Reflectorites
On Thu, 03 Feb 2000 09:34:46 -0600, Susan Brassfield wrote:
[...]
>SJ>Of course Darwinists will no doubt argue that evolution must always have
>>happened so rapidly in the past and/or in such small groups, that the fossil
>>record didn't preserve the evidence of it.
SB>Actually Gould and Eldridge were arguing this 20 years ago and it is now
>widely accepted.
Susan has neatly chopped off without ellipses what I added immediately
afterward:
"That's OK, but then that would be an unfalsifiable position. Also, that
scenario would be a *prediction* of creationist theory but an *unexpected
difficulty to be explained away* by Darwinian evolutionary theory!"
Indeed, *that* Gould and Eldredge *had* to argue this "20 years ago" (ie.
110 years after Darwin's Origin and 40 years after the Neo-Darwinian
Modern Synthesis), is an argument in itself that it was "an *unexpected
difficulty to be explained away* by Darwinian evolutionary theory".
In fact as Eldredge notes, Sewall Wright was arguing something like
punctuated equilibrium in the 1930's, ie. *60* years ago (as was Mayr and
Simpson in the 1940's and 1960's respectively):
"Shortly before he died, Sewall Wright rather testily complained that he had
anticipated the punctuated equilibria of Eldredge and Gould by a whopping
40 years. That just added one more to the list, as Simpson and Mayr had
already made similar claims." (Eldredge N., "Reinventing Darwin", 1996,
p81)
and it was not "widely accepted" then (despite Wright's eminence), for
another 40 years.
And that brief period of wide acceptance is waning. The fact is that Gould &
Eldredge, in their latest paper on Punctuated Equilibrium, "Punctuated
Equilibrium Comes of Age" (1993), have virtually abandoned it. The paper
reads like a reargard action by a defeated army retreating in disarray. The
problem is that PE's two main planks: 1) "that speciation causes significant
morphological change"; and 2) "Mayr's `genetic revolution' in peripheral
isolates", have not stood up to the test of time:
"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)." (Gould S.J. & Eldredge N., "Punctuated
Equilibrium Comes of Age," Nature, 18 November 1993, Vol 366, p226)
The best that they can do is argue that speciation does not instigate change
but merely *protects* it:
"The pattern of punctuated equilibrium exists (at predominant relative
frequency, we would argue) and is robust. Eppur non si muove; but why
then? For the association of morphological change with speciation remains
as a major pattern in the fossil record. 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, 1993, pp226-227).
Gould & Eldredge conclude their paper by contemplating that "punctuated
equilibrium" might be "destined for history's ashheap":
In summarizing the impact of recent theories upon human concepts of
nature's order, we cannot yet know whether we have witnessed a mighty
gain in insight about the natural world (against anthropocentric hopes and
biases that always hold us down), or just another transient blip in the
history of correspondence between misperceptions of nature and prevailing
social realities of war and uncertainty...Punctuated equilibrium, in this light,
is only palaeontology's contribution to a Zeitgeist, and Zeitgeists, as
(literally) transient ghosts of time, should never be trusted. Thus, in
developing punctuated equilibrium, we have either been toadies and
panderers to fashion, and therefore destined for history's ashheap, or we
had a spark of insight about nature's constitution. Only the punctuational
and unpredictable future can tell." (Gould & Eldredge, 1993, p227).
SB>Of course, they did not propose the thing without evidence
>that it was the case.
Note that Susan does not say what the "evidence" *was* for this "thing"!
Maybe that is because "evidence" is not necessary to atheists? If
they know there is no God, then it *has* to have been evolution of some
sort.
SB>Most evolutionary biologists now believe their evidence is compelling.
The question is not whether "their evidence is compelling" but whether
their proposed *theory* ("punctuated equilibrium") to account for the
"evidence is" regarded by "most evolutionary biologists" as "compelling".
And it seems from the above paper that even Gould & Eldredge don't "now
believe their" theory "is compelling"! One doesn't publicly, in one of the
world's leading scientific journals, contemplate the possibility of one's
theory being "destined for history's ashheap", if one thought that "Most
evolutionary biologists" believed that it "is compelling"!
The fact is the Neo-Darwinists have bitten off and digested that part of
"punctuated equilibrium" that they cannot ignore (namely stasis) into their
infinitely flexible, `plastic wrap' (thanks to Mike for this apt metaphor!)
system, and have spat out Gould and Eldredge's "punctuated equilibrium"
theory.
Eldredge himself admits this:
"I had rediscovered a phenomenon that turned out to be well known to
Darwin's contemporary paleontologists: species are fundamentally stable
entities a phenomenon that Stephen Jay Gould and I dubbed "stasis" in our
1972 paper elaborating the evolutionary notion of "punctuated equilibria."
Bringing stasis back out into the open as an evolutionary phenomenon
crying out for explanation is the main reason why Maynard Smith
welcomed us paleontologists to the High Table. As shall be seen,
geneticists at the High Table tend to accept stasis as a valid and most
interesting evolutionary phenomenon-one meriting explanation. Meaning
*their* explanation. Once duly thanked for bringing the matter to their
attention, paleontologists are dismissed as incapable of saying anything
meaningful about stasis." (Eldredge N., "Reinventing Darwin", 1996, pp34.
Emphasis in original).
Dawkins, pursuant to Neo-Darwinism's need to destroy the credibility of all
its rivals has described PE as only "a minor gloss on Darwinism":
"The theory of punctuated equilibrium is a minor gloss on Darwinism, one
which Darwin himself might well have approved if the issue had been
discussed in his time. As a minor gloss, it does not deserve a particularly
large measure of publicity." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker", 1991,
p250),
and has tried to downplay it by asking, in a review of Eldredge's account of
PE in his book "Time Frames", "What was all the fuss about?":
"After reading this book, one is left with a feeling of "What was all the fuss
about?", and a suspicion that Eldredge may be left with it too." (Dawkins
R., "What was all the fuss about?" Review of Eldredge N., "Time Frames",
1985, Nature, Vol. 316, August 1985, p684)
As part of its need to destroy the credibility of PE as an idea, Neo-
Darwinists now have a need to try to destroy the credibility of its leading
proponents. Dawkins, Dennett, Maynard Smith, and recently Robert
Wright, have targeted Gould and stepped up their attacks on him. Maynard
Smith has described Gould as "a man whose ideas are so confused as to be
hardly worth bothering with":
"John Maynard Smith, Emeritus Professor at Sussex and dean of British
ultra-Darwinians, reviewed Dennett's book in this publication--thus
providing small prospect for critical commentary. Maynard Smith began his
supposed analysis of ultra-Darwinian criticism with the following
gratuitous remark: `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.' (Maynard Smith
J., The New York Review, November 30, 1995, back, in Gould S.J.,
"Darwinian Fundamentalism", New York Review of Books, June 12, 1997.
http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWfeatdisplay.cgi?1997061234F@p7).
Hardly the treatment one would expect of one whose theory: "Most
evolutionary biologists now believe ... is compelling"!
The fact is that Darwinism has been forced by the fossil record evidence of
sudden appearance and stasis to gradually retreat to a position which is, as
I said, "a *prediction* of creationist theory" (see my tagline below) "but an
*unexpected difficulty to be explained away* by Darwinian evolutionary
theory!"
This is *exactly* what one would expect if creation (e.g. Mediate
Progressive Creation) was true and Darwinist Naturalistic Evolution was a
counterfeit of the genuine article!
Steve
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"At the core of punctuated equilibria lies an empirical observation: once
evolved, species tend to remain remarkably stable, recognizable entities for
millions of sears. The observation is by no means new, nearly every
paleontologist who reviewed Darwin's Origin of Species pointed to his
evasion of this salient feature of the fossil record. But stasis was
conveniently dropped as a feature of life's history to he reckoned with in
evolutionary biology. And stasis had continued to be ignored until Gould
and I showed that such stability is a real aspect of life's history which must
be confronted-and that, in fact, it posed no fundamental threat to the basic
notion of evolution itself. For that was Darwin's problem: to establish the
plausibility of the very idea of evolution, Darwin felt that he had to
undermine the older (and ultimately biblically based) doctrine of species
fixity. Stasis, to Darwin, was an ugly inconvenience." (Eldredge N., "Time
Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of
Punctuated Equilibria", Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, pp188-
189)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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