On Thu, 5 Feb 1998 07:51:31 -0800 (PST), E G M wrote:
EM>Hello again. Dr. Harper asked a couple of questions:
>
>(1) Where did you get the idea that PE doesn't have a mechanism?
>
>(2) Would you also criticize Newton and Galileo for their failure to
>have mechanisms?
EM>ANSWERS:
>
>(1) You are right, my mistake, punctuated equilibrium (PE) apparently
>does have a mechanism, actually, it has mechanisms.
I think you are being too kind! I have read every book and article I
can by Gould and Eldredge, including their latest update of PE:
Gould S.J. & Eldredge N., "Punctuated Equilibrium Comes of Age,"
Nature, 18 November 1993, Vol 366, pp223-227. There is no
PE mechanism in that paper. The only thing new that I can see in PE
is species selection, but Gould & Eldredge admit that there has
been no validation of same:
"But continuing unhappiness, justified this time, focuses upon claims
that speciation causes significant morphological change, for no
validation of such a position has emerged (while the frequency and
efficacy of our original supporting notion, Mayr's "genetic revolution"
in peripheral isolates, has been questioned). Moreover, reasonable
arguments for potential change throughout the history of lineages
have been advanced although the empirics of stasis throws the
efficacy of such processes into doubt..." (Gould S.J. & Eldredge N.,
"Punctuated Equilibrium Comes of Age," Nature, 18 November
1993, Vol 366, p226)
The best that Gould and Eldredge can say about the relationship between
speciation and morphological change is that they are associated:
"For the association of morphological change with speciation remains as a
major pattern in the fossil record." (Gould & Eldredge, p226)
But this begs the question of which is the cause and which is the effect, or
indeed whether both are effects and the true cause something else (for example
an Intelligent Designer causing a genetic revolution like a jaw or a feather
in a prepared peripheral isolate species).
The best that PE seems to be able to claim is that it preserves change once
it has been initiated:
"We believe that the solution to this dilemma may be provided in a
brilliant but neglected suggestion of Futuyma. He holds that
morphological change may accumulate anywhere along the geological
trajectory of a species. But unless that change be "locked up" by
acquisition of reproductive isolation (that is speciation), it cannot
persist or accumulate and must be washed out during the complexity
of interdigitation through time among varying populations of a
species. Thus, species are not special because their origin permits a
unique moment for instigating change, but because they provide the
only mechanism for protecting change." (Gould & Eldredge, p226).
But this seems no different than what Neo-Darwinism had always
claimed since 1942:
"Curiously, the answer had been available since the synthesis (Mayr,
1942; 1954) but was ignored by the paleontologists until used by
Eldredge and Gould (1972) in their model of so-called punctuated
equilibria...Eldredge and Gould...accepted Mayr's interpretation that
such new species had originated somewhere in an isolate (peripheral
or not) and were able to spread far and wide if they were successful."
(Mayr E., "The Growth of Biological Thought", 1982, p617).
If there is any difference, it is Gould & Eldredge's claim that
discontinuities are real and abrupt:
"In one respect Gould and Eldredge differ fundamentally from Mayr.
They maintain that punctuated equilibria are produced by
discontinuities of such size that they correspond to Goldschmidt's
hopeful monsters: "Macroevolution proceeds by the rare success of
these hopeful monsters, not by continuous small changes within
populations" (Gould, 1977: 30). What Goldschmidt had postulated,
and this seems to be endorsed by Gould, is the production of new
species or higher taxa by a single step through a single individual."
(Mayr, 1982, p617).
But this is functionally equivalent to creation!
EM>However, in contrast with the Darwinian mechanism it pales in
>elegance and appeal. I've heared it described as fuzzy, confused,
>jagged, tentative, incoherent, uncertain, etc., sort of like one
>would describe "history" without the historians' records. This
>is not my idea, this is what the fundamentals (Dawkins, Dennet,
etc.) are saying.
Agreed. Dennett claims that Gould has changed his mind at least
three times on what he and Eldredge were claiming:
"Gould has several times changed his mind about just what he and
Eldredge were claiming. In its first appearance, the thesis of
punctuated equilibrium was presented not as a revolutionary
challenge at all, but as a conservative correction of an illusion to
which orthodox Darwinians had succumbed: paleontologists were
simply mistaken in thinking that Darwinian natural selection should
leave a fossil record showing lots of intermediate forms. There was
no mention in the first paper of any radical theory of speciation or
mutation. But later, about 1980, Gould decided that punctuated
equilibrium was a revolutionary idea after all-not an explanation of
the lack of gradualism in the fossil record, but a refutation of
Darwinian gradualism itself. This claim was advertised as
revolutionary-and now it truly was. It was too revolutionary, and it
was hooted down with the same sort of ferocity the establishment
reserves for heretics like Elaine Morgan. Gould backpedaled hard,
offering repeated denials that he had ever meant anything so
outrageous. In that case, responded the establishment, there is after
all nothing new in what you say. But wait. Might there be still another
reading of the hypothesis, according to which it is both true and new?
There might be. Phase three is still under way, and the jury is out,
considering several different- but all nonrevolutionary-alternatives.
We will have to retrace the phases to see what the hue and cry has
been about." (Dennett D.C., "Darwin 's Dangerous Idea", 1995, p283)
EM>(2) I would not. Your question, however, makes me think that you
>think I was criticizing Gould, and I guess I was, but I was also
>criticizing Dawkins. However, in both cases I was simply repeating
>what has spilled over to the public eye due to the internal pressure
>(and I submitted a web-reference). The fact is Gould is more honest
>than Dawkins in regards to a fair evaluation of the fossil record;
>Gould's hero is still Darwin but not Darwinism, so he is careful in
>his critique.
Agreed. Gould's problem is that he is *too* honest. He knows that
the fossil record does not match Neo-Darwinist theory, but he
lacks the nerve to make a clean break with it:
"Gouldās uncomfortable situation reminds me of the self-created
predicament of Mikhail Gorbachev in the last years of the Soviet
Empire. Gorbachev recognized that something had gone wrong with
the Communist system, but thought that the system itself could be
preserved if it was reformed. His democratic friends warned him that
the Marxist fundamentalists would inevitably turn against him, but he
was unwilling to endanger his position in the ruling elite by following
his own logic to its necessary conclusion. Gould, like Gorbachev,
deserves immense credit for bringing glasnost to a closed society of
dogmatists. And, like Gorbachev, he lives on as a sad reminder of
what happens to those who lack the nerve to make a clean break with
a dying theory." (Johnson P.E., "The Gorbachev of Darwinism",First
Things 79, January 1998, pp14-16.
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9801/johnson.html)
EM>Dawkins' heros are Darwinism and Darwin, but it only
>takes an honest evolutionists (like Gould) to point out that
>gradualism is not what characterizes the punctuated fossil record.
>Remember that was Gould who called Dawkins a fundamentalist; with the
>obvious overtones that that title has in American religious history
>(faith over reason) it is not surprising to see that the pressure went
>up.
Good point! Gould calling Dawkins (through Dennett and Maynard
Smith) a "fundamentalist" is really a shocking epithe, within these
atheists' frame of reference. Gould must be really at desperate-after
former supporter Maynard Smith turned on him in The New York
Review, November 30, 1995:
"Gould occupies a rather curious position, particularly on his side of
the Atlantic. Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to
be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In
contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his
work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be
hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly
criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists.
(The New York Review, November 30, 1995, in Gould S.J.,
"Darwinian Fundamentalism", New York Review of Books, June 12,
1997. http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWfeatdisplay.cgi?1997061234F
@p7)
EM>Things are getting weirder. The morphological derived taxa is not
>fitting well with the molecular derived taxa. The space inside the
>cell in crammed with all sort of super-specialized power plants,
>refineries, waste management mechanisms, etc., etc.. Algorithms to
>backproject geneological trees are dramatically failing in the
>simplest of experiments possible by following several generations of
>uni-cellular organisms and examining their complete genome. And yes,
>no one has yet provided possible mechanisms for those examples given
>by Behe in his book.
[...]
Indeed! The Darwinist Haldane writing in 1927 would not have realised
how even more true his saying would become by the end of the Century:
"Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than
we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." (Haldane J.B.S.,
"Possible Worlds: And Other Essays", [1927], Chatto and Windus:
London, 1932 reprint, p286).
On Fri, 6 Feb 1998 07:40:34 -0800 (PST), E G M wrote:
>Dr. Harper replies:
BH>Yes yes, I know. This is really the heart of my "complaint" against
>you and others (i.e. Johnson). Playing one side against the other,
>apparently thinking that if these two sides kill each other off then
>creationism will be declared winner. But it doesn't work that way.
>What will actually happen (my prediction!) is that both sides will be
>strengthened by the debate.
I wonder what evidence Brian has for his stereotype of Johnson. On
his tapes he says a number of times that if his criticisms of Darwinism
stimulates Darwinists to clean up their act and strenghten their case,
well and good.
EM>I don't know what you have against Dr. Johnson. He certainly has
>captured what has spilled over the public eye and has disclosed many
>of the difficulties of the "fact" of evolution. This is totally
>welcome within and outside science precisely for what you predict. I
>don't understand your complaint given your prediction, this stance is
>very contradictory at best. I don't like the way you attribute
>apparent intent to me, but you are certainly free to say what you
>please. Just one question though, who told you I was a creationist?
Good point Ed. But you will learn (as I have) that to theistic
evolutionists, anyone who criticise evolution is automatically lumped
together with all other creationists. And creationist is equated (if
not explicitly, then implicitly) with young-earth Biblical literalism and
fundamentalism.
EM>I have not problem with evolution itself (although I have my
>scientific doubts) but with the philosophical preaching of the
>atheistic high priests of evolution, especially when they preached
>"scientifically based" metaphysical beliefs.
Agreed. The theistic evolutionists (TEs) claim also to be concerned about
this use of evolution to promote atheism, but with a few possible
exceptions (eg. Polkinghorne), they seem to have done very little
about it. I would have thought that even if they disagreed with
Johnson's anti-Darwinism, they would be strong in their support
for his anti-atheism. But instead, the TEs leaders in science and
Christian education, almost uniformly been critical of Johnson:
"So far I have described the metaphysical categories by which
scientific naturalists have excluded the topic of God from rational
discussion, and thus ensured that Darwinism's fully naturalistic
creation story is effectively true by definition. There is no need to
explain why atheists find this system of thought control congenial.
What is a little more difficult to understand, at least at first, is the
strong support Darwinism continues to receive in the Christian
academic world. Attempts to investigate the credibility of the
Darwinist evolution story are regarded with little enthusiasm by many
leading Christian professors of science and philosophy, even at
institutions which are generally regarded as conservative in theology.
Given that Darwinism is inherently naturalistic and therefore
antagonistic to the idea that God had anything to do with the history
of life, and that it plays the central role in ensuring agnostic
domination of the intellectual culture, one might have supposed that
Christian intellectuals (along with religious Jews) would be eager to
find its weak spots. Instead, the prevailing view among Christian
professors has been that Darwinism-or "evolution," as they tend to
call it- is unbeatable, and that it can be interpreted to be consistent
with Christian belief." (Johnson P.E., "What is Darwinism?",
Symposium at Hillsdale College, in November 1992, Bauman ed.,
"Man and Creation: Perspectives on Science and Theology", Hillsdale
College Press: Hillsdale, 1993.
http://www.mrccos.com/arn/johnson/wid.htm)
EM>I believe we believers
>in Christ are all partly wrong and all partly right on the various
>positions we take regarding inferential sciences. I keep reminding
>myself that "His ways are beyond tracing out". All we can hope for
>are regularities and generalities, and from the scientific platform I
>think it is too early to say evolution happened from biomolecules to
>today's diversity or whether major diversification was created and
>then evolution happened.
I personally think we can take a stronger position than that. If we are
theistic realists who believe that God is real and can supernaturally
intervene in His world, then we should expect to be surprised that a
science based on exactly the opposite philosophical premises (ie.
materialist- naturalism) should get it right. We should therefore press
the Darwinists very hard to uncover any inconsistencies in their
evidence, that their philosophical premises may make them prone to
overlooking.
Of course, at the end of the day, Darwinism might survive the
challenge and be even stronger for it. In that case theistic realism
would have to concede that although God could have intervened in
His world in biological history, He didn't. But what some Christians
who are evolutionists seem to think is that the result is a foregone
conclusion and that materialistic-naturalistic science must win.
Therefore, perhaps to protect the Church and/or science, what they
apparently want to do is short circuit the process, neutralise theistic
realist critics like Johnson, and declare Darwinism (or a materialist-
naturalist variant of it) as the winner in advance!
Johnson calls this tiny minority in the Christian world, "theistic
naturalists", because they are theists, who explicitly or implicitly
seem to accept apriori the naturalist's premise that nature is a closed
system of cause and effect in which God can never, or has never,
intervened:
"Of course, theists recognize that experience has shown that a great
many phenomena have natural causes that are accessible to scientific
investigation. To a theist there is nothing surprising about this,
because the universe is a product of the mind of God and the
inquiring mind of man was created in God's image. Whether such
extraordinary events as the origin of life, the origin of the plant and
animal phyla, or the origin of human consciousness can be
satisfactorily explained in terms of unintelligent natural causes should
be an open question for theists. A person who assumes a priori that
such creation events must have scientifically ascertainable material
causes is a metaphysical naturalist. If he believes in God he is a
theistic naturalist, who limits God's freedom by the dictates of
naturalistic philosophy." (Johnson P.E., in Van Till H.J. & Johnson
P.E., "God and Evolution: An Exchange", First Things, 34, June/July
1993, pp32-41. http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9306/johnson.html)
Please note that neither Johnson, nor I, make any claims about these
theistic naturalists' Christian committment. Indeed, he says some
very nice things about the difficulties they must have as Christians
in the field of science. Personally, I assume they may be better
Christians than myself (Phl 2:3). But that does not mean that they are
right.
On Fri, 6 Feb 1998 10:14:22 -0600 (CST), R. Joel Duff wrote:
>EM>Things are getting weirder. The morphological derived taxa is not
>>fitting well with the molecular derived taxa.
>>
>>Dr. Harper asked:
>BH>This is interesting. Do you have a reference?
>>
>>EMI say "ask and you shall receive:"
>>"The Coming of Age of Molecular Systematics," by Laura E. Maley and
>>Charles R. Marshall, Science 23 January 1998.
Or:
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Family Feuds
Reconstructing life's evolutionary tree is tough enough without
warring researchers trying to cut the branches away from each other,
says Roger Lewin
[...]
What Darwin could not have predicted was that a century after the
publication of his on the Origin of Species, biologists would begin to
use molecules such as proteins and DNA to uncover the shape of the
tree of life. This approach has taken the biological stage by sperm,
and has produced many surprising results. Consider some of the
announcements made during 1997 alone. The elephant shrew,
consigned by traditional analysis to the order insectivores (which
includes moles and hedgehogs), is in fact more closely related to its
behemoth namesake, the true elephant. Cows are more closely related
to dolphins than they are to horses. The duck- billed platypus, an egg-
laying mammal from Australia, does not represent the most primitive
form of mammal after all, but is on an equal evolutionary footing with
those marsupial mammals from Australia, kangaroos and koalas. And
forget examining the shape of seedlings in flowering plants to seek
out their evolutionary history: molecular evidence shows that the
microscopic form of pollen grains gives the best clues....if these
results and countless others like them are correct, it means that what
Darwin had in mind, and-what biologists have been doing for more
than a century, was misguided at best and at worst a waste of time.
Has morphological analysis had its day when it comes to
understanding the evolutionary relationships-the phylogeny- of life on
Earth? Some proponents of molecular phylogenetics believe it has. "
(Lewin R., "Family Feuds," New Scientist, 24 January 1998, p36)
Steve
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Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net
3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Steve.Jones@health.wa.gov.au
Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 8 9448 7439
Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
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