Re: Chauvin on "childhood hypotheses of biology"

david ford wrote:

> On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, howard hershey wrote:
> 
>>david ford wrote:
>>
>>>On Fri, 28 Nov 2003, r norman wrote:
>>>david ford:
>>>
>>>
>>>>>Chauvin, Remy.  1970.  "Finalism in Biology" in _Evolution in
>>>>>Perspective: Commentaries in Honor of Pierre Lecomte Du
>>>>>Nouy_, George N. Shuster & Ralph E. Thorson, editors
>>>>>(Wisconsin: University of Notre Dame Press), 282pp., 59-70.
>>>>
>>>>>>From the biographical notes on vii:
>>>>
>>>>>   REMY CHAUVIN was educated at Laval University and
>>>>>   the University of Paris, and holds the degree of Doctor of
>>>>>   Natural Sciences.  Some of his numerous and distinguished
>>>>>   publications treat of insect life.  During recent years he has
>>>>>   been a member of the faculty of the University of
>>>>>   Strasbourg.
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>
>>>>This wouldn't be the same Dr. Remy Chauvin who is widely cited by
>>>>every health food store pushing us to eat bee pollen, would it?
>>>>Or the one quoted by Deleuze in "A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
>>>>Schizophrenia
>>>
>>>I don't know x 2.  Do you know?
>>
>>You mean, rather, that you don't care.  It matters not to you whether
>>the quotes you use come from a complete nut job with all sorts of crazy
>>ideas.
> 
> 
> Which individual(s), if any, that I have quoted do you consider [hh]"a
> complete nut job with all sorts of crazy ideas"?
> 
> 
>> Just like it doesn't matter whether the quotes are ancient or
>>out-of-context.
> 
> 
> Which quotes, if any, that I have presented do you consider
> [hh]"out-of-context"?

Almost all of them that are not simply out-of-date or from scientists 
that were far outside the mainstream even in their own time and place.

> I will grant that some of the [hh]"quotes are ancient"-- my oldest quote
> is probably from way back in 1859.  Much has been learned of the
> biological world since 1859, not all of it supporting 1800s speculations
> about matters biological.
> 
> how has the theory of NS survived?:
> Grasse, C. P. Martin, Berlinski, D. M. S. Watson
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96.980608234718.51C-100000%40umbc8.umbc.edu
> 
> 
>>  All that matters to you is that the quote seems to
>>criticize evolution
> 
> 
> My primary focus is the theory of natural selection.

Well, good.  There are, if fact, reasonable grounds for saying that some 
unspecified fraction of macroevolutionary change (repeated speciation 
over time) is not a consequence of natural selection, but rather a 
consequence of selectively neutral changes in isolated populations, some 
of which, of course, also exhibit the localized specialization in form 
and function we see in what we call subspecies.

If you wanted, however, to argue that natural selection is incapable of 
generating speciation events or the amounts of change seen over 
evolutionary time but that you, instead favor an alternative mechanism 
such as a neutralist random walk of speciation events, you have a 
strange way of doing so.  Rather than presenting an actual argument and 
using citations to point to the *evidence* supporting your argument you 
make no argument and use quotations that seem to be the *opinions* of 
scientists artfully presented so that they *seem* to support your 
*opinion* about natural selection.  And you seem to be using these 
quotes not just to argue that evolution did not (often? always?) occur 
by a mechanisms (natural selection) you disagree with but to imply that 
the authors did not think evolution happened at all.  *That* is 
intentionally misleading.  You specifically *never* present what these 
authors think takes the place of natural selection as a mechanism, even 
though they do often discuss that.  Besides *opinions* are a dime a 
dozen and that they come from someone with a degree doesn't mean they 
are correct.  Evidence presented in favor of a position, however, is not 
as useless.  Why do you only give (part of) the opinions without 
presenting the evidence?

In short, what you are doing *looks* like typical creationist 
quote-mining used to imply that the authors disagree with *evolution* 
rather than that they do not think that natural selection explains 
everything about evolution (or, in some cases, that they do not think 
all evolution is a steady, constant change in form rather than a rapid one).
> 
> 
>>  and seems to come from someone with "credentials"
>>that appear to give the criticism some "credibility".
>>
>>[snip]
> 
> 
> In your view, does Chauvin have credentials pertinent to a discussion of
> biological origins?
> What in Chauvin's remarks do you disagree with?

It doesn't matter what Chauvin's views were or what credentials he has. 
  What matters is why *you* are using these ancient quotes the way you 
do.  I say that you are using them to try to imply that *evolution* did 
not happen, not to imply that *evolution by natural selection* is not 
the only mechanism by which evolution can or did happen.

I actually agree.  Evolution by natural selection is NOT the only 
mechanism by which evolution can happen.  Indeed, at the molecular 
level, most of the evolutionary change observed is definitely due to 
neutral drift events, with only rare and minor in extent (but important 
in consequence) change attributable to natural selection.  And I also 
agree that evolution tends to be episodic in the fossil record rather 
than a smooth continuum.  In both cases, we are talking about 
preponderance of events rather than absolute exclusion of alternatives.

So if you want to discuss whether evolution occurs by natural selection 
or neutralist explanations, I certainly would be happy to do that.  If 
you want to discuss whether evolution occurs by smooth continuous change 
or episodically, I would be happy to do that.

If all you are doing, as I suspect, is implying that "since" natural 
selection is the only possible mechanism of evolution, if I can present 
quotes that seem to imply that 'natural selection cannot explain 
evolution' then GODDIDIT, you are a quote-miner.
>