At 05:05 PM 11/06/2000, you wrote:
>I am not a scientist, just a laymen to whom the inadequacies of Darwinism
>seem so apparent that even lawyers can't help noticing them. I won't try to
>say more about the following web site, except to say I'm happy there are
>scientists not blinded by Darwinism, a hypothesis which has been an albatros
>hindering further understanding of evolution for more than a century.
>(Davison claims Darwinism doesn't even deserve the status of a theory.)
>
>Bertvan
>http://members.aol.com/bertvam
>
>http://www.uvm.edu/~jdavison/
>
>Just a couple of quotes
>
>. Macroevolution is largely finished.
>Sexual reproduction is incapable of supporting trans-specific
>(macroevolutionary) change. Accordingly, all significant change
>was produced presexually involving the first meiotic division.
>The essential feature of these changes was due not to micromutations
>in the genes themselves, but rather to the way in which those genes
>express their effects which is dependent upon their arrangement within
>the structure of the chromosome (position effect).
Chris
This assumes a largely arbitrary definition of "gene," but, even if we
accept it, the fact that most of new evolution occurs by rearranging
existing genetic components does not mean that no new evolution is
occurring. It means that it is no longer relying as heavily on creating new
micro-sequences of DNA and is instead relying more on creating new
*macro*sequences of existing micro-sequences. I have argued for some time
that, as organisms become genetically more sophisticated, less and less
genetic change is required to produce more phenotypical change. I have
argued this on the basis of my understanding of the "computational,"
information-theory nature of the genome and its functioning. It would be
too inefficient and time-consuming to attempt to create a whole new
biochemistry just to adapt to new environmental factors, so, instead (with
some exceptions), new uses are found for existing code, just as programmers
will often find new ways to use existing software components, sometimes
after modifying them somewhat.
In any case, this is hardly contrary to Darwinism, or even RM&NS. It is, in
fact, an *expression* of RM&NS, though not necessarily in the narrow way
that Davison apparently thinks Darwinism requires.
>Davison
>No one denies the validity of Galileo's equation which relates
>the distance that a body falls to time, or Newton's laws of motion,
>or Einstein's equation relating energy and mass. Why then must one
>reject, as the Darwinians do, the suggestion that comparable laws
>exist or have existed controlling the living world?
Chris
Really? Perhaps some do. Many do not. I do not. Certainly, Darwinians do
not deny the soundness of the laws of physics and chemistry, and they have
*many* times pointed out that once a certain pattern is set, that pattern
may come to be dominant and exclude other patterns which, *if* they had
occurred, might have, themselves, come to be just as dominant. For a
hypothetical example, we might suppose that, at the very beginning when the
first genome was being developed, something other than the current
"standard" protein-based life might have developed and come to be *the*
form of life on this planet. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree,
because each path followed excludes many others.
>Everyone
>accepts gravitation and the equations associated with it, yet
>no one yet understands the cause of gravity. Accordingly, neither
>in religion nor in science does acceptance demand understanding.
>
>Nevertheless, the Darwinians continue to insist that evolution is
>the result only of chance events. Stephen J. Gould has recently
>compared evolution to a drunk reeling back and forth between the
>bar room wall and the gutter (Gould 1996 page 149). He has also
>described intelligence as an evolutionary accident. I will only
>comment that it was some accident!
Chris
Perhaps Davison should read some modern physics. Chance is not only a major
aspect of the standard interpretation of the observational facts of Quantum
Mechanics, it is claimed by this interpretation to be a *radical* form of
chance, an *absolute* metaphysical form of chance, as compared to chance as
merely the occurrence of events that result from causes that are acting in
such a richly varied way and in a context that is so extremely sensitive to
slight differences in initial conditions that we have no better term for it
than chance in most cases. For all I know, Gould may be a determinist, as I
am. It would make no difference, because the kind of chance required for
evolution is absolutely compatible with absolute determinism.
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