starlarvae

If you think I'm misconstruing what evolutionary biologists intend when the use words like "trait", "niche" "adaptation", "advantage" etc., then give me operational definitions for those terms.

Right. So more progeny does not necessarily equal greater fitness, or adaptedness. So do "fitness" or "adaptedness" retain any coherent meaning in the theory? If they don't, then what remains of the theory? But doesn't the cancer example demolish the "selfish gene" as the putative unit of selection? All right. Break it up, or you'll be banished to the philosophy forum. I just started Jerry Fodor's book, What Darwin Got Wrong, so far a good dissection of NeoDarwinian logic. He leans on evo-devo to make the case that evolution theory needs to make more room--much more room--for endogenous factors. I concur enthusiastically. Evolution continues to look increasingly like a developmental process.

Ringer & Skeptic, additional examples of "anticipatory" genes are given here http://www.landesbio...ermanCC6-15.pdf The author presents an unorthodox explanation, but one I mostly endorse, because it concurs with my position that evolution is not a directionless, purely contingent process, but, rather, the unfolding of an inherent life-cycle program -- though, at that, subject to environmental contingencies. He suggests two experiments to test the "anticipatory" idea (tho I don't recall that he uses that term): 1. Find a way chemically to activate the "anticipatory" genes in the ancestral species, and see if the features coded for by those genes in the descendants appear in the ancestral. 2. Remove the genes from the ancestral species and see if the organisms are in any way compromised. I've been meaning to set up a bioengineering lab in my garage. I suppose now I have an excuse to get started.

I don't think it's clear from the published reports whether, what I call, anticipatory genes are expressed or not in the ancestral genomes. The researchers aren't explicit on that point, though the notion of "pre-adaptation" apparently is acceptable to mainstream researchers -- see example here http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/10/341/abstract/ But your point is taken. Nonetheless, I'm not sure that it's essential for my case that the "pre-adapted" genes be totally dormant in the ancestors.

I don't see the relevance of convergent evolution. What is it that you have determined in foresight, rather than in hindsight, by noticing that birds and bats (and bees?) have wings and fly? They all also absorb oxygen through respiration, so what? No two organisms, even of the same species, are phenotypically identical any one regard. Therefore, we can always discern some difference or other in a given "trait" across individuals. Therefore, by your definition, any feature of an organism is a "trait." And, so, by defining everything, you've defined nothing. Wait a minute. Let me indulge a privilege that you Darwinian evolutionists seem to take for granted. Let me make up a story. First off, whether eye color, or any other "trait", conveys any significant advantage or disadvantage depends, as you folks like to insist, on the environment. That includes the social environment. I imagine that if blue eyes ever pop up in a jungle village in equatorial Africa, the person is considered an oddball, or worse, and probably sexually selected against. Hence, eye color can bestow a disadvantage. For any difference in "traits" among organisms or species that you care to cite, I'll make up a story about how the difference came to be in terms of "advantage" and "disadvantage." That's all Darwinian evolutionists do anyway. We can all make up stories. Yes, but you can keep making finer distinctions all the way down to indiscernability. If creature A produces X amount of vitamin C in time Y, then that's a "trait". If creature B produces half as much in the same time, then that's also a "trait". If creature C produces half that much in infancy and production tapers off in adulthood, at a given rate, that's also a "trait". And on and on. What if it tapers off at a variable rate? We can make all the distinctions you want, and they're all "traits". So no matter what genes get passed on, you can point to a "trait" that accounts for the "advantage" that produced the genetic outcome, thereby explaining nothing. I won't make it happen again, but you can see how your concept of "trait" evaporates from its own incoherence. Or, are you using words in inappropriate ways? Find better words. Central to my argument is the claim that the language of Darwinian evolution is riddled with mumbo-jumbo, empty concepts that evaporate under examination. If you're not being understood, then maybe you're expressing yourself poorly. Oh, I get it. Improvements ceased once the bacteria arrived. After all, nobody can claim greater reproductive success than those little buggers. They really know how to do it! Whew! But then, no other kinds of creatures should exist, because superior reproductive success determines every evolutionary outcome. Or is that not what you said? Wow. You're really good at telling stories. Do ecological niches exist independently of the organisms that fill them? Or are they defined by their occupants? Is average temperature sufficient to define a niche? Temperature and water salinity? Temperature, salinity, and the density of predators? "Niche" is, if not an essential, at least a supporting concept in evolution theory, but it amounts to a conceptual blur. Nobody can say what the necessary and sufficient conditions are to define a "niche." (more at http://starlarvae.bl...-undefined.html ) Right. It's not a zero-sum game. No, we don't know beforehand what the outcome will be. Recall the law of unintended consequences. The genetic modification you suggest might make the crop more susceptible to other kinds of threats, such as fungi or bacteria. It might make the crop sterile. It might make it unpalatable and so unmarketable. It might have all kinds of unintended consequences. You won't know if you've "improved" the crop until you see what sprouts and what fruit is yields. That's why lands are set aside for "experimental" crops -- to see what actually happens. If you were right, there'd be no need for such testing.

Some traits proliferate through future generations. In hindsight we call them "advantages", but all that's happening is that we are using the word "advantage" as an alternative name for traits that proliferate. Inventing the notion of "advantage" adds nothing to our knowledge, because all we know is that some traits proliferate. In any event, we remain stuck with the problem of delineating a "trait". Is the lens of the eye a trait, or the whole eye? Or the eye and the optic nerve? There's no way to distinguish a trait from a non-trait. Improvement? what's that? Genes and species come and go. We can call it improvement, or attribute it to "advantages," or make up other abstractions. But we gain no explanatory or predictive power by doing so. How is anything an "improvement" over bacteria? -- or cockroaches? Aren't they supposed to be so well adapted that they'd survive a nuclear war? The problem is that only by examining genes that get passed on can we hope to attribute to them bestowing their bearers with "a greater chance of surviving." If it survives it survives. That's all we can observe. You can call it "fit" or "lucky" or "favored by God" or anything else. We can't observe any of those things.

If they're lost, what makes them beneficial? The only way to determine whether an allele is "favorable" (the term used in the paper you cite), is to see whether it survives into future generations. A beneficial, or favorable, allele cannot be lost, because if an allele is lost, it is, by definition, not beneficial. Really, let's say an allele arises, but fails to proliferate, and is lost. How would you determine whether it was lost because it was maladaptive or whether it was beneficial, but lost anyway, due to drift? All we know is that some alleles proliferate through generations more than others. Scientists then mystify the process with concepts like "adaptation", "fitness" and the like. Those concepts are mumbo jumbo. If we replace them with "luck" or "fate" nothing changes. No, I think that in biology "development" has a specific meaning that has a teleological dimension. Oh? They found a neuromuscular gene in a sponge. What was it doing there? See description of that case and links to others under heading 4 in my original post.

I don't have an issue with any of this. It doesn't pertain to the points I'm making. OK. What's the cutoff? What percent of "practical consequences" of a theory should be deduced before they are observed? I thought that scientific theories were supposed to predict. At some point the mountain of surprises suggests that the theory might need to be modified. Yes I know this, though I think the "better suited " idea is needless. Some alleles proliferate through generations more than others. We can call them "suited," "lucky," "fated," or whatever. It is ??!! Then you agree with me. That's my point, the evidence suggests that evolution is a developmental process. Why are liver, kidney, skin, etc., genes present already in the zygote? Because they will be needed by those descendant cell types. I wouldn't say that the zygote had "prior knowledge" , except metaphorically. I'm not sure how you'd quantify "almost entirely the same", but scientists were surprised by how similar genomes are across diverse species. DNA is conserved. How is that exponent derived? What determines its numerical value? But it turns out that ancient species also carry genes that seem to anticipate the needs of descendants. A news article in Nature covering the sequencing of the genome of the Great Barrier Reef sponge Amphimedon queenslandica, reveals that the hoary creatures harbor a “tookit” of metazoan genes: "The genome also includes analogues of genes that, in organisms with a neuromuscular system, code for muscle tissue and neurons." A curious finding. The article continues: "According to Douglas Erwin, a palaeobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, such complexity indicates that sponges must have descended from a more advanced ancestor than previously suspected. 'This flies in the face of what we think of early metazoan evolution,' says Erwin." "Charles Marshall, director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley, agrees. 'It means there was an elaborate machinery in place that already had some function,' he says. 'What I want to know now is what were all these genes doing prior to the advent of sponges.'" The conundrum for normal evolution theory is clear. But, rather than propose that the genes needed by organisms with neuromuscular systems are in the sponge for the anticipatory purpose of providing those genes to descendants who will need them, the scientists invent an imaginary ancestor of the sponge that needed the genes. But the ghostly ancestor would have had to have arisen within a very narrow window. Fossil evidence of sponges goes back 650 million years; it constitutes, the authors note, “the oldest evidence for metazoans (multicellular animals) on Earth.” So, what use would any species even more primitive than sponges have for the neuromuscular genes? Nobody saw it coming. It was an empirical surprise. But the sponge genome is only one example. Research is finding case after case of ancestral species that harbor genes essential for remote descendants. Another example: It turns out that a species of unicellular protozoan carries genes essential for metabolic processes specific to metazoans. The researchers who discovered the surprise genes and published their data (PNAS – 2010 107 (22) 10142-10147) explain, "One of the most important cell adhesion mechanisms for metazoan development is integrin-mediated adhesion and signaling. The integrin adhesion complex mediates critical interactions between cells and the extracellular matrix, modulating several aspects of cell physiology. To date this machinery has been considered strictly metazoan specific. [. . . .] Unexpectedly, we found that core components of the integrin adhesion complex are encoded in the genome of the apusozoan protist Amastigomonas sp., and therefore their origins predate the divergence of Opisthokonta, the clade that includes metazoans and fungi. [. . . .] Our data highlight the fact that many of the key genes that had formerly been cited as crucial for metazoan origins have a much earlier origin." (emphasis added) I agree. But I connect the dots to argue that, if the genes are present from the get-go, then evolution looks like a developmental process.

"Conserved" just means that relatively little variation across genotypes corresponds to relatively large variation across phenotypes -- whether you're looking at cell types in a body or species. DNA is conserved across cell types because all the cells inherit the same genome, which has to include genes for (genes that anticipate the needs of) each descendant cell type. The (unexpected) conservation of DNA across phenotypically diverse species suggests that evolution works under similar constraints. Ohno "predicted" it AFTER it was clear that genome size was not related to the complexity of the organism. I don't think that he, or anyone else, predicted that some amphibians, for example, would turn out to have genomes 30+ times the size of the human genome. That was another surprise with no basis in Darwinian principles. But Ringer, you said "The idea of natural selection is that those who are most fit to survive will and those who are not won't." I thought you meant what you said. Anyway, at least now you're getting away from the "fitness" nonsense. All we know is that the survivors survive. Calling the survivors "most fit" is just giving them another name. Why is it that evolution looks so much like a developmental process? Why is it that much of its genome is unexpressed in any particular species, that phenotypic variation dwarfs genotypic variation (DNA is conserved), that genetic switches play key regulatory roles in phylogenetic descent and that ancestors carry genes needed in the future by remote descendants ? We know why these things hold in ontogeny, but why in evolution, which ostensibly is not programmed but wholly contingent? I hope you don't think that by "anticipate" I mean that DNA has cognitive abilities. I just mean that genes needed by distant descendants are present already in ancestral genomes. Right. I know that the theory itself has evolved. All I'm humbly proposing is yet another modification.

That's easy to say in hindsight. But I suspect that if someone asserted the presence of significant amounts of noncoding DNA BEFORE it was discovered, the mainstream evolutionists would have dismissed the idea. "Why would there be noncoding DNA? It would just get in the way. And besides, where would it come from? " IF it is "what physiologically is expected" why did no one expect it? If you have a reference to someone predicting the discovery of large amounts of noncoding DNA, I'd like to see it.

How would one test the hypothesis that the descent of cell types in a developing organism proceeds according to a program? I'm just proposing that DNA is conserved across species for the same reason that it's conserved across cell types in a complex organism.

I'm saying that "junk" is just that, the programmed evolutionary future, waiting to unfold. Call it what you like. Genes unexpressed, or non-coding, in the zygote are triggered into expression during the development of descendant cell types in metazoan bodies. The descendant cell types retain non-coding regions (i.e., those genes needed for other cell types -- e.g., some genes expressed in nerve cells are non-coding in skin cells. All cells in a body inherit the same genome, but different genes are active in different kinds of cells.) And genes unexpressed, or non-coding, in ancestral species are triggered into expression during the evolution of descendant species. I provide several examples under heading 4 in the original post. Criticizing evolution theory for being tautological is, I think, still a legitimate avenue of criticism: Who survives? Those most fit, of course. Which are most fit? Those that survive, of course. It's a circular argument, like Plato's Euthyphro: What is good? That which pleases the gods. And what pleases the gods? That which is good. No, it shows that our EXPERIENCE involving genetic sequences now raises unsettling questions for the theory. Sorry, but that's lame. My theory is about the knowledge we're gaining, not what's lacking. If we lack knowledge about how to shoehorn new empirical data into an old theory, maybe it's because the new data don't fit into the old theory. You're overgeneralizing. When you were a zygote, you possessed genes needed for muscle, nerve, kidney, etc. cells. Your genome anticipated the needs of descendant cell types. I'm not a physicist either, but if the theory failed to predict something that it should have predicted, then the unpredicted finding must have forced a modification of the theory. Isn't that how science works? I think the unpredicted findings coming out of genetic sequencing and analysis call for a modification of evolution theory. I'm not familiar with this formula. In what units is "s", the selective advantage, measured? I'm not proposing a new process. I'm just proposing expanding the applicability of the familiar, observable process called ontogeny. Under 4. Anticipatory genes. in the original post I provide several examples of anticipatory genes in ancestral species. What data would you need to have about a sponge to predict that its genome would contain genes needed for neuromuscular metabolism, something far in the evolutionary future from the point of view of the sponge? Well that's a fine thought experiment, but evolution theory is supposed to be about the real world. The situation you describe would never occur in the real world. If in your example one of the subjects got hit by lightning, it would tell us little about any supposed disadvantage due to alleles.

I'm interested in non-religious criticisms of evolution theory. I welcome comments to my initial post in the Speculation forum: http://bit.ly/hjuS1T

Really? Who predicted it? Any DNA that is not expressed phenotypically cannot contribute to its own conservation and so would tend to be weeded out over the generations. Why is there so much junk in genomes? I didn't say anything about what types of mutations will happen. Only that the predictive power of evolution theory stopped short of "Oh, by the way, now that you chaps are prying open DNA, we'll tell you what you'll find inside, because our theory tells us how genomes have come to contain whatever it is that they contain. By the way, you'll find gobs of DNA that is not expressed phenotypically." For a theory of genetic inheritance and genetic modification over time, evolution theory hardly stuck its neck out to predict what genetic sequencing and analysis would discover. The only design theory I subscribe to is the normal scientific understanding of ontogeny, the unfolding of the adult "designed" into the zygote. I think evolution similarly is the unfolding of the life cycle of an organism. The findings coming out of genetic sequencing and analysis support that contention, because the findings correspond to what is found among the generations of cells in the body of a complex organism. For the record, I am NOT a fundamentalist Creationist, ID advocate. I don't question that the fossils tell a story of common descent. But the rules governing the process of descent I do not believe are limited to those proposed by evolutionists. Why did they think there would be more differences? Why, in terms of evolution theory, should variation among genotypes not be proportionate to variation among phenotypes? I suppose it could have. But isn't it the job of science to say more than, "That's just the way it is" ? And what might be the function of neuromuscular genes in a creature more primitive than a sponge? -- for the reference, see my original post. The comparison is between the descent of species on Earth and the descent of cell types in metazoan bodies. Ancestral cell types in a developing body (zygote, and the toti- and pluripotent types of the early embryo) carry unexpressed genes that are needed by descendant types (liver, kidney, etc). Ancestral species also carry unexpressed genes that are needed by descendants. The developmental program in both cases is built in. That's my contention. I don't think I have that problem, but even if so, I am content to let the data determine which contender has the better bead on what's going on. Physics and chemistry have done a fine job describing the workings of organisms in detail. But, yes, there are limits to those sciences' powers. "mutation function" "fitness function" I find it amusing how Darwinians feel so free to invent new natural processes ex nihilo. It's like Hegelian metaphysics. All you can possibly mean by "fitness function" is that whatever trait we find in an organism is that way because it was more adaptive than alternatives. Problem is, no one can define "trait", "adaptation" , "niche" , "organism" , or "gene." The vocabulary of evolution theory is mumbo-jumbo. See more on this problem at http://bit.ly/cQOdb2 BTW, I didn't mean to spam the biology forum when I posted originally. I was unaware of the speculation forum. Honest newbie error.

Something funny is afoot in the biological sciences. Labs peering into DNA are seeing things that nobody expected. And because the received view of evolution failed to predict these findings, and because it has little room to incorporate them, a crisis is brewing for the theory. Something more than selecting random variants is going on in evolution. The data coming out of DNA sequencing and analysis suggest that the something more has to do with a preferred direction in evolution. Phylogenetic descent seems now to be a developmental unfolding. Several discoveries point to this conclusion: 1. Junk DNA. This is not a particularly new discovery. It's been known for some time that all species carry around a lot of junk, DNA that appears to lie dormant. What aspect of evolution theory predicts that long stretches of inactive DNA would coast along inside organisms, seemingly contributing nothing to their survivability? Nobody saw it coming. It was an empirical surprise. But in the context of ontogeny, the development of organisms, it is exactly what is to be expected. Each cell in the body of a complex organism inherits the same genes from the ancestral zygote, the original fertilized ovum. Despite all possessing the same genes, brain, liver, kidney, and skin cells, for example, distinguish themselves phenotypically. Each cell type looks and acts differently from the others. But, because they all inherit the same genes, there must be a lot of junk DNA in each type of cell. Brain cells don't need genes that function uniquely in liver cells, nor do kidney cells need genes that function uniquely in skin cells. But all the cells inherit all those genes from their common ancestor, the zygote, whether they need them or not. When it comes to cell types in a body, an invariant genetic inheritance necessarily is the case, with lots of junk in each cell as a result. Ontogeny demonstrates that diverse morphologies, or phenotypes, need not correspond to any proportionate diversity of genotype. "Adaptive radiation" of cell types in a body proceeds just fine without genetic variation. Evolution appears to operate similarly. 2. Conservation of DNA. Genetic material across species, though not invariant, turns out to be much less variable than observable differences among species would suggest. DNA is highly conserved across species. In their article, Regulating Evolution (Scientific American, May 2010) researchers Sean B. Carroll, Benjamin Prud'homme, and Nicolas Gompel comment, For a long time, scientists certainly expected the anatomical differences among animals to be reflected in clear differences among the contents of their genomes. When we compare mammalian genomes such as those of the mouse, rat, dog, human and chimpanzee, however, we see that their respective gene catalogues are remarkably similar. [. . . .] When comparing mouse and human genomes, for example, biologists are able to indentify a mouse counterpart of at least 99 percent of all our genes. The perplexed authors elaborate on the new findings: . . . to our surprise, it has turned out that differences in appearance are deceiving: very different animals have very similar sets of genes. The preservation of coding sequences over evolutionary time is especially puzzling when one considers the genes involved in body building and body patterning. The discovery that body-building proteins are even more alike on average than other proteins was especially intriguing because of the paradox it seemed to pose: animals as different as a mouse and an elephant are shaped by a common set of very similar, functionally indistinguishable body-building proteins. Surprise? Puzzling? Paradox? Why does evolution theory suffer so many bouts of the unexpected now that genomes are yielding their secrets? If the received theory of evolution were solid, wouldn't new genetic details have slots waiting for them in it? Shouldn't new genetic data bolster the theory, rather than generate surprises, puzzles and paradoxes for it to resolve? Why didn't evolution theorists predict that phenotypic and genotypic differences across species would turn out to be so disproportionate, that so few genes would produce so many species? Nobody saw it coming. It was an empirical surprise. 3. Genetic switches. The differentiation of cell types in a developing organism is managed by homeobox genes. These genes function as master "switches" that trigger the expression and repression of other genes. By selectively turning other genes on and off at various stages of development, homeobox genes effectively control the varieties of tissues that will populate a body. This oversight function partly answers the riddle of junk DNA. Some genes that can appear dormant actually code for proteins whose phenotypic activity is the modulation of other genes. The regulatory genes are not junk. Now, due to the work of Carroll, Prud'homme, Gompel and others, it looks like evolution uses regulatory genes in the same way. Instead of spinning off variant cell types, the cycling on and off of genetic switches in the context of evolution spins off variant species. This discovery, of the importance of genetic switches in evolution and its helping to account for the low level of genetic diversity across species, was an empirical surprise. Nobody saw it coming. The explanatory power of this discovery has produced a new discipline within evolutionary biology, called evolutionary developmental biology, or evo-devo, a science that gives regulatory genes a starring role in evolution. 4. Anticipatory genes. A new organism, a zygote, a fertilized egg carries many genes that ride along unexpressed—until they are needed by descendant cell types. The zygote anticipates, in its genetic catalog, the genes that remote descendant cells will need, even if those genes contribute nothing to the survival of the zygote itself or its immediate descendants. The zygote divides into two cells, and the two into four, and the four into eight, and so on. The cells that make up these early stages are said to be totipotent cells—they can bear descendants of any cell type. Later, after a degree of specialization, cells become pluripotent—they can give rise to several cell types, though not to all. And the specialization continues from there, with descendants inheriting from their ancestors the specialized genes they need, along with the rest of the genome. This is to be expected in the context of a developing organism. But it turns out that ancient species also carry genes that seem to anticipate the needs of descendants. A news article in Nature covering the sequencing of the genome of the Great Barrier Reef sponge Amphimedon queenslandica, reveals that the hoary creatures harbor a "tookit" of metazoan genes: The genome also includes analogues of genes that, in organisms with a neuromuscular system, code for muscle tissue and neurons. A curious finding. The article continues: According to Douglas Erwin, a palaeobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, such complexity indicates that sponges must have descended from a more advanced ancestor than previously suspected. "This flies in the face of what we think of early metazoan evolution," says Erwin. Charles Marshall, director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley, agrees. "It means there was an elaborate machinery in place that already had some function," he says. "What I want to know now is what were all these genes doing prior to the advent of sponges. The conundrum for normal evolution theory is clear. But, rather than propose that the genes needed by organisms with neuromuscular systems are in the sponge for the anticipatory purpose of providing those genes to descendants who will need them, the scientists invent an imaginary ancestor of the sponge that needed the genes. But the ghostly ancestor would have had to have arisen within a very narrow window. Fossil evidence of sponges goes back 650 million years; it constitutes, the authors note, "the oldest evidence for metazoans (multicellular animals) on Earth." So, what use would any species even more primitive than sponges have for the neuromuscular genes? Nobody saw it coming. It was an empirical surprise. But the sponge genome is only one example. Research is finding case after case of ancestral species that harbor genes essential for remote descendants. Another example: It turns out that a species of unicellular protozoan carries genes essential for metabolic processes specific to metazoans. The researchers who discovered the surprise genes and published their data (PNAS – 2010 107 (22) 10142-10147) explain, One of the most important cell adhesion mechanisms for metazoan development is integrin-mediated adhesion and signaling. The integrin adhesion complex mediates critical interactions between cells and the extracellular matrix, modulating several aspects of cell physiology. To date this machinery has been considered strictly metazoan specific. [. . . .] Unexpectedly, we found that core components of the integrin adhesion complex are encoded in the genome of the apusozoan protist Amastigomonas sp., and therefore their origins predate the divergence of Opisthokonta, the clade that includes metazoans and fungi. [. . . .] Our data highlight the fact that many of the key genes that had formerly been cited as crucial for metazoan origins have a much earlier origin (emphasis added). And the surprises just keep coming. A news release (11/24/2005) issued by the journal Trends in Genetics announces that Corals and sea anemones (the flowers of the sea), long regarded as merely simple sea-dwelling animals, turn out to be more genetically complex than first realised. They have just as many genes as most mammals, including humans, and many of the genes that were thought to have been "invented" in vertebrates are actually very old and are present in these "simple" animals. The full text of the release is available at http://www.sars.no/resear ch/technau_Science.pdf Newer (2007) sequencing and analysis results corroborate the anemone anomalies. Another example comes from research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, which found human genes in a marine worm. The news release (11/24/2005) announcing the discovery is at http://www.embl.de/aboutus/communication_outreach/med ia_relations/2005/051124_heidelberg/index.html Additional research has found that genes essential for human nerve cells to communicate with one another are present already in bacteria. This research is described in a NIH news release (6/1/2004) at http://www.nichd.nih...eases/genes.cfm What is particularly striking about these findings, taken together—and what is particularly interesting to the star larvae hypothesis—is not only that they were unanticipated by the practitioners who engineered the current theory, but also that they make the evolutionary process look an awful lot like a developmental process, like a stage, or stages, in the life cycle of a developing organism. The findings are paradoxical only for a theory that sees evolution as pure contingency. If evolution is recognized as the developmental unfolding of a life cycle, then the findings that much of its genome is unexpressed in any particular species, that phenotypic variation dwarfs genotypic variation (DNA is conserved), that genetic switches play key regulatory roles in phylogenetic descent and that ancestors carry genes needed in the future by remote descendants are to be expected, because they are what we find when we study the differentiation of cells types in complex organisms. To propose that evolution is programmed in a way similar to that in which the development of an organism is programmed is anathema to current evolution theory. The current theory has no room for teleology. But the new research findings point directly to such a conclusion. As happens in the history of science, scientists have to decide whether to stretch the normal paradigm to try to cover a growing collection of anomalous data or to construct a new paradigm based on the data.