Valentine Pontifex

I have already mentioned those thing in this thread.
The quotes are indisputably taken out of context.
And I don't think that Morpho disagrees with that.
Again this the explanation for why species-to-species transitions are so rare. It is not an explanation for transitions of higher taxa like class-to-class.
The only misrepresentation is by the creationists. Gould has been extremely clear. Species level transitions are rarely found, transitions of higher taxa are common. How many times does Gould have to say this. But then again you like ignoring facts.
This has all been done many times. You are just too lazy to read it.

Could you please justify this position.
Please use the current understanding of how evolution works and apply it to what we know about geology.

And why is this so surprising. You never answer that question.

I wonder if you know where Gould got punctuated equilibrium? He and his collegues got it from the works of Ernst Mayr who is one of the people who founded our current understanding of the evolutionary process. Mayr deduced a great deal of what Gould later became famous for advocating from studying living populations of birds. He also noted that this pattern makes a great deal of sense if we take evolutionary biology seriously. From studies of living populations, from studies in the lab, AND from theoretical modeling, it was clear that a small isolated population can undergo evolutionary changes far more easier than a widespread population.
It took the fossil people a long time, much to Mayr's amusement to take notice of the obvious implications of Mayr's work. Maybe it is no coincidence that Gould was a TA in Mayr's class as a grad student.

Once one realizes that species-to-species transitions usually occure in small isolated populations, it becomes VERY clear why one rarely finds species-to-species transitions. As I said yesterday, it is so obvious that I would be insulting your intellegence if I actually spelled it out. What makes it worse is that for any particular time, only a handful of places on Earth have exposed fossils. Think of it, how often you run into fossils in your everyday life? And since fossil people do not usually dig fossils, but rather find them eroding out of the ground, any particular location can give you fossils for at most one point in time.

Automaton

Oh, for crying out loud. You accuse us of being persuaded by "propaganda" and then later admit that you started denying evolution because of these pathetic creationist "quotes", and not really actual evidence. Why don't you actually READ the material that they're quoting? To understand what Gould means, read Chapter 9 of The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins.

Valentine Pontifex

If you had ever bothered to actually read Gould for yourself you would know this.

Most species last a few million years before they are replaced by other similiar species. During this time, most of the time, the species does not undergo much change. This is what is Gould means by statis.

"Sudden appearence" refers to a geolologically abrupt appearance. Most of the time Gould is using this to refer to the appearance of new SPECIES. He is not saying that mammals appeared suddenly. He is saying x very specific species appeared very suddenly.

Gould agrees that there are numerous species bridging the differences between mammals and reptiles for example. Thus you cannot use him to avoid his issue. You have been provided an example of a transition from one class to another that is covered by many intermediate species to such a degree that it is arbitary were one stops calling them "reptiles" and were one starts calling them "mammals." You have been provided links to articles with many literature refences to the technical literature to look up if you want to do the research you say you want to.

hezekiah jones

Yes, this is irritating. To be accused of slavish devotion to "evolutionary dogma," whilst having the laughably sophomoric readings of Genesis propagated by the imbeciles at AiG thrown in one's face continually. It's pretty pathetic.

MrDarwin

You still haven't really answered my question, which perhaps I worded badly: what characteristics would we expect of a particular fossil if it really were a transitional form between two groups? But given that the fossil record shows us only a small percentage of all the animal and plant species that ever existed, what you are saying, basically, is that it would be impossible to demonstrate such an evolutionary chain, even if it had really existed.

Arrowman

No - but preferably by people who understand it at least a little bit, and who don't confuse propaganda and misquotes with facts and evidence.

Classic creationist dodge. "I've read Origin so therefore I know what I'm talking about. But I'm not up to speed on every little detail, which gives me an excuse to ignore rebuttals of my points and refuse to research subjects on which I express an opinion."

No-one cares what you "would label" Neanderthals as. Oh - I forgot; you've read Origin so you're entitled to draw personal conclusions which differ from those of the scientists who have actually studied these things.

Methinks an objective reading of this thread indicates that it is in fact someone else who is ducking. Does "randman" have anything to do with "random selection of arguments"?

Vorkosigan

randman, it's really time. Put up the best argument for the Flood from AiG. Answer some of the questions.

Michael

Quetzal

Randman: Thanks, but I think you're overstating the case. The points I brought out have been addressed by others on this and other threads in the discussion - I just sort of put them together.

One of the problems we often face is that, when we encounter folks who are arguing some specific aspect of evolution or the fossil record, we assume those folks have some understanding of what they are arguing. I would venture to guess that most paleontologists and biologists (and others of that ilk) take the lack of microtransitions as stipulated. IOW, because it is such a fundamental fact, there's no need to address it. I agree that this is a mistake, however I disagree that there is any deliberate attempt to mislead anyone. A caution, the entire concept is somewhat misleading right up front: no one expects to see, for example, horses' leg length gradually increasing a millimeter at time from Hyracotherium to Equus. That's not how evolution works. There's more variation than that in living species. If that's what you mean by microtransition, you're expecting something that doesn't exist.

In addition, most of the public gets their facts regurgitated by the popular media - usually in articles written by people who have no understanding of the subject, either. Popular media LIVES for sensationalizing. It's how they sell their papers. So even when they report good science, they don't provide the messy, confusing details (knowing several journalists, I think they often underestimate their readership). No question misunderstandings creep in. The problem in the US, at least, is most folks are now so programmed to accepting this, that there is little interest or motivation to dig behind the story and see what the scientists REALLY said or meant.

Another issue is textbook publishers. There are quite a few good ones, but even the best have to pick and choose what to present - and in a limited amount of space - so distortions and "obvious" facts tend to creep in. The writers are generally scientists, but the publishers generally aren't (plus we have the same sales effect as with newspapers - if you can't sell the textbook, you don't get paid...). The worst of the lot are lazy and don't even pretend to publish recent (or even necessarily good) science. They simply reprint old - very occasionally refuted - data. These folks should be taken out and shot, IMHO. They probably do more damage to scientific credibility than any 10 fundamentalist churches.

Then finally, we have the occasional real scientist who lets ego and desire for publicity overcome his/her common sense. These folks FEED on the sensationalism and press coverage. Hey, scientists are human too. In most cases, the rapidly get beaten up by other scientists. However, even the controversy gets distorted by the press. At the lower end of this continuum, we have what Dawkins called "bad poetry" - use of popular analogy or overblown hyperbole to make the discovery or theory more "sexy". At the extreme end, we have people deliberately making giant mountains out of not-necessarily-true molehills. The media eats this stuff up.

I can see why a non-specialist might think all scientists are full of bacteria poop. However, that fallacy is unfair to the thousands of dedicated men and women who are doing GOOD science. Just pick up any good scientific journal (like "Nature", or "Sci-Am", etc), and see what good science really is.


I don't think this is necessarily true. The only real "backlash" has come from the fundamentalist Protestant churches. Even being generous, these churches represent a vanishingly small minority of the population, even in the US. They are, of course, politically strong and very, very vocal. But to say that there is a large-scale backlash against evolution is, in turn, "overstating their case". Most people (at least in the US) couldn't possibly care less. The creationists win more public arguments because they present a sound-bite, emotive, simplified version. And most Americans don't have the desire to figure out why they're wrong. So they "win" by default. OTOH, the fact that every time a creationist-type argument tries to get some legal standing, it gets crushed. Why? Because scientists have learned that this type of idiocy MUST be confronted - the entire future of America depends on it - and have started to do so.
Yes and no. I agree that science needs to better present its case (scientists are generally not PR specialists, for obvious reasons). This is being addressed - it's only fairly recently that scientists have started to think beyond their research and realized that laymen need to understand what they are doing. Hence the increasing success of science popularizers like the late-lamented Sagan and Azimov, and Dawkins, Gould, etc. Even Hawking is trying to get into the swing. The problem here is the "bad poetry". Even with a ghost writer, a lot of scientists simply can't write for the popular press - or they try and bring in analogies and hyperbole that does more to obscure and confuse than illuminate. Which, of course, makes the matter worse.

Another problem is that science is not monolithic. It can't FORCE textbook publishers, for ex, to only publish good science. It can't FORCE the media to bloody learn something about what they're spouting. And, of course, it can't FORCE the layman to flipping pay attention and do some of their own reading, rather than being content to be spoon-fed pablum.

Yeah, that's sort of what I was trying to get across with my squirrel analogy. Remember, however, that no scientist believes that there aren't missing steps.

I'm not sure that's a valid question, simply because I'm not sure mutation rates, etc, can be calculated like that. Molecular biology/genetics can certainly give a degree of relatedness between existing species, and a rough calculation of how long ago different lineages diverged. I don't think it can give the exact number of mutations needed to change between species A and B.

Part of the problem is that I think you're asking for something that doesn't actually occur in nature. There isn't really a step-by-step change in populations due to mutation. In addition, you can't infer allelic effects without getting into a whole 'nother discussion about linkage disequilibrium, marginal fitness, etc. And even then, you can't even begin to undertake that whole discussion without considering all the other variables such as population size, relative mutational susceptibility, the generation rate of the particular species, and a host of environmental factors. IOW, without discussing a particular organism and its specific environment, you can't even begin to talk about what mutational effects, if any, would be required to change it into a new species. Paleoecology is an exciting new science, but it isn't that far yet. As you can see, the question gets pretty technical pretty quickly - so it comes as no surprise that these questions aren't discussed very often in the media... [BTW: If I've misrepresented the case for molecular biology, I'm sure theyeti, Peez, Mr.Darwin, or Rufus will rapidly hammer me. )

You don't see hard data 'cause, like the case with microtransitionals, it don't exist at the current level of scientific knowledge...

Except for the fact that Gould (among others) is often quoted out of context to make some kind of nameless debating point to non-specialists, I agree you have to trust the experts. Or at least their concensus. You could still be wrong - but the odds favor that course of action. Nothing in science is written in stone.

I disagree. There may be some (occasionally acrimonious) disputes over interpretation, but no "evolutionist" disputes the basic data.

This is a misinterpretation of what Gould, Eldridge, and others have said. You really should read some of their published work. Gould is actually arguing against a near-strawman hypothetical "pure gradualist". His basic point, however, is completely valid: the fossil record doesn't show microtransitions. BTW: His quote you referenced was referring to the fact that the fossil record provides a solid, gradual record documenting macroevolution (change in higher taxa). It's at the microevolution level (species to species transition) that the record shows stasis/punctuation. The rest of his theory goes on to provide mechanisms for how this occurs (allopatric speciation, habitat tracking, etc). It always slays me to see creationists citing Gould's arguments, especially since they deny macroevolution can occur - which is the opposite of what Gould is saying.

Err, no. See above. Or better yet, read one of Gould or Eldridge's books.

[ March 08, 2002: Message edited by: Morpho ]</p>

hyzer

Morpho:

Thanks for the great, level headed, even-handed explanations in your most recent posts to randman.

Well put.

- from the layperson peanut gallery -
<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

randman

Morpho, there is too much to respond to today so I will hit just a couple of points.
1."His basic point, however, is completely valid: the fossil record doesn't show microtransitions. BTW: His quote you referenced was referring to the fact that the fossil record provides a solid, gradual record documenting macroevolution (change in higher taxa). It's at the microevolution level (species to species transition) that the record shows stasis/punctuation."
I think ya'll are assuming creationists and critics are not aware of the context, that Gould beleives in evolution, but we are, and that is realy the whole point. Take a step back and see what Gould is saying. Gould is saying species don't appear to change in the fossil record. That cannot be overstated. They exhibit stasis, but he beleives species do evolve. So postulates a mode of evolution called PE, right?
Now, he goes on to state that there are species that are transitional between major groups, but these species also exhibit stasis. The fact of stasis and sudden appearance is dominant. It is not then taking him out of context to state the transitions are not shown, but species apppear fully formed without a trace of their immediate anscestors. That is true.
So the Creationists says, look here, these species are not evolving. They is no hard data, no transitional fossils to back it up, and evolutionists say that it is taking him out of context, but it isn't. There are too different ideas of transitional. GOuld is saying the emphatically that gradualistics transformations, or a pure gradualism model, is not found in the fossil record, that species go for millions of years unchanged, and in fact, we don't see them evolving. All we see our future steps. To the creationist, this is a lack of transitional fossils. The later steps can be labelled transitional but that is an intepretation based on similarites and where the species was found. The exact transitions are not found.

2. Evolution is taught to 4th graders. When others, not you Morpho, have called for education levels and such, are we then stating that what is going on is indoctrinating the public to beleive in something that they are not qualified to assess, or is this just arguing from authority?
I think evolution employs propoganda methods, and for this reason alone should be suspect. Education is about learning to think and express oneself well, and then to grasp certain subjects. From what many evolutionists on this board say, it seems that indoctrination and propoganda are the tools of teaching evolution, and that is wrong.