Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Question: Is the key problem that new species are seldom or never observed?

Denyse O'Leary
September 25, 2006
Intelligent Design
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A key problem with the argument over Darwinian evolution (evolution by natural selection acting on random mutations) is that so few actual examples of speciation (new species forming) have ever been observed that we really have no way of knowing for sure whether Darwin had the right idea.

I suspect that explains precisely why acceptance of Darwinism is so often treated as some kind of loyalty test for support for science in general.

That is, the Darwinist is taking a great deal on faith. And those Darwinists who also happen to  be fanatics  by temperament behave just as other fanatics do when they think they have found certainty: They go about like bulls looking for a fight - demanding that you too, brudder, better get saved. Otherwise, you face udder damnation …

As Jonathan Wells noted in his controversial Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design,

So except for polyploidy in plants, which is not what Darwin’s theory needs, there are no observed instances of the origin of species. As evolutionary biologists Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan wrote in 2002: “Speciation, whether in the remote Galapagos, in the laboratory cages of the drosophilosophers, or in the crowded sediments of the paleontologists, still has never been directly traced.” Evolution’s smoking gun is still missing.

– Jonathan Wells, Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design , p. 55, quoting Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origin of Species (New York: Basic Books, p. 32)

In fairness to the fanatical Darwinist, unlike the Islamic extremist, he is only trying to separate doubters from their careers, not their heads.

That said, why not insist that at least one thousand obvious examples of speciation in animals – where we have a lot of information about what happened - be accumulated and studied, so that we have a study population to work with, to assess various theories of the origin of species?

 If we can’t find that within the next century, we need to assess just what role Darwinism is playing in science or society, because shedding light cannot really be the role.

Comments
I have a very strong suspicion that some of you in the discussion now have not read the detailed article DonaldM linked to in post 15. Some of the claims of observed speciation are weak, but some of them, especially in plants, are very strong.Tom English
September 25, 2006
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jerry:
You would think that for just one species, the fossil record would record a detailed sequence of transformations from one morphology to another.
I am no biologist, but I think the standard response here is to point you to the whale transition. The essay I have linked to quotes Stephen Jay Gould:
If you had given me a blank piece of paper and a blank check, I could not have drawn you a theoretical intermediate any better or more convincing than Ambulocetus. Those dogmatists who by verbal trickery can make white black, and black white, will never be convinced of anything, but Ambulocetus is the very animal that they proclaimed impossible in theory. (Natural History, p. 14)
Tom English
September 25, 2006
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After criticizing Denyse's demand for a thousand observations of speciation, I asked:
By the way, how many times have we observed life being designed?
PaV responded:
How many times have you seen a BMW being designed? Does that mean it wasn’t designed? If a tree falls in the woods, but nobody sees it ……
PaV, Thank you. You made my point beautifully, which was to expose the double-standard of IDers who demand endless observations of speciation despite being unable, in return, to offer a single observation of the design of a living creature.Karl Pfluger
September 25, 2006
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"In terms of current evolution and us not seeing it because it takes too long, this is bogus. If changes are happening there would be evidence in the variations over different parts of the world today or over the recent past. Climbing Mount Improbable required tens of thousands of steps and at each step a distinct change happens. Somewhere for some species we should have witnessed this trail either in the present world or the recent past. Alas, none exists." Exactly. It seems reasonable to expect it to be observed somewhere in some measurable manner. Why is all of the evolution happening out of sight ?jwrennie
September 25, 2006
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Scott:
It seems to me that the bottom line is that NS + RM cannot account for the massive amount of new information required to generate true biological novelty.
As I have posted before, there have been at least 3.5 billion years for at most 4.89 billion bits of algorithmic information to enter the human genome. Thus an upper bound on the rate of information gain of the genome is 1.4 bits per year. The massive amount of information in the genome is no problem at all for neo-Darwinian theory because there has been a massive amount of time for it to get there. To pose a challenge to neo-Darwinism, you have to invoke irreducible complexity, which is essentially a claim that in some cases a lot of information must be gained all at once.Tom English
September 25, 2006
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In terms of current evolution and us not seeing it because it takes too long, this is bogus. If changes are happening there would be evidence in the variations over different parts of the world today or over the recent past. Climbing Mount Improbable required tens of thousands of steps and at each step a distinct change happens. Somewhere for some species we should have witnessed this trail either in the present world or the recent past. Alas, none exists. There are some small current changes going on but all are minor and nothing indicating the appearance of a new cell type, body or organ novelty. All are micro-evolution.jerry
September 25, 2006
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Carl Sachs, You would think that for just one species, the fossil record would record a detailed sequence of transformations from one morphology to another. The fossil record is like sampling from the proverbial urn in probability theory. If you sample enough times and you always turn up white balls (fossils that are not transitions) when you hypothesize that there should be both white and a high percentage of blue balls (fossils that are intermediaries) , then you have to come to the conclusion that your hypothesis was wrong and there just aren't many blue balls or maybe none at all. Each year the fossil record gets sampled again and again as new sites are discovered and still turns up just white balls. Most of these balls never get recorded since the only thing that counts is a blue ball. Ocassionally a white ball with a blue tint to it gets selected but that is it. Again this does not mean that some day there may be an urn with lots of blue balls but as of now no one has found that urn.jerry
September 25, 2006
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Recip Bill:
So, you accept descent with modification by means of natural selection from the five or so designed animal body plans that persisted beyond the cambrian explosion?
The first word of the quote was "if". I was pointing out that we have no idea, really, of how many times, and at what taxonomic levels, design moments occurred. At some taxonomic level "adaptation" takes over, and leads to what are called genera and species (taxonomically speaking), though, in actuality, they are all probably just varieties of a higher taxonomic group, let us say "families". Some call this "microevolution" and talk about natural selection. I have a very dim view of NS these days, but have, for the longest time, accepted its function in bringing about diversity. So, as a supporter of ID, I don't feel any need to assert that every species is directly created. As to phyla not persisting, neither will you. Did God make a mistake? I would avoid theological considerations. That's not technically science.PaV
September 25, 2006
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Reciprocating Bill, There are 35 or more current animal phyla, nearly all of which originated during the Cambrian Explosion. The link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyla for more information. Several more have gone extinct. There is nothing previous to the Cambrian phyla to indicate any pattern of development leading to these various body plans. They appeared out of nowhere. In other words a top down event.jerry
September 25, 2006
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All of the evolving seems to happen in places that can’t be observed. Which would suggest that something is amiss here if something is supported by apparently inprinciple unobservable events. (Be that via direct observation or fossil evidence).
Nothing is "supported by" in-principle unobservable events. Rather, the unobservable events are inferred on the basis of different lines of evidence: paleontological, molecular, anatomical, biogeographic, developmental -- and, in some cases, psychological. The thought behind contemporary evolutionary theory is that (a) each line of evidence licenses the inference of common descent with modification through variation and selection and (b) the convergence of different lines of evidence strengthens the inductive inference. (A "consilience" of induction.) Evolution cannot be observed -- except in very unusal circumstances -- but then again, neither can the inside of the Sun. We infer what the inside of the Sun is like based on what we do directly observe, and we infer what evolution is like in the same way. And if the sun-worship of Amenhotep had become the dominant religion of Western culture instead of Christianity, heliology and astrophysics would be regarded as threatening as evolution is to us.Carl Sachs
September 25, 2006
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But I expect this one (a clear picture of recent human origins) to fall to determined paleontological fieldwork and analysis in the not instant, but not distant, future. And that is SO cool.
I would expect it to become about as clear as any speciation event viewed through the distorting lens of geological time can be -- which is to say, very hazy.
Unless there’s a discontinuity to life (which implies special creation and denies common descent) the first homo sapiens was born to a mother of a different species. That’s not 40,000 years or 4 years or 4 minutes. It’s instantaneous.
Not so -- because species are terms applied to differences across populations. There's a gradual shift across generations, over thousands of years -- and, because of how the geological record works -- it looks "instantaneous" to us. But what looks like a geological instant to us could be tens or even hundreds of thousands of years "on the ground." Not much precision than that is available in paleontology.Carl Sachs
September 25, 2006
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"Which goes to support within the fossil record for the historical facts of speciation and common descent, not hypothesized mechanisms such as natural selection. (Why would you pose a challenge like that if you accept speciation, common descent, etc. anyway?) " The problem is that none of the events are observed or recorded anywhere. You see fully formed functional organisms that hang around for a while then die off. All the rest of it is not present in the evidence at all. Even speciation and common descent are read into the observation, it is certianly the case that the observations do not bear out the original predictions (and if you doubt this, keep in mind that punctuated equilibria assumes at the outset that there is a problem) and that the predictions from the evidence are not evidence themselves. All of the evolving seems to happen in places that can't be observed. Which would suggest that something is amiss here if something is supported by apparently inprinciple unobservable events. (Be that via direct observation or fossil evidence). Jasonjwrennie
September 25, 2006
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But I expect this one (a clear picture of recent human origins) to fall to determined paleontological fieldwork and analysis in the not instant, but not distant, future. Yeah, yeah, yeah... every generation of faithful expects its prophecies to come to pass in their lifetime. I'm not holding my breath waiting for yours or anyone else's.DaveScot
September 25, 2006
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DS said, "So how long did it take for homo sapiens to evolve from its immediate ancestor? 40,000 years? 9 months? You don’t know and no one else does either.' But I expect this one (a clear picture of recent human origins) to fall to determined paleontological fieldwork and analysis in the not instant, but not distant, future. And that is SO cool.Reciprocating Bill
September 25, 2006
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In regard to elan vital I'm going to have to throw my lot in with Julian Huxley on it. It's supernatural by definition - a force that can neither be defined nor measured. It is outside the scope of science. It's mysticism pure and simple.DaveScot
September 25, 2006
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Islam without any qualifiers is one of the three major religions which acknowledge the God of the old testament as the one true God. Judaism and Christianity being the other two. I'm not singling out radical Islam. I'm opposed to any religion or sect that supports such barbarism in the name of God or any religion which makes oppression of others a scriptural mandate. DaveScot
September 25, 2006
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Recip So how long did it take for homo sapiens to evolve from its immediate ancestor? 40,000 years? 9 months? You don't know and no one else does either. Unless there's a discontinuity to life (which implies special creation and denies common descent) the first homo sapiens was born to a mother of a different species. That's not 40,000 years or 4 years or 4 minutes. It's instantaneous.DaveScot
September 25, 2006
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Wow, Ok so now that you have explained islamic extremism/fundamentalism/radicalism very concisely, what is exactly is Islam without any qualifiers?mohammed.husain
September 25, 2006
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Jason quoted Reciprocating Bill: “But, again, are you doubting speciation and common descent?” Then he said, "But that is not the problem...this evidence in no way vindicates the concept of RM+NS " Well, it IS the problem posed by the Jason utterance: “Pretty convenient that evolution happens so fast that it doesn’t really leave much of a fossil record but happens so slowly that we can’t directly observe it,” Which goes to support within the fossil record for the historical facts of speciation and common descent, not hypothesized mechanisms such as natural selection. (Why would you pose a challenge like that if you accept speciation, common descent, etc. anyway?)Reciprocating Bill
September 25, 2006
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mohammed Those terms aren't poorly defined for me. If you believe that women are chattel and stone them to death for adultery you're an Islamic radical/fundamentalist/extremist. If you believe that killing infidels earns you a ticket to heaven and 72 virgins (or whatever) you're an Islamic radical/fundmentalist/extremist. Any questions? I have no desire whatsoever to bring myself or anyone I know together with people who hold such beliefs. Any religion that treats women as chattel in my opinion is a pox on humanity that needs to be cured not tolerated.DaveScot
September 25, 2006
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PaV: "If the “speciation” events that ID considers is at the level of phyla and classes, then not only are they few in number, but they happened quite suddenly; that is, the Cambrian Explosion. The Cambrian Explosion: now there’s “punctuated equilibria." So, you accept descent with modification by means of natural selection from the five or so designed animal body plans that persisted beyond the cambrian explosion? That these plans gave rise, without further intervention, to the subsequent picture of branching radiation assembled by modern evolutionary biology? And, that chimpanzees, bonobos and human beings recently shared a common ancestor? (recent = 5 or 6 millions years ago). Cool. (Numerous additional body plans didn't persist beyond the Cambrian, BTW. Maybe their designer was less talented or prescient).Reciprocating Bill
September 25, 2006
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"But, again, are you doubting speciation and common descent?" But that is not the problem. Assume for the sake of argument that different species turn up in the fossil record and that common descent appears to explain what we observe. I don't really have a problem with these for any theological reasons. But this evidence in no way vindicates the concept of RM+NS being sufficent to acheive this, and the fact that this RM+NS mechanism cannot be seen in the fossil record or in real time (don't forget these species turn up fully formed and ready to go). "No, actually. I believe that, human foibles aside, evolutionary biology and biologists (paleontologists, molecular geneticists, etc.) have been doing their absolute level best to accurately characterize the history of life on earth by scientific means. " Except it seems that evolution is not being observed in what we see. It doesn't happen fast enough to observe, and according to men like Gould, you don't see much of it in the fossil record as such. It happens in an inbetween space that is not recorded. This smacks of "Evolution of the Gaps". Someone can claim this is the case, but you can't really claimed it is evidenced when the idea is put in place to explain exactly why the evidence doesn't match the prediction.jwrennie
September 25, 2006
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PaV said: "If speciation occurs in an “eyeblink”, that sounds like a “creation event”. Is that what you’re suggesting?" I said "paleontological eyeblink," namely 40,000 years - an interval that is something like 1/3 of the entire run of homo sapiens sapiens. If by "creation event" you mean something that transpired over 400 centuries, well, you've got me there.Reciprocating Bill
September 25, 2006
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"In fairness to the fanatical Darwinist, unlike the Islamic extremist, he is only trying to separate doubters from their careers, not their heads." What purpose does this statement serve, other than to alienate any Muslim readers you have out there? Given that terms like "Islamic extermist," "Islamic fundamentalist" and "Islamic radical" are so poorly defined, using this sort of language only elicits an emotive response. Why not use the intelligent design movement as a means, among other things, to brings people of different faiths, who feel equally uncomfortable with NDE based on their scientific and also religious sensibilities?mohammed.husain
September 25, 2006
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Jason said, "Pretty convenient that evolution happens so fast that it doesn’t really leave much of a fossil record but happens so slowly that we can’t directly observe it." It is what it is. (As a Cleveland sports fan, I can handle that). But, again, are you doubting speciation and common descent? Not much point in arguing it here, but I'll just say you've been seriously mislead, and have trusted the wrong sources, if you accept characterizations of the fossil record as depicting anything other than descent with modification (and hence branching radiation, speciation, etc.). Seriously mislead. "Don’t you think this is a bit of a cop out ?" No, actually. I believe that, human foibles aside, evolutionary biology and biologists (paleontologists, molecular geneticists, etc.) have been doing their absolute level best to accurately characterize the history of life on earth by scientific means.Reciprocating Bill
September 25, 2006
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Rec. Bill:
The (mistaken) assertion that no speciation events have been directly observed would appear to be more challenging to this model of ID than it would be to orthodox evolutionary biology (were it a threat to the latter, which it is not, given the 40,000 year tempos involved).
As Jason quite cleverly pointed out a few posts up, where are the fossils? Darwins said/wrote that if the fossils didn't show up, then his theory was wrong. I say, "the fossils haven't shown up, and his theory is wrong." How is not a threat? It seems like an executioner.
I say this because, unless ID is postulating that the designer implements its designs (or front-loaded designs emerge) only over tens of thousands of years, we might predict that ID eevnts should be frequently observed - because such designs and hence speciation events may be instantiated over humanly observable (e.g. brief) time scales.
Even Darwin suggests that a single species can give rise to all of life. So, a single species can give rise to an entire phyla. If the "speciation" events that ID considers is at the level of phyla and classes, then not only are they few in number, but they happened quite suddenly; that is, the Cambrian Explosion. The Cambrian Explosion: now there's "punctuated equilibria". But, of course, I only bring up another great stumbling block for Darwinism, another phenomena that Darwin would have considered impossible.PaV
September 25, 2006
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Fross, "The world has millions upon millions of fruitflies out there. All of them are being exposed to conditions we can’t even imagine." For example? Isolation? Extreme weather? Diet? These are reproducible. Labs are not so limited, only our imagination. Altering environmental variables has not been tried? Temperature test? Dietary habitat? Pink Flamingos turn white in captivity due to the diet change. Yet, is this an observation that wings will fall off in the future? "We know speciation happens simply from being able to hybridize closely related species. (llamas and camels, whales and dolphins, tigers and lions, horses and donkeys, etc)" Is not Hybridizing "related species" going in circles? Kinda like saying a Dwarf can produce offspring with Marilyn Monroe? Yet, if we were not all here to know that such successful reproduction can occur, would we be calling them "two" different species? Much like Florensis in Indonesia that has recently been discredited? How is this any different from a wholphin or a liger? Maybe I do not understand what you mean by "speciation"? And I do not understand how this adds any weight to macro-evolution. What we see is wide and varying physical forms as long as there are no mutational dead ends. But taxonomy routinely upsets old views thru the ages and is not reliable from an observational viewpoint without genetic information. This has been a rather hard lesson in the last few decades with the phylogentic tree in a swirl of repeated updates and second guessing. Do ligers and wholphins create any new information? Information that did not already exist prior? Same with the finches - they were not new species. In fact, later studies showed they mated together and produced offspring. This seems like a great big merry-go-round.Michaels7
September 25, 2006
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Rude politely asked: "would you give ID permission to ask the first question: Can we detect design? Once we agree that there is design then it’s another matter to ask the how and when." That question was posed some years ago. I seem to recall some guys named Dembski, Behe, some others.... They didn't seem to need permission. I'll look it up. Although many here argue that the question has been answered in the affirmative, the fact is that no one, including the principal advocates ID, has attempted to formally apply the proposed methodological and mathematical tools of ID to specific biological structures or processes beyond the handful originally suggested at the outset of the ID movement. So if you operationalize “detect design” as actually meaning “engaging in research that detects designs,” the answer is “No.” This has nothing to do with withheld permissions. Rather, this state of affairs obtains because a design science that limits itself to stating, about the designer, only that it is capable of producing designs is scientifically empty. Until ID proposes models of design and designers that yield unique, falsifiable predictions that “put ID at risk” (which will ultimately include hypothesized characterizations of the wheres and whens) ID will remain something other than a scientific enterprise. (Some of us suspect ID was designed that way...)Reciprocating Bill
September 25, 2006
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Karl Pfluger: "By the way, how many times have we observed life being designed?" How many times have you seen a BMW being designed? Does that mean it wasn't designed? If a tree falls in the woods, but nobody sees it ......PaV
September 25, 2006
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Reciprocating Bill wrote:
Steven Jay Gould notes in “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory” that even with a strongly puncutationist view of speciation, in which the period of speciation accounts for just 1% of the lifespan of a typical species, speciation events still require on the order of 40,000 years to occur - a paleontological eyeblink that nevertheless dwarfs the span of recorded human observation. Hence it is not something that can often be directly observed.
If speciation occurs in an "eyeblink", that sounds like a "creation event". Is that what you're suggesting?PaV
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