Reflectorites
On Fri, 24 Mar 2000 07:31:14 -0600, James Mahaffy wrote:
[...]
JM>In light of that, Steve you said, "had to argue that the fossil record
>was *very* incomplete in order to hide the myriads of transitional
>forms that the `blind watchmaker' would leave in his wake:" If you had
>stopped with more I might agree, but given the nature of fossilization
>and the fact that the theory even in a non punctuated model predicts
>transitional forms to be around for less time you would not expect
>myriads.
[...]
My apologies. I thought "myriads" was Darwin's own words, but on
checking I find that he only said "inconceivably great" and "infinitude":
"By the theory of natural selection all living species have been connected
with the parent-species of each genus, by differences not greater than we
see between the natural and domestic varieties of the same species at the
present day; and these parent-species, now generally extinct, have in their
turn been similarly connected with more ancient forms; and so on
backwards, always converging to the common ancestor of each great class.
So that the number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living
and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great. But assuredly, if
this theory be true, such have lived upon the earth." (Darwin C.R., "The
Origin of Species" 6th Edition, 1928, reprint, p.294).
"On this doctrine of the extermination of an infinitude of connecting links,
between the living and extinct inhabitants of the world, and at each
successive period between the extinct and still older species, why is not
every geological formation charged with such links? Why does not every
collection of fossil remains afford plain evidence of the gradation and
mutation of the forms of life? Although geological research has
undoubtedly revealed the former existence of many links, bringing
numerous forms of life much closer together, it does not yield the infinitely
many fine gradations between past and present species required on the
theory; and this is the most obvious of the many objections which may be
urged against it. Why, again, do whole groups of allied species appear,
though this appearance is often false, to have come in suddenly on the
successive geological stages? Although we now know that organic beings
appeared on this globe, at a period incalculably remote, long before the
lowest bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, why do we not find
beneath this system great piles of strata stored with the remains of the
progenitors of the Cambrian fossils? For on the theory, such strata must
somewhere have been deposited at these ancient and utterly unknown
epochs of the world's history." (Darwin C.R., "The Origin of Species" 6th
Edition, 1928, reprint, p.441).
The "myriads" probably came from Denton:
"The difference between Eohippus and the modern horse is relatively
trivial, yet the two forms are separated by sixty million years and at least
ten genera and a great number of species. The horse series therefore tends
to emphasize just how vast must have been the number of genera and
species if all the diverse forms of life on Earth had really evolved in the
gradual way that Darwinian evolution implies. If the horse series is
anything to go by their numbers must have been indeed the "infinitude" that
Darwin imagined. If ten genera separate Eohippus from the modern horse
then think of the uncountable myriads there must have been linking such
diverse forms as land mammals and whales or molluscs and arthropods.
Yet all these myriads of life forms have vanished mysteriously, without
leaving so much as a trace of their existence in the fossil record." (Denton
M., "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis", 1985, p.186)
Steve
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"The three classics that established the American version of the [modern
evolutionary] synthesis overflow with a sense of triumph and hope: finally
there was a reliable basis for understanding evolution. However, biologists
have since declared the synthesis untestable, sterile, and outmoded
creationists and antidarwinians (Box 1) are as numerous and as vocal as
ever." (Leigh E.G., Jr, "The modern synthesis, Ronald Fisher and
creationism," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, vol. 14, no. 12, pp.495-
498, December 1999, p.495)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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