Hi everyone,

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding here. Evolution is by no means problematic, unscientific or lacks sufficient evidence. Speaking of the fossil record and that organisms don’t change – they do indeed and they do so quite dramatically and over short and long time periods. As a paleontologist, I study exactly those changes over millions of years. I do not want to criticize your belief, for I do not see any problem whatsoever to combine religion and science, they are just very different views on the subject. But please do not mix up a scientific approach, which tries to objectively explain how life has evolved based on facts, and a religious interpretation. Of course many findings of science are not 100% certain and it also involves some interpretation, but the same is true for every field of science.

Best regards, Thomas

Evolution is not consistent with the Biblical account of creation, which I believe :)

Can we have a more scientific discussion?

Of course Kim, but remember evolution isn't exactly 100% scientific, but more of a philosophy. And conversely, God and the Bible aren't completely unscientific! And you did mention that evolution is controversial. But some major problems with evolution are: how do mutations increase genetic information, the sudden appearance of species, such as angiosperms, in the so-called geological time strata, and that organisms don't fundamentally change :)

It is not scientific.

Hi everyone,

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding here. Evolution is by no means problematic, unscientific or lacks sufficient evidence. Speaking of the fossil record and that organisms don’t change – they do indeed and they do so quite dramatically and over short and long time periods. As a paleontologist, I study exactly those changes over millions of years. I do not want to criticize your belief, for I do not see any problem whatsoever to combine religion and science, they are just very different views on the subject. But please do not mix up a scientific approach, which tries to objectively explain how life has evolved based on facts, and a religious interpretation. Of course many findings of science are not 100% certain and it also involves some interpretation, but the same is true for every field of science.

Best regards, Thomas

Hi everyone,

Although I am a staunch supporter of the synthetic theory of evolution, I find the following passage for me rather critical: how can, a small genetic mutation arose in a random way, be "rewarded" by evolution and spread in a population to bring over the generations to a new structure, when still that variation was not advantageous for the purpose of survival? Can any environmental factor intervene, which somehow facilitates this process of natural selection?

Deus existe mas ele é ateu...

Ha, ha! I like @Francisco's answer. As a religious person I know God has a sense of humor. But getting to the intention of the original question I would list a few below.

1.Darwin's theory of center of origin and chance dispersal. This is his theory that allopatric distributions, whether adjacent or disjunct, are the result of an origin from an initially small area within the range followed by accidental dispersal to of species to other areas in such a way that they do not overlap or overlap very little. This theory leads to all sorts of absurdities but is widely accepted. It is not supported by biogeographic evidence. An alternative is that allopatry evolved by a widespread ancestor evolving into descendants in local parts of the ancestral range by vicariance. This does not create anomalies or contradictions inherent in Darwin's model.

2.The widespread misrepresentation of fossil calibrated molecular divergence dates as being actual, maximum, or approximate ages. This is a fallacy because fossils only provide minimum dates and so molecular extrapolations are also minimums. The failure to recognize this is quite a scandal.

3.The widespread practice of molecular systematists of rejecting the involvement of geological events because they are older than their molecular dates (see above on failure to recognize molecular dates as minimums).

4.The widespread use of teleological arguments in evolution. This is absurd since purpose cannot be derived by scientific analysis, but is the preserve of religion (i.e. God may have a purpose in the course of evolution, but it is beyond practical experience to demonstrate that).

5.The common practice of explaining everything by natural selection(usually through a teleological argument) when other mechanisms of differentiation are known – such as biased gene conversion. The natural selection stories are probably favored because everyone likes a good story. But I think the practice is intellectually lazy.

" If advantage shows on a longer timescale it will still prevail if only the new species survives long enough for the "experiment" to show result. "

Thank you so much, Ales; I was referring for example to the diversification of the front limb of vertebrates

Evolution is a process. Its a description of how “selection” by consequences operates...i am confused by the question

Aj S. Jr. - Or, in terms of science, evolution is a methodology. Without method you have zip.

John Grehan

Hi John, evolution as a methodology...could you expand on your idea?

I think i get what you are getting at but don't want to assume.

I have always thought of evolution as a universal mechanism by which things change (not necessarily progress towards anything or imply a direction).....replace "species" with "idea" or the moving targets of social norms and mores, current trends in fashion, etc.

All "things" are in the process of evolving when considered as a group. All groups or networks of "things" evolve with respect to environmental constraints. The consequences of doing "something" in the environment "selects" which of those "things" persist.

"Select" doesn't quite work here because it elicits ideas of purpose or a grand design but that's not how I am using "selection by consequences" here

Most discussions of evolution get bogged down over a fruitless debate over whether it is a theory or a fact. Pointless exercise as far as I am concerned. More interested in evolution as a method - set of operational practices that lead to new discoveries (or not). So for physics there is methodology, for the study of genetics there is methodology, for the study of physiology there is methodology etc. It is method that counts for it is in the application of methodology (experimental or other) by which science contributes something new. So why not evolution - what evolutionary methods are employed by its practitioners? By addressing methodological principles and findings one can look at the empirical grounding of evolutionary research programs. Otherwise one is just looking only at rhetoric. No doubt one can argue about that. Its just my perspective and no doubt there are others.

Thanks for the expansion John, i found the explanation thorough and clear

The only problem is that some people say things which are simply not true. Andrew Paul McKenzie Pegman says earlier in this thread "But some major problems with evolution are: how do mutations increase genetic information, the sudden appearance of species, such as angiosperms, in the so-called geological time strata, and that organisms don't fundamentally change". None of these are problems and, to the contrary, are excellent sources of evidence supporting evolutionary theory.

"Mutations increase genetic information" by duplication of genetic information, which inevitably happens through time, at a range of genomic scales. Nucleotides can be appended to genes, altering function if viable. Genes can be mistakenly copied, and the redundant copy can be further mutated to exapt to new purpose. The same happens with chromosome or even full-genome-duplication, which has happened several times in essentially all lineages. So, to say there is a problem is simply incorrect: increasing genetic information is well understood and consistent with evolutionary theory.

Article Nested radiations and the pulse of angiosperm diversificatio...

Book Polyploidy and Genome Evolution

https://www.nature.com/articles/hdy201589

http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/171/4/2294.short

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17164

"The sudden appearance of species" happens through a species adapting quickly to new evolutionary pressures, or the geological record making it seem so. Neither are much of a mystery and certainly aren't inconsistent with evolutionary theory.

Article Tempo does not correlate with mode in the fossil record

https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0168952515001304?token=D729F6CB2281446C7D6277A5305D103D86407334DCB1F732C5257F45EBCB2DA84C24BE66ACDC893F159F03938AC95970

Article Eutherians experienced elevated evolutionary rates in the im...

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/7/2407.full.pdf

"Organisms don't fundamentally change" is, again, simply false. We have a fossil record documenting change. We vast organismal change over the past few thousand years through domestication of crops, livestock, dogs etc. We can witness evolutionary change actually happening, in, say, anolis lizards morphologically evolving to new predator pressures on generational-timescales, or bacteria responing to antibiotics, or body size change in response to limited resources.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5802/1111/tab-pdf

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6327/826/tab-pdf

Article Convergence in reduced body size, head size, and blood gluco...

To respond to the OP: the answer is that there are no problems with evolutionary theory. You might as well ask, in an aeronautical science channel, "what are the major problems with aerodynamic theory?", while an aeroplane flies overhead. Planes fly because aerodynamic theory is right. Modern biology is a staggeringly dynamic scientific field, providing tangible results in many areas, because evolutionary theory is right.

And just one more thing: biologists would love it if evolutionary theory turned out to be wrong. It would be the most exciting event in the history of science, and we would all be very very excited to turn our research to this revised perspective. The scientist showing evidence that biologists have been suffering a collective hallucination that evolution looks right for 150 years would become a superstar, the most famous scientist in history. But, so far, that evidence has not emerged. We live in hope though.

I've uploaded some of the refs above which might be behind a paywall, please ask if you cannot access the above links and I'll try to find them.

I see that @Alastair R. Tanner interpreted "problems with evolutionary theory" as referring to evolutionary theory as a whole while I took it to refer to aspects of evolutionary theory. Aerodynamic theory can be problematic in various aspects. Even as a plane flies overhead because there are plenty of cases where applications of aerodynamic theory (as in design of particular planes) have been wrong - resulting in crashes (which

is why there are test pilots). It is possible that evolutionary theory as a whole is unfalsifiable in the sense that it is a research program in the sense of Lakatos. Alaistair lists some examples of erroneous problems and I would tend to agree that they are erroneous, but as I listed, other problems

do exist and they are not erroneous. I find evolution interesting for its diversity of perspectives and in how practitioners respond to those differences. Keeps life from being boring (whether or not Creationism is true or not, it is boring - always the same message throughout and nothing new).

John Grehan It is not a matter of being boring or exciting, biologists simply try to find the most reasonable explanation for the existence and development of life and its huge diversity. And from all we know, evolutionary theory is the most promising approach. As is the matter for any theory, it cannot be proven - such as gravitation cannot the proven. But thousands of studies have delivered empirical support for both graviation and evolution, and so far there hasn't been any falsification (at least no reliable one).

In the end, I fully agree with Alastair R Tanner - there are no problems! And a lack of evidence for some case studies or phenomena we currently cannot explain are not a problem either - rather a challenge to explain in the future.

Alright John Grehan , here you go then:

"1.Darwin's theory of center of origin and chance dispersal. This is his theory that allopatric distributions, whether adjacent or disjunct, are the result of an origin from an initially small area within the range followed by accidental dispersal to of species to other areas in such a way that they do not overlap or overlap very little. This theory leads to all sorts of absurdities but is widely accepted. It is not supported by biogeographic evidence. An alternative is that allopatry evolved by a widespread ancestor evolving into descendants in local parts of the ancestral range by vicariance. This does not create anomalies or contradictions inherent in Darwin's model."

References please. I can't really think of a single evolutionary scenario which isn't supported by biogeographical evidence. Erm there are no kangaroos in Europe. Tenrecs live in Madagascar. Cichlid fish speciated in the African lakes. Sea gulls make ring species. Ants speciated when the Atlantic opened. There are no rabbits in the Cambrian. I could provide references, but that would basically be a list of every evolutionary and palaeontological research article ever published.

"2.The widespread misrepresentation of fossil calibrated molecular divergence dates as being actual, maximum, or approximate ages. This is a fallacy because fossils only provide minimum dates and so molecular extrapolations are also minimums. The failure to recognize this is quite a scandal."

Molecular divergence trees have maxima and minima, reflecting the uncertainty that the method returns. All good molecular time inference papers are entirely transparent about their uncertainty. This uncertainty is statistically represented by 95% confidence intervals, statistical quantifications as is common practice across all scientific disciplines. To say these are "misrepresentations" or a "scandal" suggests you think authors deliberately obfuscate or intend to mislead, that journal editors are morons, and that peer reviewers are in on some kind of conspiracy. In which case, you'll need to provide evidence in the form of references to support that hypothesis.

"3.The widespread practice of molecular systematists of rejecting the involvement of geological events because they are older than their molecular dates (see above on failure to recognize molecular dates as minimums)."

See above. References please.

"4.The widespread use of teleological arguments in evolution. This is absurd since purpose cannot be derived by scientific analysis, but is the preserve of religion (i.e. God may have a purpose in the course of evolution, but it is beyond practical experience to demonstrate that)."

References please. Evolutionary biologists are well aware of what teleological arguments are, and are only misinterpreted when readers mistake scientific language as suggesting that anything in evolution has agency or direction.

"5.The common practice of explaining everything by natural selection(usually through a teleological argument) when other mechanisms of differentiation are known – such as biased gene conversion. The natural selection stories are probably favored because everyone likes a good story. But I think the practice is intellectually lazy."

References please, I'm especially interested to see an example of teleology in the evolutionary literature in the past 50 years. Darwin himself was cautious of just so stories, and this was reiterated by Lewontin and Gould in 1979. We know that many characteristics of organisms are the result of exaptation, genetic drift, evolutionary bottlenecks, limitations, compromises, and contingency. We acknowledge those are there, and focus on natural selection as a driving force because it does explain everything else which is not the result of chance (which happens to be quite a lof of biological reality). I don't see the problem in that.

Hi Alistair

1. I’m away from my home computer but will append a couple of references when I get back. But I would suggest Heads (2012) Molecular Panbiogeography of the Tropics in the meantime.

2. “Molecular divergence trees have maxima and minima” True, they present these, but if fossil calibrated they can have no maxima. “you think authors deliberately obfuscate or intend to mislead, that journal editors are morons, and that peer reviewers are in on some kind of conspiracy” Actually there are articles where authors admit the divergences are only minima, but then later present them as actual or maxima.

3. “The widespread practice of molecular systematists of rejecting the involvement of geological events because they are older than their molecular dates” off the cuff, look up Alan de Queiroz 2005 and other publications as a good example. Susanne Renner is another good example.

4. “teleological arguments in evolution” – I would have to dig for that as they are just about present whenever a selection explanation is invoked for the origin of an adaptation. But there is a paper discussing this and will append when I get home.

5. “The common practice of explaining everything by natural selection” – its just about everything out there. “focus on natural selection as a driving force because it does explain everything else which is not the result of chance” – yes selection does explain everything. Whether its responsible or not is another matter. Take the divaricating growth form of plants. ‘Everyone’ attributes that to selection protection from browsers (which browse the plants anyway’ or some to selection involving climate etc. None of them consider that it might be a developmental change involving replacement of indeterminate with determinate meristems and sterilization of inflorescences that have nothing to do with selection by browsers or anything else.

Cheers, John

My main problem with evolution is the sudden explosion of organisms in the precambrian era representing practically every phylum extant today and those that existed in the past. Secondly is the existence of numerous convergent morphological cgaracters is diverse organisms explained very vaguely as arising from similar environmantal pressures and thidly the lack of the presence of convincing missing links in the explanation of our relatively short evolutionary history.

Ahmed, you need to explain why something is seen to be a problem. So the 'sudden explosion' involving perhaps most phylya - is it a problem because it

does not fit with expectations of some kind? Or is it contradictory to some theoretical view? If its a problem because it does not fit in with your

expectations then it may only be a problem for that reason.

Similarly with 'convergent' morphological characters. These can only be identified once a particular phylogeny is chosen. The all that are incongruent with the selected tree are by definition 'convergent' What is it about evolutionary theory that you do not see as accommodating the multiplicity of character origins. Agree with your about the vague assertions of similar environmental pressures as these are just speculations with out empirical basis.

Missing links is problematic. How much of a 'missing' link is needed? Its a very personal expectation rather than a scientific question. There is effectively a 'missing link' between myself and my parents since I exist as a separate individual even though at one time I was not. But now there

is not direct trace of that link anymore. The link is historical. There is nothing in evolutionary theory that presents the expectation that every generation of change will be preserved in the fossil record, or even in genetic heritage.

Biogeographically one can see many instances of adjacent allopatry between differentiated entities (species, genera etc). Here there is no 'missing link' in space because the related taxa are next door to each other.

Thomas, I agree with you that evolutionary theory, in general, is the most promising approach (and consequently less boring), or I would not be a practicing evolutionist. However it gets tricky when saying that there has been no falsification. I have seen it stated that the day after publication of Einstein's relativity theory it was falsified. Of course falsified by the person who made that argument since that falsification was not generally accepted. Creationists would argue of course that they have falsified evolution.

Similarly, Newton's theory of gravitation was falsified with respect to its prediction about planetary motion. Since the data conflicted (planets did not move in a way in accordance with the theory) one could say that the theory was falsified. But the other option would be that the data were wrong or incomplete rather than give up an elegant theory. And that is what happened.

On teleology – everywhere one sees explanation of evolution to meet a need one is confronted with teleology, some more overt than others. I have attached a paper that addresses this issue (Heads, M. 2009. Darwin’s changing views on evolution: from centres of origin and teleology to vicariance and incomplete lineage sorting. Journal of Biogeography). A couple of excerpts below: Ayala (2004, p. 65) argued that ‘many features of organisms are teleological, a bird’s wings are for flying; eyes are for seeing…’ (italics in original). But this is only one way of looking at organic structure – the mediaeval, scholastic way, not the Renaissance, scientific way that Darwin started to employ after 1859.

Ruse’s (2003, p. 8) book focused on a paradox: although teleological thinking and language ‘would not be deemed appropriate in physics or chemistry’, they ‘fully permeate evolutionary biological science’. Even now ‘we still go on using and seemingly needing this way of thinking’. Ruse is defending neodarwinism and teleology – hence the insinuation that all biologists are neodarwinists and use teleological language. However, this ignores Darwin’s later work and also contemporary discussion in developmental genetics.

However, mainstream biologists are now acknowledging problems with teleology. The editor of one journal, Evolution and Development, advised authors: ‘be careful about using teleological words to describe biological entities’ (Raff, 2005). This advice could also be given to school teachers. Raff warned that statements such as ‘x is well-designed to do y’ will be seized on by creationists. However, Bacon, Voltaire and the others all avoided teleological words and thinking, not because of the tactical reason that creationists might use them but because teleology is not valid in science

Dear Kim, as with any theory, there are problems. But these problems have nothing to with the problem of this thread, which is just a split-off of this one, where you also posted:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_you_believe_in_the_Theory_of_Evolution.

Here just another platform for religious bigots is generated, just to increase RG-traffic and your RG-index. Everything already written elsewhere...

The arguments of those who pick fights with evolutionary biologists are always disingenuous and the same people pick this fight over and over again.

None are trained in evolutionary biology. None have read the literature that is terribly exciting, and elegant. None have apparently read Darwin's well laid out evidence in the first three chapters of Origin... which is followed by his compelling summary of everything that makes Natural Selection inarguable.

I have been guilty of entertaining the questions and comments of these people but it is really quite useless because they have a very specific and destructive agenda.

Patrice – I was somewhat amused by your comment that Darwin made a “compelling summary of everything that makes Natural Selection inarguable”. What is arguable is the role and relationship of natural selection to other mechanisms of evolutionary change and adaptation such as biased gene conversion, unequal slippage etc that may generate evolutionary novelty that spreads through a population without a selection process or differential reproduction. As long as the novelties are not detrimental to the requirements of survival, they can establish structural innovation that may result in new adaptations. For the record, I have read ALL of Darwin's Origin and Voyage and at least some of his later editions of the Origin.

I would not worry about whether people who pick fights with evolutionists are disingenuous or not. Really does not matter. I pick 'fights' with evolutionists all the time and I am one! What matters, at least to me, is whether any particular debate or discussion is of interest to participate. Let others worry or not about their perspective.

John i accept your arguments in favour of convergent characters and human evolution but cannot comprehend. The precamcrian explosion of phyla. I am not a geologist or palaeontologist. How do you explain the presence of so many early diverse forms. What is the logical explanation for this. I am not a religious bigot as someone has suggested but require some scientific explanation.

Modelo de equilibrio pontuado de Jay S. Gould

Ahmed Thandar , here are a couple of thoughts, and then I cover some hypotheses for you to consider:

1. Should the question be "10 or 20 million years is quite a long time: why was the Cambrian 'explosion' so slow?"? An analogy: in the early days of, say, petroleum exploration, there was an explosion new companies exploiting the newly available "commercial niches". Eventually, the most successful companies dominate and only a few survive. It would be very weird for the new companies, in this scenario, to emerge slowly and gradually - slow change would need more explanation than fast change. Similarly, evolutionary theory predicts rapid change when presented with opportunity. Which is what we see at the Ediacaran/Cambrian.

2. For all we know, eukaryotic biological diversity may well be very narrow and conservative. As we only have one example, we have no idea if diversity is actually broad or not. If we had another example, we might be asking "why is life on Earth so low in diversity? why did the Cambrian give rise to so few major lineages?"... I feel it is worth keeping that possibility in mind.

---

As for hypotheses, the Cambrian diversification is explained through a combination of the following factors:

A threshold in genetic repertoire being reached. As mentioned earlier, genetic information increases with duplications. Duplications are usually redundancies, allowing for greater complexity through adaptation and integration of the "spare version" of genes, gene complexes, plasmids, chromosomes, and whole genomes.

A threshold in genetic regulation being reached. For example, micro-RNAs (and the many other families of genetic modifiers) have enormous control over phenotypes through post-transcriptional regulation. Genetic repertoire is power, but genetic regulation is control, if you like. Power is nothing without control, as they say.

Key adaptations. Given the complexity provided by the above points, developmental plasticity can have huge potential for morphological diversity. For example, tinkering with Hox genes (and other high-level gene complexes) through the above genetic mechanisms can mean that a wide array of ecological niches become rapidly available. Also, predatory and prey roles emerge as biomineralisation becomes refined. This, along with sensory evolution, could have opened a massive width of ecological niches for lineages to exploit. Parasitism is also a major driving influence (perhaps the main driving influence), and that arms-race may have had huge evolutionary influence. Parasitism also leads to metaevolution: some parts of the genome are "allowed" to mutate faster than others in order to "keep up" with parasite pressures. This accellerates genetic isolation and thus evolution.

Long term / geological aspects. Oxygen levels were significant before the Cambrian, so it cannot be a factor alone. But the characteristics of oceans, volcanism, continental shelves providing photic and littoral zones might have only become condusive to "complex" life at the Cambrian or Ediacaran. Snowball earth / global volcanism scenarios probably fragmented populations, leading to isolated lineages which could evolve without hybridisation, only to later recombine with strong synergistic traits. An analogy: imagine hitting a massive population of bacteria with antibiotics again and again. Small, isolated groups will evolve resistance, but in different ways. Then, after millions of years, turn off the antibiotics, and the isolated lineages can finally come back together, combine their skills, and boost complexity and thus evolutionary potential. It is also worth keeping in mind that planet Earth, even today, is a prokaryotic place. Multicellular eukaryotes are just big gangs of endosymbiotic prokaryotes. You are just a big blob of collaborating bacteria and archaea which happens to be able to see and hear and think.

The Cambrian diversification is compatible with evolutionary theory - indeed, evolutionary theory predicts this kind of punctuation to exist in the history of life. It would need more explanation if it didn't exist.

Ahmed,

I think Alaistair gave a pretty good run down on possible explanations about the the presence of “so many early diverse forms” and Francisco mentions Gould's punctuated equilibria (which is a very specific hypothesis that is problematic for me, but others before him have noted that evolutionary 'rates [a relative term anyway] is sometimes faster than others). But the trouble with your question lies within the question of why “so many”. Who are you (not in any impolite way) to decide what is “so many”? If it were half the number would it be “so many” to be a problem for you? Is the number of taxa in the fossil records at particular times a problem for you in general? In other words, nature is what it is, our expectations of what nature should do is a personal matter that has nothing to do with how nature works. It would be like imposing exceptions of how God should behave and what God should do and when (ironically both religious and atheists sometimes share that propensity).

Explanations are the end result of analysis. In a sense they are hypotheses that can be measured up against the facts (in this case fossils and their morphology and geology) as we know them. Its a bit like reconstructing a historical record from fragments such as after a car accident. We can never revisit the particular circumstances of that individual accident, but make inferences based on direct observations of other accidents (equivalent perhaps of observing nature in present time) and knowledge of operational factors such as physics (equivalence perhaps of observing biological and ecological processes in the present). Of course whether such explanations are “logical” is for individual judgment in evolutionary theory just as much as in a court of law. (Actually I think some evolutionary explanations [an in some biological fields such as Medicine] are so superficial that they would not stand up in a court of law).

I appreciate that people often have difficulties with aspects of evolutionary theory. And this can be across the board and one does not have to be a religious bigot to have those problems. There are plenty enough evolutionary bigots (that I would think of them this way) and some misuse science to attack religion or God (which is fine to represent their personal view of life, but not to hijack science or evolutionary theory as the unpaid mercenary of their cause any more than some religious do the same in using science to bolster their faith [another bizarre irony])

The Cambrian "explosion" followed (as is usual with rapid widespread speciation events - See Michael Benton papers) a massive Precambrian extinction due to climate change. In this case cooling and extensive glaciation. See for details, example, Young, GM. Geoscience Frontiers Volume 4, Issue 3, May 2013, Pages 247-261

I've been reflecting on the comment by Patrice regarding critics of evolutionary biology that “None are trained in evolutionary biology”. The implication being that such individuals are not qualified to criticize or challenge evolutionary theory. This bothered me a bit as I also have no training in “evolutionary biology”, including evolutionary biogeography for which I have published papers challenging evolutionary orthodoxy in reputable scientific publications, including one book published by the Oxford University Press.

The idea of formal “training” is certainly important as substantiating a certain background, and especially important for competency in technical ability, but it has nothing necessarily to do with the knowledge base or understanding that a person might develop outside of a formal training program. After all, Darwin had no formal training for what he did. Formal programs themselves can run the risk of constraining students understanding to a particular viewpoint of the teachers (the parrot problem).

And formal training does not immunize the trained from their own oversights or myopia – a classic example being the way that Barbara McClintock was for a long time ridiculed for her jumping genes theory by her 'trained' colleagues. In my own field of evolutionary biology the pioneering works of Leon Croizat in the 1950's was by a person trained in jurisprudence. The frequent misrepresentation by molecular biologists of molecular divergence dates as actual or maximal by rather than minimal was brought to attention by Michael Heads who was not formally trained as a molecular biologist.

This is to point out that the amount of formal training in evolutionary biology is a contingency. Oversight or misunderstanding by a critic without the formal training might be adduced to that lack of training. But scientists who have been formally trained can also generate their own level of nonsense or incompetence as well. So each situation has to be examined case by case. My research often leads me into examining and making inferences about geological evidence even though I have no formal training in geology. So I have to be very careful to recognize my limited knowledge – especially on quantitative geophysics. When possible I may attempt to receive feedback from a geologist as I am currently doing with a paper looking at the impact of Pacific terranes and island arcs on the origin of Galapagos biota. Evolutionary theory is about the effectiveness of methodology, not about the formalities of training.

Evolution not true and they wrote only nonsense. All of this money!

I judge that Kim's initial question, followed by his plea for scientific answers only, are based on real curiosity and an open mind.

Notwithstanding your "amusement" at my recent post, I agree with much you say. In my own case, and especially as a woman, I have had male molecular biologists with no training in evolutionary theory or mammalogy (my two areas or real expertise that extends well beyond formal training), mansplain (ie. no scientific dialogue but simple dismissal) why their results about Eutherian evolution are above scrutiny.

Nevermind that these same biologists have been shown more recently to have poorly modeled their analysis. They could have learned that a lot earlier if they had considered seriously talking to someone like me, who understood the statistical weakness of their analysis. Nor do they accept that their methods are poor. Rather, they refuse to listen to male colleagues with better knowledge of the mathematics of evolutionary theory.

It is true that a formal education is not strictly necessary to understand evolution on some level. But the implications of the theories of neutral evolution and natural selection and the mathematics that are necessary to understand the process demands higher mathematical training and years of reading the difficult papers that form the basis for well founded and extremely well accepted evolutionary "theory".

I would never expect to compete with my pediatrician husband about how to handle a case of sepsis. This even though I am a very good biologist and have training in biostatistics. But I did not do four years of medical school, nor four years of residency followed by decades of practice.

Similarly, he has a diploma in statistics but does not understand the complex interactions of various statistical distributions and the associated probability models. And he has not been steeped in the practice for decades.

He also does not readily understand how to detect natural selection and population genetics, areas that have become familiar to me but not my talented graduate students and some of my colleagues.

So excuse me if I am sensitive to criticism of my hard won, rigourous training, but I have no doubt that it has been a useful process learning from wonderful mentors. And I resent any suggestion that somehow bias in thinking can be avoided simply by avoiding formal training.

And I do not think it worth my time to answer any questions herein that are not based in a genuine curiosity and instead are meant to inform me that I am wrong as are the whole cadre of mathematicians and biologists who have the evolutionary knowledge that I do.

This is research gate, which implies that the work is evidence based. Period.

Dewanand Makhan – Evolution not true and they wrote only nonsense.

You are free to believe or not to believe in anything you choose, but on ResearchGate you will be asked an uncomfortable question that you will not be asked in a religious setting or around a dinner table:

You've made an assertion of fact. Now show us your data.

Patrice Showers Corneli Thank you for your comments and perspective. I agree with you that idiots who just dismiss other viewpoints are not doing science any favors, and out of hand dismissal is problematic when it does not involve explicit contestation of evidence, regardless of whether that person has formal training or not.

I do agree with you that for most people it would take years of mathematical training to understand technical aspects of a paradigm. I for one am not a mathematical population geneticist so I would not presume to argue against natural selection as a process and have no reason to. What does get interesting for me is that the role of this process in the historical origin of adaption is a separate issue. Natural selection is one possibility, but there are alternative concepts, including some by geneticists to suggest that there are mechanisms beyond 'drift' that may 'drive' for the lack of a better word, the evolution and spread of novelty.

The principal evolutionary field I work with and have self learned expertise is that of biogoegraphy – the origin of differentiation in geographic space. I have to contend with a widespread belief system involving centers of origin and miraculous chance dispersal events (some even use the word 'miracle')

Regarding the analogy to a pediatrician – when there is no reason to question or challenge a specialist then one does not. When there is reason then one might, regardless of qualifications. The medical field is full of medical blunders by 'experts' and many cases of people without any qualifications whatsoever doing their own research and finding solutions to intractable medical problems that have been dismissed out of hand by doctors as psychological problems etc. And of course there is the classic stupidity of medical researchers studying a disease by sampling only males (heart attacks being a classic example) and this stupidity still goes one even by 'highly trained' researchers.

Regarding the comment that you “resent any suggestion that somehow bias in thinking can be avoided simply by avoiding formal training.” I did not say or imply any such thing. I noted that even with formal training one can develop bias as a result of that training. Of course one can develop bias from any other background. That goes without saying. Since we are human I doubt there is any such thing as an unbiased scientist - in any field. An interesting example is the case of human-great ape phylogeny where all the molecular systematists support a human-chimpanzee sister group. This is supported by huge numbers of DNA sequences and much mathematical modelling - and so it is supposed to be true. But morphologically (morphogenetically) humans and orangutans share about 28 unique features and early hominids also share distinctly orangutan morphologies. Now I am not a trained expert in either field, but there is a problem here. The molecular systematists responded mostly by being abuse and cross that i would not just subordinate morphological evidence to molecular sequences. The hostility was such that some individuals made attempts to suppress my work from publication. Censorship should not be a part of science but it is alive and well in evolutionary biology at least.

As for your note that “This is research gate, which implies that the work is evidence based. Period.” - absolutely, could not agree more. Of course in science the nature of evidence is not always self evidence, which is why there are different perspectives on many aspects of evolutionary theory – by evolutionary theorists.

Ronán Michael Conroy most fossils only few teeth or a piece of bone. Than wrote only nonsense to get money. May be your family came from apes! Is that your Evolution!

Dewanand Makhan I'm afraid your statements are a bit incoherent. Any possibility of providing some evidence based analysis for whatever it is you are trying to say?

John Grehan what based analysis! Spreading only lies to get money!

Keep dreaming and smells money! What is the difference between apes and humans?Your group believe that we came from apes, ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

Viemos dos macacos só por parte de mãe, ou os meninos fizeram sexo com a Eva eh eh eh

Francisco de Castro Bonfim Junior you wrote only 4 papers and what you want to say. Write in English. You not belief in Eva? That is your problem! Be happy to spread Evolution nonsense!

Dewanand Makhan You are presenting yourself as just asserting your beliefs which is fine, but that's just your personal belief system, and belief systems have no scientific merit at all. As noted earlier by one contributor, science is about evidence and in that regard it seems that you have nothing to offer.

I am not aware of any requirement to write in English, but even so its easy enough these days to translate text by computer and usually get a good rendition for general conversation.

Francisco de Castro Bonfim Junior – minha mulher diz que por parte do pai, viemos das cobras!

Bom fim de semana!

Getting back to the original question of problems and considering the focus on human origins (even if only in sarcasm) I figure I might as well briefly elaborate on the problem of human origins – at least from my perspective – for those who may be interested. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, we share a lot of unique or derived features with orangutans (just look at that face – both have a receded hairline from birth, both have the same external ear morphology, both have forward oriented cranial hair, and in males both have a beard and mustache well developed in the male). There are many other unique skeletal and biological similarities (both do not have an externally visible estrus). Even down to the fine details of dental morphology humans and orangutans share several unique cusp formation in the juvenile set of teeth. Chimpanzees on the other hand share very little uniquely in common with humans.

This contrast sets off a conundrum in evolutionary biology, and one not confined to this particular example where molecular sequence similarities do not correspond with morphogenetic similarities. One possibility is that the molecular similarity is actually phenetic (a measure of overall similarity) whereas the morphogenetic similarities are each individually identifiable as uniquely derived features. In molecular approaches the phylogenetic tree is often used to decide what is derived, whereas in morphogenetics the data set is initially limited to characters with derived states for the ingroup. This is an issue that merits much more attention than current. I do not know what the solution might be. In the fossil record, the earliest unambiguous hominids with extensive fossil representation - the australopiths – have distinctly orangutan features of the skull, including the vertically oriented cheekbones. There are also isolated fossil teeth from Africa that have been ascribed to australopiths but have surface features more like orangutans than humans. One day hopefully some of these teeth will be found together with a skull.

The phylogenetic commonality of orangutans and hominids may be the result of a widespread orangutan-like ancestor distributed between Africa and Asia and differentiated locally into different forms, of which only orangutans survived in the east and humans in the west of the distribution range.

Desculpe-me, nós viemos dos peixes, OK?

Discussions revolving around the actual question are going out of hand between religious bigots who have no or little knowledge of evolutiln and scientists who want to deny divine revelations. I expect the former to stay out of the discussion and support those who think both science and religion can go hand in hand. There is tremendous support for evolution and we ard closing the gap, albeit slowly between science and religion. When we reach the point when religious people accept the scientific evidence despite several problems and scientists trying to exclude "religious bigots" in their arguments, then we will reach a utopian compromise. Many things in science have evidence to support them unlike the lack of this in most religion-based arguments.

John Grehan .... are you a human evolution expert? Could you instead speculate on some problems in Lepidopteran evolution? (Anything along the lines of "the phylogeny is not complete" doesn't really qualify as a problem.)

Your thoughts on human evolution suggests you are afflicted by biases. It sounds like you are fond of a conclusion, (in this case that Pongo are Homo's closest living relatives, on the grounds that you think they look a bit similar (anthropomorphic / salience bias)), and you are keen on evidence that supports your conclusion ("One day hopefully some of these teeth will be found together with a skull"). This is confirmation bias, especially as in this case as you have chosen to disregard the consistent evidence that rejects your conclusion.

For the OP: there is again no problem here. Homo's closest living relatives are Pan. Refs: every Hominidae paper published in the last 20 years.

Hi Alastair R Tanner The situation is that morphological cladistics provides evidence of a human-orangutan sister group whereas sequence analysis provides evidence of a human-Pan sister group. My preference is certainly in favor of the morphological cladistics, but then that is just my preference, just as others may prefer the sequence similarity. It is true that nearly everyone accepts the human-Pan relationship, but that of itself does not make it necessarily true. Just happens to be the majority view.

Teeth - all I was implying is that for those teeth is would be interesting to see what kind of skull they belong to. At present it is otherwise difficult to interpret their morphology more extensively.

Yes I have my biases as does every scientist. Not sure why you object to my commenting on human-orangutan affinities as I have published on the subject.

Alastair R Tanner - interesting that you respond to a presentation of evidence by asking if I am a "human evolution expert " This focus on someone being an 'expert' is the opposite of the view expressed by Patrice Showers Corneli who said that science is all about evidence. Period.

John Grehan , let's pause while everyone digests this article which details how you have a poor grasp of hominid evolution, phylogenetics, and science in general by the looks of things:

Article Humans as second orangutans: sense or nonsense?: a reminder ...

Thank you for introducing me to my new favourite smack-down article! I can't wait to cite it.

My highlights:

...it sometimes appears as if papers making sensational claims can get published with rather less than compelling evidence, especially if said claims are likely to result in attention from the popular press...

Even more egregious than the above vague claims made about DNA sequence data is the complete failure of the authors to realize that there is another class of molecular markers that is particularly informative for investigating phylogenetic relationships...

In sum, there is no reason to expect that morphological characters are necessarily good phylogenetic characters...

Yes, some-times the conventional wisdom is overturned, and alternative views do deserve to be heard – but if publication in a peer-reviewed journal is to have any meaning at all, editors and reviewers have a responsibility to ensure that well-established contributory evidence is not dismissed in a superficial way.

I note that since then, a decade ago, you've had trouble publishing on the topic and went back to pointing at moths and giving them names. Stick to what you know, eh?

If anyone wants further methodological detail, please see my publications on why parsimony, John's method of choice, is unsound:

Article Bayesian methods outperform parsimony but at the expense of ...

Article Parsimony and maximum-likelihood phylogenetic analyses of mo...

Article Uncertain-tree: Discriminating among competing approaches to...

Alastair R Tanner As a courtesy I suggest you outline what you see as valid in their arguments in support of your suggestion that I (and my co-author of course) have a "poor grasp of hominid evolution, phylogenetics, and science in general". I do know about this paper by the way.

Alastair R Tanner I would also suggest that is it useful for anyone looking at that paper in any critical way to also look at the original work and also other responses in both directions - to see if the critics have the right end of the stick. Cheers.

Richard Richards I might be in agreement with you about evolution being a fact, but as mentioned early in this discussion, it reduced evolution to a personal belief system whereas science is usually about methodology, not so much about existential matters. Without method one does not have science since there is no pathway to do anything.

Richard Richards When you make an assertion about evolution being a fact you are asserting a personal belief system - which has nothing to do with good scientific research I agree.

Dewanand Makhan When you said “Keep dreaming, write fake stories, publish fraudulent and smell only money” you crossed a line to impute that I (and others) publish untrue content that is fraudulent and for the purposes of financial gain. This constitutes slander (making a false spoken statement damaging to a person's reputation). I will contact Research Gate to lodge a protest and ask if this transgresses the conditions of participation. I have no problem with you holding particular beliefs, but when you engage in slander it is not something that I can accept as reasonable in a science discussion venue.

John Grehan said "As a courtesy I suggest you outline what you see as valid in their arguments".

Stoneking's entire article is valid. It is a masterclass, detailing how your research on orangutans is riddled with bias, rejects well-supported work of others in favour of your own, and demonstrates your dismissive ignorance of modern phylogenetic methods. Stoneking's adds to that criticism of the shady editors who published the research, contravening the peer review verdict that your work is poor and should be rejected. A suppose a silver lining is that the "discussion" your paper was meant to stimulate never happened: your theory was rightly never heard of again, except for Stoneking kindly taking time to tell you what a real scientist looks like.

I'll say it again, as you asked me to repeat myself: you have a poor grasp of science because you carry out research with the egotistical objective of proving yourself right, not because you want to know the truth.

Article Evolution of the second orangutan: Phylogeny and biogeograph...

Article Humans as second orangutans: sense or nonsense?: a reminder ...

Article Reply to "Humans as second orangutans: Sense or nonsense?"

I'm bored of this thread now, especially as the OP's question was answered ages ago. 160 years ago, to be precise.

Alastair R Tanner

“Stoneking's entire article is valid....detailing how your research on orangutans is riddled with bias, rejects well-supported work of others in favour of your own, and demonstrates your dismissive ignorance of modern phylogenetic methods.” Thank you for your opinion. Not much I can say for the purposes of discussion unless you specify what precisely you consider as bias and demonstrates ignorance of modern phylogenetic methods. If I recall correctly, some critics raising the issue of bias was that we restricted character analysis to putative apormophies through outgroup analysis. This method is considered valid by various cladistic theorists including Gary Nelson who was not so stupid about such matters having been responsible for establishment of cladistics in the US. The papers we rejected (if you are referring to morphology) were rejected only for character states that did not conform to apomorphic states by outgroup analysis (outgroup here being lesser apes and at least OW monkeys), or where certain claims about the distribution of character states was wrong (e.g. that frontal sinus was a derived character state). And we did validate quite a number of character states presented in these papers.

“Stoneking's adds to that criticism of the shady editors who published the research, contravening the peer review verdict that your work is poor and should be rejected.” Not all peer review felt that way. Anyway, peer review is not a review by all peers. The reviews we did get were addressed adequately enough for editors to accept. Calling the editors 'shady' is a bit naughty. Maybe you disagree with them, but just because you disagree with someone does not make them shady. If disagreement were the criterion then most scientists are shady people for sure.

“you have a poor grasp of science because you carry out research with the egotistical objective of proving yourself right”

You could do better to demonstrate such accusations. I am sure you would not like it if I just said the same about you without demonstrated evidence (and not just pointing to disagreements).

“not because you want to know the truth” Again, its easy enough in invent any manner of motives to those you disagree with. But as a matter of scientific courtesy one normally does not engage in such practices. Better left to politics.

“I'm bored of this thread now”

Bye bye. I have a minority perspective on evolution, but never so bored as not to discuss issues with anyone so interested.

Books by Ernest Mayr, Howard W. Odum, and Rachel Carson bring fundamentals about evolution. After these publications many others have been publishing different aspects of the evolution of different living beings, since today it is known that the evolutionary path of species is particularly rare, being very similar evolutionary paths, because, despite the similarities Physical or habits, when convergence processes occur, living beings adapt from their genome and environmental conditions.

Even though Alastair has bowed out of the conversation, others may be interested to know more about the orangutan relationship. Its an interesting situation regardless of where one may stand on the issue. Chimpanzees, for all that they are supposed to be so recently related, share very little uniquely in common with humans. When one looks at most similarities one finds that they are also found in the outgroup (lesser apes and OW monkeys for example). But otherwise they are very different. One of the distinctive features of the chimpanzee and gorilla skull is the inflated glabella - the region between the eyebrows above the nose. This inflation forms a ridge that is raised upwards and has a suclus or channel behind it. This does not occur in Homo (some neanderthals have an inflated region but it does not form an upraised ridge) and not in the australopiths. Instead the morphology is closer to orangutans with eyebrow ridges, but more developed than in orangutans.

Internally, the palate of chimpanzees and gorillas is posteriorly thinned, as in other primates. In humans, australopiths, and orangutans and fossil orangutan relatives the palate remains posteriorly thick.

This is the basic approach we used in the original analysis. We selected only those features that showed a derived condition within the large bodied hominids whether they supported a human-chimp, human-orangutan, human-gorilla, human-chimp/gorilla, chimp-orangutan etc. combination. This is a cladistic approach where analysis is limited to using derived characters (in contrast to phenetics which uses both primitive and derived character states).

None of this would be so controversial if it were not for its rendering a different result found in molecular systematics. We do present some explanations of why sequences, even if in large number, could sometimes render a false result. Of course we favored the morphogenetic findings, but in methodological principle the conflict of morphogenetics and sequences (which occurs in other taxa as well) is problematic as there is no recipe at this time by which to automatically decide which choice is correct. This may certainly anger some, but how we feel about a choice has nothing to do with the veracity of a choice. As I say, makes for an interesting and intriguing situation.

By the way, as a side observation. I was once at a presentation by an orangutan behavioralist who noted that when chimpanzee specialists would visit they would end up whispering "orangutans are more intelligent". One may appreciate the irony of the whispered comment since orangutans are supposed to be so phylogenetically primitive and the scientific and popular literature has often played up the intelligence of chimps while overlooking similar if not superior intellectual abilities in orangutans.

I once accepted evolutionary theory (that microbes could change into humans over billions of years) but I came understand that Neo-Darwinism just does not stack up as an explanation for the diversity of life on earth. There are many scientists who agree: https://dissentfromdarwin.org/scientists/

I wrote a semi-popular article that outlines 21 bad arguments that are commonly proposed to encourage belief in evolution: https://creation.com/is-evolution-true (some of these arguments have been put in this forum).

Fundamentally, evolution is a belief about the history of planet earth. As such it is a claim about history. Such is not part of experimental science, which a great tool for increasing our understanding of how the current world operates (you can't do experiments on past events). Evolution has been given a free ride by piggybacking it onto 'science' when it is really an historical perspective.

Donald Batten I think its good that you have settled on a level of certainty about life (just as I have also). We all have to make existential decisions. If you look at evolution as purely a belief system then it is so. And just like any belief system, its a matter of personal decision. Many people, including no doubt some who are scientists, believe in a flat earth. And then there are those who believe in Old Age Creationism and Young Age Creationism and in both camps no doubt each considers the evidence to provide conclusive proof.

There are two points one which one might take a different perspective. First is your apparent impression that Neo-Darwinism is the only evolutionary game in town. It is not. I think much of Neo-Darwinism to be wrong, but I was able to find a non-Darwinian approach that was satisfactory to my outlook.

Second is your reference to Evolution not being part of experimental science. One might argue about the nature of that characterization, but even if true, it does not automatically make evolution a non-science unless one defines science as that which is only experimental. And then what is 'experimental' anyway? If I recall correctly, Einstein came to his conclusions through thought experiments.

Beliefs are certainly powerful drivers of what we do and what we accept. We are all fortunate that Hitler neglected atomic physics at least in part because it was perceived to be 'Jewish Science'. And now we have people who deny climate warming even as the seas start to lap around their feet (this is literally true in the US where one community denies the sea level increase now drowning their town for the first time might have anything to do with climatic warming). Its enough to make one wonder if we have evolved much at all :)

Teoria é uma hipótese testada e comprovada. portanto viva a Teoria da evolução geobiológica (paleontologia)...Procurem ler os trabalhos de Jay S. Gould, principalmente sobre o Modelo do equilíbrio pontuado.

Francisco de Castro Bonfim Junior I personally would not recommend Gould's rather diffuse and confused writings, especially on punctuated equilibria which is to my mind rather vacuous in its reasoning about the nature of evolutionary rates (if I recall correctly, and happy to be corrected), he attributed the process to some kind of peripheral isolates which is purely conjectural and not evidence biogeographically.

Francisco de Castro Bonfim Junior ou melhor, teoria é uma hipotese testada e ainda não refutada!

De acordo com Ronan Conroy...

Preprint THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW OF MODERN SYNTHESIS THEORY OF EVOLUTION

John Grehan I don't know anyone who is scientifically literate who believes in a flat earth. That is a red herring, and I hope you are not suggesting that skepticism about molecules-to-man evolution is akin to believing in a flat earth, which is plainly ridiculous (and a matter that can be dealt with decisively by observation and experiment in the present, unlike the supposed evolution of the diversity of life on earth in the unobserved past).

Donald Batten Both flat earth and creationism are belief systems so yes in that respect they are comparable. The shape of the earth cannot be decisively dealt with by observation and experiment or there would be no dissent on the matter.

Even yesterday cannot be decisively dealt with by observation and experiment.

Out of curiosity, are you an Old Earth or Young Earth creationist?

Konstantin M. Golubev If there is a point you wish to make regarding the preprint you posted could you do that so to be able to read it, or not, with some purpose? Thanks.

Some may have seen the latest rendition on the 4 Ma fossil australopith. Lot of press about it. What's interesting is to see the artists portrayal that try to make it look like an African ape when its skull is, as usual, more like that of an orangutan, and even including the derived orangutan clade feature of broad vertical cheekbones. I consider artistic representations of hominid fossils to be the propaganda arm of this particular evolutionary science.

Dear John Grehan,

I do not believe in supernatural beings, but think that reality is more complex than supposed previously.

The attempts to reduce evolution to oversimplified concept of undirected movement leads research to senseless fighting.

The upholders of New-Darwinism simply do not read Charles Darwin. He was not so restricted in his views to treat evolution as undirected. He even upheld Creationism.

The preprint tells about his views, mistakes and achievements.

Preprint THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW OF MODERN SYNTHESIS THEORY OF EVOLUTION

Best regards,

Konstantin

Konstantin M. Golubev Thanks for the explation. As your preprint emphasizes, you are looking at the philosophical aspects. As you say, if Darwin believed in a supernatural influence on evolution then he might be described as a theistic or 'creationist' evolutionists, but not to confuse with creationism of various other kinds that are out there.

Konstantin, No evolutionary biologist would say that evolution is undirected. It certainly is directed by natural selection. That is what "The Origin..." proves. One cannot have a limited food, water and habitat resource that the earth provides and have reproduction that is geared to produce more offspring than any ecosystem can provide plus the fact that traits are inherited with variation across individuals in a population, to know that any being that is even slightly more fecund or slightly more able to secure limited resources will produce more surviving offspring than those less able. And the variation does not have to be profound. Think of the joke about running away from the bear. You do not need to outrun the bear. You simply need to outrun your companion.

I am not aware that the Origin proves evolution is directed by natural selection. As far as I am aware, all Darwin did was make an argument for the ecological process of selection being responsible for evolutionary changes in variation. But not all improbable genetic change in the spread of new variants requires differential reproduction to take place. And even Darwin proposed 'laws of growth' that determined evolutionary developments separately from selection based processes.

Um... I guess we are not reading the same Darwin John.

John Grehan, you say " Both flat earth and creationism are belief systems so yes in that respect they are comparable." Now you are being decisively insulting, unless you include your own beliefs about the past as on par with flat earthism. IIRC you were offended at those who scoffed at your ideas about orangutans and human origins (I don't scoff because your position is consistent with their being no coherent pattern of phylogeny amongst 'hominins' that leads to Homo).

However, you also say, "The shape of the earth cannot be decisively dealt with by observation and experiment or there would be no dissent on the matter." Really? It is a matter of observation, unless you believe in a grand conspiracy of everyone involved in space exploration and astronomy, etc. There is so much evidence that it is bizarre that anyone would doubt the sphericity of planet Earth (and it has been known since before Christ; Aristarchus of Samos , for example). I know of no scientist who doubts it. You don't, do you? Surely not? Perhaps you should consider some of the evidence: https://creation.com/refuting-flat-earth

As for my beliefs about the history of the universe, if you had read the article that I posted previously, you would know.

Patrice Showers Corneli Admittedly there is more than one version of Origin so yes we may well have read different versions. So below are some quotes (there are others, but suffice for now) on laws of growth. As for Darwin proving natural selection as the only evolutionary mechanism I would be interested in quotes on that (which would be interesting as it would contradict excerpts below where Darwin admits that there are laws of growth separate from natural selection). Apologies in advance for any typos.

1860: 5th thousand printing p. 205: “We are far too ignorant, in almost every case, to be enabled to assert that any part or organ is so unimportant for the welfare of a species that modifications in its structure could not have been slowly accumulated by means of natural selection. But we may confidently believe that many modifications, wholly due to laws of growth, and at first in no way advantageous to a species, have been subsequently taken advantage of by the still further modified descendants of this species.”

1872, 6th edition p. 157-158. “...we may easily err in attributing importance to characters, and in believing that they have been developed through natural selection. We must by no means overlook the effects...of the complex laws of growth, such as correlation, compensation, of the pressure of one part on another...But structures thus indirectly gained, although at first of no advantage to species, may subsequently have been taken advantage of by modified descendants, under new conditions of life and newly acquired habits.”

p. 173. “Now although natural selection may well have had the power to prevent some of the flowers from expanding, and to reduce the amount of pollen, when rendered by the closure of the flowers superfluous, yet hardly any of the above special modifications can have been thus determined, but must have followed from the laws of growth, including the functional inactivity of parts, during the progress of the reduction of the pollen and the closure of the flowers.” It is so necessary to appreciate the important effects of the laws of growth...”

p. 174. “We thus see that with plants many morphological changes may be attributed to the laws of growth and the interaction of parts, independently of natural selection.”

Donald Batten “Both flat earth and creationism are belief systems so yes in that respect they are comparable." Now you are being decisively insulting, unless you include your own beliefs about the past as on par with flat earthism.” Not sure how that is insulting. Any belief system, including what I might hold about evolution or what happened yesterday are comparable in that respect.

“IRC you were offended at those who scoffed at your ideas about orangutans and human origins” Actually, I was not offended. There are differences of viewpoint on this. That is OK. Normal part of science.

“However, you also say, "The shape of the earth cannot be decisively dealt with by observation and experiment or there would be no dissent on the matter." Really? It is a matter of observation, unless you believe in a grand conspiracy of everyone involved in space exploration and astronomy, etc. There is so much evidence that it is bizarre that anyone would doubt the sphericity of planet Earth (and it has been known since before Christ; Aristarchus of Samos , for example). I know of no scientist who doubts it. You don't, do you? Surely not? "

Point is that no matter how many people believe something, or accept something as a matter of observation, it does not of itself make it necessarily true for everyone. There was once a time when various naval authorities of high rank did not believe that a single plane could sink a battleship, even though the contrary has already been demonstrated. It took the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse before the point about air power got hammered home sufficiently.

I guess my weakness is the appeal of Lakatosian reasoning – that I look at science, and evolution in particular, in terms of progressive research programs.

"As for my beliefs about the history of the universe, if you had read the article that I posted previously, you would know.” OK. but I don't read posted articles unless there is a specified point that is mentioned as to the content that makes it worth reading to a purpose. Point is that there are Old and Young Age Creationists, so even in that belief system there are different beliefs so nothing is self evident any more than for anything else.

Dear Patrice Showers Corneli,

Darwin treats evolution in a classical sense, and not like undirected activity, as “and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.” Charles Darwin: THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. CHAPTER XV - RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION,

and classical Merriam-Webster's Student Dictionary: «evolution 1 a: a process of change in a certain direction; especially: a process of constant change from a lower or simple state to a higher or complex state»

It looks also that Darwin highly appreciated Lamarck s point of view of traits use and disuse regarding evolution. “Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from use and disuse.” Charles Darwin: THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. CHAPTER XV - RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION

Charles Darwin seems to be the upholder of Creation. “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.” Charles Darwin: THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. CHAPTER XV - RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION

In principle, natural selection considered as “Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life” (Charles Darwin: THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. CHAPTER XV - RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION does not imply random mutation mechanism. As an example, environment (conditions of life) has an influence on our behaviour, clothes and buildings, but we are changing all these ones not in arbitrary way, but intelligently. And natural selection, described as a pressure of environment, is usual phenomenon that could be watched all around, and it is acceptable as a term prevailing.

“Struggle for Life most severe between Individuals and Varieties of the same Species …we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.” Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species - CHAPTER III - STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE.

He did not take into account that survival is provided not only by struggle, it is provided by cooperation too. It could mean that beings appear very successful not struggling, but uniting. Struggle for life is a fairly non-general concept.

“Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce… have argued that morality is a suite of behavioral capacities likely shared by all mammals living in complex social groups (e.g., wolves, coyotes, elephants, dolphins, rats, chimpanzees). They define morality as "a suite of interrelated other-regarding behaviors that cultivate and regulate complex interactions within social groups." This suite of behaviors includes empathy, reciprocity, altruism, cooperation, and a sense of fairness…This supports the notion that moral reasoning is related to both seeing things from other persons points of view and to grasping others feelings…Cognitive neuro-scientist Jean Decety thinks that the ability to recognize and vicariously experience what another individual is undergoing was a key step forward in the evolution of social behavior, and ultimately, morality. The inability to feel empathy is one of the defining characteristics of psychopathy, and this would appear to lend support to Decety's view…” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality

Best regards,

Konstantin M. Golubev

Your first paragraph is one of my favorite of Darwin's. So thank you for including it.

The Merriam Webster definition is simply wrong and while species have taken advantage of niches that so-called simple organisms do not there is nothing in the process that leaves the "simple' or 'primitive behind. Through billions of years the Cyanobacteria are still with us and doing fine. No more or less fit than us.

The paragraph you cite does not confirm Lamarck. It is still not the case, as Lamarck, suggested, that outside physical changes that occur between between birth and death can be transmitted to offspring.Darwin merely points out that characters that are needed will be lost over time because natural selection does not direct the maintenance of useless traits.

Another of my favorite Darwin remarks is indeed “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.” But this view of life refers specifically to natural selection directing evolution. The "originally breathed by the Creator" is understandable in the context of his early theological training which he left behind in favor of biological research. He is not denying the existence of God, he is only saying that ultimately Natural Selection is the agent of change.

Random mutation is not evolution. Rather it is a source of variability among individuals. Without the variability (plus reproduction plus limited resources), Natural Selection cannot work. All one has to do is to study multiples sequences to see that genes mutate. Some changes are useful, some are not. Natural selection discards the deleterious ones and utilizes the ones useful for the environment that an organism lives in.

Many humans do not have to deal with a struggle for life. Many more deal with limited resources and starvation everyday as do all other creatures. And Darwin does not exclude cooperation in any way (the Descent of Man). And contemporary evolutionist have used Darwin's principles to recognize that cooperation in the form of kin selection and reciprocal altruism are highly adaptive in many situations and indeed are not inconsistent with Natural Selection in any way.

The very fine Bekoff paragraph highlights the many instances of reciprocal altruism and kin selection and other positive selective pressures for cooperation in general.

Dear everyone,

Just a small addition to the discussion above: I wonder why everyone still dissects Darwin's book from 1859. Although I do not want to mitigate the greatness of Darwin's achievement, the book is 160 years old and we are far past its level. There are so many modern and well-written papers and books on evolution detailing aspects that Darwin had no idea about (considering e.g. the molecular level). If we want to discuss the principles and validity of evolution, please bring the discussion to a modern view.

Best regards,

Thomas

Indeed. Thomas.

Thomas A Neubauer Ironically much of what is out there about evolution is not that much different from Darwin's perspective. The prevalence of natural selection stories to 'explain' adaptation is a classic example. Similarly the widespread acceptance of Darwin's centers of origin and dispersal theory to explain allopatry is also an example of views that have not gone beyond Darwin (1959).

Only a short comment inspired by Thomas A Neubauer post.

I always was wondering why most people mindlessly cite Darwin (1859) in their articles, though several editions of this book appeared during Darwin's life, and in the latter editions some important points changed as compared to the original publication. I trink it is much better to study and cite the last edition, with appropriate remarks about differences with the first one (if needed). In Russia, we have a very good translation of "Origin" published in 1991 (reprinted in 2003), in where all differences between subsequent editions are noted and commented. I realize, of course, that some latest additions might seem misleading (the 'pangenesis' theory, for instance) but formally the last 6th edition of Darwin's work (1872) is the one, which completely reflects the author''s will (since Darwin took into account some criticizm which he had meet after first edition appeared).

Dear all,

Patrice Showers Corneli The Merriam Webster definition is simply wrong

It is Oxford University Press:

https://blog.oup.com/2015/05/word-evolution-etymology/

"Charles Darwin’s caution, however, was futile—the word was ahead of him. By the end of the 18th century, evolution had become established as a general term for a process of development, especially when this involved a gradual change (‘evolutionary’ rather than ‘revolutionary’) from a simpler to a more complex state. The notion of the transformation of species had become respectable in academic circles during the early 19th century, and the word evolution was readily in hand when the geologist Charles Lyell was writing Principles of Geology (Second Edition, 1832): despite his reluctance to call evolution by that name, Darwin did famously dare to use the corresponding verb for the very last word in his book:

From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Thomas A Neubauer If we want to discuss the principles and validity of evolution, please bring the discussion to a modern view.

Do you mean we should stop talking about Natural Selection and Neo-Darwinism?

It happened that famous Charles Darwin had used to explain living beings evolution as analogy of species breeding by humans – artificial selection.

Humans as local deities decide what kind of species should survive and have kids - it is called artificial selection. Darwin proposed to treat environment as deity similar to human – it can decide who’ll survive. He called this natural selection. The species, by him, are consumers and destroyers, struggling all vs. all. They are changing in an arbitrary way, and if environment likes change of the being, it allows being to survive. Being is absolutely passive regarding environment and only tries to fit.

As scientist, Darwin collects many valuable facts, but his explanation of these facts has several problems.

It seems that there are at least 3 types of emerging living beings traits.

1. The main traits of evolution providing new features of energy production and supply, metabolism, growth, reproduction, movements, sensations, intellectual and emotional ability;

2. The strengthening of existing traits like higher height and stronger leg;

3. The errors in genome supplying strange useless traits and recessive traits that appear in a case of both parents are having these traits.

It is probable that artificial selection deals partially with traits type 2 choosing species having higher useful abilities, and traits type 3 as decorative only. It is known that pure decorative lineage has health problems. It explains why Darwin’s generalization of artificial selection to natural selection is not good analogy.

The Stanford’s human genome ENCODE project shows that only 1.5% of DNA are protein-coding genes and the main part of DNA controls functions of cell regulating expression of genes. There is also a pool of sleeping neutral elements waiting to be used. The results of ENCODE project show that one trait is not connected to one gene. It could be controlled by several genes, and one gene could control several traits.

1. Stanford University (2017). ENCODE: Encyclopedia of DNA Elements. https://www.encodeproject.org

It should be noted that DNA is carrying instructions used in the development and functioning of living cell and in some sense acts similarly to a brain that controls functions, movements, sensations and thoughts.

The Richard Lenski experiment shows that main complex traits building is directed multi-stage activity.

“The E. coli long-term evolution experiment is an ongoing study in experimental evolution led by Richard Lenski (2012)…Around generation 33,127, they saw a dramatically expanded population-size in one of the samples indicating that this population could grow in a medium with citrate… phylogenetic history of the population, which showed that the population had diversified into three clades by 20,000 generations. The Cit+ variants had evolved in one of these, which they called Clade 3…The authors interpret these results as indicating that the evolution of citrate use in this one population depended on one or more earlier, possibly nonadaptive "potentiating" mutations …The researchers concluded that the evolution of the Cit+ trait suggests that new traits evolve through three stages: potentiation (making the trait possible); actualization, (making the trait manifest); and refinement (making the trait effective)”

1. Blount, Z. D., Barrick, J. E., Davidson, C. J., Lenski, R. E. (2012). Genomic analysis of a key innovation in an experimental Escherichia coli population. Nature. (Nature 489 (7417): 513–518, 2012-09-27).

Best regards,

Konstantin

Patrice Showers Corneli I too would agree that 'random mutation' is not evolution. But various molecular geneticists have suggested that some mutation is not random and that some of these mutations may spread through populations by molecular conversion methods while also being selectively neutral or may well engender increased reproductive output as a result (so selectively positive as an outcome rather than as a 'driver' [teleological term by language default]). This view conforms to Darwin's laws of growth principle. Some have suggested that evolution is best understood as a reciprocal co-construction between molecular gene conversion mechanisms and natural selection.

Gene conversion is merely another source of variation for selection to work on. If the outcome of gene conversion is adaptive then the change will be favored (positive selection). If it is neutral or deleterious, it will (respectively) eventually disappear or quickly disappear. What is Darwin's growth principle?

I agree with Matthew Hahn and andrew Kern, who present an excellent demonstration that the neutral theory does not at al direct evolution.

Konstantin. Darwin was well aware of evolution as a process. His fabulous contribution was to provide a mechanism, Natural Selection, as the driver of evolution.

Patrice Showers Corneli Your assumption that a selectively neutral conversion will eventually disappear is incorrect. The whole point about biased gene conversion is that a mutation will spread through a population of its own accord. Selection might work against it if deleterious but whether 'adaptive' in the sense of resulting in higher reproductive output or just neutral, the gene is the driver, not selection. Various molecular geneticists have proposed that there are effectively two drivers - environmental (selection) and biological (molecular mechanisms of biased turnover).

Not sure what you are asking about what's Darwin's growth principle?

Natural selection works at the level of gene in any instance and the benefit is to the gene the environment of a gene pool. An organism is a collection of interacting genes all driven by natural selection on the genes in the gene pool. Explain to me please, exactly how the gene is the driver?

I am asking what Darwin's "growth principle" is? I do not remember it from the book or recent literature.

Patrice Showers Corneli Where a gene has a mutation that then converts the same position on homologous chromosomes (as in offspring) it effectively spreads itself through the population - sort of like a virus. This is just one mechanism of 'molecular drive' as the process is sometimes called. This process does not require natural selection in the sense of increased reproductive output to generate a change in genetic characteristics.

Darwin's growth principle - at least what I was referring to and quoted from his books earlier in this thread was Darwin's 'laws of growth' - that he believed there were biological processes in addition to natural selection that generated evolutionary change.

'Molecular drive' is a mystical 'force', which has no basis in scientific evidence, unless you believe in circular reasoning. Furthermore, it is only meant to explain multiple copies of the same allele within an organism, not within a population. Natural selection still needs to operate to fix an allele in a population.

Dear Donald Batten,

Molecular drive' is a mystical 'force', which has no basis in scientific evidence, unless you believe in circular reasoning.

If I post some thoughts, the natural selection means that only reasonable thoughts deserve to be read and evaluated. But I should create thoughts in my mind before posting. If I would post casual sets of characters not thinking, what would natural selection do?

The evolution in reality is not about genes, but about creation/improvement of species and traits. Genes are characters, not thoughts.

The Stanford’s human genome ENCODE project shows that only 1.5% of DNA are protein-coding genes and the main part of DNA controls functions of cell regulating expression of genes. There is also a pool of sleeping neutral elements waiting to be used. The results of ENCODE project show that one trait is not connected to one gene. It could be controlled by several genes, and one gene could control several traits.

1. Stanford University (2017). ENCODE: Encyclopedia of DNA Elements. https://www.encodeproject.org

"The researchers concluded that the evolution of the Cit+ trait suggests that new traits evolve through three stages: potentiation (making the trait possible); actualization, (making the trait manifest); and refinement (making the trait effective)”

1. Blount, Z. D., Barrick, J. E., Davidson, C. J., Lenski, R. E. (2012). Genomic analysis of a key innovation in an experimental Escherichia coli population. Nature. (Nature 489 (7417): 513–518, 2012-09-27).

Best regards,

Konstantin

Donald Batten My understanding of molecular drive is that it is a term referring to the process whereby genetic changes may occur and spread without requiring natural selection. If it has no basis in evidence then the molecular geneticist to ascribed that term was a deluded nut, I guess. And presumably other molecular geneticists who recognize molecular mechanisms of genetic change are also.

For those interested, some text below referring to Nei's view on mutation and selection (from Heads 2017, Biogeography and Evolution in New Zealand)

"Although most biologists still see evolution as a process dominated by ecological forces external to the organism, the idea that internal mutation pressures can be a directional for e in evolution is not a new one (Lynch, 2007c, citing Dover, 1982; Nei, 1987, 2005; Cavalier-Smith, 1997; Yampolsky and Stoltzfus, 2001; Stolzfus, 2006b). It has also been supported by Masatoshi Nei, whose work on molecular biology and evolution helped found the field (his work has been cited more than 240,000 times).

With respect to evolution in general, Nei (2007: 12235) concluded that: “the driving force of phenotypic evolution is mutation, and natural selection is of secondary importance.” Nei's views are summarized in a recent book, titled Mutation-Driven Evolution (Nei, 2013). In it, he developed a detailed critique of Fischer's (1930) panselectionism. He also criticised neodarwinan comparisons of natural selection to an “artist” working with the “raw material” generated by mutation. Nei suggested that these models are too simplistic, as most assume a constant selective pressure in space and time, and large amounts of preexisting genetic variation. He argued instead that what really matters in evolution is where and when a specific mutation occurs."

The important point of the above is that there are different evolutionary perspectives among molecular geneticists, and some views are concordant with the view that genetic evolutionary changes do occur without requiring natural selection to establish new traits in species. As I am not a molecular geneticists the most I can do is recognize that such a view exists and has evolutionary implications.

John, I am sure that Dr. Batten is as familiar as I am with the fine scientists Nei, Lynch, Cavalier-Smith. These were among the papers we read for our molecular evolution training and teaching.

Please see the attached which is perhaps the best explanation of the unimportance of the neutral theory, a theory that I took for granted for many years.