tion
1. the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence."
...
Meaningless strings of letters are not "knowledge or intelligence," even assuming they are "communicated" by/to a transmitter/receiver.
Why would you think strings of DNA (or protiens, or any other biological purveyor of information) contains the results of any knowledge or intelligence? If you intend to use information in that sense only, you are begging the question. I submit biological systems have no information in that sense of the word.
The term "information" can be used in other ways, I spoze, but that aint the way I'm usin it. If there is no meaning, then there is no "information" in the sense I'm using it in that (and prior) post(s).
That's fine, but even the ID proponents do not use that definition of information.
Well, tellya what, eh, Eric? You start countin, startin at 0, by 1/1,000,000ths (.0000001, .0000002, etc.), and, also startin at 0, I'll count by millions (1 million, 2 million, etc.) and we'll see who runs outta numbers first, eh? How can one infinity be larger than another?
Generally, by saying two sets are 'the same size', it is meant you can match up each item in one set to one and only one item in the second in such a way that each item in the second is paired to one and only one in the first. Under that definition, there are different sizes to infinity. The smallest size is called countably infinite or denumerable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countable_set
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncountable_set
One Brow said: "So, you understand and agree that mutations and similar mechanisms create variation by changing the information available..."
No, I don't understand that, not in the sense I think you're claiming it. Like I said, variation on a limited supply of options is NOT creating variations in any substantial sense.
Let me use a simple example. Say I write the word "cat" and you change the a to an o to spell "cot." OK, that's a variation, and it's now a different word. But I don't care how much you change them three letters around, you're never gunna make them spell "animal." You need more letters (spaces for letters) for that.
I don't think a bacterium has enough spaces to turn into a whale, see? Where do the extra "spaces" come from, and how do brand new letters get in them?
Of course the whole example presupposes the availability of a complete aphabetic system, an established linguistic syntax and content, and a mutual (between writer and reader) understanding of those complexities. You don't get the letter o from an a by simply butchering up the a--it has to already be there as a pre-made, readily understood, option.
To my knowledge, no human being has ever been born with the innate ability to read a language, let alone come into the world with it's own meaningful language. Them bacteria must be purty smart, eh?
One Brow said: "Why would you think strings of DNA (or protiens, or any other biological purveyor of information) contains the results of any knowledge or intelligence?"
Because them neo-darwinists done told me so, eh? The DNA tells the zygote just what to do. It contains the "knowledge" of how to build a wing, for example. If that knowledge could not be communicated from generation to generation, the whole darwinistic notion of evolution goes out the window.
Although the term is thrown out a lot, it is my contention that no human mind can truly grasp the concept of "infinity." Of course, probably 99% of people will tell you they understand it perfectly, but, still....
To me it is a simple violation of the basic concept to say that one infinite set can be more or less than another. Neither has any boundries whatsoever, which are prequisites for any measurement of "size."
One Brow said: "I submit biological systems have no information in that sense of the word."
You don't see the contradiction here? The more a mechanist attempts to remove all semblance of "intelligence" and/or "knowledge" from biological systems, the more he is in effect claiming that the knowledge and intelligence is coming from outside the system.
We can argue (and I would) that no matter how "intelligent" a computer with its programming may appear, it does not have "real" intelligence. It is simply slavishly following directions given, and created by, the "true" intelligence behind the whole operation (the computer programmer and the hardware designer).
"
"In the best-known organisms, like Drosophila, innumerable mutants are known. If we were able to combine a thousand or more of such mutants in a single individual, this still would have no resemblance whatsoever to any type known as a [new] species in nature."—*Richard B. Goldschmidt, "Evolution, As Viewed by One Geneticist," American Scientist, January 1952, p. 94.
"Out of 400 mutations that have been provided by Drosophila melanogaster, there is not one that can be called a new species. It does not seem, therefore, that the central problem of evolution can be solved by mutations."—*Maurice Caullery, Genetics and Heredity (1964), p. 119.
When are those damn fruitflies gunna git with the program, I wonder?
No, I don't understand that, not in the sense I think you're claiming it.
My error. I should have said 'changing the code that is inherited' to avid confusion with the definition of information you prefer.
Like I said, variation on a limited supply of options is NOT creating variations in any substantial sense.
Let me use a simple example. Say I write the word "cat" and you change the a to an o to spell "cot." OK, that's a variation, and it's now a different word. But I don't care how much you change them three letters around, you're never gunna make them spell "animal." You need more letters (spaces for letters) for that.
Sometimes there are gene duplications, and the spelling does not aways have to be perfect for the code to be usable. cat -> ccat -> gcat -> gnat -> gnit -> gnite -> anite -> anime -> animee -> animel -> animal.
I don't think a bacterium has enough spaces to turn into a whale, see?
Gene duplicaiton, gene transfer, etc. Most amoebae and many other one-celled eukaryotes have larger genetic codes than we do.
Of course the whole example presupposes the availability of a complete aphabetic system, an established linguistic syntax and content, and a mutual (between writer and reader) understanding of those complexities. You don't get the letter o from an a by simply butchering up the a--it has to already be there as a pre-made, readily understood, option.
That would fall under abiogenesis, which is much less well-understood.
One Brow said: "Why would you think strings of DNA (or protiens, or any other biological purveyor of information) contains the results of any knowledge or intelligence?"
Because them neo-darwinists done told me so, eh?
Not in the sense of "knmowledge or intelligence", I'm fairly sure. When discussion the genetic code, they don't use 'information' to mean knowledge nor intelligence. they might use 'instruction', but that is in a programmatic sense, not a knowledge sense.
Although the term is thrown out a lot, it is my contention that no human mind can truly grasp the concept of "infinity."
I agree.
Of course, probably 99% of people will tell you they understand it perfectly, but, still....
I probably understand it better than most people, and I barely understand the basics of it.
To me it is a simple violation of the basic concept to say that one infinite set can be more or less than another. Neither has any boundries whatsoever, which are prequisites for any measurement of "size."
You are welcome to this point of view. mathematicians have a different definition of size, which allows for different sizes of infinity. The very definition of "infinite", in mathematics, is "of the same size as a proper subset of itself".
You don't see the contradiction here?
No.
The more a mechanist attempts to remove all semblance of "intelligence" and/or "knowledge" from biological systems, the more he is in effect claiming that the knowledge and intelligence is coming from outside the system.
While I'm not a mechanist, I would say philosophically there is no knowledge or intelligence to remove.
We can argue (and I would) that no matter how "intelligent" a computer with its programming may appear, it does not have "real" intelligence. It is simply slavishly following directions given, and created by, the "true" intelligence behind the whole operation (the computer programmer and the hardware designer).
Of course, there are the questions of whether a cmputer can teach itself, based on reacitons to the environment, to behave more intelligently withing that environment (it can), and whether the programmer and the engineer can do anythinmg besides slavishly follow their directions.
When are those damn fruitflies gunna git with the program, I wonder?
Why would you expect unselected mutations to create different species? That is not the type of speciation we have seen in the field.
I had me a dream last night, ya know? I wuz at this here big-ass smorgabord banquent. Man, they had EVERYTHING to eat. 87 different kinds of bread alone. Over 400 entries, with hundreds of sauces. 700 different deserts, I tellya! Ya wuz free to select whatever ya wanted, becuz it wuz all free, see!?
Then I woke up in my 8' x 10' travel trailer, surrounded by nuthin but empty 40's and not even a saltine cracker to eat. I sez to myself, I sez: "Gawd, I wished I wuz Natural Selection. Whatever that guy wants to chose from is always there, free, and it aint no dream, neither."
One Brow said: "Of course, there are the questions of whether a cmputer can teach itself, based on reacitons to the environment, to behave more intelligently withing that environment..."
Once we get computers who think for themselves, I wonder if they will assume that they got their start when a sulpher atom collided with a nitrogen atom in a warm pond somewhere, eh?
One Brow said: "Why would you expect unselected mutations to create different species? That is not the type of speciation we have seen in the field."
True dat. Good thing too, because most of these mutants could not possibly survive outside of the lab test tube they were created in, ya know?
If I say sumthin like "mature elephants are bigger than cows," there are always at least 3 responses I expect to get:
1. Elephants are not cows
2. Elephants are not native to North America, and
3. Let's get up a posse, and go elephant-tippin tonight, whaddaya say!?
One Brow said: "That would fall under abiogenesis, which is much less well-understood."
I'm not sure why you would say that. Many have argued that the whole DNA code was developed via "natural selection." I am just lost when I hear such things (such as NAS saying life "arose" via natural selection). But, again, the mere invocation of the magical words "natural selection" seems to be all the explanation that's needed for the faithful.
I can't choose between a cherry pie or a pumpkin pie until someone bakes one of each. If I choose the cherry pie, I can't fathom someone saying that I "created" the pie. Or that my choice of it explains the existence of the pie. If my old lady knows in advance that I prefer cherry pie to pumpkin pie, she may just quit bakin any more pumpkin pies. Either way, there will be no pies, cherry, pumpkin, or whatever, unless and until she bakes them. What I "prefer" has nuthin to do with where they originate and how they continue to appear.
All such considerations seem to get glossed over and totally ignored by those who are enamored of the magical phrase "natural selection."
I sez to myself, I sez: "Gawd, I wished I wuz Natural Selection. Whatever that guy wants to chose from is always there, free, and it aint no dream, neither."
Actually, the results of natural selection often look highly jury-rigged and have a lot of make-do features. It's a lot more like one of Red Green's duct-tape creations than a smorgasbord.
Once we get computers who think for themselves, I wonder if they will assume that they got their start when a sulpher atom collided with a nitrogen atom in a warm pond somewhere, eh?
Some of them might, you never know.
True dat. Good thing too, because most of these mutants could not possibly survive outside of the lab test tube they were created in, ya know?
Species have a 99.7% failure rate, and speciations may not involve mutations at all, depending on how you define 'species'.
If I say sumthin like "mature elephants are bigger than cows," there are always at least 3 responses I expect to get:
1. Elephants are not cows
2. Elephants are not native to North America, and
3. Let's get up a posse, and go elephant-tippin tonight, whaddaya say!?
Sorry, I missed the point here.
I'm not sure why you would say that. Many have argued that the whole DNA code was developed via "natural selection."
I think that is a reasonably valid analogy for what may have happened, ubt it is not true natural selection in the sense of what happens to living things, I don't think.
I am just lost when I hear such things (such as NAS saying life "arose" via natural selection).
I Interpret that statement to be 'rose to dominate the surface of the planet', not 'began to exist'. YMMV.
All such considerations seem to get glossed over and totally ignored by those who are enamored of the magical phrase "natural selection."
I don't think anyone believe natural slection does all the work required of a pie-baker. Natural slection is more like sculptor using marble. Most sculptors don't create the marble themselves, they just shape it by removing the parts they don't want.
One Brow said: "I don't think anyone believe natural slection does all the work required of a pie-baker. Natural slection is more like sculptor using marble. Most sculptors don't create the marble themselves, they just shape it by removing the parts they don't want."
Well, the question of who bakes the pies tends to get lost with these guys. It's just taken for granted that the little women will supply anything the king of the house may or may not want, and that his "selection" process is what ultimately controls everything. Just wait til she up and leaves, eh? As Homesick James done said: "Ya nevva miss yo watta, til yo well runs dry....Ya nevva miss yo womin, til she done said goodbye."
These guys get so sold on natural selection being a "creative" process that they lose track of where the real creation comes from. Of course ultimately the dubious point is the absolute faith they display in (what they insist is) "random" mutation. Maybe hybridization helps explain things, maybe horiztontal gene transfer, maybe symbiosis, maybe jumping genes, maybe hox genes, and maybe a lot of other things would help make the general proposal plausible. But slow, allele by allele random mutation don't cut it. It never has, notwithstanding decades of assurances that "science" basically knew for a "fact" that it did.
The mysteries of evolution cannot be solved by reliance on mere random mutation. Like I said, Dawkins claimed that a bacteria has information encoded in its genetic structure equivalent to a 30,000 volume set encyclopedia. And all this information came from where? It all started out with just the first letter in the first sentence on the first page of the first volume and then "just grew" from there? But mere random mutation of allele? I don't think so! Homey don't play dat. The complexity of a single cell is vastly greater than anything ever designed by man.
Although a computer that could think might not know it, it didn't come to be by random forces acting on mindless matter in motion in the void.
They act like finding a new, viable, meaningful informative, beneficial mutation (like, for example, a direction to a wasp to paralyze prey and bury it with it's eggs) is like finding another pebble of sand on a beach, ya know? Meaningful information is not like a grain of sand, and it's not just out there, lyin around, waitin for anybody who wants to come pick it up.
If twenty gazillion monkeys pounded on typewriters for 20 gazillion years, would they ever produce, in order, all 1913 pages of "War and Peace?" I mean just all laid out there, in order, ya know? I don't have to start doin no math to see that the answer is "no."
But that's only half the question, anyway. Suppose they did it. Then what? They wouldn't even know what it was. Nor would the next 900,000 gazillion monkeys who came along. They couldn't read or understand it, so it might just as well not even exist. Typing out the book is useless without intelligent readers to enjoy and appreciate it. And where would they come from? All from a rock that decided to start replicating itself, and then mosey around gittin mutated by sonic x-rays, that the idea?
Heh.
Well, the question of who bakes the pies tends to get lost with these guys.
In this metaphor, they might deny there were pies at all.
It's just taken for granted that the little women will supply anything the king of the house may or may not want,
Again, it's just the opposite. The metaphorical women find a few odds adn ends lying around. Sometimes it can be shaped into a pie, sometimes a casserole, and most of the time it's completely inedible or even poisonous. 00
The mysteries of evolution cannot be solved by reliance on mere random mutation. Like I said, Dawkins claimed that a bacteria has information encoded in its genetic structure equivalent to a 30,000 volume set encyclopedia. And all this information came from where? It all started out with just the first letter in the first sentence on the first page of the first volume and then "just grew" from there? But mere random mutation of allele? I don't think so! Homey don't play dat. The complexity of a single cell is vastly greater than anything ever designed by man.
So, what would the limit be of a quadrillion generations of random changes be in terms of information generation? I'm not saying I expect you to agree, but I also don't thin you should find the position unreasonable.
Although a computer that could think might not know it, it didn't come to be by random forces acting on mindless matter in motion in the void.
Although we can make all sorts of guesses, and even offer evidence for the plausbilityof them, without a time machine we'll never truly know the history of life.
They act like finding a new, viable, meaningful informative, beneficial mutation (like, for example, a direction to a wasp to paralyze prey and bury it with it's eggs) is like finding another pebble of sand on a beach, ya know? Meaningful information is not like a grain of sand, and it's not just out there, lyin around, waitin for anybody who wants to come pick it up.
It doen't need to be meaningful, just marginally more useful then the informaiton currently in hand.
Suppose they did it. Then what? They wouldn't even know what it was.
True, but this only means evolution has no goal.
One Brow said: "So, what would the limit be of a quadrillion generations of random changes be in terms of information generation? I'm not saying I expect you to agree, but I also don't thin you should find the position unreasonable."
After 4 billion years of evolution, bacteria are still around with just one (circular) chromosome. Unless it's already there, hidden from us, something has to be added, not just mutated.
"Over 35 years ago, Susumu Ohno stated that gene duplication was the single most important factor in evolution (97). He reiterated this point a few years later in proposing that without duplicated genes the creation of metazoans, vertebrates, and mammals from unicellular organisms would have been impossible. Such big leaps in evolution, he argued, required the creation of new gene loci with previously nonexistent functions (98). Bold statements such as these, combined with his proposal that at least one whole-genome duplication event facilitated the evolution of vertebrates, have made Ohno an icon in the literature on genome evolution."
Ohno delineates the problem...random mutation alone cannot do the job, new material is needed. But, again, that's just part of the question. "The two genes that exist after a gene duplication event are called paralogs and usually code for proteins with a similar function and/or structure....Gene duplication doesn't necessarily constitute a lasting change in a species' genome. In fact, such changes often don't last past the initial host organism...in either event, duplications can be and often are marginally or severely detrimental. For instance, duplications of oncogenes are a common cause of many types of cancer, as is the case with P70-S6 Kinase 1 amplification and breast cancer"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_duplication
When a gene is "duplicated" both pairs are designed to do the same job; one is not ready-made to perform brand-new functions. So the question of how new information arises is not answered by reference to gene duplication. A recent paper asks, "But how do newly duplicated genes survive and acquire novel functions, and what role does gene duplication play in the
evolution of genomes and organisms?" The conclusion of this paper is that "It can be expected...that the once imaginative idea of
evolution by gene duplication will be established as one of the cornerstones of evolutionary biology."
http://www.nslij-genetics.org/duplication/zhang03.pdf
Two points here:
1. While one can, if he wants, expect a "new cornerstone" of evolutionary biology to emerge, that merely reinforces the point I've been making: A new cornterstone is needed.
2. The role of gene duplication is speculative and hardly demonstrated or proven. Although gene duplication might help provide what I have called "spaces" for new information, it does not itself provide the new information, and new information hardly seems to be the norm:
"Gene duplication generates functional redundancy, as it is often not advantageous to have two identical genes... Gradually, the mutationcontaining gene becomes a pseudogene, which is either unexpressed or functionless, an evolutionary fate that has been shown by population genetic modeling [22,23] as well
as by genomic analysis [9,24]."
But the third (real) point is that the development of new, meaningful and useful information within the context of an extremely complex "system" is not like just adding another rock to a pile of rocks. Furthermore, the system of communication had to develop before any meaningful alterations to it could occur. We have no idea how that happened, but it is always just taken for granted. Until we understand how the genome truly works, I can't pretend to guess about how and why random mutilations of the system can and will improve it.
As one evolutionary (and strong opponent of ID theory) advocate put it:
"...without gene duplication (via retrotransposition, segmental duplication, and whole genome duplication) evolution would have ceased with the simplest of all prokaryotes.
You see, it's easy to attack a caricature of evolutionary theory consisting of only random mutation and natural selection, but that's just a straw man. Natural selection on allelic mutations cannot explain much beyond within population variation and speciation..."
http://evolgen.blogspot.com/2005/10/name-that-tune.html
The so-called "straw man" mentioned here is in fact the argument many neo-darwinist advocates have advanced for years (and still do). It is not one which has been falsely imputed to them in most cases.
Once again: "Natural selection on allelic mutations cannot explain much beyond within population variation and speciation..." To some this seems almost intuitively obvious. Others will deny it until the cows come home.
In response to "Suppose they did it. Then what? They wouldn't even know what it was,"
One Brow said: "True, but this only means evolution has no goal."
My point was not really about goals, but let me address that. The point was that the most eloquent language is worthless without somebody (thing) which already knows and understands the language. Random alteration of sentences would effect no changes, beneficial or deleterious, if "something" wasn't reading and understanding those sentences.
All human languages were developed, presumably gradually, with a specfic goal in mind: communication. To my knowledge, no language was initally just "discovered" laying around on the ground somewhere. Even if it was, it would be useless to those who could not understand it. So, yeah, the production and formulation of an elaborate language does seem to be goal-oriented process, from all we know and have seen.
I think it was Kuhn who characterized the final stage of a "paradigm shift" in science as being: "We knew it all along."
The blogger I cited certainly displays this attitude. But, in fact:
"Undeterred by the lack of unequivocal evidence, Ohno postulated that the major advances in evolution such as the transition from single- celled organisms to complex multicellular animals and plants could not simply have been brought about alone through processes such as natural selection
based on existing allelic variation at particular genetic loci in populations....he postulated that “natural selection merely modified, while redundancy created"....Natural
selection would be relegated to the back seat of evolution to only do its conservative job of fine-tuning those duplicates, which had, through duplication, the chance to accumulate a sufficiently large number of “forbidden” mutations to bring about changes in function
of these duplicated genes. To be sure, a controversial, almost anti-Darwinian idea, indeed...Ohno’s basic tenets of the 1970’s remain current and hotly debated still today."
Also from that last article cited:
"To this date, the relative importance of gene and genome duplications for evolution
remains disputed. Ohno’s idea of redundancy
continues to be rivaled, as it should be and has been for the last three decades, most strongly by the idea that regulatory evolution is what ‘drives’ evolution (see recent summaries by Carroll et al., 2001; Davidson,
2001)."
Not that I'm really in any position to judge, but I too would see much more potential for explanation in "regulatory evolution" than in mere gene duplication.
Inotice you never commented on this quote from Gould: "The history of most fossil species [demonstrates] stasis - most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless...Every paleontologist knows that most species don't change."
Therein lies another problem with the glib assumption that virtually endless variation will somehow be generated for natural selection to work it's magic on.
Here's one more quote from Ohno (from the blogger's site I cited a couple of posts back): "Had evolution been entirely dependent on natural selection, from a bacterium only numerous forms of bacteria would have emerged." So, I guess his answer to your question about a quadrillion generations of random changes would be "not much" as far as natural selection goes.
Of course, there is no need to speculate about "random mutation" if the genentic process is not the mere product of external forces being randomly imposed on a passive organism:
"Forty years’ experience as a bacterial geneticist has taught me that bacteria possess many cognitive, computational and evolutionary capabilities unimaginable in the first six decades of the twentieth century...Analysis of cellular processes such as metabolism, regulation of protein synthesis, and DNA repair established that bacteria continually monitor their external and internal environments and compute functional outputs based on information provided by their sensory apparatus...my own work on transposable elements revealed multiple widespread bacterial systems for mobilizing and engineering DNA molecules....bacteria utilise sophisticated mechanisms for intercellular communication and even have the ability to commandeer the basic cell biology of ‘higher’ plants and animals to meet their own needs. This remarkable series of observations requires us to revise basic ideas about biological information processing and recognise that even the smallest cells are sentient beings."
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VHP-4R5GKC9-5&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1015964532&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=29cb0d2899b7ca2b474f7641c687273c
Sentient beins, eh? Intelligence? Like, whooda thunk, I ax ya?
More from Shapiro, with a link to the full article:
"Molecular biology came into being on the promise of confirming mechanistic
views of life by defining how living cells worked at a physico-chemical level. Ironically, molecular biology has uncovered a vast realm of complex intracellular
machinery, signal transduction, regulatory networks and sophisticated control processes
that were unanticipated in the early days of this new approach to life. My own view is that we are witnessing a major paradigm shift in the life sciences in the sense that Kuhn (1962) described that process. Matter, the focus of classical molecular biology, is giving way to information as the essential feature used to understand how living systems work. Informatics rather than mechanics is now the key to explaining cell biology and cell activities....
The idea of natural genetic engineering is controversial to some because it implies the existence of an “engineer” to decide when restructuring should occur. (Indeed, one journal editor would not publish a paper of mine earlier this year because I insisted on using the phrase). But natural genetic engineering fits very well with a more contemporary view of cells as cognitive entities acting in response to sensory inputs....
The older I became, the more my experiences with
genetic change in bacteria deviated from the conventional wisdom. Fortunately, my results
fit with precedents from plant genetics, where researchers had documented that various stresses also activate transposable elements (McClintock, 1984, 1987; Wessler, 1996).
Since I began my own research career 42 years ago, there has been a complete revolution in our understanding of how bacteria survive and reproduceI have used a 1968 Scientific American article on DNA replication by Nobel Laureate Arthur Kornberg for teaching. Kornberg’s article reflected the oversimplistic reductionist thinking dominant in the first three decades of molecular biology that was based on mechanical, linear, sequential and unitary concepts of how biological systems operate. The only way I know how to make sense out of the last 50 years of molecular biology is to abandon the mechanistic and atomistic ideas of the pre-DNA era and embrace a more organic, cognitive and computational view of cells and genomes. There are no units, only interactive systems."
http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/2006.ExeterMeeting.pdf
An interesting article, I thought. His claim is that "matter" is no longer the essential feature in understanding how living systems work. Matter is giving way to "information" in that respect. In my own simplistic way, I have been trying to distinguish material features from informational features in many of these posts. But, of course, for a natural-born materialist, such things are rather non-sensical, I spoze.
Shapiro summarizes a number of factors which serve to undermine the contention that natural selection, acting on "random mutations," generates substantial evolutionary change. For one thing, he claims that bacteria actively resist such outcomes:
"E. coli cells replicate their DNA at almost 4000 base-pairs per second but have an error frequency of far less than one nucleotide misincorporation per every genome duplication (2 X 4.6 million base pairs duplicated every 40 minutes. This incredible precision is accomplished not by rigid mechanical precision but rather by using two layers of expert error monitoring and correction systems: (1) exonuclease proofreading in the polymerase itself, which catches and corrects over 99.9% of all mistakes as soon as they are made
(Kunkel & Bebenek, 2000), and (2) the methyl-directed mismatch repair system (MMR) system,
which subsequently detects and fixes over 99% of any errors that escaped the exonuclease. Together, this multilayered proofreading system boosts the 99.999% precision of the polymerase to over 99.99999999%. At both stages of the error correction process, detailed molecular analysis has clarified the distinct roles of sensory and repair components."
Secondly, transformations which have been imputed to natural selection in the past have been mistaken:
"When antibiotic chemotherapy began on a large scale, there was a well-established theory of how bacteria could evolve resistance: mutations would change cell structures so the cells were no longer sensitive to antibiotic action or so the antibiotic could not enter the cell to reach its target. Even though a single mutation might confer only partial resistance, successive mutations would confer ever higher levels.
For the philosophers of science, it is important to remember that this theory was abundantly confirmed by laboratory experiments (summarized in Hayes, 1968). Nonetheless, this experimentally-confirmed theory was wrong for the vast majority of antibiotic resistant bacteria found in hospitals around the world. Naturally-acquired antibiotic resistance is generally due to the expression of new functions for inactivating antibiotics or for pumping them out of the cell."
He's sayin that resistance is due to the cell generating "new functions" rather than RM + NS. Must be some kinda IDer, eh, Eric?
I just noticed that I omitted the citation for the Myer & Van de Peer article on Ohno's theory referenced above, so here it is:
http://www.evolutionsbiologie.uni-konstanz.de/pdf1-182/P137.pdf
After 4 billion years of evolution, bacteria are still around with just one (circular) chromosome.
After two hundred years there are still Europeans. That doesn't mean Euro-Americans don't exist.
1. While one can, if he wants, expect a "new cornerstone" of evolutionary biology to emerge, that merely reinforces the point I've been making: A new cornterstone is needed.
Probably many more than one.
2. The role of gene duplication is speculative and hardly demonstrated or proven. Although gene duplication might help provide what I have called "spaces" for new information, it does not itself provide the new information, and new information hardly seems to be the norm
Fortunately, when you can tolerate a 99.7% failure rate, new information does not need to be the norm.
Furthermore, the system of communication had to develop before any meaningful alterations to it could occur.
True, but that question is outside the scope of evolution.
We have no idea how that happened, but it is always just taken for granted.
Abiogenesis is an active field of research. I don't think we are taking the creation of the system for granted.
The so-called "straw man" mentioned here is in fact the argument many neo-darwinist advocates have advanced for years (and still do). It is not one which has been falsely imputed to them in most cases.
Yet, that group is slowing dying out as a new generation adapts the more fruitful points of view, and science marches on.
All human languages were developed, presumably gradually, with a specfic goal in mind: communication. To my knowledge, no language was initally just "discovered" laying around on the ground somewhere. Even if it was, it would be useless to those who could not understand it. So, yeah, the production and formulation of an elaborate language does seem to be goal-oriented process, from all we know and have seen.
Goal-oriented, but not to a more specific goal than communication. If you are willing to accpet survival as a goal, then life is goal-oriented to that goal.
Not that I'm really in any position to judge, but I too would see much more potential for explanation in "regulatory evolution" than in mere gene duplication.
Why choose? Here's an analysis that uses both:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/regulatory_evolution_of_the_ho.php
Therein lies another problem with the glib assumption that virtually endless variation will somehow be generated for natural selection to work it's magic on.
In a species already well-adapted to the envirionment, most changes will not be beneficial. Stasis should be the norm then.
Sentient beins, eh? Intelligence? Like, whooda thunk, I ax ya?
You'll notice I recently mentioned anemergent, self-directing intelligence as one of the alternatives to ID.
But, of course, for a natural-born materialist, such things are rather non-sensical, I spoze.
I suppose.
He's sayin that resistance is due to the cell generating "new functions" rather than RM + NS. Must be some kinda IDer, eh, Eric?
Is he saying the new functions were passed on by some external agency? the Designer reached into bacteria and made them immune? I didn't get that from what he said.
One Brow said: "In a species already well-adapted to the envirionment, most changes will not be beneficial. Stasis should be the norm then."
Well, this comment highlights two more questions that arise:
1. Gould says most species enter and exit without significant change. Where's the virtually endless "trial and error" that you would expect from completely random changes, then? How is it that most species are simply "born" so well-adapted that no further improvement is possible, by chance?
2. The second question which I always wonder about it how a certain fixation becomes universal? If a change is simply a slight advantage over a other members of a population that has survived just fine for countless generations, why should it then become exclusive? All the remaining critters are suddenly rendered incapable of survival and reproduction because a slightly superior individual has arrived on the scene, that the idea?
Some overwhelming benefit to the slightest change in always simply assumed--not because of known facts, but only because the theory demands it. Some of the comments at the Myers website you posted demonstrate this type of circular reasoning, e.g."
"Apparently this resulted in a slight survival advantage over the single gene -- according to the researchers, the two genes work slightly better than the single combined gene....there were two gene duplications, resulting in four different genes, but the other two have since disappeared -- presumably because they were never subjected to mutations that led to an advantage (or enough of an advantage; or the advantage later became disadvantageous; or ... the story can be arbitrarily complex)."
"Apparently," "presumably," "arbitrarily complex," etc., eh? Why should a one-time duplication result in an utter extinction of individual who had a single gene which works (then and now) just fine?
It's kinda like sayin that if a guy was born 8' tall, and could therefore reach for apples higher on the tree, his genes would wipe out those of 5 billions others who have survived just fine bein under 8' tall. To begin with, how many millions of generations would it take for his genes to exclusively prevail--especially with the rest of the world's population out-reproducing him by about 5 billion to one in merely the first generation? It would get much greater than that with each successive generation, even if his progeny could reach more apples, ya know?
Say he has 4 kids, and everyone else has only 3 (because his 4 can reach more apples---ridiculous, I know, but indulge me here). Now those 4 are gunna somehow eat all the apples the other 15 billion would like to have, but can't reach, and starve out the "less fit," that it?
One Brow said: "Is he saying the new functions were passed on by some external agency? the Designer reached into bacteria and made them immune? I didn't get that from what he said."
Why would, or should, he say that? He's sayin that bacteria aren't simply the blind, passive, billiard balls dressed up as robotic machines that the neo-darwinists have always implicitly assumed them to be.
What's your take on this Shapiro guy, eh, Eric? Obviously some kinda IDer, doncha figure?
One Brow said: "You'll notice I recently mentioned anemergent, self-directing intelligence as one of the alternatives to ID."
Well, yeah, I would lean toward that one, too. Of course the questions about where that came from would always arise and at some point, you probably have to posit some pre-existing intelligence.
Shapiro sounds like he accepts an aristotlean version of "natural (internal) teleology." I too am inclined to accept this notion, without the slightest pretense to understanding how or why it is there. He calls it a case of "cognitive entities acting in response to sensory inputs," others might call it "intelligence" and/or purposeful behavior.
Unlike the neodarwinist brain trust, I don't feel the need to reject teleology from biology ab initio on the basis of metaphysical doctrine. In fact, it seems like some sort of teleology is required to explain life in all it's complexity and diversity, Dawkins' ceaseless efforts to persuade us to the contrary notwithstanding.
A dumb, lifeless material object like the coffee cup I'm holding right now, does not, and, I will go so far as to say, "can not," suddenly become mobile, self-replicating, purposeful, and "intelligent." Ex nihio nihil fit. Some sort of "intelligence" and direction must have been present (latently, or otherwise) in the matter which busted outta the big bang, I figure.
I said: Not that I'm really in any position to judge, but I too would see much more potential for explanation in "regulatory evolution" than in mere gene duplication.
You responded: Why choose? Here's an analysis that uses both:
Well, accordin to PZ, there:
"This means that as far as we can tell, the Hoxa1 and Hoxb1 proteins are functionally interchangeable. The differences that they've accumulated in the peptide sequence over that half billion years of evolution do not significantly change how either protein works, and all the important action must have taken place in the evolution of the regulatory control of each."
I read him to be sayin that the gene duplication was of no real functional significance, and that "all the important action" was in the regulatory evolution. I am not sayin it can't be some of each, just sayin that I think there is much more potential for explanation (doesn't mean it will be actualized, of course) in the activity of regulatory system than there is is mere duplication. In this particular case (PZ), that seems to hold true.
Half a billion years for the duplicated gene to develop "forbidden" mutations and it aint never done it...go figure, eh?
That blog says that 13 hox genes in mammals quadrupled (to 52) 500 million years ago. This seems rather "saltational" don't it? On what basis (other than prior ideological committment, I mean) would someone purport to know (or claim) that this was a "random occurrence)? All 13 genes quadrupled at the same time, and it aint happened since, eh? Random coincidence, ya figure?
I said: While one can, if he wants, expect a "new cornerstone" of evolutionary biology to emerge, that merely reinforces the point I've been making: A new cornterstone is needed.
You responded: Probably many more than one.
I completely agree with your comment, but it just re-raises a question that never got answered, and least not satisfactorily, best I could tell.
When you claim, to my great surprise, that the "theory" of evolution is a fact (by Gould's definition), just what is it that you are calling "the theory?" It can't be what Gould called the theory, because he explicitly said we were far from considering the theory to be "certain."
Is, for example, the claim that gene duplication is by far the most important factor in evolution, a "fact?" Is the neo-darwinistic (pan-adaptionist) claim that natural selection is far and away the heavy lifter a "fact?" Is the Nei school of "mutationist" theory a "fact?" Is Margulis' combination of endosymbiotic and gaia speculations a "fact?" Is the claim that macro-evolution is simply a lot of micro-evolution a "fact?" Is the gradual, allele by allele, mutation of existing genes at random, with virtually all known diversity developing by that process a "fact?" What are the undisputed facts in THE theory of evolution, anyway?
One Brow said: "You'll notice I recently mentioned anemergent, self-directing intelligence as one of the alternatives to ID."
Well, strictly speakin, I don't see that as an "alternative." That would be intelligence design. Like, for example, if I broke my arm, then designed a cast to protect it while the bone reset and a sling to support it and keep it relatively immobilized until it healed. Then the cast and sling would be products of "intelligent design" in my book.
How is it that most species are simply "born" so well-adapted that no further improvement is possible, by chance?
When the environment changes slowly, you would expect most species to make minor adaptations. When it changes rapidly, most species will die out. Either way, seeing rapid change will be a rare event.
All the remaining critters are suddenly rendered incapable of survival and reproduction because a slightly superior individual has arrived on the scene, that the idea?
That's a process that happens over hundreds (or in the case of a really small advantage, thousands) of generations. Even if there is no selective advantage between two alleles, occasionally mere drift will remove one.
Some overwhelming benefit to the slightest change in always simply assumed--
Actually, the benefit can be very small, offereing a 1% difference or even less in mean offspring produced.
Now those 4 are gunna somehow eat all the apples the other 15 billion would like to have, but can't reach, and starve out the "less fit," that it?
Anything can happen with numbers that small, and most of the time the 8' offspring will just die out for reasons not related to apples. On those occasions were they do get enough descendents to become firmly established (maybe 10% , and assuming there are no compensating disadvantages, depending on what happens to th4e hetreozygous, etc.), they do begin to outcompete the rest of the population to the degree the apples confer an advantage.
Why would, or should, he say that?
If he doesn't, it isn't ID.
What's your take on this Shapiro guy, eh, Eric?
Currently, he strikes me as someone who made some very strong claims in the past (the thrid way guy, IIRC), and whose research has not panned out to be as dramatically as his claims.
...and at some point, you probably have to posit some pre-existing intelligence.
Why? I realize some people dispute this, but I don't see a need to posit intelligence in an embryo for there to be emergent intelligence in a human.
Some sort of "intelligence" and direction must have been present ...
I won't try to convince you otherwise, though I disagree.
the gene duplication was of no real functional significance,
Just having an extra copy of agene can confer a small adavantage, even if the protiens are the same.
Half a billion years for the duplicated gene to develop "forbidden" mutations and it aint never done it
You don't think any of the four copies severs any other purpose in any vertebrate? Until you can say that, yo don't really know what it has or has not done.
This seems rather "saltational" don't it?
We see the same thing happen with plants today with their entire genome (polyploidy). I don't find gene duplication particularly saltational.
On what basis (other than prior ideological committment, I mean) would someone purport to know (or claim) that this was a "random occurrence)? All 13 genes quadrupled at the same time, and it aint happened since, eh? Random coincidence, ya figure?
All 13 genes seem to have been on the same chromosome.
When you claim, to my great surprise, that the "theory" of evolution is a fact (by Gould's definition),
I think you are misreading Gould statement as a definition, when it is a lmitation of the definition. I don't, and never have, claimed it was a fact.
just what is it that you are calling "the theory?"
However, Gould considered certain component theories. like natural selection, to be so confirmed that it would perverse to withhold dissent. Indeed, no one denies natural selection happens. When I say the theory of evolution is confirmed, I am referring to those components we know are confirmed.
No, to pretty much all your closing questions except for Margulis' speculations concerning endosymbiosis (it seems very certain endosymbiosis was a historical event).
Undisputed facts would include shared eukaryote ancestry and descent with modification.
One Brow said: "However, Gould considered certain component theories. like natural selection, to be so confirmed that it would perverse to withhold dissent. Indeed, no one denies natural selection happens. When I say the theory of evolution is confirmed, I am referring to those components we know are confirmed."
Hmmm, natural selection "happens" is a scientific theory? As far as I can tell, there is a great amount of dispute about the role natural selection plays in evolutionary change. If my theory of gravity is that "all matter attracts other matter" would my theory be akin to "fact" if it was generally acknowledged that matter exists?
See what I'm gittin at?
One Brow said: "Undisputed facts would include shared eukaryote ancestry and descent with modification."
I think this is far from "proven" (e.g., the sudden appearance of all major phyla without known ancestry in the fossil record), but let's leave that be. Isn't this basically what Gould called the "fact" of evolution (to be rigidly distinguished, he said, from the "theory" of evolution)? It sounds like you're saying the fact is the fact. But I was asking about the theory.
I don't feel like looking for it, but I'm sure that at one point you finally broke down and asserted that the theory was a fact (as "fact" was defined by Gould). You claimed he said the same, too (which he didn't).
One Brow said: "Undisputed facts would include shared eukaryote ancestry and descent with modification."
Both of these claims seem somewhat vague to me. With respect to "shared eukaryote ancestry," are you claiming universal shared ancestry amongst such critters? As in, "once upon a time there came to be the first eukaryote organism, and this happened only once in all history. Thereafter, all eukaryotes descended from the one (and onliest) original eukaryote."
With respect to "descent with modification," I'm not sure how this in even a part of evolutionary theory, per se. I have fathered 29 chillen. Each one, kinda looked like me and they Mama, but each one was somewhat different, too. For this reason, I know "descent with modification" to be a stone-cold fact.
One Brow said: "You don't think any of the four copies severs any other purpose in any vertebrate? Until you can say that, yo don't really know what it has or has not done."
I didn't say that, and I'm not sure what to think about ALL duplicate copies of genes. I'm just noting, in this one case (the only one I'm aware of) where the changes, if any, in function were experimentally assessed, it didn't seem to pan out in half a billion years. This certainly undercuts any notion that they "must" mutate in significant ways, don't it? You can't just assume that they will, and then claim that this assumption "proves" that duplication is the major factor in evolutionary change.
Why would, or should, he say that?
You said: If he doesn't, it isn't ID.
Well, I think you're conflating ID with creationism. As I said in a subsequent post: "...I don't see that as an "alternative." That would be intelligence design."
A brief excerpt from wiki: "Most eukaryotes are now included in one of the following supergroups, although the relationship between these groups, and the monophyly (common ancestry) of each group, is not yet clear:"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote#Origin_and_evolution
If the ancestry of eukaryote groups is "unclear," why would one insist that common ancestry was so well-confirmed that it would be perverse to deny it?
In any event, it does not appear that the scientific community believes that eukaryotes evolved exclusively by means of "descent:"
"Horizontal gene transfer (HGT; also known as lateral gene transfer) has had an important role in eukaryotic genome evolution, but its importance is often overshadowed by the greater prevalence and our more advanced understanding of gene transfer in prokaryotes....the number of well-supported cases of transfer from both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, many with significant functional implications, is now expanding rapidly."
http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v9/n8/abs/nrg2386.html
Isn't this really just a case of taking your a priori metaphysical assumptions to be the equivalent of "fact," Eric? That would not be uncommon, since fundamental a priori metaphsical maxims are, by definition, beyond question. They are assumed, absolutely, and no demand or expectation of demonstration of their adequacy is placed on them.
Here's another article if ya aint convinced that the "undisputed facts" of "shared eukaryote ancestry and descent with modification" is, well, kinda disputed, ya know?:
"Vertical transmission of heritable material, a cornerstone of the Darwinian theory of evolution, is inadequate to describe the evolution of eukaryotes, particularly microbial eukaryotes....Observations on widespread chimerism in eukaryotes have led to new and revised hypothesis for the origin and diversification of eukaryotes..."
http://ijs.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/52/5/1893
I mean, like, I know what you're sayin, on some level at least, eh, Eric? I think its safe to say that all giraffes descended from giraffes and all turtles descended from turtles, and stuff. But this "universal common ancestor" tale just aint pannin out, even if ya try to skip a couple of billion years and start with eukaryotes, know what I'm sayin?
Here's an article on a topic we were speculating about--the long term stability (no significant mutations) of duplicate genes. Says here:
"Genetic redundancy means that two genes can perform a common, overlapping function [1,2]. Each gene can therefore be lost without any effect on this shared function. Intuitively,
therefore, redundancy between duplicates should not be evolutionarily stable because one duplicate can lose a redundant function with no phenotypic effect....We find many duplicates that have retained overlapping redundant functions over vast evolutionary distances, demonstrating that genetic redundancy can be an evolutionarily stable state....in yeast, 231/244 pairs (95%) of known redundant duplicates that can be unambiguously dated are at least 100–150 million years old....We conclude that genetic redundancy can be maintained between exactly the same genes in different eukaryotic lineages separated by up to one billion years of evolution."
www.icrea.cat/Web/GetFile.asmx/Download?idFile=8851
Hmmm....95% remained stable for 100-150 million years, eh? It seems that somehow this continuous and ceaseless random mutation at "known" rates just aint doin it's job in creating new phenotypes. Zup wit dat?
Ya know, I always kinda thought that a single-celled eukaryote had to be microscopic, but it aint so:
"Matz and his colleagues recently discovered the grape-sized protists and their complex tracks on the ocean floor near the Bahamas. The finding is significant, because similar fossil grooves and furrows found from the Precambrian era, as early as 1.8 billion years ago, have always been attributed to early evolving multicellular animals.
We now have to rethink the fossil record. Very few fossils exist of organisms that could be the Precambrian ancestors of bilateral animals, and even those are highly controversial. Fossil traces are the most accepted evidence of the existence of these proto-animals. With their find, Matz and his colleagues argue that fossil traces cannot be used alone as evidence that multicellular animals were evolving during the Precambrian, slowly setting the stage for the Cambrian explosion.
"I personally think now that the whole Precambrian may have been exclusively the reign of protists," says Matz. He says the appearance of all the animal body plans during the Cambrian explosion might not just be an artifact of the fossil record. There are likely other mechanisms that explain the burst-like origin of diverse multicellular life forms.
The finding is significant, because similar fossil grooves and furrows found from the Precambrian era, as early as 1.8 billion years ago, have always been attributed to early evolving multicellular animals. This rapid diversification, known as the Cambrian explosion, puzzled Charles Darwin and remains one of the biggest questions in animal evolution to this day."
http://www.physorg.com/news146406170.html
What's up with this guy, anyway, I wonder? He's tryin to take what scant "evidence" for pre-cambrian proto-animals we thought was there and just piss all over it. "Other mechanisms" explain it, he claims, eh? Yeah? Like what, smart guy?
As far as I can tell, there is a great amount of dispute about the role natural selection plays in evolutionary change.
As you have pointed out, there is dispute among physicists about the role of gravity in galaxy formation. This doesn't change that every recognizes it exists and certainly has a variety of effects, for both natural selection and gravity.
If my theory of gravity is that "all matter attracts other matter" would my theory be akin to "fact" if it was generally acknowledged that matter exists?
A theory would not be akin to fact at all. Nor does saying somethig is highly confirmed make it akin to fact.
See what I'm gittin at?
Yes, you're still trying to say that theories can't be as confirmed as facts can be. We still disagree.
Isn't this basically what Gould called the "fact" of evolution
I did say they were facts.
But I was asking about the theory.
Undisputed theories would include that natural selection and genetic drift explain a variety of observed effects, and that the mechanisms of mutation to DNA do not take the survival needs of the organism into account.
Thereafter, all eukaryotes descended from the one (and onliest) original eukaryote."
Not necessarily. Syzygy could have united disparate lines, for example, so that there would be shared ancestry without a LUCA. Viral gene transfers is another method. I'm deleting any more comments that seem designed to rebut a LUCA with further response.
This certainly undercuts any notion that they "must" mutate in significant ways, don't it?
I am not aware anyone claims any specific gene must show the effects of mutations.
Well, I think you're conflating ID with creationism. As I said in a subsequent post: "...I don't see that as an "alternative." That would be intelligence design."
The ID of the movement spearheaded by the DI argues for the need for a Designer to have inserted themself into the process. Otherwise, youj would have IC arising without active guidance.
If the ancestry of eukaryote groups is "unclear," why would one insist that common ancestry was so well-confirmed that it would be perverse to deny it?
The quote is saying that the group identifications may not represent a true picture of the descendant patterns. For example, if the animal-fungi break could conceivably be prior to the animal-plant break, then the monophyly of that Opisthokonts would be in question. It's doesn't cast doubt on the shared ancestry.
What's up with this guy, anyway, I wonder? He's tryin to take what scant "evidence" for pre-cambrian proto-animals we thought was there and just piss all over it. "Other mechanisms" explain it, he claims, eh? Yeah? Like what, smart guy?
No doubt this will be an interesting discussion for a couple of decades.
Well, Eric, I guess you don't mean "common descent" when you say "shared ancestry." I kinda thought ya did, since that is what has, for many decades, been one of the lynchpins of "the" theory of evolution. I'm gunna guess at what you mean by shared ancestry here, but first, is your concept an essential part of the theory of evolution, as you see it, or just an interesting "fact?"
I'm guessing that you mean:
1. Abiogenesis occurred where life arose from inert matter by "natural" forces. This may have happened once, twice, three times, or a million times, it doesn't really matter, as far as your presumption of "shared ancestry" goes.
2. At some point, it quit happening. Whenever that was, there were certain extant critters around and, since there was never again any abiogenesis, then all subsequent life had to come from the life existing at the time of the last abiogenetic event. Not necessarily by descent, but, just somehow--hybridization, chimeratic mergers, wholesale gene swapping by HGT, whatever.
Therefore, all life "shares" those ancestors, whether 1 or 1 million.
But I think you are also assuming that any abiogenesis produced only the most primitive form of life, and could never have produced more complex forms whole cloth---the complexity had to come afterwards, by whatever means. You might even concede that abiogenesis is happening somewhere on the planet right now (which would probably best accomodate your devotion to uniformitarism), and always has, as long as the life produced by abiogenesis was microscopic and simplistic.
All that could well be true, but I wouldn't call it a confirmed "scientific theory" unless and until the mechanisms for the changes, as well as the changes themselves, were specified. To just assert that it "had to happen that way somehow" is not what I would call a (scientific) theory of evolution.
Insofar as you want to claim that THE theory of evolution has been confirmed beyond question, I don't think you are justified in merely pointing to some "components" being generally acknowledged as "existing." I don't think there has ever been a serious theory which ended up failing miserably which didn't have some known component in it somewhere. That alone does nothing to confirm the theory as a whole, does it?
I sense that what you call THE theory of evolution really just boils down to this: "Evolution occured by natural, I said NATURAL, means, not, I repeat NOT, by special creation by a divine being. THAT, my creationist friend, is THE CONFIRMED theory of evolution, which every reasonable person believes in and which only perverse fools would deny."
One Brow said: "Undisputed theories would include that natural selection and genetic drift explain a variety of observed effects, and that the mechanisms of mutation to DNA do not take the survival needs of the organism into account."
A couple of comments here:
1. Here you display you inclination to call any sub-hypothesis a (presumably even THE) theory (of evolution). If any one can be confirmed, then, for you, the entire theory has be confirmed.
2. The Havard and Berkeley professors I cited, and a great number of other respectable scientitsts who are strictly evolutionists, would seemingly dispute this claim: "the mechanisms of mutation to DNA do not take the survival needs of the organism into account." I am guessing that if you call something "undisputed," it really has nothing to do with whether the issue is actually disputed in the scientific community. Rather it just means that you, personally, don't question it.
I will grant you that no neo-darwinist disputes it. They couldn't. It is a fundamental axiom of their theory, and therefore not subject to question or dispute within the metaphysical framework of their theory. And, for many decades, neo-darwinism was far and away the pre-dominant, orthodox view, so there was relatively little "dispute," about this presumption. However, lack of dispute does not, in and of itself, make a claim an "undisputed fact." An undiputed claim, maybe, but....
Well, Eric, I guess you don't mean "common descent" when you say "shared ancestry."
I'm surprised you don't recall that I chose 'shared ancestry' as a phrase specifically to remove the LUCA from the discussion, since you insisted common descent meant a LUCA.
... one of the lynchpins of "the" theory of evolution.
New discoveries can open up new possibilities.
I'm gunna guess at what you mean by shared ancestry here, but first, is your concept an essential part of the theory of evolution, as you see it, or just an interesting "fact?"
As I see it, facts are parts of scientific theories. However, I know you disagree.
Therefore, all life "shares" those ancestors, whether 1 or 1 million.
That's a reasonable summary.
You might even concede that abiogenesis is happening somewhere on the planet right now (which would probably best accomodate your devotion to uniformitarism), and always has, as long as the life produced by abiogenesis was microscopic and simplistic.
If there was no extant life, abiogensis might still be going on.
... is not what I would call a (scientific) theory of evolution.
Naturally, since you were discussing abiogenesis.
Insofar as you want to claim that THE theory of evolution has been confirmed beyond question, I don't think you are justified in merely pointing to some "components" being generally acknowledged as "existing."
No scientific theory is completed confirmed in all its mechanisms.
I sense that what you call THE theory of evolution really just boils down to this:
I am sure you are convinced of this.
... the entire theory has be confirmed.
The Theory of Evolution is an active field of research. No sc ientific theory as broad as evolution has ever been confirmed in all its details.
"the mechanisms of mutation to DNA do not take the survival needs of the organism into account."
They have done work on organisms allowing random mutations to be less frequently corrected. I didn't see where they added any new causes of mutation, or any methos that any particular cause could be linked to the needs of the organism.
I am guessing that if you call something "undisputed,"
Or, when you call something disputed, it reaaly means that there are questions and possibilities about any sort of phenomenon that is related to the topic but not part of the topic under discussion.
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