lucaspa

Let's separate Wilson's studies on evolution and altruism and the speculative application of those studies to the formation of human governments. Wilson's studies on altruism in social insects were scientifically and mathematically rigorous. He demonstrated that the "altruistic" sacrifice of an individual drone for the colony was actually a selfish act when viewed from the perspective of the genes. From those observations has come a large amount of speculation on altruism in humans and its possible source in natural selection -- sociobiology. In the last 10 years sociobiology has turned into "evolutionary psychology", which tries to determine how much human behavior has been shaped by natural selection and is, therefore, genetically determined. There are quite a few studies showing "moral" behavior in other species. For instance, monkeys can understand the relationship of their eating food and another monkey receiving a painful electric shock. The monkey with the food will refrain from eating so as to avoid the other monkey getting the electric shock. Humans seem to have a genetic "module" in the brain to detect cheating. Such a module would be necessary in a social animal in order to 1) cooperate with others for survival but 2) avoid being cheated. Where did "evil" come into this? ' Again, where did this "good and evil" come from? Those are human moral concepts. Are you aware of the "naturalistic fallacy"? This fallacy is looking at what happens in nature and trying to say what moral human behavior ought to be. The Social Darwinists were committing the naturalistic fallacy, for instance. We cannot read "good" or "evil" in nature. "Kellogg properly taught in his textbook (with David Starr Jordan) that Darwinism cannot provide moral answers: "Some men who call themselves pessimists because they cannot read good into the operations of nature forget that they cannot read evil. In morals the law of competition no more justifies personal, official, or national selfishness or brutality than the law of gravitation justifies the shooting of a bird." " Stephen Jay Gould in the essay "William Jennings Bryan's last campaign" in Bully for Brontosaurus, 1991, pp. 429-430.

This is an attempt to shorten the posts in the thread "Help on Shattering the Myths of Darwinism". This thread will focus on the "scientific" objections Milton and the Advocate raise. Before I start addressing Milton, let's just do a reminder of the 5 different theories that Darwin proposed. These are: "1. The nonconstancy of species (the basic theory of evolution) 2. The descent of all organisms from common ancestors (branching evolution). 3. The gradualness of evolution (no saltations, no discontinuities) 4. The multiplication of species (the origin of diversity) 5. Natural selection." Ernst Mayr, What Evolution IS. pg 86 This is one example of why I consider Milton a closet creationist. This is one of the standard creationist arguments against evolution. I find it in Henry Morris' 1974 Scientific Creationism. Milton is simply recycling it as tho it is valid. First, let's look at that "natural selectio, formerly known as survival of the fittest". That's a misstatement of history. Darwin named the process "natural selection" in the first 3 editions of Origin. Then Herbert Spencer used the soundbite "survival of the fittest" and Darwin acknowledged it in the 6th edition of Origin. Like all soundbites of complex ideas, "survival of the fittest" does not represent the reality. So, let's do what we should do, critically examine the situation by going back and looking at the full description of natural selection: "If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each beings welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occured useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection." [Origin, p 127 6th ed.] Now, look at this carefully. It is a deductive argument. Premise #1: organisms vary. Premise #2: there is a struggle for life, based on a geometric increase in numbers of individuals of a species combined with an arithmetic increase in resources. Conclusion #1: Some variations will help the individual organism in the struggle for existence. Conclusion #2: Such individuals, by inheritance, will produce offspring with the favorable variations. If the premises are true, then the conclusions must be true. And Darwin spends 2 of the largest chapters in Origin demonstrating the truth of the premises. 1. This inability to predict characteristics in advance is not totally true. What variation is "fit" depends on the environment. After all, a wing doesn't do a gopher any good. Environments are usually very complex and it is thus difficult to predict variations. But it has been done! Contrary to what Milton claims. This study did exactly that: Evaluation of the rate of evolution in natural populations of guppies (Poecilia reticulata). Reznick, DN, Shaw, FH, Rodd, FH, and Shaw, RG. Science 275:1934-1937, 1997. The lay article is Predatory-free guppies take an evolutionary leap forward, pg 1880. This is an excellent study of natural selection at work. Guppies are preyed upon by species that specialize in eating either the small, young guppies, or older, mature guppies. Eleven years ago the research team moved guppies from pools below some waterfalls that contained both types of predators to pools above the falls where only the predators that ate the small, young guppies live. Thus the selection pressure was changed. Eleven years later the guppies above the falls were larger, matured later, and had fewer young than the ones below the falls. The group then used standard quantitative morphology to quantify the rate of evolution. So we have a study in the wild, not the lab, of natural selection and its results. In this study natural selection was measured quantitatvely, and even predicted since it was predicted that, in the absence of predators that fed on large guppies but in the presence of ones that fed on young guppies, the guppies would grow larger and mature earlier to avoid the predators. That is exactly what happened. Milton never mentioned this study, did he? Yet the book was published in 2001, nearly 4 years after the paper I cited. 2. Mendelian genetics gives us an objective means of measuring fitness. The mathematics of Mendelian genetics leads to the Hardy-Weinberg principle which, briefly stated, says that in the absence of outside influence, the allele frequency in a population stays constant. So fitness is the ratio of the progeny actually produced to the progeny expected from Mendelian inheritance. Fitness is therefore always relative (Understanding Evolution, pp. 153-154.) We can also get a selection coefficient that measures the selective advantage, or disadvantage. S = 1.0 - fitness. Now, to get into greater detail, there are some things that can perturb a Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. A very small population will do so, in which case genetic drift comes into play as significant. Gene flow from other populations will also cause a shift in allele frequency, as will non-random mating. So all these have to be eliminated before a conclusion of natural selection can be made. However, those factors are eliminated in hundreds of studies in the field of population genetics. The Grant study of the beaks of the Galapagos finches did so. Not true. The evolution of the long neck is explained by lengthening of the individual vertebrae. And the reason is simple: being able to get to a food source no other mammal in that ecosystem can reach. Also Milton is mistaking evolution here. He refers to "favoured the Giraffe over other animals". That isn't how natural selection works. Natural selection works in favoring individuals over other individuals in the same species. The competition is not against other species primarily, but against members of your own species. This is another recycled creationist argument. Duane Gish's book Evolution? The Fossils Say NO! from 1979 is based on this. Note the claim "complete absence" and "transitional species". It is false. There are 3 types of transitional fossils: 1. Transitional individuals. These are individual organisms that connect one species to another. Some fossil records are so complete that transitional individuals can be traced from species to species to new genera, family, order, and even class! I've posted a partial list of references that have such sequences elsewhere on the web: http://www.christianforums.com/t43227 I can recreate it here if you wish. And yes, I went and looked up the references. 2. Successive species. These are fossils of species connecting "higher" taxa. The horse lineage is mostly transitional species (altho there are instances of transitional individuals within it). The transition from amphibian to mammals thru the Therapsids is an example of transitional species. Many times individual paleontologists have transitional individuals but report successive species. 1. http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_04.htm 2. http://www.origins.tv/darwin/transitionals.htm 3. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Miller.html 4. Transitional fossils: http://asa.calvin.edu/ASA/resources/Miller.html 5. Horse evolution: http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm 3. Successive higher taxa 4. Isolated intermediates. Archeopteryx was, for a long time, an isolated intermediate between reptiles and birds. I found many of these types of transitionals documented in an article by RJ Cuffey in his chapter in Science and Creationism published in 1984. How could Milton miss this? So the transitionals in the fossil record are there. Despite Milton's claims to the contrary. So why Punctuated Equilibrium? It would be nice if you would give the WHOLE SOURCE, not just that it is "Niles Eldredge". We also need to check to see if Milton is quoting out of context. However, Eldredge is quoting what "Darwin ... believed". That is different from what is actually necessary. Now, as I've shown above, there are "many examples of gradual evolution in the fossil record." But Darwin mostly argued for something called "phyletic gradualism" as the major mechanism of #2 and #4 theories above. Phyletic gradualism is the transformation of one large population (species) to another species over the course of generations. It is also called "anagenesis". You start with one species and you end with one species. If ALL speciation were by this method, of course, soon we would be out of species. After all, species go extinct. So gradually you would lose species until there were none left. Phyletic gradualism would leave many more transitional series in the fossil record than what we see. So, what does Milton say? Now, before we get to PE, let's look at Darwin: "Many species once formed never undergo any further change ... and the periods, during which species have undergone modification, though long as measured by years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which they retain the same form." Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 4th and later editions, pg. 727 So Darwin wasn't totally committed to phyletic gradualism. His theory was dependent on it. Another way to have speciation is cladogenesis. In this view a population splits into 2 or more species. You start with 1 species and end up with 2 or more. The most famous form of cladogenesis is allopatric speciation. In allopatric speciation, a small population gets geographically isolated from the large main population: across a river, over mountains, rise of the Isthmus of Panama, etc. The small population faces a different environment and transforms under natural selection to a new species. It can then migrate back into the range of the larger population and thus "suddenly" appear at that location. "The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. It is gradualism that we must reject, not Darwinism. ... Evolution proceeds in two major modes. In the first, phyletic transformation, an entire population changes from one state to another. If all evolutionary change occurred in this mode, life would not persist for long. Phyletic evolution yields no increase in diversity, only a transformation of one thing into another. Since extinction (by extirpation, not by evolution into something else) is so common, a biota with no mechanism for increasing diversity would soon be wiped out. The second mode, speciation, replenishes the earth. New species branch off from a persisting parental stock. "Darwin, to be sure, acknowledged and discussed the process of speciation. But he cast his discussion of evolutionary change almost totally in the mold of phyletic transformation. ... "Eldredge and I believe that speciation is responsible for almost all evolutionary change. Moreover, the way in which it occurs virtually guarantees that sudden appearance and stasis shall dominate the fossil record. "All major theories of speciation maintain that splitting takes place rapidly in very small populations. The theory of geographic, or allopatric, speciation is preferred by most evolutionists for most situations (allopatric means 'in another place'). A new species can arise when a small segment of the ancestral population is isolated at the periphery of the ancestral range. Large, stable central populations exert a strong homogenizing influence. New and favorable mutations are diluted by the sheer bulk of the population through which they must spread. They may build slowly in frequency, but changing environments usually cancel their selective value long before they reach fixation. Thus, phyletic transformation in large populations should be very rare - as the fossil record proclaims. "But small, peripherally isolated groups are cut off from their parental stock. They live as tiny populations in geographic corners of the ancestral range. Selective pressures are usually intense because peripheries mark the edge of ecological tolerance for ancestral forms. Favorable variations spread quickly. Small, peripheral isolates are a laboratory of evolutionary change. "What should the fossil record include if most evolution occurs by speciation in peripheral isolates? Species should be static through their range because our fossils are the remains of large central populations. In any local area inhabited by ancestors, a descendent species should appear suddenly by migration from the peripheral region in which it evolved. In the peripheral region itself, we might find direct evidence of speciation, but such good fortune would be rare indeed because the event occurs so rapidly in such a small population. Thus, the fossil record is a faithful rendering of what evolutionary theory predicts, not a pitiful vestige of a once bountiful tale. "Eldredge and I refer to this scheme as the model of punctuated equilibria." SJ Gould, The episodic nature of evolutionary change. In The Panda's Thumb, 1980, pp.179-185. Thus Milton misstated PE! Sorry, but again Milton is missing the literature. PE has been documented in the fossil record: 1. Williamson, PG, Paleontological documentation of speciation in cenozoic molluscs from Turkana basin. Nature 293:437-443, 1981. Excellent study of "gradual" evolution is an extremely fine fossil record. 2. A trilobite odyssey. Niles Eldredge and Michelle J. Eldredge. Natural History 81:53-59, 1972. A discussion of "gradual" evolution of trilobites in one small area and then migration and replacement over a wide area. Is lay discussion of punctuated equilibria, and does not overthrow Darwinian gradual change of form. Describes transitionals. Again, notice the dates. Looong before Milton wrote. So why is Milton writing statements that have already been refuted before Milton wrote them? Is Milton simply incompetent? Or does he have a secret agenda? 1. Darwinism is conclusively backed by evidence. Milton is wrong in his assertions. 2. You do the same thing in physics. The Standard Model of particle physics is also core hypotheses with hundreds of auxiliary hypotheses. So is quantum mechanics and relativity. So why does this not present a problem for you in physics but does in biology? Let's start with the last sentence. I made clear that the example of the giraffe's neck was never intended as solid evidence about evolution. It was intended simply as a means of illustrating the differences between Lamarckism and Darwinism. Now, is there evidence supporting historical adaptation? Yes. Much of it comes from looking at living species that have intermediate features. For instance, the entire taxonomic family that contains skinks are intermediate between legged reptiles and snakes. Within that family you can find every intermediate between legs like lizards and legless like snakes. Here is one of the intermediates: http://www.kingsnake.com/oz/lizards/skinks/ldeserto.htm Another example of evolution of adaptation in living species is the evolution of the placenta. The intermediates are in a living genera of fish: 1. David N. Reznick, Mariana Mateos, and Mark S. Springer Independent Origins and Rapid Evolution of the Placenta in the Fish Genus Poeciliopsis Science 298: 1018-1020, Nov. 1, 2002. Intermediate steps in same genus. http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mmateos/reznicketal.pdf News article at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/298/5595/945a The evolution of wings -- both insect and bird -- has also been studied. These are examples of "exaptation". This is when a trait evolves for one reason and then at some point acquires another function. In the interest of space, let's just do insect wings. Insect wings are modified gills. Because they have lots of vasculature, gills out of water make very good heat exhangers: 5. Averof, M and Cohen, SM, Evolutionary origin of insect wings from ancestral gills. Nature, 385: 627-630, Feb. 13, 1997. So now you have heat exchangers. It turns out that the bigger the modified gill, the better it is at being a thermoregulator. JG Kingsolver and MAR Koehl Aerodynamics, thermoregulation, and the evolution of insect wings: differential scaling and evolutionary change, Evolution, 1985. First, Kingsolver and Koehl examined the 3 categories of functional continuity: proto wings for gliding, for parachuting, and attitude stability. They then developed aerodynamic equations for exactly how proto-wings should help an insect under these 3 hypotheses. They then went on to construct insect models of flying and nonflying forms among early fossil insects. To these models they attached wings of various lengths and measured the actual aerodynamic effects for properties predicted by various hypotheses of functional continuity. The results of wind-tunnel tests were consistent: aerodynamic benefits of begin for wings above a certain size, and they increase as wings get larger. But at small sizes of insect proto-wings, aerodynamic advantages are absent or insignificant. Kingsolver and Koehl then tested their models for thermoregulatory effects. They achieved results symmetrically opposite to aerodynamic benefits: for thermoregulation, wings work well at the smallest sizes, with benefits increasing as the wing grows. however, beyond a measured length, further increase in wing size confers no additional thermo effect. These 2 effects can be graphed. Interestingly enough, the size at which wings begin to lose any additional benefit to thermoregulation is the size at which aerodynamic effects begin to kick in. So, by actual measuring the functional shift, Kingsolver and Koehl have shown that incipient wings aid thermoregulation but provide no aerodynamic benefit -- while larger wings provide no further theromoregulatory benefit but initiate aerodynamic advantage and increase the benefits steadily thereafter. Cool, huh? Wings evolve as thermoregulators and, at a particular size, are good for flying. And all this is quantitatively studied in insect models. Does this qualify as "solid evidence" for an historical adaptation? I would say that it is in the same league with the evidence for heliocentrism: no reasonable person could deny it.

It has been argued that Richard Milton in Shattering the Myths of Darwinism is NOT a creationist and is not arguing for creationism. Well, thanks to the Advocate we have the smoking gun to refute this: Look at what I bolded. Special creation = creationism. And again, this argument is one consistently used by IDers/creationists. You can find it on AiG! So the Advocate's attempt to say is unconvincing. If he was not arguing that, then why say it? the Advocate, if you really think this was "ironic", then please post some quote from Milton that would lead us to think so.

You missed a potent argument against Behe. He is playing the old pea-under-the-cups game and moving the pea around. Behe admits natural selection, does he? Well, natural selection is a two-step process: 1. Variation 2. Selection. Mutations are part of "variation". So of course they don't produce anything! It takes variation in combination with selection to have natural selection and the production of designs. So, no, random mutation by itself, does not account for what we see today. No one in evolution says it does! So in addition to the shell game, Behe is also constructing another strawman. Also, there is that word "random". In this context "random" means "with respect to the needs of the individual or the population". For instance, in a climate growing colder year by year, just as many deer with shorter fur will be born as with longer fur. SELECTION IS NOT RANDOM. It is the opposite of random. It is determinism. And selection cuts down odds. I maintain that life has been demonstrated in a lab: http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html http://www.thefreelibrary.com/From+proteins+to+protolife:+was+life's+emergence+random+or+guided+by...-a015657614 Fox SW. "Synthesis of life in the lab? Defining a protoliving system." Quarterly Review of Biology, 1991 Jun, 66(2):181-5. You might be interested in this quote from Dawkins: "Darwinism is widely misunderstood as a theory of pure chance. Mustn't it have done something to provoke this canard? Well, yes, there is something behind the misunderstood rumour, a feeble basis to the distortion. One stage in the Darwinian process is indeed a chance process -- mutation. Mutation is the process by which fresh genetic variation is offered up for selection and it usually described as random. But Darwinians make the fuss that they do about the "randomness" of mutation only in order to contrast it to the non-randomness of selection, the other side of the process. It is not necessary that mutation should be random in order for natural selection to work. Selection can still do its work whether mutation is directed or not. Emphasizing that mutation can be random is our way of calling attention to the crucial fact that, by contrast, selection is sublimely and quintessentially non-random. It is ironic that this emphasis on the contrast between mutation and the non-randomness of selection has led people to think that the whole theory is a theory of chance. ... One could imagine a theoretical world in which mutations were biased toward improvement. Mutations in this hypothetical world would be non-random not just in the sense that mutations induced by X-rays are non-random: these hypothetical mutations would be systematically biased to keep one jump ahead of selection and anticipate the needs of the organism ... Darwinians wouldn't mind if such providential mutations were provided. It wouldn't undermine Darwinism, though it would put paid to its claims for exclusivity: a tailwind on a transatlantic flight can speed up your arrival in an agreeable way, and this doesn't undermine your belief that the primary force that got you home is the jet engine." R Dawkins, Climbing Mt. Improbable, pp 80- 82.

Let's take the statement: "the earth is flat". What is the probability of that being true? Zero, right? In a later post to me you said that heliocentrism was "demonstrably true". Therefore the statement "the earth is the center of the solar system" must have a zero probability of being true. I'll go along with the first sentence, altho you apparently don't. After all, you basically said heliocentrism was true beyond any shadow of doubt. As to estimating the probability of a theory being true, Bayesian analysis tries to do just that. Have you run a Bayesian analysis of Darwin's 5 theories? What answer did you get? You might be interested to know that Bayesian analysis is done for phylogenies based on DNA sequences: http://www.mathcs.duq.edu/larget/bambe.html http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/294/5550/2310 Here is an entire book on Bayesian analysis and molecular evolution: http://www.springerlink.com/content/q775x38p61075111/ For articles in just PNAS concerning Bayesian analysis as applied to various hypotheses within evolution: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/search?session_query_ref=rbs.queryref_1195323797961&COLLECTIONS=hw1&JC=pnas&FULLTEXT=%28Bayesian+AND+analysis+AND+evolution%29&FULLTEXTFIELD=lemcontent&RESOURCETYPE=HWCIT&ABSTRACTFIELD=lemhwcompabstract&TITLEFIELD=lemhwcomptitle What is it? 1. Instead of "I prefer to say ..." how about quoting what some scientists have said about truth? 2. Science also deals with unobservables. After all, no one has directly observed an electron. 3. Sometimes not seeing an effect is just as good. After all, Einstein's General Relativity says that light should be bent in a gravitational field. If we had NOT seen the effect, it still would have been part of science. 4. What do you mean by "Occam's Razor"? And why should it be a "given"? And no, the Razor is NOT "the simplest explanation is correct". Originally, the Razor was used to eliminate hypotheses as part of description of phenomenon. When you think of hypotheses, there are 2 components: 1. Discovery. 2. Justification. The old view of science -- Newton, Mills, Descarte -- was that hypotheses are the digests of observations. That was shown to be wrong by first the Positivists, then by Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, etc. Yes, all 4 of those, altho they disagree on everything else, do agree on this. As an example of hypotheses not being based on inductive logic: Volume 13, #22 The Scientist November 8, 1999 http://www.the-scientist.com/yr1999/nov/halim1_p1_991108.html Nobel Laureate Ready To Head Back to Lab Author: Nadia S. Halim Date: November 8, 1999 Courtesy of Rockefeller University Nobel laureate Günter Blobel -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When Günter Blobel and David Sabatini first proposed the signal hypothesis in 1971, the whole thing was simply ignored. There was not a shred of evidence to support it. If there is no evidence, you can't be using inductive logic. Popper said: "I thought that scientific theories were not the digest of observations, but that they were inventions -- conjectures boldly put forward for trial, to be eliminated if they clashed with observations, with observations which were rarely accidental but as a rule undertaken with the definite intention of testing a theory by obtaining, if possible, a decisive refutation." Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 1963 p 38. Deductive logic is such that, if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. The classic example is: Premise #1: All men are mortal. Premise #2: Socrates is a man. Conclusion: Socrates is mortal. The conclusion CANNOT be false if the premises are true. Therefore true statements cannot have false consequences. Now, I never said you could "prove" by deductive logic. I specifically said you can DISprove by deductive logic. What you are now doing is trying to deny falsification. I find this ironic since you started out saying that science works by Popper. Now you are saying that Popper's vision of science doesn't work! Now you are starting to put things together. This is holism. It goes back to Pierre Duhem's observation that hypotheses are tested in huge bundles. Therefore you are not logically required to discard the favored theory; you can discard one of the bundle instead (what you call "a different theory"). However, you can get around this difficulty by testing hypotheses in different bundles. That is the purpose of "controls" in experiments. You test the entire bundle except for the favored hypothesis. If the controls work, then you can't rationally say "something wrong with a different theory". Actually, you are. Remember, true statements cannot have false consequences. So, since there are false consequences to the statements "the earth is flat" or "the earth is the center of the solar system", we know those statements are not true. Which means, of course, the statements "the earth is not flat" and "the earth is not the center of the solar system". Going back to your discussion of heliocentrism, you said: Where is the counterweight in physics to heliocentrism? Where is the counterweight to QM? Relativity isn't. Relativity doesn't address the behavior of atoms. You demand from biology a counterweight that you don't demand in physics. You are quite willing to accept heliocentrism as "fact" but won't accept evolution. So, we are not arguing about whether theories can be so well supported that we accept them as provisionally true (what you call "fact"), but whether evolution has reached that point. What's more, we are discussing whether you think it has reached that point. And here we run into another inconsistency in your argument: So, you won't trust me about that vast body of information and accept it "uncritically". But you will accept Milton's criticisms uncritically. Why does Milton get a free ride from criticism? Why do you trust his claim that "nearly all the evidence which originally gave support to Darwinism has been dropped"? Again, a double standard. Now again I have to go and I don't want my long science post merged with this one -- which will happen automatically if I answer now. WAIT! I will start a new thread "Milton's science" where I can discuss Milton's scientific claims. And yes, there are refutations to his comments about natural selection. Look for that thread. It is not possible to absolutely prove anything in science to be true or false. At best you could absolutely prove a statement of the sort "if these assumptions are true, than this is true" (which is equivalent to saying "if this is not true, than these assumptions are not true" -- meaning that unless you want to discard a bunch of assumptions, then you need to accept that something as true. "Assumptions" in this case could be very high profile, like Maxwell's equations or relativity) ---- All that being why science uses a more restricted definition of "true" than philosophers -- because they want to get something done. In fact, it may even be possible to absolutely prove that some statements form "the simplest observable truth" with respect to everything which has so far been observed.

I'm going to split my reply into three parts: philosophy of science, discussion of the science (evolution and abiogenesis), and discussion of theology. This will be the philosophy of science part: Not really. There are two general ways of looking at theories: as sets of statements and as "models". BOTH aim at discovering "truth" = accurate description of the physical universe. That's not the problem of induction. You have presented "unity". Inductive arguments follow the form: a1 has property p a2 has property p ... a(n) has proptery p therefore, all a's have property p. Observation of white swans leading to the statement "all swans are white" is an inductive argument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning (I don't like using Wiki as a source, but this time I know from other printed sources that it is fairly accurate. It will serve as an introduction to you and correct your misunderstanding of induction.) The most common statement of the "scientific method" -- the hypothetico-deductive method -- is not inductive, it's deductive. It's based on deductive logic. That does not mean that science does not use inductive logic occasionally. Every time we draw a line thru a set of points we are using inductive logic. The problem of induction is that you can't prove anything with it. Inductive arguments are of the form: the future will resemble the past. The problem is circularity. In order to say induction proves anything, you have to presume the very thing -- the future resembles the past -- that you are seeking to prove! Bertrand Russell had a very good illustration of the limits of induction: a chicken observes every day that the farmer comes out with feed. Farmer-chicken feed. Day after day. So the chicken concludes that the farmer will always bring feed. But one day the farmer brings an axe and the chicken learns that his induction was wrong. However, there is something "right" about induction in that it works a lot of the time. It works enough that you mistakenly think it is the basis of the scientific method and we keep drawing those lines thru a limited set of points. But, strictly speaking, you can't "prove" be either induction or deduction. You can, however, absolutely DISprove using deduction. Not exactly. In order to be provisionally true, a hypothesis must, of course, be unfalsified. But an untested hypothesis is also unfalsified. Also, a theory can survive one or two tests, be unfalsified, yet still not accepted as provisionally true, i.e Big Bang before discovery of the CMBR. In order to get to be accepted as provisionally true a hypothesis must survive 1) a large number of tests or 2) several tests including a test which no other known hypothesis could pass. You can see at this point induction comes back in. We think that, since a hypothesis has not been falsified a number of times, it will always not be falsified. Of course, because of the problem of induction, we can't be sure of that. But that was exactly what you were advocating! So you do think accepting a theory as provisonally true is more than "it is unfalsified". As a physicist, do you constantly question Special Relativity or the orbital model of electrons? Not from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions but from Kuhn's later book Postscript and his later essay "Ojectivity, Value Judgement, and Theory Choice". You have uncritically accepted Kuhn's thesis. Just as you have uncritically accepted Milton without reading a textbook on evolutionary biology. Kuhn made some statements I think are just wrong. For instance, in Structure Kuhn claims that not only the paradigm changes in a paradigm shift, but reality changes as well. Thus, before Levoisier and Priestly, combustion really did occur by phlogiston; since then it occurs using oxygen. I don't know of any physicist that says reality itself changes when we switch from one paradigm to another. Do you ascribe to this? There are many, many more valid criticisms of Kuhn. I suggest you read Philosophy of Science: the Central Issues edited by Curd and Cover. It has the essential essays -- by the original philosophers -- and then critiques of those positions. They have a detailed critique of Kuhn. One of the ironies here is that a paradigm shift away from creationism to Darwinism occurred in the period 1850-1870. In Kuhnian terms, creationism was the paradigm and was "normal" science. People kept finding anomalies. Then we have the revolution and switch to Darwinism. Now, as far as Kuhn was concerned, science never goes back to the old paradigm. Even when there were anomalies in Uranus' and Mercury's orbits, no one suggested going back to a Ptolomaic solar system. So, if Milton is serious about science following Kuhn, he can't think that rejection of Darwinism is going to go back to any form of creationism. That isn't exactly what happened. We take Milton's claim as a hypothesis. From that we use the hypothetico-deductive method to make deductions about consequences to that hypothesis if it is true. One of the deductions is that fewer papers will be published using Darwinism because fewer and fewer people find it useful in doing "normal" science and are switching to a new paradigm. Another deduction is that more and more papers are going to be about anomalies that evolution can't explain. Using deductive logic (not "Popperian" logic), we look to see if the consequences are true. What you are trying to do is show alternative or ad hoc hypotheses that prevent the consequences from falsifying Milton's statement: Do these ad hoc hypotheses work? We can test them independently. Pouring $$ isn't going to make the anomalies disappear. In fact, more $$ means more scientists working in the area to find anomalies. That isn't happening. Also, Kuhn says $$ has nothing to do with declining paradigms. They decline due to 1) the presence of anomalies and 2) people switching to an alternative paradigm. If we go back to the period 1830-1859, we do see an increase in papers describing anomalies of creationism. Blythe's work comes to mind, as does Hooker's and Asa Gray's. Now, does Milton say there is an alternative paradigm? If so, then a deduction would be that we would see an increase in publications involving this paradigm. The second objection is just silly. By Kuhn, you would not see ANY papers in a paradigm that was replaced a century ago. Paradigm replacement is complete: the old paradigm is no longer used at all. So this objection is simply a non-starter. It's a strawman. Darwinism is 2. It is currently unfalsified. I stand by my claim that we are running out of tests to falsify Darwinism. Darwinism has passed every test we have thrown at it and there simply aren't more tests to pass. Lakatos disagreed with Kuhn. He sided with Popper on how theories are evaluated: tested in an attempt to show them false. In terms of how we do things in the lab, Popper is pretty much correct. What you think of as the "scientific method" is Popper's hypothetico-deductive method. What Lakatos rejected was Popper's "naive" falsificationism. Popper went too far in tentativeness and thought that ANY and EVERY false result should automatically result in rejecting a theory. Popper eventually acknowledged the role of ad hoc hypotheses, but he never did acknowledge holism. Both of these can be gotten around, but together they mean that major theories are not rejected on the basis of one falsification -- as Popper proposed. Lakatos rejected Kuhn's assertion of paradigms and the unrationality of paradigm replacement and "scientific revolutions". So, you accept Milton but won't read a textbook on evolutionary biology. I suggest Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology. Sorry, heliocentricity is still a theory. We accept it as provisionally true. We accept it so strongly that you think it is "fact". IOW, it has failed falsification so many times that we can't think of any other test to falsify it, can we? Can you think of a test to falsify heliocentricity? Please go to your questions above and give me your position on heliocentricity, on your scale. Now, are you taking a Popperian view of heliocentricity? If not, then you agree that a strict Popperian view is not applied to all theories. We are down to discussing how confirmed Darwinian evolution is. Milton's complaint is without merit. It has long been realized by evolutionary biologists that Darwin made 5 theories: "1. The nonconstancy of species (the basic theory of evolution) 2. The descent of all organisms from common ancestors (branching evolution). 3. The gradualness of evolution (no saltations, no discontinuities) 4. The multiplication of species (the origin of diversity) 5. Natural selection." Ernst Mayr, What Evolution IS. pg 86 (BTW, Mayr's book is another you need to read.) Now, the Grant study on Darwin's finches or the peppered moth example only applies to #5. Phylogenetic analysis tested #1 and #2 but didn't touch the rest. 1. No one has to pressure schools to teach relativity or QM as fact. They do so anyway. No one is complaining about it, either. 2. You looked ONLY at recent theories. How about atomic theory? That is taught as fact. How about Bohr's model of the atom? Anyone questioning that model? Oh, no, he is choosing an easy target. A target that he knows does not have much fossil or other evidence behind it. He is ignoring the hard targets -- such as the mammalian middle ear or the wings of birds and insects -- that have much more evidence. So what he is doing is "synedoche" -- picking out a particular unrepresentative example and then trying to make it "general". It is induction and very bad induction. No. ID/creationism is a scientific theory. One that is already falsified. However, remember the giraffe example is used as a way of explaining the difference between Darwinism and Lamarckism. The problem is that ALL of his arguments are ID/creationist arguments. And ones that have been refuted before. I'll get to that in my next post. So the question arises: why is Milton using arguments that have already been refuted and presenting them as valid? That is what creationists do. So, using the commutative principle from mathematics: creationists = using invalid arguments as tho they are valid = Milton, it is reasonable to infer that Milton is actually a creationist and is hiding that position. That you behave as a standard creationist -- believe Milton's arguments uncritically, claim scientific expertise you apparently do not have, have not and will not read books on evolutionary biology, are a theist, etc, -- lends support to the hypothesis that Milton wrote a creationist book for creationists. Also note that Milton did not publish or even submit his critique to a scientific journal such as the Journal of Theoretical Biology but marketed it to the lay public, and the hypothesis that Milton is advocating creationism/ID gets more support. Milton is not talking to scientists at all. If that were the case, we would deduce that Milton would have read the literature better and be more familiar with the data against his positions (next post) and try to publish in a more scientific forum than a book geared to an audience without biological training.

Remember, you are defining "brilliant" in terms of an occupation. You think that only "scientific investigation, inventions, philosophy, mathematics, fine arts" demand "high intellectual skills". So, consider economics as a motivator. Brilliant people can earn more money as an investment banker or bussinessman than they ever can as a scientists or philosopher or mathematician! So a majority of high-intelligence people follow the money into occupations where they can earn more money. Medical schools have noticed a drop-off in the intellectual quality of applicants as the salaries of doctors have dropped and those of other occupations has increased. Also, how many paid mathematicians do we have (in academic institutions) compared to attorneys? Not everyone who is brilliant can get a job as an theoretical mathematician. Opportunity, economics, and motivation has more to do with people choosing or not choosing a particular occupation, and thus the number of people in the occupations you name is not reliable a indicator of the number of brilliant people in the world.

Lightning in the atmosphere and hydrothermal vents. The Miller-Urey reactions (which also work in a non-reducing atmosphere) make sugars, formic acid, cyanide, purines, and pyrimidines (bases) in addition to amino acids. This is usually overlooked in web articles, which just mention the amino acids. "The Miller-Urey experiments in the late 40’s and early 50’s showed that organic molecules could be formed by inorganic processes under primitive earth conditions. By discharging electric sparks in a large flask containing boiling water, methane, hydrogen and ammonia, conditions presumed to be similar to those of the early earth, they produced amino acids and other organic molecules experimentally. Using variations of their technique, most of the major building blocks of life have been produced: amino acids, sugars, nucleic acid bases and lipids. " http://www.utdallas.edu/~cirillo/nats/day18.htm Lehninger's Biochemistry 1974 edition went into more detail on this. The research is more than 30 years old by now so most of it is in print, not on the web. For instance, this book -- http://www.ecampus.com/book/1891389289 -- has several pages in Chapter 13 devoted to the abiotic synthesis of sugars and nucleic acids.

Then I suggest you stop trying to make a "single simple statement that applies in all situations". I am being constructive by Popperian science: testing statements in an attempt to show them to be false. Apparently, I am too good at that and you resent it. That is a psychological problem of Popperian science: the person making the statement has to be willing to graciously admit that there is contrary evidence and that the idea is wrong. When human egos come into the process, that is difficult for some people. So, if you are going to do science, you have to make a personal decision that you are not going to get upset, frustrated, or angry when people find contrary data and show the idea to be wrong. I suggest you stop trying to find a definition of science or the scientific method. I suggest you find the essay "The Demise of the Demarcation Criteria" by Larry Laudan. Instead of trying to demarcate science from everything else, simply try to test statements as best you can in an attempt to show them false. I've just been reviewing an 18 hour CD course on the philosophy of science. In terms of "methods", we have: 1. The classical empiricist method. 2. Mill's methods. 3. Descarte's method. 4. the hypothetico-deductive method. 5. deduction 6. induction All of them, at one time or another, have been said to be the "scientific method". All of them are used at one time or another. Since you admit that there is no single statement, or even a few statements, that can adequately describe science and separate it from everything else, I constructively suggest we stop trying. I also suggest we all keep in mind the philosophical terms "necessary" and "sufficient". "Necessary" = the entity must have it in order to be the entity "Sufficient" = do not need anything else in order to be the entity. "Entity" = what you are talking about: species, deity, science, hypothesis, elephant, whatever. We cannot find conditions that are both necessary AND sufficient so that we can say what is science and separate it from what is not. Does science contain facts? Yes. Does science consist of entities in addition to facts? Yes. Science also consists of hypotheses and theories. There, we're done. Doesn't science also explain the facts by means of hypotheses and theories? Doesn't science also look for causes and effects that connect facts? Barunpaudel, this is a problem with trying to define science as "a process to enumberate the facts". Science does far more than "enumerate". Linneaus "ennumerated" the species. But Darwin explained how those species came to be -- the Origin of Species. By your definition, we should throw Darwinian evolution out of science. Einstein did not "enumerate" any facts when he came up with General Relativity. Instead, he predicted many facts that we should find if the theory was true: one of them being that light could bend in a strong gravitational field. If science were nothing but "a process to enumerate the facts" it would be very boring and I would leave it for something more exciting -- such as watching paint dry. You are now imposing your ethical ideas on science. If science is "identification, modification, or improvement of so called facts" how can we know ahead of time whether that will result in "good things" for the world? When Marie Curie and others discovered radioactivity, how could they know that this could be used to build a fission bomb? Was the guy that discovered how to make light coherent (laser) supposed to know that lasers could become weapons? Or the guy that worked out the chemical formula of the compound in tear gas? Science is not a system of ethics. Facts are not ethical. They are neither "good" nor "bad". Nor is it possible to forsee all the possible technological uses of "facts". By your scheme, when Baltimore identified the fact of reverse transcriptase, he should have known that the reverse transcriptase could be used to create new bioweapons. Or let's take a more extreme example: when Lavoisier discovered oxygen and then Priestly showed that oxygen was part of combustion, you would have them suppress those facts because someday someone would use those facts to make the fuel for intercontinental missiles with nuclear warheads! Your "for quality improvement of various aspects of the creatures living in this world" is not up to scientists. It is up to everyone. It is you and all the non-scientists who decide what facts we use and how we ought to use them. You are making scientists responsible for what you must be responsible for. Science tells you how the physical universe works. All of us decide what we ought to do with that knowledge.

That's a non-sequitor. A does-not-follow. Remember, there is devergence from the common ancestor. One of the divergences is that we can no longer mate with and produce fertile offspring with goats. And yet, the common ancestor species of goats and humans could. So also communication can diverge to the point that understanding is not possible. Humans are even further apart from other species due to our complex speech. You don't think the human is going to be a bit biased in his assessment of the goat's emotional state? This is like asking the rapist if the victim "enjoyed" it. Consent has to be given BEFORE the act, not deduced afterward. Irrelevant to an ethical/moral argument. Using humans as scientific experiments -- a la Dr. Mengele -- has economic and health benefits. It's still immoral and wrong. Apples and oranges. As you noted, killing for food is for nutrition. All species exploit other species for food -- even plants. A start. However, back to your first argument based on "nature" and evolution. We have evolved as omnivores -- where meat is part of our diet. We have not evolved to have sex with other species, have we? Instead, our sexual cues are geared toward our own species -- so that we can produce fertile offspring. Since we can't produce fertile offspring with members of species other than our own, by your logic, we shouldn't be doing it.

Natural selection will work even if most of the population dies for reasons other than that particular trait -- nonselective. What you are saying is that most of the people are dying of disease, starvation, predation, etc. Very few are living longer. However, even if there are just a few and they take care of their grandchildren, that will cause the increase in frequency of that trait in the population. "Thus much, perhaps most, of the mortality suffered by a population may be random with respect to this locus or character [hoofs in horses, for example] These nonselective deaths may be contrasted with selective death, those that contribute to the difference in fitness between genotypes. Even if most mortality is nonselective, the selective deaths that do occur can be a potent source of natural selection. For instance, genetic differences in swimming speed in a small planktonic crustacean might well not affect the likelihood of being eaten by baleen whales, which might be the major source of mortality. But if swimming speed affects escape from another predator species, even one that accounts for only 1 percent of the deaths, there will be an average difference in fitness, and swimming speed may evolve by natural selection." Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, pg 368. 1. The sites I posted don't comment on this. They are also very specific that fertility depends not only on sperm count, but on volume of semen. That decreases with frequent orgasm and thus fertility decreases. 2. Comparing testes and and muscles is comparing apples and oranges. Development with working harder is not a "general principle". For instance, the cartilage in knees and intervertebral discs do not "develop with use". Instead, they degrade. Kidneys don't "develop" if you drink lots of water and force them to filter more blood. Some organs do develop. The prime example are organs that involve muscle cells: skeletal muscle, heart, and the smooth muscle of blood vessels. The individual muscle cells get bigger. It's called "hypertrophy". So, when you pump iron you don't get any more muscle cells in the muscle, but each myofiber (a multinucleated cell extending from origin to insertion) gets larger in diameter. Bone remodels in response to mechanical stress and strain. It's called "Wolff's Law". You can use this to study the origin and insertion points of muscles and ligaments on fossil bones to get an idea of the musculature. BTW, you can also overstrain the system. The Israeli army in the 1960s tried a new training program for its elite commandos. It involved very heavy physical training and the recruits began having fractures in the long bones. They were putting too much use on the bones and microfractures were accumulating faster than the remodeling process could repair them and the bones were breaking. Again, another example where the body did not "develop" with use: the repair process didn't increase. Skeptic, your "general principle" is not general. Also, Skeptic, for the idea that frequent masturbators would be able to reproduce because of "development" and that their offspring would also have the same characteristic -- which you at least implied -- then you do have to have Lamarckism.

That's fine. I was only dealing with the specific question of whether it would bolster your chances. None of what I said was an argument against going for 2 majors. You do that because you want to. I don't know. That depends on the school. You should talk to your Bursar and find out what happens at yours. Most schools would just say "BS" and your transcript would indicated 2 majors.

You were doing well until you appealed to personal interest. Then you introduced the idea that your response is due to bias that you are male! (BTW, I am also male.) The theory is what it is and the "grandmother" theory is that human males get their additional lifespan as a byproduct of selecting for the female lifespan. You are now arguing for a second theory: independent selection factors for male longevity. Before modern health care, what was the difference in mean lifespan between men and women? If you can't do that, at least you can go back to the actuarial tables of 70 or so years ago. You are going to find that there was a considerable -- 25% -- difference. So how do you tell that from some direct selection pressure and the accidental benefit?

1. Which thread? You are implying that we have 2 different theories. 2. Longevity WHEN? Now, with modern health care? Doesn't count, does it? Mean male lifespan has been going up in the last few hundred years. The gap has gotten narrower, but it was much wider in the past. 3. CDarwin has noted an independent possible selection criteria for male longevity: continued fertility. Of course, it is going to be difficult to distinguish that from an accidental benefit from female longevity. So, no, you don't have a scientific source. What a surprise. Perhaps you can browse thru the back issues and find it? Or not. BTW, New Scientist is a magazine about science. It doesn't have primary articles itself. I wasn't being ironic. Quite an assertion. Where is your data? Also, your language is confusing. When you say "specific adaptation" are you referring to the "ability to adapt to outside pressures"? Because that would be a specific adaptation. (For others here, you want to look up "Baldwin effect") Lots of bold assertions, but absolutely no data to back it up. I think you think the assertions are logically necessary, but they are not. There is no requirement that a male that is not having much sex divert physical resources into survival. What about just laying around looking at the sky? Now, there is data to contradict the second of your assertions: males that have lots of ejaculations in a short period of time have lower semen volume and sperm counts: http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/menshealth/facts/semenandsperm.htm http://health.ivillage.com/infertility/infertmen/0,,5kxp,00.html Therefore he is NOT developing the "busy" part of his body to cope. This is not like muscles which indeed change during exercise. "testicles and muscles" is another way of saying "apples and oranges". You can't validly equate them.

The original site I posted -- http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html -- did that. Didn't you read it? What everyone means. Nerve cells are stimulated and respond by an action potential. Protocells are stimulated the same way and respond with the same response. Nope. Fires don't make the chemicals that they then burn. Their metabolism is purely catabolic. I made the statement because there is a relative dearth of pages on the internet on protocells. Most of the work was done before there was an internet. So by far the bulk of the data is in hardcopy scientific papers. If you want to rely on consensus, go into politics. Science is about agreement with data, not consensus. Claims are evaluated against the data, not on consensual agreement. The data says the protocells are alive. That many people don't want to admit that has nothing to do with the reality. In fact, it looks like most scientists do agree, which is why they have moved onto something else: getting directed protein synthesis. All the data in the papers I posted and more data in other papers. All of it says the protocells meet the requirements to be "alive". 1. Proteins are not random the way you are using the term. Proteins made by chemistry have internal ordering due to the R groups. You can't make all possible proteins; the chemistry won't allow it. 2. The people who have worked with thermal proteins/protocells have done a LOT of testing. And that is where "virtual certainty" comes from. Now, you can quibble and say that the probability is 0.999999 but that is "virtually" 1. 3. Can you name anyone that has studied proteins that has claimed the protein had NO biological activity? Remember, there are a lot of biological activities: structural, membrane component, enzyme, etc. The claim may be that the protein did not have a particular, specific biological activity (the one they were testing for), but never NO biological activity at all. You cited it as being accurate to refute the claim. So yes, you did imply it was accurate. Correct. However, you also have to criticize their position. They don't get a free ride to being right. Selective quoting. I was hoping you were more honest than that. Guess not. Keep reading. I'll do the bold: "Thermal polyaspartic acid microspheres are extremely simple models of protocells that are more amenable to precise quantitative experimental investigation than the proteinoid microspheres of Sidney W. Fox. " Protocells are made of mixtures of ALL amino acids. These guys confined themselves to just ONE amino acid. So they are making a simplified model of protocells, not protocells themselves! You didn't read the full article of the previous paper, either, but managed to say "much about it". Double standard anyone? Actually, I have. In fact, since I work at a medical school, I had the library get photocopies of them all. It's not that they lost popularity, but people decided to move on to the next problem and get directed protein synthesis. People are fascinated in having DNA direct the synthesis of proteins -- as it does in modern cells. What they want to do is find out how directed protein synthesis arose. You are confusing apples and oranges, so you aren't going to be able to show anything. When delivering the class, Pappellis took a verbal shortcut and accepted that the claim made by other scientists was true -- as was accepted at the time. Now, Papellis was referring to the claim of life in the Martian meteorite. "discussion for the Pope" concerns protocells, NOT the Martian meteorite. And Pappellis didn't discuss that. That Fox was twice invited to talk to the Pope was in the Harbinger article. Cutting and pasting out of context isn't going to show anything except your bias. Notice that Pappellis is not on the author list of the early papers on protocells. He looked at that body of work and decided, like I have, that it is valid. It is no different than looking at the body of work on evolution and deciding that it is scientifically valid. I hate to deflate your ego, but it doesn't matter if you are convinced. After all, there are people out there that aren't convinced humans really landed on the moon or even that the theory of heliocentrism is correct! People can refuse to be convinced by data for any number of emotional reasons. What needs to be done is to show how the protocells are NOT alive. What does the concept of "life" do that protocells don't? Fox's competitors in the abiogenesis field decided that "life" had to have directed protein synthesis. This wasn't part of their criteria before the protocell work. It was added because the protocells fulfilled the original criteria of what it took for an entity to be "alive". You can do the same thing if you want. Or you can invent some other criteria after first determining that protocells don't fulfill it. Since we are in "people that think evolution is a fake" thread, I will note that many people think evolution is wrong because "we never see a cat turn into a dog". Of course, that is not a requirement to be evolution. That was added because they already knew the requirement couldn't be met. Many others think "evolution" is wrong because "we have never seen life come from non-life", thinking that criteria has not been met. So, are you going to do the same thing?

That's been done. Including making the DNA and getting bacteria to express the gene and make the protein: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17096543&ordinalpos=4&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum Since I know, from experience, that you don't always read the information accurately, I'll put the Abstract for you and bold the relevant parts: "Spider silk fibers have remarkable mechanical properties that suggest the component proteins could be useful biopolymers for fabricating biomaterial scaffolds for tissue formation. Two bioengineered protein variants from the consensus sequence of the major component of dragline silk from Nephila clavipes were cloned and expressed to include RGD cell-binding domains. The engineered silks were characterized by CD and FTIR and showed structural transitions from random coil to insoluble beta-sheet upon treatment with methanol. The recombinant proteins were processed into films and fibers and successfully used as biomaterial matrixes to culture human bone marrow stromal cells induced to differentiate into bone-like tissue upon addition of osteogenic stimulants. The recombinant spider silk and the recombinant spider silk with RGD encoded into the protein both supported enhanced the differentiation of human bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) to osteogenic outcomes when compared to tissue culture plastic. The recombinant spider silk protein without the RGD displayed enhanced bone related outcomes, measured by calcium deposition, when compared to the same protein with RGD. Based on comparisons to our prior studies with silkworm silks and RGD modifications, the current results illustrate the potential to bioengineer spider silk proteins into new biomaterial matrixes, while also highlighting the importance of subtle differences in silk sources and modes of presentation of RGD to cells in terms of tissue-specific outcomes." You might also be interested in the following paper: J Thromb Haemost. 2005 Aug;3(8):1692-701. The promise and challenges of bioengineered recombinant clotting factors. Pipe SW. Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. ummdswp@med.umich.edu The past 10 years of clinical experience have demonstrated the safety and efficacy of recombinant clotting factors. With the adoption of prophylactic strategies, there has been considerable progress in avoiding the complications of hemophilia. Now, insights from our understanding of clotting factor structure and function, mechanisms of hemophilia and inhibitors, gene therapy advances and a worldwide demand for clotting factor concentrates leave us on the brink of embracing targeted bioengineering strategies to further improve hemophilia therapeutics. The ability to bioengineer recombinant clotting factors with improved function holds promise to overcome some of the limitations in current treatment, the high costs of therapy and increase availability to a broader world hemophilia population. Most research has been directed at overcoming the inherent limitations of rFVIII expression and the inhibitor response. This includes techniques to improve rFVIII biosynthesis and secretion, functional activity, half-life and antigenicity/immunogenicity. Some of these proteins have already reached commercialization and have been utilized in gene therapy strategies, while others are being evaluated in pre-clinical studies. These novel proteins partnered with advances in gene transfer vector design and delivery may ultimately achieve persistent expression of FVIII leading to an effective long-term treatment strategy for hemophilia A. In addition, these novel FVIII proteins could be partnered with new advances in alternative recombinant protein production in transgenic animals yielding an affordable, more abundant supply of rFVIII. Novel rFIX proteins are being considered for gene therapy strategies whereas novel rVIIa proteins are being evaluated to improve the potency and extend their plasma half-life. This review will summarize the status of current recombinant clotting factors and the development and challenges of recombinant clotting factors bioengineered for improved function." That doesn't appear to be what they did. Instead, they took nucleotides and a DNA synthesizer and, adding one base at a time, constructed a chromosome. From scratch. They based the sequence of bases on several existing chromosomes, but that would be like an engineer making a car but basing the design on earlier cars. The engineer still "made" the car if he machined all the parts himself and put them together.

You must mean "have a higher fitness with fewer offspring and HIGHER survival rates." BTW, fitness is defined as the ratio of the progeny (allele frequency) actually produced to the progeny (or allele frequency) expected from Mendelian inheritance. No. "Grandmother". Originally proposed by Kristen Hawkes: Am J Hum Biol. 2003 May-Jun;15(3):380-400. Grandmothers and the evolution of human longevity. Hawkes K. Deparment of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112, USA. hawkes@anthro.utah.edu "Great apes, our closest living relatives, live longer and mature later than most other mammals and modern humans are even later-maturing and potentially longer-lived. Evolutionary life-history theory seeks to explain cross-species differences in these variables and the covariation between them. That provides the foundation for a hypothesis that a novel role for grandmothers underlies the shift from an ape-like ancestral pattern to one more like our own in the first widely successful members of genus Homo. This hypothesis links four distinctive features of human life histories: 1). our potential longevity, 2). our late maturity, 3). our midlife menopause, and 4). our early weaning with next offspring produced before the previous infant can feed itself. I discuss the problem, then, using modern humans and chimpanzees to represent, respectively, genus Homo and australopithecines, I focus on two corollaries of this grandmother hypothesis: 1). that ancestral age-specific fertility declines persisted in our genus, while 2). senescence in other aspects of physiological performance slowed down. The data are scanty but they illustrate similarities in age-specific fertility decline and differences in somatic durability that are consistent with the hypothesis that increased longevity in our genus is a legacy of the "reproductive" role of ancestral grandmothers. Among our great ape cousins it is normal for the female to have a much longer lifespan than the male. This is due to the male having a short reproductive life. When the chimp alpha male is knocked off his perch, essentially his reproductive time is over, and he dies young. The females have to live longer to raise the offspring, regardless of who is alpha male." You appear to be discussing something different. Perhaps you could post the scientific paper that is your source? Or perhaps not. I didn't know you were a Lamarckist.

No, they did NOT add enzymes! The thermal proteins turn out to have enzymatic activity! They are not "blobs of amino acids"! They are cells composed of proteins! Pay attention and forget Wiki. The requirement is not "sense their environment" but respond to stimuli. And apparently you missed the part that the protocells respond to stimuli with an action potential identical to nerve cells Fire lacks anabolism. Protocells have that. No, they convinced quite a few researchers. If you look at the contributors to Fox's books, you find a large number. However, what happened was that the goalposts got moved. Instead of "life", what researchers wanted to do was get a cell with DNA/RNA directed protein synthesis. IOW, a modern cell. And that is where the research is now. Protocells are alive. The data says so. Yes, it is your fault. Wikipedia can't be used as a reliable source. There is no mechanism for checking the accuracy of the entries, and people can change the entries whenever they want. Now, at the website I gave you, there is this at the beginning "One thing that will make tonight so exciting is a video tape that you will see, .. in which you will see the phenomenon of living cells forming before your eyes. " http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html http://www.springerlink.com/content/dxq91868368083p2/ http://www.springerlink.com/content/k2374p7614351u64/ http://www.thefreelibrary.com/From+proteins+to+protolife:+was+life's+emergence+random+or+guided+by...-a015657614 If you really want to see that protobionts are not speculative, then you have to go to the scientific literature and do hardcopy. Below are some references for you to look up: Fox SW. "Synthesis of life in the lab? Defining a protoliving system." Quarterly Review of Biology, 1991 Jun, 66(2):181-5. Rohlfing, DL, Fox, SW. Catalytic activities of thermal polyanhydro-a-amino acids. Advances Catal. 20: 373-418, 1969. Hydrolysis (energy gaining): p-nitrophenyl acetate Fox, S., Harada, K. Rohlfing, DL The thermal copolymerization of a-amino acids. In Stahmann, MA (ed) Polyamino Acids, Polypeptides, and Proteins (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison) 47-54, 1962 Rohlfing DL and Fox, SW. The catalytic activity of thermal polyanhydro-a-amino acids for the hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl acetate. Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 118: 127-132, 1967. Usdin, VR, Mitz, MA, Killos, PJ. Inhibition and reactivation of the catalytic activity of a thermal a-amino acid copolymer. Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 122: 258-261, 1967. p-nitrophenyl phosphate Oshima, T. The catalytic hydrolysis of phosphate ester bonds by thermal polymers of amino acid. Arch. Biochim. Biophys. 126: 478-485, 1968. Decarboxylation Glururonic acid: Fox, SW and Krampitz, G. The catalytic decomposition of glucose in aqueous solution by thermal proteinoids. Nature 203: 1362-134, 1964 Pyruvic acid: Hardebeck, HG, Krampitz, G, Wulf, L. Decarboxylation of pyruvic acid in aqueous solution by thermal proteinoids. Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 123: 72-81, 1986. Oxaloacetic acid: Rohlfing, DL THe catalytic decarboxylation of oxaloacetic acid by thermally prepared poly-a-aminoacids. ARch. biochem. Biophys. 118: 468-474, 1967. Deamination Krampitz, G, Haas, W. Baas-Diehl, S. Glutaminsaure-Oxydoreductase-Aktivitat von polyanhydro-a-aminosauren (proteinoiden). Naturwissenschaften 55: 345-346, 1968. Anabolism: Amination: Krampitz, g, Baars-Diehl,S, Haas, W, Nakashima,T. Aminotransferase activity of thermal polylysine. Experientia 24: 140-142, 1968. Kolesnikov, M.P. 1991. Proteinoid microspheres and the process of prebiological, photophosphorylation. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 21: 31-37. ADP + Pi + light yields ATP RNA/DNA: JR Jungck and SW Fox, Synthesis of oligonucleotides by proteinoid microspheres acting on ATP. Naturwissenschaften, 60: 425-427, 1973. Peptides: T Nakashima and SW Fox, Synthesis of peptides from amino acids and ATP with lysine rich proteinoid. J. Mol. Evol. 15: 161-168. 1980. Fox, SW, Jungck, JR, Nakashima, T. From proteinoid microsphere to contemporary cell: formation of internucleotide and peptide bonds by proteinoid particles. Origins of Life 5: 227-237, 1974. Nakashima, T, Fox, SW. Formation of peptides by single or multiple additions of ATP to suspensions of nucleoproteinoid microparticles. BioSystems 14: 151-161, 1981. Paecht-Horowitz M, Katchalsky A. J Synthesis of amino acyl-adenylates under prebiotic conditions. Mol Evol 1973;2(2-3):91-8 Oxidoreductions: H2O2 (catalase) and H2O2 and hydrogen donors (peroxidase reaction) Dose, K, Zaki,L. The peroxidatic and catalase activity of hemoproteinoids. Z. Naterforsch 26b: 144-148, 1971. Photoactivated decarboxylation -- glycoxylic acid, glucuronic acid, pyruvic acid. Wood, A, Hardebeck, HG. Light-enhanced decarboxylations by proteinoids. In Rohlfing, DL and Oparin, AI (eds) Molecular Evolution (Plenum, New York), 233-245, 1972. Hormone: Fox, SW, Wang, C-t. Melanocyte-stimulating hormone activity in in thermal proteins of a-amino acids. Science 160: 547-548, 1968. Compartments within protocells: Brooke S, Fox SW. Compartmentalization in proteinoid microspheres.Biosystems. 1977 Jun;9(1):1-22. Photosynthesis: Bahn PR, Fox SW. Models for protocellular photophosphorylation. Biosystems. 1981;14(1):3-14. Masinovsky Z, Lozovaya GI, Sivash AA, Drasner M. Porphyrin-proteinoid complexes as models of prebiotic photosensitizers. Biosystems 1989;22(4):305-10. Masinovsky Z, Lozovaya GI, Sivash AA. Some aspects of the early evolution of photosynthesis. Adv Space Res 1992;12(4):199-205. Response to stimuli Przybylski AT. Excitable cell made of thermal proteinoids. Biosystems 1985;17(4):281-288. Vaughan G, Przybylski AT, Fox SW. Thermal proteinoids as excitability-inducing materials. Biosystems. 1987;20(3):219-23. Ishima Y, Przybylski AT, Fox SW. Electrical membrane phenomena in spherules from proteinoid and lecithin. Biosystems. 1981;13(4):243-51. Pappelis, A., S. W. Fox, R. Grubbs, and J. Bozzola. 1998. Animate protocells from inanimate thermal proteins: Visualization of the Process. In Exobiology: Matter, Energy, and Information in the Origin and Evolution of Life in the Universe. J. Chela-Flores and F. Raulin, eds., Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Pp.195-198. Growth and Reproduction: Fox, SW, McCauley, RJ, Wood, A A model of primitive heterotrophic proliferation. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. 20: 773-778, 1967. Fox, SW. Molecular evolution to the first cells. Pure Appld. Chem. 34: 641-669, 1973. Communication: Hsu, LL, Brooke, S, Fox, SW. Conjugation of proteinoid microspheres: a model of primordial communication. Curr. Mod. Biol. (now BioSystems) 4: 12-25, 1971. BTW, Skeptic, if you go back to 1996 it was thought that life had been discovered on Mars. That was the year it was announced that traces of microorganisms were found on a Martian meteorite discovered in Antarctica. And it did overshadow everything else that year. You are using a rhetorical trick. You are trying to ridicule Papellis and say he is wrong in general because, later, it was decided that the evidence wasn't as solid as initially claimed. The controversy is still active. But that isn't valid. In its historical context, the comment is accurate: the "discovery of life on Mars" did overshadow everything else. It is non sequitor to say "because it was decided that the data did not show life on Mars means that Papellis' comments on protocells are also wrong."

What it looked like was water with a lower salt content than the present sea but a higher content of amino acids, sugars, and nucleic acids. However, it was still a pretty dilute solution of these. It's not like it is going to be thick like a "soup"; it's going to be clear. Clearer than the modern ocean (which has quite a few microogranisms per ml). It's just that you have a solution of salts and organic chemicals.

1. There are genes that, if changed, will increase lifespan. This has been done in C. elegans and some other species. You can do a Google or PubMed search. 2. Telomeres seem to be responsible for what is called "Hayflick's Limit" in which cells have a specified number of cell divisions (which varies from species to species) and then they senesce and die. Note, however, that many adult stem cells do not have this limit and can replace their telomeres 3. There is a theory of aging that oxidative damage accumulates in cells and kills them. In terms of evolution, natural selection is blind to what happens to an individual after it breeds. It cannot select either for longer or shorter lifespand UNLESS that lifespan has an effect on the ability of the next generation to breed. Thus, there are alleles in humans that protect against atherosclerosis, but they can't increase by natural selection since coronary artery disease only affects people long after they have children. So the alleles remain in low frequency in the population. Paralith already gave the "grandmother theory" of why humans tend to be able to live so long after they have children. If anyone is interested, the paper is: Hawkes K. Am J Hum Biol. 2003 May-Jun;15(3):380-400. Grandmothers and the evolution of human longevity. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=12704714&ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum Children whose grandmothers are still alive have a better survival chance than those whose grandmothers die young (like before they are born). And, of course, the longer a grandmother lives (and is active), the more grandchildren she is going to be around to help. So natural selection would select those who had longer-lived grandmothers (and, of course, they would have the grandmothers' alleles). Males go along for the ride since the alleles for longer lifespan are on chromosomes other than the X. This theory makes a lot of logical sense altho it is very difficult to test. One piece of data that it does explain is why women have longer average lifespans than men: women are directly selected while men only get an indirect benefit from selection for female long life. You are a bit behind the times in terms of theories of cancer origin. You are working under the old "two-hit hypothesis". It is now thought that most cancers arise in adult stem cells. These stem cells are ALREADY "immortal". What happens is that the stem cell loses growth control. However, to have a clinical cancer the cell needs a lot more mutations: mutations that avoid apoptosis because it has genetic damage, mutations that avoid the immune system, mutations that attract blood vessels, and mutations that allow the cell to leave its tissue, get into the blood vessels, and then get out of the blood vessels again. Avoiding the immune system is a biggie. It appears that most cancerous cells are killed by the immune system because they are producing abnormal proteins, and the immune system can detect this.

Dear God, NO! Avoid Feynman until you learn quite a bit in the field. Feynman liked being outrageous. He once said "I love to see how far I can lead people by the nose before they notice." If you don't know anything in the field, Feynman can lead you quite far. What Evolution IS by Mayr, as someone noted. The Whole Shebang by Timothy Ferris Theories on the Scrapheap by John Losee (also his Philosophy of Science: An Historical Perspective) Evolution by Mark Ridley

For our grad school of Biomedical Science, the number of undergraduate majors is irrelevant. The times I've sat on the Admissions Committee no one even looked! Certainly not me. It may be different in the social sciences. GPA is important in that it must be > 3.0. After that gradations between 3.2 and 3.8 aren't too significant. The GRE is very important. It's a standardized test that can be used to compare students of different schools. GPA is internal and may reflect, to some extent, how the professors graded rather than the student. So GPA is not strictly comparable between schools -- which is why any GPA > 3.0 is acceptable. Letters of recommendation are important, as is research experience. Again, research may not be as important if you are going to grad school in Psych. Why don't you call around to some grad schools and ask what is important for their admission criteria?

This is misrepresentation. If you go to the page and read it, you find: "Because of the dependence of the Sun's irradiance on solar activity, reductions from contemporary levels are expected during the seventeenth century Maunder Minimum. New reconstructions of spectral irradiance are developed since 1600 with absolute scales traceable to spacebased observations. The long-term variations track the envelope of group sunspot numbers and have amplitudes consistent with the range of Ca II brightness in Sun-like stars. Estimated increases since 1675 are 0.7%, 0.2% and 0.07% in broad ultraviolet, visible/near infrared and infrared spectral bands, with a total irradiance increase of 0.2%." This means that it is increase since the Maunder Minimum, which is in the middle of the Little Ice Age. There are NO claims that this increase will account for current global warming. Instead, it just gets us back to what solar irradiation was before the Minimum. But ice cores show that average temps then were a lot lower than now. Solar forcing has been considered as cause of global warming. As have the other causes listed at http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/ They are insufficient to account for the increase in mean global temps. Only from the Maunder Minimum. It has long been known that sunspot activity declined to the Minimum and then increases since then. This has all been taken into account by climatologists. People guilty of blatant misinformation should not project their failures on others.

Sorry, but I am NOT moving the goalposts. I'm taking the standard definition for life. From Merriam-Webster: "c: an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction" The protocells have ALL of those. What has happened is that some scientists -- for personal reasons -- added the requirement of directed protein synthesis. It's obvious that isn't required. You sidestepped my point. You still want to discuss "gaps" in science. Theologically you cannot insert God into those gaps. It is wrong to do so by theological reasoning, not scientific reasoning. I would add the caveat "right now". I don't want to speak for all time. For instance, if ekpyrotic is true, then it pretty much wipes out theism. That's a very big "if", which is why I bolded it. That's not the reason. The reason is not due to deity but science. science cannot directly test for deity. The limitation is called Methodological Materialism and derives directly from how we do experiments. We can't "control" for deity or supernatural. Deity gets into science by the backdoor: propose a material mechanism of deity and then test for the mechanism. A great example is Flood Geology: God causes a Flood and the Flood causes all of geology. Scientists didn't test for God; they tested (and refuted) the Flood. Does this mean that God does not cause geology? No. It means God doesn't cause geology THIS way. Creationism has the mechanism of direct manufacture of organisms or parts of them. The data shows that this mechanism is false. (BTW, notice that this is Popperian science: showing a theory -- creationism/ID -- to be false). I agree that some scientists present their personal beliefs as science. Dawkins, PZ Meyer, and Michael Behe are particularly abusive in this. They get the science wrong. Belief in God or belief that God does not exist comes from outside science. 1. When has Dawkins addressed groups of school children? When has science been presented as atheistic in public schools? 2. The reason it "undermines the public trust in all of science" is that creationists spin it this way for their own reasons. If the public understood science, it would ONLY undermine Dawkins' "objectivity" on this subject. Quite frankly, I think Milton is lying. He is using too many of the already refuted creationist arguments for me to think he is really agnostic and being "open minded". If he were truly open minded, he would have found the refutation for those arguments already. But yes, we can leave it until later. No. I'm saying it hasn't been falsified and we are running out of tests that haven't been performed. "Unfalsifiable" is a state whereby no test could possibly falsify it. "Falsifiable" is a state whereby you can specify data that, if found, would falsify it. That doesn't mean you are going to find that data. You may find data that supports the theory, instead. A theory doesn't go from "falsifiable" to "unfalsifiable" because the tests have been done and not falsified it. The theory is still "falsifiable", it's just that we can't find any datat that actually falsifies it. Common ancestry could still be falsified if we were to find mammalian fossils in Cambrian or pre-Cambrian strata. Thank you for the quote from Popper. I have the book and I am a Popperian -- subject to some valid criticism of Popper. Popper does state that theories can get "confirmation": "2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions. 3. Every 'good' scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is. 4. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. 5. Confirming evidence should not count *except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory:* and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory." [emphasis Popper's] Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 1963 p 38. So the situation is more complicated than you portray. Yes, our theories remain "tentative" in that we cannot, strictly speaking, "prove" them. However, there comes a point where attempts to falsify the theory repeatedly fail and we provisionally accept the theory as true. Notice that "provisionally". We can always change our minds if new data comes up -- those mammalian fossils in Cambrian strata. But in the meantime we accept the theory as provisionally true. We then use the theory/hypothesis as background for other hypotheses/theories. A classic example is heliocentrism. We provisionally accept that the planets orbit the sun, Kepler's laws of those orbits, and Einstein's (and Newton's) laws of motion. We then use those theories to calculate the paths of spacecraft to other planets. When those spacecraft arrive where and when we calculate them to arrive (accepting the theories as true), then that becomes more supporting data for the theories. Theories are tested in bundles. You have read a little of Popper. Time to read Pierre Duhem. Evolution doesn't stop being tested. But by this time it is perverse not to accept evolution as provisionally true. Name some that haven't been tested for common ancestry. Equivalent statements, such as finding bird fossils, don't count. If there are "countless" you should have no trouble listing 10 for us. BTW, "common ancestry or Darwinism" are not the same thing. Darwin actually proposed 5 theories that we lump together under "evolution". The latest when common ancestry as a whole was tested was when DNA sequences became easy and cheap to get. Phylogenetic analysis compared base sequences across taxa. IF common ancestry was wrong, those sequences would have been independent. Instead, the sequences showed historical relationships -- what common ancestry predicts. That pretty well covers just about everything else. I noted above when molecular biology was able to make a new test for Darwinism. I also note that when it became possible to do amino acid sequences of proteins, the same thing was done looking at proteins from different taxa to see if they were related. This has been, is being done, all the time. And yes, if there is new data challenging evolution, then we consider this. However, notice that the new claims don't get a free ride. Just because someone says the data refutes Darwinism doesn't automatically mean it does. This claim too is open to testing trying to falsify it. Not protective. Just that the tests HAVE BEEN DONE! Pay attention. If you can think of tests, put them out there. But there are a lot of evolutionary biologists who have been working -- by Popperian science -- since 1859 testing evolution. PubMed has over 150,000 articles just since 1965 that involve tests of evolution! We are at the stage of testing evolution the way we test heliocentrism -- by having it as one of the bundle of hypotheses, not the primary one. Are we secure with heliocentrism? Cell theory? The helix theory of DNA? This gets to what you quoted from Popper: Evolution is not "dogmatically" upheld. The parts that can be challenged are. Look at Gould with Punctuated Equilibrium, spandrels, and group selection. ALL of those challenged parts of evolution. Another philosopher of science you need to read is Imre Lakatos. Lakatos talks about "research programmes" where you have core statements (hypotheses) and auxiliary hypotheses. Major theories like evolution have a few core hypotheses and hundreds of auxiliary hypotheses. Look at all the argument over the decades over the auxiliary hypotheses. Attempts to show them wrong. The reason the core statements are still there is that people have tried to show them wrong and repeatedly failed. It's not that we haven't tried to overthrow the core statements, but we can't. You are mistaking "can't" for "don't want to". No, Popper did NOT say that. He did not say "remain scientific". He said to be scientific, a theory when proposed had to be falsifiable. And evolution was falsifiable when it was proposed. I posted a criteria Darwin listed that would have falsified natural selection: if that data had been found. It hasn't been. (Note the humans have made navel oranges -- without seeds -- such that the trees produce fruit solely for the benefit of humans. And guess what? Navel orange trees were NOT made by natural selection!) As it turns out, this is the part Popper got wrong. He was proposing a demarcation criteria between science and non-science. He was wrong. Falsification won't work as defining something as "scientific". 1. Milton is wrong about evolution being able to stand up. 2. Milton can't claim that evolution fails to satisfy 2 contradictory views of what science is. Since they contradict, anything that satisfies one is not going to satisfy the other. No, we can't. Since this is about Milton's book, I have tested Milton's statements and falsified them. You can't pretend it didn't happen and come back later. Sorry, but you have Kuhn wrong. Kuhn didn't use the term "ad hoc hypotheses". That's Popper. Kuhn stated that anomalous data surfaced and was not handled. However, continuing testing Milton's statements trying to falsify them (BTW, aren't you a bit protective about Milton?), we find that evolution has handled the anomalies very well from within evolution. The most famous example is the relative rarity of transitional sequences between species in the fossil record. As Gould noted, if most speciation is by allopatric speciation (small populations peripherally isolated), then the fossil record is exactly what we would expect to see! BTW, Kuhn emphasizes not a paradigm's decline, but that a paradigm is only replaced by another paradigm. Unlike Popper, who said we should drop a theory when falsified, even without a replacement, Kuhn insisted that theories are only dropped when there is a viable replacement. What does Milton offer as a viable alternative paradigm that we should drop Darwinism? You changed goalposts. The number of papers published addresses Milton's claim that evolution is a "declining paradigm". A consequence of that is that fewer and fewer papers are published as people switch to a NEW paradigm. I showed that the consequence was false. I continued to do that above as I showed that evolution has been able -- using evolution without ad hoc hypotheses -- to resolve anomalies. Now, predicting new (novel) as yet unobserved phenomenon is a characteristic of a theory being successful under Popper. I also showed data that evolution was doing this. Again falsifying Milton. You don't seem to be adhering to Popper and admitting falsifying data. Instead, you seem to be positing ad hoc hypotheses to avoid falsification. Moved the goalposts. You are forgetting history. Darwinism elaborated (past tense) a number of bold predictions not yet tested. But then the tests were done. And the bold predictions born out. It is not required that a "good" theory keep coming up with "bold" predictions. Relativity made the VERY bold prediction that light bent in a strong gravitational field. That prediction was born out. There is no requirement for Relativity to be a "good" theory that it keep coming up with bold predictions. You are making a strawman out of what Popper said. Popper was talking about when a theory was formulated. As it is, evolution continues to be a very successful theory. Very recently, scientists used evolution to "predict" exactly which strata to look in to find transitional species between fish and amphibians. And lo, they found Tiktaalik roseae. Now, logically if a theory really has it right, it can't be falsified. Because it is correct. If we really could search thru all the possible Cambrian strata and do not find mammalian fossils, it would mean that evolution was "falsifiable" but not "falsified", wouldn't it? Where are we with evolution and Darwinism? The testing of the original, bold predictions have been done. So we now use Darwinism as one of the bundle of (provisionally) true hypotheses as we make up new ones. We still test Darwinism a lot, but as part of the bundle and not as the main hypothesis. This is where Popperianism runs into trouble. Compare that to what you said in a later post: If you adhere to a strict view of Popper, then YES! Even if we tested those historical adaptations and supported them, that doesn't mean they are true. Therefore, untested (not "verified") they are just as much support as they would be if tested! But you don't think so, do you? You think the historical adaptations would offer more support for Darwin if they were tested and "confirmed" in the Popperian sense. So you don't agree with Popper. You also have the problem that, if you think Popper is absolutely right, there is no way to "verify", is there? If the probability of correctness doesn't increase to the point of near certainty, then nothing can be "verified", can it? So, in view of your adherence to Popper, what would you accept as "verification"? Now, Popper wrote that view because he tried to completely reject induction. If you completely reject induction, then you are logically left with this view. Popper painted himself into a corner. Popper realized this was wrong, which is why, in his later books, he allowed "a whiff of inductionism" into his view of science. As a theory continues to avoid falsification, induction is employed to give confidence that it will continue to avoid falsification. That is why we can accept theories as provisionally true. Popper had some very good ideas on how, generally, science is done. But Popper is not the last and only word on how science is done. Popper was mistaken about things. On the contrary, I have tested Milton's statements by trying -- and succeeding -- in falsifying them. LOL! Weren't you paying attention during the controversy of Punctuated Equilibrium? Haven't you been paying attention about the evo-devo debate? Haven't you been paying attention to the Feduccia-Ostrom arguments over the ancestry of birds or the recent Nature paper where Leakey challenges that habilis is the ancestor of erectus? Good grief, the controversies within evolution are all around you! The problem is that the core statements of Darwinism haven't been overthrown because we can't. Scientists have tried. They tried with phylogenetic analysis. They tried before that with amino acid sequences. They tried before that with morphology. When you look at molecular biology, do you see anyone challenging the foundational statement that DNA is a helix? Does that bother you? Do you think there is any data out there that would falsify that theory? Does that mean the theory wasn't falsifiable? Does that bother you? Do you see anyone challenging the foundational statements of heliocentrism? What evidence or tests can you propose that would falsify it? Haven't all the basic tests been done? What "bold new predictions" does heliocentrism make? Does that failure mean it isn't a "good theory"? IOW, the Advocate, why are you applying standards to evolution that you don't apply to other theories? Your whole post is Special Pleading. Milton, and you, have made a strawman. The giraffe neck is used to illustrate the difference between 2 theories: natural selection and Lamarckism. It compares those 2 theories on how they would explain the giraffe got the long neck. The claim was NEVER made that either explanation had been tested in that instance. Do you want the specific examples that Milton used or do you want data on whether the general idea of natural selection providing adaptations? In terms of general data, there are examples both in living species (having intermediates) and in the fossil record. For instance, in terms of complex organs, a recent study looked the evolution of placenta. They did this in a fish genus where the living species display intermediate stages of evolution of the placenta: 1. David N. Reznick, Mariana Mateos, and Mark S. Springer Independent Origins and Rapid Evolution of the Placenta in the Fish Genus Poeciliopsis Science 298: 1018-1020, Nov. 1, 2002. Intermediate steps in same genus. http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mmateos/reznicketal.pdf News article at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/298/5595/945a In a real-time experiment where the particular environment was known, the adaptation that natural selection should produce was predicted and then supported by the experiment: 2. Reznick, DN, Shaw, FH, Rodd, FH, and Shaw, RG. Evaluationof the rate of evolution in natural populations of guppies (Poeciliareticulata). Science 275:1934-1937, 1997. The lay article isPredatory-free guppies take an evolutionary leap forward, pg 1880. Other real-time experiments have looked at evolution of E.coli, tracking mutations and the adaptive advantage they cause: 2. Evolution in E. coli: http://myxo.css.msu.edu/lenski/pdf/2003,%20JME,%20Lenski%20et%20al.pdf Lenski RE, Mongold JA (2000) Cell size, shape, and fitness in evolving populations of bacteria. In: Brown JH, West GB (eds) Scaling in biology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 221–235 Lenski RE, Travisano M (1994) Dynamics of adaptation and diversification: 10,000-generation experiment with bacterial populations. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 91:6808–6814 http://myxo.css.msu.edu/lenski/pdf/1994,%20PNAS,%20Lenski%20&%20Travisano.pdf People studying protein evolution can track the adaptive results of natural selection in terms of function of the proteins: 1. E Wilson-Miles and DR Davies, On the ancestry of barrels. Science 289: 1490. Sept. 1, 2000. 2. M Buck and MK Rosen, Flipping a switch. Science 291: 2329-2330, March 23, 2001. Describes studies on the motion of proteins that are signalling molecules, including mutations that give activity in the absence of phosphorylation. 8. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5770/97 JT. Bridgham, SM Carroll, J W Thornton Evolution of Hormone-Receptor Complexity by Molecular Exploitation Science 7 April 2006: Vol. 312. no. 5770, pp. 97 - 101 Does Milton tell you why they are considered to be wrong? It would seem that Milton is showing that the auxiliary hypotheses of evolution are not only falsifiable, but that some of them have actually been falsified! So much for saying that evolution isn't falsifiable. Does he tell you what hypotheses/explanations replaced the originals and how those were tested? Or does he leave you in ignorance with the idea that there is no possible explanation? Mostly what they do is form part of the body of scientific evidence refuting ID/creationism. Remember, ID/creationism says that there is no POSSIBLE way for natural selection to make the structure. If there is a possible way, then that refutes ID/creationism. Altho the way is often documented -- such as the mammalian ear. http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/dave/JTB.html Remember that you also have to apply Popper to ID/creationism. When you do that, they are not only falsifiable but falsified. That is the difference between evolution and ID/creationism in terms of Popperian philosophy of science: 1. Evolution is falsifiable BUT not falsified. 2. ID/creationism is falsifiable AND falsified. Lockheed, try to listen carefully here: it's not about creationism being wrong. We agree that creationism is a refuted scientific theory. It's about the arguments used to show creationism to be wrong. Invalid arguments are invalid whether you use them for a position you agree with or you use them for a position you disagree with. The video does not have valid arguments to show creationism to be wrong. Nor are the arguments based in science! The video you posted has no science in it! It is assertion and argument from analogy. Invalid arguments.

Empirical. The reason it wasn't "trumpeted" is because abiogenesis scientists moved the goalposts. Instead, of "life", what they wanted was "modern cell" that made proteins by directed protein synthesis. I first encountered protocells in Lehninger's Biochemistry, the 1970 edition. I didn't think too much about them at the time but encountered them again in Science and Creationism edited by Ashley Montagu when I encountered creationism for the first time and was doing reading. Since the 2 major advocates of protocells -- Sidney Fox and Pappellis -- are dead or retired, there isn't much on the web. Pappellis used to have several pages on the Southern Illiniois University website, but they have been removed after his retirement. There is still one good page around: http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html I'll do better than that. I'll give you a recipe and you can make life in your own kitchen. Call Sigma Chemical Co. at 800-325-3010 and order 1 bottle of catalog number M 7145 and one bottle of R 7131 amino acids solutions (you need both to get all the amino acids http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/sigma/formulation/M5550for.pdf ). They will cost you about $40 plus shipping for both. Empty the bottles into a fying pan, turn the heat on low and heat until all the water is evaporated. Then heat for 15-60 minutes. Add water. You will have protocells in the solution. The probablity is 1 that each protein will have A biological activity. And ALL of them have A biological activity. If you do this at a hydrothermal vent, about 30 minutes. That is 10^-21 trillion years. Amino acids can be made by at least 3 ways: 1. In a thunderstorm in an atmosphere that has carbon dioxide, ammonia, water, nitrogen. In other words, the Miller-Urey reactions done in an oxidizing atmosphere. 2. At hydrothermal vents. Amino acids are being made there today. 3. On comets and delivered to the early earth by soft collisions. Amino acids have been observed on comets today. Which is why Wiki is a dubious source! They talked about "coacervate droplets" as "protocells". Apples and oranges. This is from Pappellis' website and was part of a lecture given to his class in "Origin of Life". I copied it before the page was removed: "In the late 1950s, Fox and his associates were describing how they synthesized thermal proteins (6) and the conversion of these into protocells (proteinoid microspheres) that exhibited the attributes of life. That these were simulations of natural events was to be suggested. By the 1980s, they were considered to be alive (protocells, the smallest unit of protolife)(7). Only the 1996 discovery of life on Mars would eclipse the findings of Yanagawa and Kabayashi (8) that the thermal protein protocell could be synthesized by simulations of hydrothermal systems!! " "Thermal oligo/polypeptides were found to be highly ordered in both primary sequence and composition. Even the number of repeatable units in thermal oligo/polypeptides was greater than that isolated from modem proteins. The self-assembled protocells also showed more order than cells that emerged later by evolution. Thus, thermal oligo/peptides were informed molecules that yielded protocellular units when hydrated (protocellular boundary = wall-membrane), multizymes (metabolically active molecules capable of catalyzing multiple categories of reactions common to metabolism in modem cells), molecules of inheritance (storage and transmission of information needed to sustain life in one and many generations), substrates for growth and reproduction, and the conversion of solar energy to chemical bond energy. The ability of protocellular boundaries to exhibit membrane potentials (action potentials), to function as semipermeable barriers, and sites of syntheses is believed to be due to the amphiphilic natures of thermal oligo/polypeptides and their porous nature enabling diffusion to occur in very short periods of time. " http://mccoy.lib.siu.edu/projects/bio315/section2.htm