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Darwin Was Wrong…
…and Lamarck was right.
Well, maybe. Of the two major theories of human evolution developed in the 19th century, Darwin believed in natural selection — that human traits are passed along through DNA and not through environmental factors — and Lamarck believed that parents can transmit environmentally acquired traits.
Darwin won the sweepstakes, but Lamarck may not have been entirely wrong. From ArsTechnica:
…scientists exposed male mice to six weeks of alternating stressors like 36 hours of constant light, a 15-minute exposure to fox odor, exposure to a novel object (marbles) overnight, 15 minutes of restraint in a 50 mL conical tube, multiple cage changes, white noise all night long, or saturated bedding.
Poor little guys.
Then the scientists allowed the mice to breed. Adult offspring of these chronically stressed dads had reduced hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal stress axis reactivity; when they themselves were restrained for 15 minutes, they did not make as much corticosterone as mice sired by relaxed dads. This is relevant, and problematic, because blunted stress responses in humans are associated with neuropsychiatric disorders like depression, schizophrenia, and autism.
In other words, dads better learn to relax a bit:
The researchers found that stressed dads have increased levels of nine microRNAs in their sperm. The scientists obviously hypothesized that these miRNAs were responsible for the reduced corticosterone response in the kids, and they set out to test it by injecting a similar cocktail of RNA into single-cell mouse zygotes. After these zygotes divided into two cells, one of the cells was allowed to develop into a full-grown mouse and the other was taken for genetic analysis. The mice that got these miRNAs looked exactly the same as those born to the stressed dads; as adults, they had the same blunted stress response and transcriptional changes in their brains. So the miRNAs are responsible for transmitting this effect.
On the other hand, let me ask the dads out there: seeing the world the way it is these days, isn’t being totally stressed out the most rational way to be?
Published in Science & Technology
Time is the problem. Speciation (major changes in body form) could not have arisen by natural selection in the time frame in which this is know to have occurred (the Cambrian explosion). The scientific basis for this is thoroughly and pedantically laid out in “Darwin’s Doubt.” Darwin, himself, was at a loss to explain these facts and assumed that common ancestors would eventually show up in the fossil record. They have not and it is not due to inadequate sampling. That, too, has been scientifically established. Further, as the author makes clear experiments performing even minimal mutation of genes related to body form are almost uniformly lethal. I was skeptical about this until I read this book. I am now thoroughly persuaded that macro evolution – arising of new species – is not explained by mutation plus natural selection. The scientific evidence against this possibility – to anyone with an open mind – is overwhelming.
Civil: There are indications that perhaps the fossil record regarding the Cambrian explosion is biased by the fossilization process, it favoring hard bodies over soft ones. Furthermore a genetic analysis of the different phyla in existence actually places their divergence back before the the earliest Cambrian fossils, indicating that the phyla observed in the Cambrian emerged over a longer time. Their sudden appearance in the fossil records coincides with the development of easily fossilized structures. Some with in the evolutionary community speculate that the emergence of the phyla is actually do not to genetic innovation since the genetic mechanisms for body patterning are actually very similar even between species like flies and humans, but rather in the development of regulating the expression of these mechanisms. Specifically they point to the development of various microRNAs.
The problem that I see with advocates of Intelligent Design (which I assume you are) is that you have no physical mechanism to offer. The current mechanism works without the need for an intelligence in guiding it as demonstrated on the micro level. Why should one be required on the macro level? Or are you proposing that an entirely different mechanism of change is occurring? If so what? Can we discover it today? People can be high on skepticism, but short on testable hypothesis.
Well yes. In away it might be argued it has more since evolution is driven by generation time. Slow breeding creatures would evolve more slowly.
What is important to remember is that the process of evolution is highly conservative. The goal (if we can call it that) of reproduction is the preservation of the original pattern. Evolution is a byproduct of the inability for perfect replication.
My scientific knowledge doesn’t extend much beyond baking soda vinegar volcanos but may I beg clarification?
Why do you say ID offers no physical mechanism?
Isn’t the problem that the current mechanism doesn’t quite work out?
Isn’t ID a working out of what doesn’t work out in the current mechanism?
via
http://socratesinthecity.com/video/darwins-doubt-stephen-meyer
bio: http://socratesinthecity.com/speakers/stephen-c-meyer
Don’t they all look the same?
I say this in good faith, but isn’t this begging the question?
What is the physical mechanism that proponents of ID point to in the vast increase of fauna during the 20 to 25 million year duration of the Cambrian period that saw a profusion of new vertebrate species?
It’s fine to say that current science may not have a complete explanation of why a good deal of these new variant lifeforms emerged in such large numbers other than perhaps favorable environmental conditions – a relatively mild-to-warm climate with ample vegetation and a substantial increase in global oxygen levels that may have helped – keeping in mind of course that we’re speaking of an up to 25 million year span…but I’ve been hard pressed to find anything from ID proponents, like those from the Discovery Institute, to suggest something other than a genetically driven evolutionary processes aided by favorable environmental conditions with the exception of the following. ID proponents have advocated that many of these new life forms appeared (presumably during the Cambrian period and many later periods) as they are without evolving from any previous life forms or common ancestors:
“Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc.” (From a post 1987 edition of Pandas and People, where the term “intelligent design” replaced the term “creationism” after the Supreme Court’s Edwards v. Aguillard decision which determined that teaching creationism in public schools violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.)
How the “intelligent agency” miraculously produced this profusion of very different (yet sometimes) quite similar life forms isn’t worthy of further exploration apparently.
But they don’t work anything out is my point. The current model is that alterations in DNA occur randomly from generation to generation via various means (ie. improper replication, radiation, etc.) these changes lead to alterations (maybe large usually small) to the characteristics of the organisms in question. The prevalence of any particular alteration is dependent upon any selective benefit it offers, and random chance. This offers a mechanism for change and physical means for selecting that change.
ID seems to say that this process can not create what we see. So what process then does? They suppose an intelligence. Okay, so what does this intelligence do? Does it selectively breed organisms with favorable traits randomly generated via natural means? Does it introduce mutations? If so how? Does it just fabricate things ex-nihilo? Is this force still around? If it just acts as a force of selection the way we do in animal breeding why even postulate it to begin with. Humans aren’t needed to have to breeds of animals, we only co-opt an already existent process, why would this intelligence be any different?
To add to what Valiuth has said, at about the 1:05 mark in the Stephen Meyer interview he states that he invokes another kind of cause to explain the information necessary to “build the Cambrian animals” other than the materialist/mechanistic process of evolution because in his words, “we know what kind of information rational animals can produce.” his way of linking back to a designer. What he conveniently fails to say, or is knowingly evasive about is what the process was that employed the “digital information” (read: variations in the genetic codes necessary) and how that process worked, to result in the profusion of lifeforms. In other words, the current understanding of the molecular evolutionary biological process to his thinking seems flawed or inadequate (again over 25 million some years) so there must have been some other mysterious infusion of information that in some mysterious way was applied in some manner to result in the explosion of new species. What this is, is anyone’s guess. Unfortunately, neither Metaxas nor anyone else in the audience presses him on the point. So, Meyer’s purported application of a rigorous scientific method (emulating Darwin’s own method) to explain the Cambrian explosion in any sort of detail doesn’t really come across as rigorous or scientific. It’s more like Conan Doyle’s (via Mr. Holmes) dictum that if all other explanations are ruled out then the most improbable explanation must be correct. The problem is Meyer’s explanation lacks any discernible substance. He references a “cause” without bothering to explain a method. Pretty weak.
I suppose Newton’s Principia was rubbish because he failed to provide a mechanism for gravitation.
Meyer’s case is similar to other ID proponents in that it argues that certain features of life are only explained by the action of intelligence. Specified information, irreducible complexity, low probability specifications – all of these are the distinct hallmarks of design when we can examine the production directly.
Well, to be accurate, Newton provided a mechanism or a mechanistic model based on observed and mathematically calculated gravitational forces over distance, didn’t he? Today there are observable, practical and predictable evolutionary processes carried out in medicine and since the advent of the discovery of the DNA molecule and science of genetics which bolsters Darwin’s general theory – not diminishes it.
Meyer’s general proposition – at least as I understood it from the video – was that at certain points in time there seems to have been infusions of new information presumably by a conscious, intelligent being. Is that testable? Or should it be taken as an article of faith? Will it ever be testable? How did these infusions occur? What sort of process was involved? Should we expect that more detail on it is forthcoming from Meyer and his ID colleagues? Should we anticipate that the process by which these infusions of information occurred was natural? Or supernatural?
Given the example cited by Tuck in Comment #21 of the rapid macro-evolutionary changes of Italian wall lizards when they were simply transferred to a new environment within just a matter of decades is it really inconceivable that thousands of new species could have emerged during a 25 million year span?
As to the notion of irreducible complexity being a hallmark of design, I would kindly draw your attention to this article by Kenneth Miller.
Could you explain this a bit further? If the phyla diverge before the cambrian explosion, then how come they all ended up with shells? It’s not like the Soviet Union deciding that the atom bomb is nifty and that they should develop their own. If the mechanism is based on heritability, then how does it jump from species to species? (Unless the diverging phyla somehow still allows the exchange of genetic material?)
This is the sort of problem I have with this kind of debate. I remain fascinated by the raw biological arguments (I feel like that ought to be a double entendre), I remain fascinated by the molecular biology and all that, but I’ve long since wearied of the… is there a word for it? Not a proxy war, but the war that the proxy war is actually fighting.
Let’s forget the “Intelligent Design” part of Intelligent Design. Let’s take irreducible complexity as a scientific question; as a pointer towards areas where evolutionary theory is weak, where the details haven’t been properly fleshed out. Let’s forget that each side is trying to convert the other to their religion.
Please?
I find the article unconvincing. Briefly his argument runs as such:
Which is correct in an Aristotelian sense. However he doesn’t explain why the TTSS is, itself, not irreducibly complex. Broadly speaking, suppose it’s composed of 15 proteins. Do those proteins have another function? What’s the Dembski probability on that subsystem? What of the other fifteen proteins in the flagellum; if we assume the TTSS is a solved problem, what’s the probability of those fifteen proteins to go from a TTSS to a flagellum? I’d like to see a calculation like Dembski’s on either half of that calculation.
I get that reducing it from one unfathomably unlikely coincidence to two merely stupendously unlikely events helps, but until it’s reduced further to several actually-maybe-possible unlikely events the question remains open. It’s bad logic to say that there’s no possible solution to the problem, but it’s also unnecessary to assume the problem is solvable.
Also Mr. Watt. May I ask you draw your links from a less insulting source? Sample quote:
Good question. The simplest explanation is that the underlying genetic code for producing a hard body existed in each animal. The proteins that make up the exoskeleton of animals probably existed long before it became used in its main role as the foundation of a shell. The evolutionary pressure to develop a hard body in response to predation would be very strong. Thus the mutations leading to the development could be selected for in numerous organisms independently. Also it is possible that each phyla actually developed independent methods for creating a shell, out of different proteins/substances. I don’t know if we have any way of knowing the composition of the exoskeleton of these ancient animals, and many of the phyla that emerged in the Cambrian no longer exist today.
Think of it this way flight was developed independently by insects, birds, and mammals, because there was a clear benefit to it.
You may need to re-read the section on TTSS again. It’s Behe’s contention that the flagellum mechanism cannot function without all 30 proteins intact. That elimination of one or more proteins renders the functionality of the flagellum inoperable. Miller and others have shown that this is incorrect:
As far as Kenneth Miller’s style, the article is fairly comprehensive, and sometimes terms like “argument from ignorance” may offend but I’ve given up trying to protect those who are too easily offended when evolution is discussed. Hopefully, you’re not asking for a “safe zone”.
I don’t really want to convert people to anything. Despite the arguments I have made. I’m not really an atheist trying to disprove God or anything like Richard Dawkins. I take a more hands off view with respect to God’s work in creation. I believe God made an internally consistent world, whose mechanisms and forces are guided by their own internal consequences to the development of the world he envisioned. Science is interested in those internal self contained consequences. I think the theology of most ID advocates demands a more proactive God. While atheists demand a total negation of God. I think God created a process. I want to understand that process.
I’m just interested in seeing if Meyer’s and other ID proponents are using sound logic and really adhering to rigorous scientific methods as they claim to be doing…or whether at some point they abandon testable hypotheses and just point to something more supernatural and hence unexplainable.
Well, I think the goal is survival of the line.
Changes to the pattern are necessary to survival of the line, to adapt to environmental changes.
Therefore imperfect replication is a feature, not a bug.
Bacteria accomplish this via swapping genetic material and deletion of unneeded material, and by the usual random errors in replication. We accomplish it also by random errors, but primarily by sexual reproduction, which ensures that the pattern is never reproduced exactly.
Well put, that’s my view as well.
Fascinating post and discussion in the comments (truly!) but oof! Does a center-right website really need to have this headline bleating on the Internet in a Presidential election cycle?
Right, but that’s a technical point. The question is if the flagellum could have arisen from purely mechanistic forces. If it’s irreducibly complex then the processes that gave rise to it had to start and stop with no resting points between zero and completion. Such a process defies the normal evolutionary principle of slow modification over generations; it’s either all or nothing.
What Miller shows is that the flagellum has such a resting point between zero and completion. But he only shows the one. He doesn’t demonstrate that the sub component is not irreducibly complex, or that said sub component is likely in a Dembskian sense. This is what I meant by being right in an Aristotelian sense. His syllogism worked, but he’s failed to refute the main point.
Quoting from the article:
This is absolute rubbish. For the first thing, it’s not clear that the TTSS is not irreducibly complex. For another thing, if you consider the TTSS as one system and completely explicable otherwise, the set of that component and all the other proteins together might constitute an irreducibly complex system. “Irreducibly complex” doesn’t also require that each amino acid have no other function.
Well, sexual reproduction doesn’t alter the DNA sequence it randomizes alleles. So it gives you different patterns, of the same blocks. Mutation changed the blocks. Really it is always best to avoid talk of agency and will with these things none of it is sentient. DNA does what it does because physical laws force it to do what it does.
I could see how they could’ve developed a gene to make shell-like compounds beforehand, but if that’s the case, wouldn’t we have a fossil record of it?
Miller has refuted Behe’s thesis. He has shown that Behe’s proposition in incorrect by showing the flagellum functional when some of the proteins in Behe’s mission-critical protein clusters are removed. How far do you want to take this or should I say “reduce” this before we arrive at components that are irreducible? Down to the protein or subatomic level? Clearly there are internal structures – organs, bone clusters in modern mammals that no longer serve a functional purpose and some in fact, like the appendix, that can be quite harmful to the organism. Not all structures are intelligently designed or serve just one purpose. Many are flawed and harmful but still persist within organisms.
So you’re suggesting that we should pick our discussion topics by what will keep the Left happy? I suggest that if we do that, then the terrorists will have won…
I suggest we don’t refuse to accept the situation that we find ourselves in. Despite having read more science than the average lefty I encounter – every engagement I have with them will start with the premise that they know science and I deny it for religious purposes (despite the rich tradition the Catholic Church has on science). You can’t always scream “unfair” without dealing with the unfairness.
I don’t say avoid the topic, but let’s not have a headline that’s this provocative (in the current climate).