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 thoseÃ‚Â Darwinists who also happen toÃ‚Â be fanaticsÃ‚Â by temperament behave just as other fanatics do when they think they have found certainty: They go aboutÃ‚Â like bulls looking for a fight -Ã‚Â 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 -Ã‚Â be accumulated and studied, so that we have a study population to work with, to assess various theories of the origin of species?

Ã‚Â 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

jwrennie, "Pretty convenient that evolution happens so fast that it doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t really leave much of a fossil record but happens so slowly that we canÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t directly observe it. " There's nothing convenient about it. Given known mechanisms, it is the best scientific explanation we have. And no - ID is not a good scientific explanation.Hawks_{September 25, 2006
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jwrennie:
Pretty convenient that evolution happens so fast that it doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t really leave much of a fossil record but happens so slowly that we canÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t directly observe it
Good point!bFast_{September 25, 2006
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Wow, I can't believe my comment got through.
{DaveScot}No other way of creating a living thing is even remotely demonstrated.
It's quite debatable that virii are living things. But this virus was not created 'from scratch.' It was based on a known virus, which is usually just a ball of coding nucleic acid in a protein shell. Simple compared to any bacteria. But, it's a start. I guess you have to follow recipes before you can become a chef. I was about to say that any living system that was developed in the lab would presumably be based on the kind of life already existing on Earth, but then I realized that there is always the possibility of a chance discovery. In some lab somewhere, there may be the chance to discover some compartmentalized chemical system that has the attributes of being alive (i.e. consumes raw material for energy and reproduces itself) while not resembling the living systems we already know.
{John A. Davison}The manufacture of life from scratch is not just an engineering problem. Somewhere in the process it will be necessary to produce what Henri Bergson called the elan vital, the vital spirit that includes metabolism, irritability and self reproduction. I regard that as quite impossible.
Since that pretty much sums up what life is (the metabolic plus the genetic), I guess you are just saying that engineering life is impossible.beervolcano2_{September 25, 2006
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"Steven Jay Gould notes in Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Structure of Evolutionary TheoryÃ¢â‚¬Â 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." Hi Bill. Don't you think this is a bit of a cop out ? 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 seems a little strange that all of the evolution happens in ways that can't be easily observed. Jasonjwrennie_{September 25, 2006
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The manufacture of life from scratch is not just an engineering problem. Somewhere in the process it will be necessary to produce what Henri Bergson called the elan vital, the vital spirit that includes metabolism, irritability and self reproduction. I regard that as quite impossible. "A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable," John A. DavisonJohn A. Davison_{September 25, 2006
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"would you give ID permission to ask the first question: Can we detect design? Once we agree that there is design then itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s another matter to ask the how and when." Based on current evidence, the scientific community isn't going to agree that you can 'detect design' in nature any time soon. In any case I still think the best chance that ID has is to come up with the how (or at least the 'what') and the when. This still doesn't require inferring to much about the designer. "Lynn Margulis makes an excellent jibe against the Darwinists along this vein which I quote on my blog." Thats an interesting quote that I hadn't heard, but if it counts as 'anti-Darwinist' then 'Darwinism' isn't a particularly term in the ID debate.Chris Hyland_{September 25, 2006
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In many cases, speciation happens as the result of symbiogenesis. These have been observed. Lynn Margulis makes an excellent jibe against the Darwinists along this vein which I quote on my blog.johnnyb_{September 25, 2006
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Reciprocating Reciprocating Bill, these are interesting reciprocities, but 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. I'd say we ask the paleontologists as to when and let the biologists theorize as to how. To date there are some ID biologists who accept common descent and some (I believe Jonathan Wells) who don't. Lots of work ahead!Rude_{September 25, 2006
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Jehu said: "Nonsense. With selective breeding of organisms with very fast life cycles, such as fruit flies, speciation should be observable. Claiming the process is to long to allow observation is nothing more than a blatant appeal to ignorance." The world has millions upon millions of fruitflies out there. All of them are being exposed to conditions we can't even imagine. Why do you expect scientists to be able to create a new species (in a fraction of a fraction of the time) simply because they have a tiny fraction of the population in their lab, exposing them to a fraction of the conditions that exist out in the real world? But you do have a point. Quickly reproducing populations should have more speciation events. Following that logic we'd expect to find far more beetle species out there than cat species. Why don't you do a search on that and see if that logic holds up? ;) "And as for continental drift analogy, with continental drift we have an observable process and mechanism so there is no comparison to the speciation myth. " Observable process is what you would call micro-evolution which works with the real world observable mechanism of NS. 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) Peace, FrossFross_{September 25, 2006
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It is often beyond me what ID advocates are advocating when denying the reality of speciation in this way. If you are arguing that design accounts for new species, you are postulating one of two kinds of event: either the first individuals of new species are periodically inserted ex nihilo into earth's biosphere, or extant species give rise to descendents who are modified through designer intervention (or new species spontaneously unfold by means of previously stored information, in the instance of front-loading). As near as I can gather, most ID advocates who post here, and many of the principals of the movement, seem to endorse some version of the latter views, and hence the reality of common descent AND speciation. 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). 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. (R-Bill laps forehead!) But as I wrote that last paragraph, I remembered that ID has been unwilling to commit to assertions of ANY KIND about empirically detectable specifics of design, including proposals regarding tempo of speciation based on design, whether design is or isn't still occurring, etc. My take is that this is because ID advocates cannot or will not commit to a model of design with any "moving parts" that would generate such inferences/predictions. My bad.Reciprocating Bill_{September 25, 2006
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bv You could not conclude, based on life created in the lab, that all life must have some about this way. No, but you CAN conclude it's the only known way. A polio virus has been manufactured in a lab from non-living components. As I recall they didn't build its protein coat but they did synthesize its DNA from scratch, inserted it into an empty viral shell, and got a functional polio virus. The same thing was done with some other bacteriophage. Granted a fully functioning bacteria is far more complex than a virus but at this point it's just an engineering problem and it's pretty safe to say that intelligent agents can create living things from non-living precursors. No other way of creating a living thing is even remotely demonstrated.DaveScot_{September 25, 2006
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I can't believe Jonathan Wells could make such a statement. Of course I haven't read his book, but even so - "A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable." John A. DavisonJohn A. Davison_{September 25, 2006
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beervolcano is back!!! :) Easily the best alias ever used here. Cheers!Scott_{September 25, 2006
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First of all, the talk.origin list. I think it is week indeed. I have not the specific nformation to discuss any single case, but do you really think it makes sense to consider HeLa cell cultures a new species? A continuos cell line derived from a human carcinoma? It is well known that some human neoplastic cells are altered in the sense that they can proliferate in culture. But they are not a new species. They are human cells with genetic "errors", which, because of a disease, are expressing in a different way the information which was already present in the cell. No new information has been created. Human stem cells can survive in culture, and so can HeLa cells. Calling that a form of "speciation" really means to deliberately lie. What would that be, a new unicellular species deriving from man? Again, I have not the information to debate mosquitoes and poliploydy in plants, but if the approach is as serious as for HeLa cells, then yes, I do believe that "these arenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t really what they are advertised to be". I don't believe true speciation has ever been observed. But Darwinists are right here, it does not prove anything. And even if it were observed, the question would still be there: what is the cause, the mechanism. Again, the two possible explanations are: RM +NS, or design. Maybe we have not yet ultimate arguments to solve the problem. That's exactly our point. Darwinists are those who believe that the problem is already solved, that it has been solved for years. I don't believe that, and that's why all possible hypotheses should be considered potentially valid explanations, and should be discussed. And each new fact, each new observation (and believe me, there will be thousands of them, in the following years, and either those who collect them believe in evolution or design, new facts are always welcome, they are the property of all) should be interpreted in the light of all reasonable hypotheses: RM +NS and design. But that's not what happens in the scientific community today. That's the only real problem. I would like to say that, in my opinion, both RM +NS and design can be conceived in two different time modalities: gradual or relatively "sudden". In the evolution field, that's the difference between the classic model and the so called "punctuated equilibrium" (whatever it means, because I still have many difficulties in understanding its logic). But design too could have been applied by the designer(s) in two ways: acutely, or in a slow way (for instance, through intelligent selection of random mutations, or through the accumulation of intelligently guided mutations in a very long time). In both cases, a new species, or phylum, would represent a new project, but its implementation could follow different modalities. Again, until and unless we do observe true speciation, these are only theories, and I don't think anybody has any evidence of how that happened.gpuccio_{September 25, 2006
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The only reason that speciation cannot be observed is because it isn't happening any more. Like every other genetic change, the origin of a species or any other taxonomic category was an instantaneous event. The fact that such events are a thing of the past is the ONLY reason they cannot be observed today. My signature says it all. "A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable." It is hard to believe isn't it? I love it so!John A. Davison_{September 25, 2006
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If mankind succeeds in the afore mentioned effort to create an artificial cell, would that not strengthen the design inference (since we could then say unequivocally that the only force demostrated to be capable of generating life is intelligence)?
Since it has never happened, what do you say to that? We have also not been able to determine how life can arise from nonlife. Also, any artificial life projects going on are really cobbling together parts from already existing life. If you know of a project where people are attempting to build life from scratch, based on an entirely new living system, besides protein-nucleic acid-sugar, then I'd like to know about it. You could not conclude, based on life created in the lab, that all life must have some about this way.beervolcano2_{September 25, 2006
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Donald M., Your first talk.origin list is discussed here http://www.alternativescience.com/talk.origins-speciations.htm I think Wells deals with these arguments in his book also, I have not read it but the quote posted above sounds like Wells has just finished reviewing the claims of speciation.Jehu_{September 25, 2006
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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.Scott_{September 25, 2006
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Chris Hyland: "The burden of proof is indeed on the Darwinist to prove Darwinism. However it is also the burden of proof of the IDist to prove design. " But is it? Design has always been self evident which is what Darwin and his followers have tried to counter. We could just let them come up with some evidence first, but after a century and a half of siliness it has fallen to ID to show us quite precisely how to detect design.Rude_{September 25, 2006
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But bFast makes a good point. I have heard--is it true?--that in some populations of a species there is breedability all the way along but not between the end points. The species is hard to define by any one criterion and classification is as much an art as a science. What the Darwinists cannot explain is the input of new design--variation within a population, hybridization, the loss of anything (eyes, hair, breedability, etc.)--none of this helps the Darwinists.Rude_{September 25, 2006
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Denyse writes:
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?
But what about this article from Talk. Origins? Or, this one? According to these guys, why, there are dozens of observed speciations we can point to. Are you suggesting these aren't really what they are advertised to be?DonaldM_{September 25, 2006
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Karl said: "By the way, how many times have we observed life being designed?" There are numerous efforts underway in labs to do just this. The effort to identify the minimum number of genes to support an independent single-cell organism is an area of on-going research. Counter-question for you, Karl: If mankind succeeds in the afore mentioned effort to create an artificial cell, would that not strengthen the design inference (since we could then say unequivocally that the only force demostrated to be capable of generating life is intelligence)? P.S. The talkorigins examples seem pretty weak, and rest on how we define "species." For instance, if two species don't usually breed, but can nonetheless produce fertile offspring together, are they really considered to be separate species (Burros, wolf/dog) ? At least one of the talkorigins examples appear to rest on this rather tenuous distinction (the "ring species" example if I'm not mistaken).sabre_{September 25, 2006
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"That is, the Darwinist is taking a great deal on faith." As much faith as with any other theory that describes past events we cannot observe. "How bout that ontogeny and phylogeny are essentially the same, but on different scales. That the information is pre-coded to abruptly unfold new species at given intervals. Like a computer algorithm. CouldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t this make sense since we find code wrapped in code, at the cellular level? And wouldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t this be more consistent with the fossil record we observe?" This seems to be a popular idea among ID supporters unfortunately in all the time I have been interested in ID I have not seen this idea expanded upon. "Unless it can be shown that these things created themselves, like little whirlpools formed by water flowing downhill, it is certain that something else created them. What other alternative is there?" We don't know how they were created would be the other alternative. "Nonsense. With selective breeding of organisms with very fast life cycles, such as fruit flies, speciation should be observable." That does depend how you define speciation. "And as for continental drift analogy, with continental drift we have an observable process and mechanism so there is no comparison to the speciation myth." There are several proposed mechanisms of speciation, there wa even a discussion of one here quite recently. "The DarwinistÃ¢â‚¬â€œI suppose what heÃ¢â‚¬â„¢d have to say is that in selective breeding we reach the limit when we have to wait for mutations to provide more ammo for change" Im not really sure whats wrong with that. "but again the burden of proof is on him." The burden of proof is indeed on the Darwinist to prove Darwinism. However it is also the burden of proof of the IDist to prove design.Chris Hyland_{September 25, 2006
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Jehu, Good point, insects such as fruit flies reproduce every couple of days, if I am not mistaken. So, bombard them with radiation, chemicals, etc that put random mutations in hyperdrive, and see what you get. Since this has actually been done, what are the results? Simple, a bunch of deformed, dysfunctional fruit flies. A non-starter to prove any real evolutionary progress.Ekstasis_{September 25, 2006
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I played around with this question on ISCID's brainstorms a while back. After having done so, I came to the conclusion that a strong case for RM+NS creating new species can be made. The question came up around the recent Polar/Grizzly hybrid. In the brainstorm, the focus was on the classic definition of separate species -- that they cannot mate to produce reproducing offspring. If rm+ns produces new species, then the line between species a and species b must be a blurry line. If the line is a nice clean line, then rm+ns cannot account for speciation. The line is, however, very blurry. We find, for instance, that some mules are fertile. We find subspecies A and subspecies B having diminished fertility. We find where male A can mate with female B but not the other way around. We find that A can mate with B and B can mate with C, but A can't mate with C. Though we have not been able to observe classical speication, we have been able to observe each step along the way. I, therefore, must conclude that rm+ns provides a viable explanation for speciation. Now for the greater question, is this "the key problem"? I would strongly say "no!" It has always been very clear that the higher we go up the phylogenic tree, the greater the gap problem. This is opposite at least to intuition. If it can be demonstrated that species are the reasonable product of rm+ns, and that genus is the product of rm+ns, that still says little about the philums and classes. I honestly suspect that time will reveal that all variety within families is the product of rm+ns, that the boundary between microevolution and macroevolution is at the family level.bFast_{September 25, 2006
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And the burden of proof is on the one who says that what we see is "the appearance of design"--not real design. Don't know if anyone has resurrected Luther Burbank's old stuff on how selective breeding only goes so far--that each species has its limits (size, shape, etc.). The Darwinist--I suppose what he'd have to say is that in selective breeding we reach the limit when we have to wait for mutations to provide more ammo for change--but again the burden of proof is on him.Rude_{September 25, 2006
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Fross, you said, "So how quickly do you think that typical speciation is supposed to happen? Do you really think it can happen within a few human generations worth of observation time? ThatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s almost on par with saying that you disagree with plate tectonics because youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve never seen a continent split." Nonsense. With selective breeding of organisms with very fast life cycles, such as fruit flies, speciation should be observable. Claiming the process is to long to allow observation is nothing more than a blatant appeal to ignorance. And as for continental drift analogy, with continental drift we have an observable process and mechanism so there is no comparison to the speciation myth.Jehu_{September 25, 2006
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Denyse wrote:
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?
Darwin published the Origin less than 150 years ago. Life originated 3.5 billion years ago. If life's history is represented by a line one mile long, then the time from Darwin to us amounts to less than the thickness of a sheet of paper. Should we really expect to see species popping into existence all around us? I don't yet have Wells' book, but I suspect his criteria for what counts as an "observation" of speciation are unduly restrictive. Otherwise, how could he dismiss the evidence found at the following link? http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html By the way, how many times have we observed life being designed?Karl Pfluger_{September 25, 2006
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"This is all very interesting, but if the ID community does not see there is any evidence for speciation, what is the alternative explanation? This is where I find ID rather fuzzy - there are viable explanations for design at the cellular level and below, but how does ID explain the panoply of species and how they formed? If speciation is discarded, do we assume that there was some form of intelligently guided speciation?" Unless it can be shown that these things created themselves, like little whirlpools formed by water flowing downhill, it is certain that something else created them. What other alternative is there?Jehu_{September 25, 2006
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So how quickly do you think that typical speciation is supposed to happen? Do you really think it can happen within a few human generations worth of observation time? That's almost on par with saying that you disagree with plate tectonics because you've never seen a continent split. I think the real question to ask is if two seperate species did branch in the past, what type of evidence would you expect to see to support that?Fross_{September 25, 2006
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