>
>> >Yes. But here we talk of concepts that are broad enough to verge on the
>> >philosophical. Paradigms, if you will; a level of discourse that working
>> >scientists with their attention on the details must inevitably find
>> >annoying, as it suggests an undermining of the foundations of their
>> >work.
>
> >On the contrary, working scientists like myself use paradigms all the
time;
> >we tend to create and test a dozen a month, give or take. It's all part
of
> >the job, something you would know if you were a working scientist.
>
> I suppose terms get cheapened in the evolution of language; maybe
> that's a recognized 'law' in that field. When I was in school a paradigm
> shift was a scientific revolution. Now lab workers flip a few new ones
> in the pan for breakfast every day.
>
On the contrary, the definition of paradigm has always been simply "a pattern
or model"; it has only been relatively recently (since 1962 as compared to
the 400 years since Gallileo) that philosophers have adopted the term to
refer to what Strahler calls the "dominant theory" or the "ruling
hypothesis". This is not an inappropriate use of the term, but it is a
rather restricted, specialized usage, and this usage is pretty much
restricted to philosophers and theorists. To the average working scientist,
paradigm still means what it has meant since at least Gallileo's time: a
model or working hypothesis.
>
> What is the point of this emphasis on the 'working scientist'? It seems
> an empty argument from authority, self-authority at that.
>
You are making claims about the way working scientists think and behave, and
about the concepts they use, in a manner that strongly suggests you can speak
with authority on these issues, as if you were a working scientist yourself
rather than simply an "armchair" critic who only knows what he has read from
selective and often biased sources. A true working scientist such as myself
can instantly recognize from what you say that you do not in fact have the
experience or the knowledge to speak with ANY kind of authority on these
subjects; I am simply pointing this out. Your characterization of my
experience and knowledge as a working as being "an empty argument from
authority" is simply your strawman attempt to dismiss my comments rather than
have to deal with the fact that I know better than you how a working
scientist thinks and behaves, and what certain concepts mean in the context
of scientific methodology. Like it or not, I am here to tell you that the
way you characterize how working scientists think and behave, and how they
use certain concepts is dead wrong. Under these circumstances you cannot
defend your position by simply contemptuously dismissing my own.
>
> Hasn't it been
> shown that fundamental breakthroughs are just as likely to come from
> outsiders?
>
No actually, it hasn't. The only examples that exist are those of people who
were already experts in the field in which they made their breakthrough,
through independent study and research, but who were unacknowledged by the
recognized experts in that field. Take for example the "classical" case of
Watson and Crick. These supposed "outsiders" were in fact nothing of the
kind. Watson was already a (bio)chemist and Crick (a physicist) had returned
to school to study to become a chemist. They both had to be taught how to
interpret x-ray crystallographs by one of the resident experts, Maurice
Wilkins (with whom Watson and Crick shared the Nobel Prize), and since they
could not do their own experiments they had to rely on (some say stole) the
data of Wilkins and his colleague Rosalind Franklin. The only thing that
Watson and Crick provided that was missing was the single-minded drive to
elucidate the structure of DNA as quickly as possible before anyone else
could beat them to it (in other words, obsessive-compulsive behavior and
supreme ego). Had Watson and Crick never been on the scene, Franklin and
Wilkins would have figured out the structure in about another year's time if
not less (they were that close).
There is no case of a scientist who uses the expertise in his own field to
make a breakthrough in another field he knows practically nothing about; nor
is there any case of a lay person with no expertise whatsoever making a
breakthrough in any field. Take for example the "classical" case of Charles
Darwin. He has been described as an amateur, but he wasn't. He had no
formal degree (they didn't really exist back then for the natural sciences),
but he studied independently, did his own field research, took
"extra-curricular" courses while at university and was tutored by some of the
leading experts in natural science of the time, such as Erasmus Darwin (a
grandfather), Robert Grant, John Stevens Henslow and Adam Sedgewick. So he
was far from an amateur when he accepted the post of ship's naturalist on the
Beagle.
>
> >As I tried to point out, what you as a non-scientist would consider a
> >mystery more than likely is no mystery to the scientists who study it.
> >I know of one thing you consider to be a mystery -- the Cambrian
> >explosion -- and I also know it is no mystery to those who study it.
> >I would rather concentrate on the real mysteries than waste time
> >debating issues that are no mystery at all, which you would know if
> >you at least studied the scientific literature.
>
The following is a perfect example of what I mean above.
>
> The vertebrates appeared suddenly in the fossil record.
>
The generally accepted period covered by the Cambrian explosion -- from the
beginning of the Cambrian to the onset of the Chengjiang and Burgess Shale
periods -- spanned 18 million years. This is hardly sudden or instantaneous
by either geological or evolutionary standards. On top of that recent
paleontological and molecular biological evidence has demonstrated that the
majority of the diversification believed to have occurred in the mid-Cambrian
actually took place during the Vendian, some 100 million years before the
beginning of the Cambrian. That would make the "explosion" during the
Cambrian actually more of an "accretion" of body plans characterized by
increases in size, the introduction of hard body parts and the
diversification of appendages.
True vertebrates do not actually appear in the fossil record until 450
millions years during the Ordovician. Chordates are repesented by Pikaia in
the Burgess Shale and by Yunnanozoan in the Chengjiang 525 million years ago.
It is not known if they are true cephalochordates or just hemichrodates, but
it seems obvious that the chordate body plan had been established before
then, either in the Vendian or shortly after the start of the Cambrian 543
million years ago. However, using paleontological, molecular and ontological
evidence, the emergence of the chordates can be traced from when they
branched off from annelids and molluscs through arthropods and nematodes back
to a roundish flatworm that lived during the late Vendian at the time of the
Ediacaran fauna.
So in point of fact neither the vertebrates nor the chordates "appeared
suddenly in the fossil record".
>
> They appeared
> fully-formed, as anatomically complex as modern vertebrates. Granted,
> 'complexity' is a somewhat subjective term.
>
Even granting the subjectivity of the term, neither the Cambrian chordates
nor the Ordovician vertebrates were "fully-formed, as anatomically complex as
modern vertebrates". Though they resembled fish in shape, the Ordovician
vertebrates had no jaws, no bony skeletons, no true vertebrae, no kidneys, no
true hearts, etc. And the Cambrian chordates didn't even have that much.
They were more like adult acorn worms or larval ascidians, which are --
compared to modern vertebrates -- anatomically the most primitive of living
chordates. Heck, they are even more primitive than the vast majority of
arthropods, molluscs and annelids; only nematodes are more primitive.
>
> But I don't see that this
> geologically instantaneous emergence has been satisfyingly explained
> by extrapolating from shifts in the color gene frequencies of moths etc.
>
That's because (1) it wasn't geologically instantaneous and (2) the main
evidence that explains the event is not simple population genetics, natural
selection or genetic drift (though at its heart the event is simply a
large-scale version of all these phenomena). The main evidence consists of
direct and indirect fossil evidence, molecular phylogeny data and ontological
data, particularly the evidence demonstrating the evolution of body plans and
different strategies for ontological development.
>
> Some different kinds of evolution must have taken place, wild and weird
> things.
>
I guess that depends on what you mean by different. Evolution of body plans
and ontological developmental strategies certainly appear different from
shifts in body color and antibiotic resistence, but it is still basic
neo-Darwinian evolution, only on a larger scale and affecting more critical
systems.
>
> Imaginative theorizing is needed, not contentment with what's in
> the literature.
>
First of all, you are not even aware of the evidence in **textbooks** that
refute your misconceptions, so I would hardly see you as an authority on the
literature of the Cambrian explosion. Secondly, if you read the literature
you would see that much of the generally accepted explanation IS based on
imaginative theorizing (backed by empirical evidence). To imply otherwise as
you do simply demonstrates your lack of knowledge in this area.
>
> Where would your protein-first model be if you'd accepted
> established ideas?
>
Bad analogy; both the protein-first concept and the thermal protein
(proteinoid) microsphere protocell model were **founding** theories of modern
abiogenesis along with the genes-first concept back in the Sixties. In other
words, thermal proteins are not a new idea challenging established ideas, but
in fact are an established idea being challenged by new ideas like the RNA
world and catalytic clays.
As offensive as this sounds, it is nonetheless true that you really do not
know or understand this issue as much as you claim to. My best advice would
thus be: READ THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE!
Kevin L. O'Brien