Secular Pinoy

The latest chapter in the debate, Gould's Magnum Opus:

<a href="http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i27/27a01401.htm" target="_blank">http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i27/27a01401.htm</A>

I haven't read the book but from what the article above says, it seems to be a solid good book. It would complement my growing SJ Gould book collection (4 so far), and would clarify some of the points in Eldredge's Reinventing Darwin.

Jubal

I would suggest that, once a new mutation gets a foothold, it is exaggerated or watered down according to need via natural selection. Giftedness in humans is possibly an example that we can actively monitor (especially since it seems related to autism). It would be interesting to discover that this is a new subspecies of human in the making. Or, perhaps, I'm not making any sense at all. In any event, I'd be thrilled to hear of humanity actually evolving into something with a better sense of priorities.

Quetzal

I saw Gould's "Structure..." in Border's Book Store when I was in the US last week. I almost bought it - then realized that it would put me over my weight limit on my suitcase.

Still, I'm tempted to pick it up. Another book that I DID buy is Eldridge's "Triumph of Evolution". Although not all that good as a creationism-bashing screed (which it was intended for), it does have some excellent, non-specialist discussion of PE.

Finally, the best recent discussion of gradualism in the fossil record (that I also bought on my last trip - see why Gould would have put me over the top?) is Zimmer's "At the Water's Edge". Anyone interested in whale evolution ought to check it out. It's a lot more technical than Zimmer's PBS companion book, but still very very readable for a non-specialist. Zimmer's books show he is an outstanding writer at explaining science to a non-scientist audience. The next Dawkins?

Jubal

Wonderful. Perhaps I should write some of this down, it would be thrilling to actually be exposed to some of this material.

Bill

Gould is an ethnic Jew and refers to himself as an agnostic. Gould's article entitled <a href="http://cyberbuzz.gatech.edu/kaboom/interesting/gould-magisteria.html" target="_blank">Nonoverlapping Magisteria</a> (NOMA) appeared in Natural History in March 1997. Gould's key thought there is expressed here: Thus, in Gould's view, religion has a place in civilized society: as the source of "moral meaning and value." This rankles many atheists who refuse to acknowledge that religion has any value at all. However, atheistic formulation of "moral meaning and value" are substantially lacking, and those which have been advanced over the past few decades have each been found to produce somewhat obviously erroneous results when applied to real-life situations. (It can be argued that religion, too, has errors within its moral rules, but most major religions of today have had hundreds to thousands of years to "work out the kinks" in their own moral systems, so the flaws are somewhat less obvious.)

Anyway, both Dawkins and Gould are profiled in <a href="http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/bookdetail.asp?BookID=698" target="_blank">Mystery of Mysteries : Is Evolution a Social Construction</a> by Michael Ruse. I bought that book, and I feel it gave me a great deal of insight into both Dawkins and Gould. Ruse calls them both "populizers of science" rather than actual dedicated scientists. For instance, Ruse counts Gould's papers and citations in professional journals versus articles and books written for the popular press and discerns that his professional work is extremely "thin." More or less the same argument can be made for Dawkins. The key point here is that neither Dawkins nor Gould are particularly well-respected among scientists for producing revolutionary new ideas, models, or theories. Frankly, Gould's idea of "punctuated equilibria" seems to be more descriptive of what happens rather than offering any real cause-and-effect insight into the evolutionary process. These days, we have a far better understanding of things like "evolutionary bottlenecks" through which only a few members of a species progress, rapidly evolving during that "bottleneck" due to a small breeding population. This idea EXPLAINS what was previously only DESCRIBED by Gould's idea of "punctuated equilibria." Thus, Gould's grand idea is now extremely obsolete.

== Bill

Synaesthesia

*WINCE*

This is simply a creationist misrepresentation of Gould’s theory. I think if anything, Gould has overstated how revolutionary his theory is.

The theory is based NOT upon absence of fossil records, but upon systematic trends in the frequency of certain varieties of animals over time. The evidence, not simple absence of evidence, clearly supports the contention that morphology does not change in a smooth and consistent rate over time. PE is still a gradualist theory, it’s just a refinement in our conception of the gradual patterns of change.

Secular Pinoy

I thought Habitat Tracking is a major part of the Naturalist position. Niles Eldredge refers to it in several passages in his book Reinventing Darwin. I forgot how he reconciles HT with PE, but I did remember that he used HT to challenge the Ultra-Darwinists. To a UD, a population would not leave their current habitat when faced with, say climate change. They would stand their ground and adapt. Of course, my memory is kinda hazy. I'll try to re-read Eldredge's book.