On Tue, 7 Dec 1999 10:19:53 -0600, John E. Rylander wrote:
[...]
>SJ>neoDarwinian step-by-step method must fail claims Hoyle, because it
>>implies 100 non-functional steps. The alternative: a jump of 100
>>mutations
>>of exactly the right kind would be highly improbable [20^100 or 10^130
>>SJ]. The histone-4 case is in fact a case of Michael Behe's Irreducible
>>Complexity long before Behe published his Darwin's Black Box, since the
>>hand-written version of Mathematics of Evolution was 'published'
>>in 1987."
[...]
JR>The deductive argument IC -> couldn't have evolved is just as mistaken when
>Hoyle presents it as when Behe does, EVEN IF the conclusion is true. IC of
>suitably complex system does imply that the simplest path is unavailable
>(for the reasons presented in the quote above), but (certainly in principle,
>anyway) there are indefinitely many more circuitous evolutionary paths still
>available, even given IC of the end result.
All Hoyle is saying is that one cannot plausibly arrive at histone-4 by the
normal, bottom-up, step-by-step, Neo-Darwinian pathway.
JR>(To put this another way: evolutionary IC -> instead of 100-at-once, or 100
>neutral or dysfunctional steps, there are 100+n steps, where n is probably
>some fairly large number. Instead of building up from zero, it builds at
>least in part laterally or down from other complex precursors.)
It is of course always possible to protect Neo-Darwinism from falsification
by adding in any number of imaginary building up, building sideways, and
building down just-so' stories. But that just goes to show that Neo-
Darwinism is just an unfalsifiable system of thought!
If Neo-Darwinism was false, how would a Neo-Darwinist known it?
Or, to put it another way, if an Intelligent Designer did in fact create
histone-4 in one jump, how would a Neo-Darwinist ever know it?
The postulation of hypothetical circuitous routes is always possible to save
Neo-Darwinism. But as Mike Behe notes. such explanations become less
plausible as the number of unexplained irreducibly complex biological
systems increases:
"Even if a system is irreducibly complex (and thus cannot have been
produced directly), however, one can not definitively rule out the
possibility of an indirect, circuitous route. As the complexity of an
interacting system increases, though, the likelihood of such an indirect
route drops precipitously. And as the number of unexplained irreducibly
complex biological systems increases, our confidence that Darwin's
criterion of failure has been met skyrockets toward the maximum that
science allows." (Behe M.J., "Darwin's Black Box", 1996, p40).
One can continue to rescue Neo-Darwinism by such ad hoc auxiliary
hypotheses, but Neo-Darwinism, like Ptolemaic astronomy, has then
lost its original simplicity in a maze of ad hoc `epicycles':
"The concept of the epicycle was one of the characteristic features of the
Ptolemaic system. In the centuries following its formulation, the gradual
accumulation of astronomical data by medieval Christian and Moslem
astronomers revealed further irregularities in the movements of the planets
which required further adjustments to the traditional geocentric system. To
account for these irregularities, more and more epicycles were proposed
and as time went on the theory underwent successive modifications and
amendments. By the early sixteenth century the whole Ptolemaic system
had become, in the words of a contemporary astronomer, "a monstrosity",
a fantastically involved system entailing a vast and evergrowing complexity
of epicycles. The state of astronomy is described in Kuhn's The Structure
of Scientific Revolutions:
`By the thirteenth century Alfonso X could proclaim that if God had
consulted him when creating the universe, he would have received good
advice. In the sixteenth century, Copernicus' co-worker, Domenico da
Novara, held that no system so cumbersome and inaccurate as the
Ptolemaic had become could possibly be true nature. And Copernicus
himself wrote in the Preface to the De Revolutionibus that the astronomical
tradition he inherited had finally created a monster.'
However, so ingrained was the idea that the Earth was the centre of the
universe that hardly anyone, even those astronomers who were well aware
of the growing unreality of the whole system, ever bothered to consider an
alternative theory."
(Denton M.J., "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis", 1985, p349)
Steve
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"I do not know when the technical and popular prose of science became
separated, although I accept the inevitability of such a division as
knowledge became increasingly more precise, detailed, and specialized. We
have now reached the point where most technical literature not only falls
outside the possibility of public comprehension but also (as we would all
admit in honest moments) outside our own competence in scientific
disciplines far removed from our personal expertise. I trust that we all
regard this situation as saddening, even though we accept its necessity."
(Gould S.J., "Take Another Look", Science, Vol. 286, 29 October 1999,
p899)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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