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Talk:Theory of evolution/Archive 23 (view source)
Revision as of 21:56, September 12, 2012
, 21:56, September 12, 2012no edit summary
Has anyone followed what is going on within the evolutionary community regarding this material: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/19/evolution-darwin-natural-selection-genes-wrong Why Everything You Have Been Told About Evolution is Wrong][[User:Conservative|conservative]] 18:34, 1 April 2010 (EDT)
Has anyone followed what is going on within the evolutionary community regarding this material: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/19/evolution-darwin-natural-selection-genes-wrong Why Everything You Have Been Told About Evolution is Wrong][[User:Conservative|conservative]] 18:34, 1 April 2010 (EDT)
Yes, I have. Really, I am addressing the article in this answer, and my whole view on the subject could change if any actual evidence was placed before me which it is not even in Fodor's book. That article demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of evolutionary biology and genetics. If it were describing environmental effects on genetic hereditry, with the outcome being beneficial for the offspring, such as in Lamarck's positation that giraffes have long necks because their parents and grandparents (etc) were constantly endeavouring to reach for food, then yes, the arguement against Darwinian theory would exist. But that is not what the report contains. The article lists three exemplary studies - and, given the relish with which the journalist puts them forward, it would make sense to assume they are the only studies supporting this claim (for surely such an anti-Darwinist would not neglect a supplementary affront to Darwinism). Therefore, it is evident that the sole evidence against the scientifically held theory of evolution is easily dismissable. The reason is because the two cases, that of chickens and their offspring, men and their grandchildren, (while for now excluding mice and their young), detail negative circumstances which organisms had to endure, and, in mice in their young, an abstract positive chance. The fact that there were then subsequent abnormalities in the chickens' children, or mens' grandchildren, or positive ones in a small number of mice, does not demonstrate that evolution is influenced by inherited characteristics based on environmentally-influenced actions, but re-iterates something already known by scientists like Dawkins and Dennett: that, in the case of the first two, an organism which undergoes stress and/or negative circumstances, will not transmit the traits to subsequent generations by means that differ from Darwin's articulated mechanism, but that chemical imbalances will distort the sensitive physical and genetic structure of genes, impairing their ability to assimilate and propigate instructional codes in the new organism they are now building. That is, a chicken that is subjected to stress (by the way, what a cruel experiment!) will undergo chemical imbalances which will have a direct influence on their ability to produce sex cells, and the same is true of the grandfathers. The only difference in their case is that what has been affected is simply a section of DNA that often skips a generation. As for the mice, even though the article gives no references, and I have read the book from which it draws its information, that can be placed under the heading of chance. What the article fails to realise, moreover, is that evolution and/or natural selection does not rely on randomness, but that it is a structured process, guided by rules and, by the nature of the unconscious force at work, codes of conduct. Furthermore, there is no evidence of horizontal transfer included. To speak of rape, moreover, as natural, neglects the fact that humans can chose whether or not to do what they want, though they admittedly cannot chose what to want. And as for the purpotedly 'insightful' and 'shocking' claim that rape is natural, isn't everything natural, being that it exists? How is a beaver dam more natural than a skyscraper, or a volcano more natural than a living room sofa? Of course rape is natural, because people do it! Then we come to the ridiculous point: "Survival of the fittest. Who are the fittest? The ones who survive!" This fails to realise that the fittest are the ones most suited to surviving. We can observe, prior to an organism dying, and another surviving, which is most suited to its environment, and accurately predict which one will survive! Therefore, it is not correct to say that survival of the fittest is a redundant term, but that it is an apt one. Ann Coulter's point that: "The 'survival of the fittest' would be a joke if it weren't part of the belief system of a fanatical cult infesting the Scientific Community" is therefore nullifed. Although, like everything she says, it ridicules itself. The following paragraph is arguably the most stupid in the history of literature: "Fodor notes – undeniably correctly – that not every trait a creature possesses is necessarily adaptive. Some just come along for the ride: for example, genes that express as tameness in domesticated foxes and dogs also seem to express as floppy ears, for no evident reason. Other traits are, as logicians say, "coextensive": a polar bear, for example, has the trait of "whiteness" and also the trait of "being the same colour as its environment". (Yes, that's a brain-stretching, possibly insanity-inducing statement. Take a deep breath.) Step two: natural selection, according to its theorists, is a force that "selects for" certain traits. (Floppy ears appear to serve no purpose, so while they may have been "selected", as a matter of fact, they weren't "selected for". And polar bears, we'd surely all agree, were "selected for" being the same colour as their environment, not for being white per se: being white is no use as camouflage if snow is, say, orange.)" . . . Now, polar bears' whiteness is not 'selected for' and that is the answer, because snow is not and never has been orange. As for the dog's ears, is he really saying that just because we don't know something now, we won't in future!? Daniel Dennett, astute as ever, summarises Fodor's book immaculately, and so I need only refer you to his comments on it, which are in the article. As for the last paragraph of the article, which is: "The irony in all this is that Darwin himself never claimed that it [natural selection] was [the only force at work in evolution]. He went to his deathbed protesting that he'd been misinterpreted: there was no reason, he said, to assume that natural selection was the only imaginable mechanism of evolution. Darwin, writing before the discovery of DNA, knew very well that his work heralded the beginning of a journey to understand the origins and development of life. All we may be discovering now is that we remain closer to the beginning of that journey than we've come to think." First of all, Darwin said what he said because he was under a huge amount of pressure from his friends, his wife, and a religious society, and his words were an act of false contrition to their deistic delusions. As for the discovery of DNA, it has not proved Darwin wrong. Instead, it has proved him right. It has just allowed us to narrow down the scale at which natural selection can be considered to work. And this fact is clearly visible in Richard Dawkins' 'The Selfish Gene'.
== Terribly biased? ==
== Terribly biased? ==