Re: 1980 Eldredge: "time to reexamine" theory of NS

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (J McCoy) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Lenny Flank) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > david ford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > > Eldredge, Niles.  July 1980.  "An Extravagance of Species"
> > > _Natural History_, 47-51.  Paragraphs from 48, 50, and 51:
> > >      Trilobites, including the ones from Bolivia that I studied,
> > >      pose some fundamentally important evolutionary puzzles,
> > >      puzzles whose solutions demand changes in evolutionary
> > >      theory.  It would be tempting to offer a scientific detective
> > >      story of my work, with patterns in the raw data suddenly
> > >      emerging to suggest a new theory.  But no scientist ever
> > >      accumulates facts blindly.  There are always new ideas
> > >      emerging that influence the way we look at new, and old,
> > >      facts.
> > >      ....
> > >      Such similarities [i.e. instances of convergence] offer some
> > >      insight into the evolutionary history of the Gondwana
> > >      trilobites.  But we are left to explain the most striking fact
> > >      about these fossils-- their diversity.  What does all this
> > >      variety suggest?  How and why did ancestral trilobites
> > >      evolve into so many kinds of descendants, so anatomically
> > >      varied?
> > > 
> > >      Standard evolutionary theory focuses on anatomical change
> > >      through time by picturing natural selection as the agent that
> > >      preserves the best of the designs available for coping with
> > >      the environment.  This generation by generation process,
> > >      working on small amounts of variation, is thought to
> > >      change, slowly but inexorably, the genetic and anatomical
> > >      makeup of a population.
> > > 
> > >      If this theory were correct, then I should have found
> > >      evidence of this smooth progression in the vast numbers of
> > >      Bolivian fossil trilobites I studied.  I should have found
> > >      species gradually changing through time, with smoothly
> > >      intermediate forms connecting descendant species to their
> > >      ancestors.
> > > 
> > >      Instead I found most of the various kinds, including some
> > >      unique and advanced ones, present in the earliest-known
> > >      fossil beds.  Species persisted for long periods of time
> > >      without change.  When they were replaced by similar,
> > >      related (presumably descendant) species, I saw no gradual
> > >      change in the older species that would have allowed me to
> > >      predict the anatomical features of its younger relative.
> > > 
> > >      The story of anatomical change through time that I read in
> > >      the Devonian trilobites of Gondwana is similar to the
> > >      picture emerging elsewhere in the fossil record:  long
> > >      periods of little or no change, followed by the appearance
> > >      of anatomically modified descendants, usually with no
> > >      smoothly intergradational forms in evidence.
> > > 
> > >      If the evidence conflicts with theoretical predictions,
> > >      something must be wrong with the theory.  But for years
> > >      the apparent lack of progressive change within fossil
> > >      species has been ignored or else the evidence-- not the
> > >      theory-- has been attacked.  Attempts to salvage
> > >      evolutionary theory have been made by claiming that the
> > >      pattern of stepwise change usually seen in fossils reflects a
> > >      poor, spotty fossil record.  Were the record sufficiently
> > >      complete, goes the claim, we would see the expected
> > >      pattern of gradational change.  But there are too many
> > >      examples of this pattern of stepwise change to ignore it any
> > >      longer.  It is time to reexamine evolutionary theory itself.
> > > 
> > >      There is probably little wrong with the notion of natural
> > >      selection as a means of modifying the genetics of a species
> > >      through time, although it is difficult to put it to the test.
> > >      But the predicted gradual accumulation of change within
> > >      species is seldom (if ever) encountered in our practical
> > >      experience with the fossil record.
> > >      ....
> > >      The internal cohesion of a species predicts the sort of lack
> > >      of anatomical change during its history that we see so often
> > >      in the fossil record.  And speciation, the process of creating
> > >      a new, descendant reproductive community from an
> > >      ancestral one-- in a way other than that proposed by natural
> > >      selection-- must be a crucial step in the evolutionary
> > >      process.
> > >      ....
> > >      During such [speciation] events, behavioral, anatomical,
> > >      and genetic change (sometimes quite rapid) may occur.
> > >      Such change must occur if we are to be able to tell the
> > >      daughter species from the parent.  And the process of
> > >      natural selection must account for part of such change.  But
> > >      natural selection per se does not work to create new
> > >      species.  The pattern of change in so many examples in the
> > >      fossil record is far more a reflection of the origin and
> > >      differential survival (selective extinction) of species than
> > >      the inexorable accumulation of minute changes within
> > >      species through the agency of natural selection.
> > > 
> > > compare "internal cohesion of a species" with
> > > 1970 Mayr on organisms' observed resistance to change
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Is this before, or after, Eldredge says that creationists are liars
> > and poor scholars, and that creation "science" is bankrupt and
> > dishonest.
> 
> I don't know about that LENNY FLANK.




It's "Mr" Lenny Flank to you, Junior.





 but it looks like he gave out
> ideas that weakens the evolutionary theory.
> 




Riiggghhttt. Is that before or after he says that creationists are
liars and poor scholars, and that creation 'science' is bankrupt and
dishonest.

And when are you going to quit whining like a little pussy and pay
your debts?





===============================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"

Creation "Science" Debunked:
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