Re: morphological change

Jim Bell (70672.1241@compuserve.com)
09 Jun 95 19:21:14 EDT

Brian writes:

<<Sorry to butt in, but it seems to me that many of the complexity
folks would be more likey to agree with Kurt and Jim than with
Glenn.>>

True. So far, Glenn stands pretty much alone, convinced that large scale
morphological change, including parallel adaptations, are demonstrated in what
he assumptively calls the whale "sequence".

I would add to Goodwin's, the words of S. J. Gould:

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major
transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to
construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and
nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."

And Eldredge says something particularly apt in this discussion:

"We are faced more with a great leap of faith--that dradual, progressive
adaptive change underlies the general pattern of evolutionary change we see in
the rocks--than any hard evidence."

Leap of faith...lack of hard evidence...

Hmm...