The Evolutionary Tree Continues to Fall: Falsified Predictions, Backpedaling, HGTs and Serendipity Squared

_{Cornelius Hunter

July 27, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution states that the species arose from earlier species. Slight changes accumulating over long time periods resulted in one species giving rise to a new species, over and over. Read more

Comments

Doveton, Birds and bats never needed to fly (and still don’t – see the Galapagos Cormorants, emus, ostriches, penguins), but rather gained changes that allowed flight, which under the circumstances and environments at the time were an advantage. Dogs and snails have never had any changes that allowed flight to take place According to your explanation, your second statement is an assumption. Perhaps some specimens of dogs and snails did make small changes in the direction of flight, but they weren't advantageous. I'm going to get this right if I keep trying: Why do birds and bats fly while dogs and snails don’t? Birds and bats gained changes that allowed flight, which under the circumstances and environments at the time were an advantage. And how do we know that birds and bats gained changes that allowed flight, which under the circumstances and environments at the time were an advantage, but dogs and snails did not? Because birds and bats fly while dogs and snails do not. Is that better? :)ScottAndrews_{July 29, 2011
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Doveton:
I certainly see evidence of a tree and common descent.
Good for you. Unfortunately that point of view is still untestable. Also evolutionary biologists have said there isn't any evidence for a tree of life. Strange...Joseph_{July 29, 2011
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Joseph,
There isn’t any genetic evidence to support the claim that non-flying animals can gain flight via an accumulation of genetic accidents.
While that may well be true, could you explain why you think that's relevant in light of this discussion thus far? The reason I ask it, as it stands your statement is similar to stating that there isn't any genetic evidence for why chloroplasts are green. My response to such an observation would be, "Ok. And...?"
There isn’t even a way to test it.
Ok. And...?
As for the fossil record, well the vast majority is of marine inverts (>95%) and we do not see any evidnce of a tree nor universal common descent in that vast majority.
I certainly see evidence of a tree and common descent. Here's a good example: http://biology-web.nmsu.edu/nish/theLab/theLab.html and here: http://mollus.oxfordjournals.org/content/74/4/317.abstract And here: http://paleobiol.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/26/1/19 And so on.Doveton_{July 29, 2011
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Scott Andrews:
That was, in fact, an elaboration on your short answer, and the objection also still holds. Why do birds and bats fly while dogs and snails don’t? The answer boils down to, ‘Birds and bats needed to but dogs and snails were fine without it.’ It fits anything that has been observed and predicts anything that will be observed. It explains everything and nothing.
Sheesh, preserve me from flying snails! :D No, it doesn't "boil down to" what you said. I mean I'd love to fly, and I could argue that I need to, but I can't. I'd also love to be able to apparate but I can't. And I'd say that the argument you hint at there, is actually a very good example of why evolution is a good explanatory model. If wings are cool, why didn't the ID give every species wings? If flow-through lungs are cool, why didn't the ID give every species flow-through lungs? If bird-wings are cool, why bother to make a bat with a quite different type of wing, nonetheless reusing the same basic body plan? If sidewinding works, why give lizards legs? Well, you can answer: "because the ID felt like it" or you can answer: because morphology is constrained by inheritance. As it must be, if evolution is true. And I think the second is a much more satisfying answer. Not only that, but you can keep your ID, and give him/her credit for having initiated such an elegant system :)Elizabeth Liddle_{July 29, 2011
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Doveton, There isn't any genetic evidence to support the claim that non-flying animals can gain flight via an accumulation of genetic accidents. There isn't even a way to test it. As for the fossil record, well the vast majority is of marine inverts (>95%) and we do not see any evidnce of a tree nor universal common descent in that vast majority.Joseph_{July 29, 2011
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ScottAndrews,
Allow me to rephrase. Why do birds and bats fly while dogs and snails don’t? Flying is useful for birds and bats not not for dogs and snails. How do we know that flying is useful for birds and bats but not for dogs and snails? Because birds and bats fly but dogs and snails don’t. Having made that correction, it’s much less circular. :)
While that's true it is less circular, it still doesn't reflect what I noted evolutionary theory actually states.Doveton_{July 29, 2011
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Chris Doyle,
You’re missing the point: evolution is a theory designed to explain the origin of species as a direct result of continuous but massive changes that have occurred throughout the history of life, changes that should form a tree-like pattern.
Yes, that's an accurate description.
Does the fossil record show us any of these changes? No. Does it even show us a tree-like pattern? Of course not. It only provides evidence of sudden explosive appearances, long-term stasis, and sudden extinctions, often cataclysmic ones.
I disagree. While the fossil record may not show changes taking place - it is after all a series of snapshots - it does show distinct morphological incremental changes across closely related species. The fossil evidence we have for cetaceans is one of the better examples. I'm not even sure what you mean by "sudden explosive appearance" considering the timeline records and "not tree-like" given the same. How is this not tree-like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Artiodactylamorpha.jpg How is 65 million years "explosive"? http://www.dickrussell.org/graywhale/history_page.html I suppose we in science see a bit more nuance in the fossil record that you do not.
All of that is the very last thing evolutionists expected to see, but rather than admitting that fatal problem, they’ve spent decades trying to explain it away instead. Unsuccessfully.
I would argue that we just haven't seen the fossil record as you have.Doveton_{July 29, 2011
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But the whole point I’m making is that evolutionists have got a substantial track record when it comes to explaining away uncomfortable evidence. Never mind 2 Princes or Alastair Campbell, evolutionists are the true Spin Doctors! Based on their past behaviour, it is perfectly valid to argue what evolutionists would do when yet more uncomfortable evidence came along to undermine their beliefs.
But this is exactly what I'm disputing, Chris. I do realise that this is the perception here, but I consider it unfounded, or at least, if founded, self-correcting (by which I mean sure, all scientists have a tendency to argue positively for their claims, but the system is largely self-correcting). So can you give me some actual examples?
Again, it is simply unproductive for you to assert (without proof) that evolutionists have “an extremely well-supported model”… unless you’re talking about funding, not evidence! If you’re talking about specific evidence, then now is the time to produce it. I’ll be disappointed if you mention peppered moths, finches beaks or embryology :-(
No, I'm talking about evidence. Not only that, I am talking about consilient evidence. And I will group it into two categories: evidence for common descent and adaptive change through bifurcating lineages (which could conceivably also be explained by design), and evidence that Darwin's mechanism actually works, can be observed to work, and that its prerequisites are present. The items you mention come into the second category. The first category includes: The fact that both extant and fossil biota can be readily placed into nested hierarchies (as noted by Linnaeus) using phenotypic "characters" ie. that these "characters" are non-randomly distributed, and form a tree. The fact that with some interesting exceptions, genetically derived phylogenies map on to phenotypically derived phylogenies, and that the interesting exceptions are susceptible to viable alternative mechanisms (e.g. viruses. The fact that these phylogenies predicted the finding of actual fossil animals, in a particular place (the finding of Tiktaalik). A case of intelligent design if ever I saw one - what was the probability of Shubin stumbling on Tiktaalik by chance!) The fact that there are a large number of transitional series in the fossil record (which is not to say we have actual lines of descent, but evidence of populations at least closely related to populations on actual direct lineages). The fact that we also see the transitional stages of evolving features (e.g. limbs). In the second category, which is of course trickier because we cannot observe much evolutionary distance in real time, I would include: All the examples you mention, which includes both actual lab experiments with manipulated variables as well as field work, and to which I would add Lenski's e-coli experiments and vast amounts of work on fruitflies. The fact that GAs work (novel solutions are found to problems presented as a fitness function). The fact that the prerequisites for Darwinian mechanisms are present in life - replication with variance in the ability to replicate in a given environment. Note that with those prerequisites in place, adaptation by natural selection is bound to occur. The fact that many mechanisms have already been found that generate (randomly) the kind of variance required for Darwinian evolution to occur. The fact that "irreducible complexity" simply does not work as an argument, because the fact that a feature cannot function if one part is removed does not infirm the possibility that the feature itself could have evolved via pathways that involved subtraction rather than addition; nor is it true that all precursors for a feature have to be advantageous to be propagated through a population (drift) and can even in fact be slightly deleterious. The fact that novel functions have been shown to be traceable to specific mutations (citrate metabolism in e-coli; antifreeze in arctic fish; nylon metabolism in bacteria in Japanese nylon-factory waste pools). I could go on, but I hope that's a start :)Elizabeth Liddle_{July 29, 2011
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ScottAndrews,
Why do birds and bats fly while dogs and snails don’t? The answer boils down to, ‘Birds and bats needed to but dogs and snails were fine without it.’ It fits anything that has been observed and predicts anything that will be observed. It explains everything and nothing.
Except that evolutionary theory doesn't explain birds and bats flying and dogs and snails not flying the way you just described it. Birds and bats never needed to fly (and still don't - see the Galapagos Cormorants, emus, ostriches, penguins), but rather gained changes that allowed flight, which under the circumstances and environments at the time were an advantage. Dogs and snails have never had any changes that allowed flight to take place, so flight was never a characteristic that could have been selected for. Of course, there's nothing to suggest that flight would have been selected in either dogs or snails since both compete in their respective environments quite nicely without that trait.Doveton_{July 29, 2011
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Scott Andrews said: Why do birds and bats fly while dogs and snails don’t? The answer boils down to, ‘Birds and bats needed to but dogs and snails were fine without it.’ It fits anything that has been observed and predicts anything that will be observed. It explains everything and nothing. Exactly. Well-funded, very large and detailed collections of just-so-stories do not amount to the theory of evolution being "well-supported" where it really matters: evidence.Chris Doyle_{July 29, 2011
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Doveton, So no, change does not occur when there is a need to adapt from an evolutionary theory perspective. Rather, changes occur – all the time. IF those changes are useful for adapting to environmental changes, they will have a better chance of being passed on to the next generation and so on. Need does not come into the picture. Allow me to rephrase. Why do birds and bats fly while dogs and snails don’t? Flying is useful for birds and bats not not for dogs and snails. How do we know that flying is useful for birds and bats but not for dogs and snails? Because birds and bats fly but dogs and snails don't. Having made that correction, it's much less circular. :)ScottAndrews_{July 29, 2011
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Doveton, You're missing the point: evolution is a theory designed to explain the origin of species as a direct result of continuous but massive changes that have occurred throughout the history of life, changes that should form a tree-like pattern. Does the fossil record show us any of these changes? No. Does it even show us a tree-like pattern? Of course not. It only provides evidence of sudden explosive appearances, long-term stasis, and sudden extinctions, often cataclysmic ones. All of that is the very last thing evolutionists expected to see, but rather than admitting that fatal problem, they've spent decades trying to explain it away instead. Unsuccessfully.Chris Doyle_{July 29, 2011
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Elizabeth, But my short answer still holds in general, I think That was, in fact, an elaboration on your short answer, and the objection also still holds. Why do birds and bats fly while dogs and snails don't? The answer boils down to, 'Birds and bats needed to but dogs and snails were fine without it.' It fits anything that has been observed and predicts anything that will be observed. It explains everything and nothing.ScottAndrews_{July 29, 2011
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Lizzie, My apologies. I really shouldn't try to explain what you mean when you know better than I what you were getting at and do a much better job of doing that anyway. I'll stop doing that now. :)Doveton_{July 29, 2011
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ScottAndrews,
This is not an explanation, but rather a reflection of what it would explain. Change occurs when there is a need to adapt, and stasis when there is no need to adapt. But historically, how do we determine whether there was a need to adapt? According to the change. If it changed, adaptation was required. If it didn’t, it wasn’t.
The way you've phrased the above sets up an inaccurate depiction of evolution, Scott. Evolutionary Theory does not suggest that any organism needs to adapt. Evolution as a process doesn't include need as a driving mechanic. There's no organism population out there in nature (this includes us humans) that is aware of what biological changes would best suite given environmental changes and then chooses those changes it feels it needs. So no, change does not occur when there is a need to adapt from an evolutionary theory perspective. Rather, changes occur - all the time. IF those changes are useful for adapting to environmental changes, they will have a better chance of being passed on to the next generation and so on. Need does not come into the picture. When Lizzie notes above, "there is no reason to change further", what she means is that there is no selective pressure or rather nothing advantageous to select when a population reaches an optimum balance with its environment. She's not saying there is no need to change - changes will take place anyway - but rather that any changes that might take place are not very likely to be selected for when a group of organisms are already optimized in a given environment.Doveton_{July 29, 2011
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ScottAndrews:
This is not an explanation, but rather a reflection of what it would explain.
Not quite getting your distinction here, but perhaps my wording could have been better: Darwin's principle predicts that populations will moved to an optimum within a given environment (he didn't express it quite like that, but if you plug in his algorithm, that's what you get). So, if we observe punk eek in the fossil record, we would hypothesise that the eeks were associated with environmental stability and the punks by environmental change - that's a prediction for which confirmatory or disconfirmatory evidence can be sought.
Change occurs when there is a need to adapt, and stasis when there is no need to adapt.
Right. Or, to put it less teleologically (although it amounts to the same thing) populations will move to an optimum within any given environment, and tend to stay there, so environmental change will tend to be followed by adaptation, and environmental stability will be associated with evolutionary stasis.
But historically, how do we determine whether there was a need to adapt? According to the change. If it changed, adaptation was required. If it didn’t, it wasn’t.
Well, scientific progress is iterative, but most obvious examples are the big extinctions, and subsequent rapid evolution, and there has been a lot of research into trying to find evidence for big environmental changes at around the same time. More intersting, though, are smaller scale changes, and changes not to the environment itself but to the location of the population. Plus the evolving population itself is part of the environment, leading to feed-back loops in which bigger horns in the population increase the advantage of even bigger horns. But the short answer is: if you see a "punk" fossil series then you need to be looking for some environmental change that might have rendered the original population no longer at an optimum. That evidence can be independent of the evidence of punk. Of course the other possible trigger for a punk series might be a novel feature, but I suspect that is rare. For example rudimentary vision might have triggered a huge punk sequence in which a new optimum appears on the horizon. Which is why "fitness landscape" is a better generalisation than "the environment" - populations move to fitness peaks within a high-and- growing-dimensioned landscape. But my short answer still holds in general, I think :)Elizabeth Liddle_{July 29, 2011
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Lizzie, you say: But my more serious point is – I don’t think it’s valid to argue from what you think Darwinist would do in the circs. But the whole point I'm making is that evolutionists have got a substantial track record when it comes to explaining away uncomfortable evidence. Never mind 2 Princes or Alastair Campbell, evolutionists are the true Spin Doctors! Based on their past behaviour, it is perfectly valid to argue what evolutionists would do when yet more uncomfortable evidence came along to undermine their beliefs. Again, it is simply unproductive for you to assert (without proof) that evolutionists have "an extremely well-supported model"... unless you're talking about funding, not evidence! If you're talking about specific evidence, then now is the time to produce it. I'll be disappointed if you mention peppered moths, finches beaks or embryology :-(Chris Doyle_{July 29, 2011
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Elizabeth, Now, about stasis – this is an easy one, and comes directly from Darwin’s theory with hardly any adjustment. Darwin’s theory, is, essentially, a theory of how populations adapt to an environment. Once they reach an optimum, there is no reason to change further. In fact, no mechanism, under Darwinism, for them to do so (although there is under drift theory, and indeed, apparent stasis sometimes shows evidence of drift – changes over time that appear to serve no adaptive function). This is not an explanation, but rather a reflection of what it would explain. Change occurs when there is a need to adapt, and stasis when there is no need to adapt. But historically, how do we determine whether there was a need to adapt? According to the change. If it changed, adaptation was required. If it didn't, it wasn't.ScottAndrews_{July 29, 2011
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Do you really not see that stasis is exactly what we’d expect to see if evolution was not true?
no no no. Evolutionary theory clearly predicts both change and not change, even though to evolve is to change. Darwin's theory was clearly a theory of perpetual change.Mung_{July 29, 2011
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Chris:
Obviously you don’t think that the salt patterns or snowflakes shed any life whatsoever on the cell though right?
I do, actually, Chris, though by a remote connection :)
Okay Lizzie, my problem here is that, when it comes to evolution, we can talk all day about venetian blinds and sand on drums. And there’s always an excuse when things don’t turn out the way evolutionists predicted they should turn out. Do you really not see that stasis is exactly what we’d expect to see if evolution was not true?
But not relative stasis (slow evolutionary change) punctuated by periods of much more rapid change, nor placeable on an inheritance tree. But you raise an important point: some predictions made by a hypothesis are common to the predictions made by other hypotheses, in which case, no matter how true they turn out to be, they aren't very informative, because they don't distinguish between alternative hypotheses. Stasis alone would tell us nothing, and stasis only (exactly the same organisms alive in the Cambrian as are alive here, less a few extinctions) would be completely inconsistent with the Darwinian hypothesis. But that isn't what we see at all.
If we did actually find a fossil of a rabbit in the Cambrian, it would just be explained away as an extraordinary example of convergent evolution. If evolutionists can cope with that on the one hand and stasis on the other, they can certainly cope with an upside-down Tree of Life!
I find this an odd argument (although it's not the first time I've seen it). The biggest problem with it is: we have no fossil rabbit from the pre-Cambrian! And how, or whether, it would be "explained away" would depend entirely on what this hypothetical fossil looked like. If it were identical to a modern rabbit, and clearly Cambrian in origins, then it would certainly require a huge revision of our phylogenies, and render most of them totally unsupported by actual data. We'd find ourselves with a new tree in which most of the required links did not simply have gaps but were completely missing. We'd have to postulate, for example, that mammals had a completely different phylogeny to all other vertebrates. For which there would be no support from any other fossil apart from that one rabbit. So Darwinian evolution would in fact be in dire straits, and, to save it, the hunt would be on for pre-Cambrian precursors of that rabbit. Now, they should be there, because rabbits, unlike wormy things, fossilise pretty well (after all, we just found one...). We would also start looking for post-Cambrian rabbits, indeed evidence of rabbit-stasis from Cambrian to the present day, and we would have to abandon the existing rabbit phylogenies completely. Or, as you suggest suggest that rabbits evolved twice, independently, in which case we'd be hunting for post Cambrian descendents of the Cambrian rabbit. But my more serious point is - I don't think it's valid to argue from what you think Darwinist would do in the circs. I am sure you are right that the first response would be something like: "it's a fake" and the second, if it were verified, would be to try to fit it into the Darwinian schema. But that's not, as you might think, because of cussed Darwinian presuppositions, but because we have an extremely well-supported model, and the pre-Cambrian rabbit would throw the most colossal spanner into it, and that spanner could only be assimilated by such a radical retweaking of the parameters, and that retweaking make such radical new predictions, so far completely unfulfilled, that Darwinian evolution would, in fact, be in serious trouble, trouble that would only increase as subsequents efforts to find precursors and descendents of said rabbit failed to yield results. And, of course, this is entirely hypothetical because right now There Is No Such Rabbit! Much more interesting as a potential falsification, as I have suggested, would be actual evidence for an alternative evolutionary pathway - evidence for latent genetic material, for instance, activated by environmental triggers. So epigenetics should be a fertile area of enquiry for ID I think - although again, because Darwinian selection can operate above the level of the phenotype (at the level of the population) epigenetics is not inconsistent in principle with Darwinian evolution, but I'd expect Darwinian theory to make quite different specific predictions than ID.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 29, 2011
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The tree of life based on parentage remains intact...
As long as you beg the question of whether there is in fact a tree and ignore all contrary evidence.
...it’s the way science works!
In your world perhaps, not in ours.Mung_{July 29, 2011
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PS. Very cool video (post 34) by the way, Lizzie! It reminds me of snowflakes. Obviously you don't think that the salt patterns or snowflakes shed any life whatsoever on the cell though right?Chris Doyle_{July 29, 2011
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Okay Lizzie, my problem here is that, when it comes to evolution, we can talk all day about venetian blinds and sand on drums. And there's always an excuse when things don't turn out the way evolutionists predicted they should turn out. Do you really not see that stasis is exactly what we'd expect to see if evolution was not true? If we did actually find a fossil of a rabbit in the Cambrian, it would just be explained away as an extraordinary example of convergent evolution. If evolutionists can cope with that on the one hand and stasis on the other, they can certainly cope with an upside-down Tree of Life! So, I don't think we're occupying very productive ground in this discussion. If you are willing and able to test your evolutionist beliefs, then give us an important and specific piece of evidence from the real world that supports these beliefs. I say "real world" because GAs (to cite an example you often return to) deal only in intelligently-designed, goal-driven simulations and so do not shed any light whatsoever on how it is that a single-celled common ancestor evolved (neo-darwinistically) into human beings.Chris Doyle_{July 29, 2011
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Incidentally, atlhough off topic, if you google "Chladni patterns" you'll find lots more, including this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf0t4qIVWF4 Which, quite apart from its function in my metaphor is a lovely example of how complex patterns can emerge from Chance and Necessity :)Elizabeth Liddle_{July 29, 2011
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Hi Chris: to pick up some of your other points:
Hi Lizzie, I’ve not read the essay, but I will. In the meantime, I don’t think you have identified the fundamental problem at all. First of all, it is not a case of Lizzie (and scientists) versus Chris (and non-scientists). If anything, it is a case of evolutionists on the one hand moving the goalposts and “us guys” using science to cry foul play!
Well let me restate my point by recycling your metaphor above: It is a case of scientists constantly moving the goal posts in order to catch as much of the data as possible with as little spare room as possible, versus "you guys" inferring from our moving goal posts that we are not doing what is, in fact intrinsic to scientific methodology :)
Remember: although there maybe “scientific consensus” on your side, Lizzie, we have true science on our side. Which is more important?
oo, oo, Chris :) No, I don't "remember" this :) I hope we both have "true science" on our side, which is the position that our models must be constantly fitted to data, not the other way round. Consensus doesn't matter terribly, except inasmuch as it is an indicator of consilience which does. And ID will have "true science" on its side just as soon as it makes testable differential hypotheses (like the frontloading hypothesis) and tests them, comparing the model fit to the model fit of an evolutionary model.
Quite simply the fossil record does not look the way it should look if evolution was true. The Cambrian Explosion – with its sudden appearance of virtually all major body plans – particularly undermines neo-darwinism. And then there’s all the stasis: fossils of things that are still around today have not evolved at all. And then there’s all the discontinunity: the same discontinuinty that we see in all extant species today.
Actually, Chris, none of those statements are true. There are a very large number of ways the fossil record might look if evolution were true, and the way it does look is one of them. There are also an even larger number of ways the fossil record might look if evolution were false, and the way it looks is not one of them. And to illustrate this, let's say you are in a strange house and it is pitch dark outside. You can hear the wind whistling, and a tapping on the window pane (my son would do a better job of writing this story than I am, but I'll go on...). At the window is a Venetian blind. Suddenly there is a flash of lightning. Thrown on to the wall opposite the window is the shadow of the slats of the Venetian blind, and in that split second you see the image of what looks like a tree - but is it? There are twigs, but are they really connected to branches? There are branches, but no shadow of the trunk - the window cill is too high to reveal it. Does this shadow look like it should if there was a tree out there? I think it does :) Now, about stasis - this is an easy one, and comes directly from Darwin's theory with hardly any adjustment. Darwin's theory, is, essentially, a theory of how populations adapt to an environment. Once they reach an optimum, there is no reason to change further. In fact, no mechanism, under Darwinism, for them to do so (although there is under drift theory, and indeed, apparent stasis sometimes shows evidence of drift - changes over time that appear to serve no adaptive function). And about "discontinuity" - again, two easy answers. One is the Venetian blind slats - fossilisation is rare, and the conditions for fossilisation non-random. We do not therefore have a random sampling of all biota - instead some environments, and some kinds of biota give a much higher probability of fossilisation than others. The other is also easy, and again, can be derived directly from Darwin's principle of adaptation. If the environment changes (which it does sometimes, relatively quickly) or if a population, or a subdivision of it, moves into a new enviroment, or is cut off from the old one, then that population may no longer be at an optimum for that environment. And so adaptation begins and we see relatively rapid evolution towards a new optimum for that environment (as can be observed, in real time, in what you would call "micro-evolution"). I don't know if you've ever played around with sand on a drum head. You put sand on a drum head and play a sound at a particular frequency (or combination of frequencies. The drum starts to resonate with the sound, and the sand jumps around on the antinodes (which are moving) at random until they settle into a node (on a drum head the nodes are linear, and form a kind of network on the drum head). So you end up with the sand marking the nodal lines. That is stasis. Now, change the sound - immediately the sand starts jumping around again, because what was a node is now an antinode until stasis again sets in and the sand settles into the new nodal lines. Hey presto - punk eek! In fact having typed the above, I just googled up this: http://vimeo.com/10689468 :) (Warning - turn the sound down to low!)
And if there really was a Tree of Life, we should never, ever find “a peculiar chunk of DNA in the genomes of eight animals – the mouse, rat, bushbaby, little brown bat, tenrec, opossum, anole lizard and African clawed frog – but not in 25 others, including humans, elephants, chickens and fish.” Dismissing that as HGT is simply not good enough.
Why is it not good enough? And what is your quote from? It may not be "good enough" I don't know.
Okay, I’ll go and read Asimov now. I hope he says that science should go wherever the evidence leads and theories should be abandoned if they are undermined by the evidence, not preserved because of an a priori commitment to naturalism.
He does indeed. Indeed, he treats it as a given. However, the point of his essay is that "abandon" can, and does, include minor tweaks to the abandoned theory and adoption of the modified theory. And the chief test of every theory is: "how well does it fit the data"? (Given two equally well-fitting models, parsimony is often used to choose between them but parsimony isn't necessarily reliable - better to derive differential hypotheses from each model and test those hypotheses against new data).Elizabeth Liddle_{July 29, 2011
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Elizabeth:
Now, let us take a slightly more specific theory than “ID” which isn’t actually an explanatory theory at all – it’s a default inference.
That is wrong as the design inference is not a default. Do you understand what "default" means? IMy guess is you think archeaology is a default inference too. How about forensics and SETI? The design inference is based on our knowledge of cause and effect relationships. It can be tested and falsified.Joseph_{July 29, 2011
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Elizabeth:
I have to say, the arguments against the tree of life seem pretty thin!
Not to these scientists: Charles Darwin's tree of life is 'wrong and misleading', claim scientists:
Dr Eric Bapteste, an evolutionary biologist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, said: "For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life. We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality."
Joseph_{July 29, 2011
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Hi Lizzie, I'm now with you, thanks for the clarification. And yes, I agree that's how science works and it is stronger for it: as we make more observations and perform more experiments, we learn more and we revise our theories accordingly. Only one problem remains and it is a big one. Evolution: it's just not science, is it? 19th century science, maybe. But certainly not 21st century science. Darwin himself was completely and utterly wrong (think flat earth wrong) about most of his subject matter, so why are we hanging onto the ambiguous scraps that remain? Let me do a Pip and answer that for you: if the theory of evolution was concerned with profound worldview-neutral subject matter it would have been consigned to the scrapheap of bad science long ago: along with Flat Earth theory! But it isn't, and furthermore, far too many influential people have staked their professional reputation on the theory of evolution being true. Indeed, far too many people NEED the theory of evolution to be true because they absolutely must refuse to allow a Divine foot in the door. So, pertinent as Asimov's essay might be to science or knowledge in general: unless you equate evolutionary theory to flat Earth theory, it is irrelevant to the Tree of Life.Chris Doyle_{July 29, 2011
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Lizzie,
However, in both cases the original model remains a decent approximation for many purposes. Flat maps work pretty well for limited regions. ID frontloading is still a good-enough description for most purposes; ditto Darwin’s theory. The point being that all models are wrong, but some are less wrong than others (hence “the relativity of wrong”); moreover, all models are provisional and subject to constant falsification. That does not mean (or very rarely means) that when a model is falsified, we have to go back to the proverbial drawing board.
One of the ways I like to illustrate this is by comparing Classical Mechanics and Relativity. Relativity is definitely a more accurate model of how the physics of the universe work, but from a utility perspective, the vast majority of activities humans engage in on and around Earth can be more easily described and calculated using Classical Mechanics. Classical mechanics works just fine for putting satellites in in orbit for example. So has the Classical model been "falsified"? By many standards, yes, but it still has utility at the scales we still operate at.Doveton_{July 29, 2011
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Ok...clearly I need to read ahead. My last comment is pretty much covered by your reference to the Asimov essay. Oh well...a little redundancy never hurt anyone. :)Doveton_{July 29, 2011
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