Evolution - is it Challengable?

[Daecon]

Would that be a "big picture" viewpoint?

[SkepticLance]

To psynapse

 

Exactly the same thing happens in the human body, where most of the cells, including the brain, are simply support structures for the gonads, to allow those specific cells to pass on their genes. Which makes no difference since all the cells share exactly the same genes. Which is what happens with slime moulds. The same genes are passed.

 

To Mr. Skeptic

 

Allow me to challenge one of your earlier statements, that a theory can only be destroyed by another theory. Not so.

 

Theories are not wrecked by new theories. They are wrecked by new data. In science, data is king. If you want to test, and maybe destroy, an old theory, you make a prediction and then test the prediction. The results (new data) may support or oppose the old theory. If the old theory is destroyed, it may be replaced by a new theory, but not necessarily.

 

To vexer.

 

I think your point has been addressed very thoroughly. Evolution by natural selection has been attacked many times scientifically, and continues to be so. The fact that it continues is strong evidence that it is the best model of reality in this sphere. Today there are several creationist organisations who hire Ph. D. biologists to do work to try to destroy the principle of evolution. To date, they have consistently failed.

[CDarwin]

Allow me to challenge one of your earlier statements, that a theory can only be destroyed by another theory. Not so.

 

Theories are not wrecked by new theories. They are wrecked by new data. In science, data is king. If you want to test, and maybe destroy, an old theory, you make a prediction and then test the prediction. The results (new data) may support or oppose the old theory. If the old theory is destroyed, it may be replaced by a new theory, but not necessarily.

 

Stephen Jay Gould addressed this in Ontogeny and Phylogeny. His premise is that although in theory a theory (haha) should fall when the data becomes arrayed too forcefully against it, often this doesn't happen. Theories simply change to incorporate the exceptions. What it seems to take to demolish a really well-entrenched theory is another theory that incorporates all the exceptions better and more elegantly than the old theory.

[Daecon]

Are there any examples of these "exceptions"?

[CDarwin]

Are there any examples of these "exceptions"?

 

Well, Gould was talking about Hackel's Biogenic Law, "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' (that was part of it at least), which was a form of orthogenetic transformationism. Obviously there are instances when ontogeny demonstrably doesn't recapitulate phylogeny, and Haekel dealt with this by simply created a subclass of evolution in his theory called "palingenesis" where natural selection worked to "distort" the proper orthogenetic, progressive sequence.

 

It took the modern theoretical approach brought by Mendelian genetics in the early 20th Century to unseat the Biogenic Law and usher in the more powerful theory of proper Darwinian evolution.

 

There are certainly "exceptions" in the data set used to bolster Darwinian evolution; that is individual observations that don't themselves seem to support the theory. The many tortoises on different islands might be an example, as they give the some elements of the appearance of possessing common descent but obviously couldn't. The rest of the data is robust enough to allow even these such observations to be fit into the theoretical framework, however, such that it is difficult to imagine any theory that could do better.

 

But then, I don't suppose anyone ever does before it's come up with.

[SkepticLance]

To CDarwin

 

I understand what you are saying. However, it is new data that shows the need for a new theory. You are suggesting that human nature, being imperfect, means that scientists will not dump an old theory just on the basis of new data. There will be truth in this, sadly. However, that reflects the flaws in human decision making, rather than a part of good science.

[CDarwin]

To CDarwin

 

I understand what you are saying. However, it is new data that shows the need for a new theory. You are suggesting that human nature, being imperfect, means that scientists will not dump an old theory just on the basis of new data. There will be truth in this, sadly. However, that reflects the flaws in human decision making, rather than a part of good science.

 

I'm not sure you could expect anything else, though. Science is, after all, only human reasoning. It's bound to work in certain ways.

 

Data is the basis of the new theory, right. So data is an essential part of all of this. The simple enumeration of data usually isn't enough, though.

[SkepticLance]

The formulation of a new theory should roughly follow as below.

New data

Formulation of hypothesis

Testable prediction from hypothesis

Novel experiment or observation to check prediction

Further predictive testing

Hypothesis passes tests and becomes a theory.

[Mr Skeptic]

To Mr. Skeptic

 

Allow me to challenge one of your earlier statements, that a theory can only be destroyed by another theory. Not so.

 

Theories are not wrecked by new theories. They are wrecked by new data. In science, data is king. If you want to test, and maybe destroy, an old theory, you make a prediction and then test the prediction. The results (new data) may support or oppose the old theory. If the old theory is destroyed, it may be replaced by a new theory, but not necessarily.

 

Yes and no. While data may be enough to falsify a theory, there is no reason to drop a decent if incorrect theory unless there is a better theory to replace it. Old theories may be kept alive by making exceptions or restricting where they apply, or they can simply be modified into a new if similar theory.

 

For example we currently hold two contradictory theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Though they contradict each other as to whether gravity is due to warping of spacetime or gravitons, we keep both theories because they are useful. Though Newtonian mechanics has not only been shown to be false, but has been replaced by more accurate theories (relativity, and quantum mechanics), we still keep it because it is accurate enough given certain restrictions, and much simpler.

 

---

 

I suspect that the major reason that people are reluctant to talk about challenging evolution is because that theory is under heavy siege from non-scientific circles. Unless their words are watched carefully, they might find that something they said gets yanked out of context in some creationist literature or newspaper, and ruins their reputation.

[swansont]

There's a difference between falsified theories, contradictory theories and incomplete theories. GR and QM aren't really contradictory since they don't have a lot of overlap — it's not like they predict different results across the board and only one can be right.

 

You won't drop a theory that works, even if you find areas where it doesn't hold — you will limit its use to the areas where it does hold, and/or modify the theory, as appropriate. You discard theories when they don't work, i.e. you falsify them. Lamarckism, saltation, as I mentioned before, and in physics you have things like the particulate thermodynamics like phlogiston and caloric theories.

 

New data does bring about demand for new theories when the established theory doesn't fit. But whether you discard, modify or segregate the old theory depends on the failure mode. We didn't drop Newtonian gravity when GR was introduced, because it still works under a wide range of circumstances. Same with classical physics that does not deal with quantum or relativistic scales. Evolution is an example of modification of the theory, because new mechanisms have been added, but the "descent with modification" basis still holds.

[Vexer]

SkepticLance wrote: I think your point has been addressed very thoroughly.

 

I think you must be joking.

 

 

I have pretty much had almost zero intelligent response.

 

 

I thank CDarwin for (his/her) offering. But the ideas there don’t really represent modern “alternate theories”. (And BTW, as far as I know “Lamarkism" has been shown to occur, on a cellular level. But not enough to constitute a Big Picture theory. So far).

 

CDarwin, you talk about history. I’ve “boned up” on that. I’m trying to bone-up on the truth. Now.

 

 

But people (as I knew they would) are too trigger-happy to burn the witch. Kinda amusing to watch, up to a point.

 

 

psynapse; I understand the argument about “altruism”, but in general, I can accept that as a group-selection thing that fits well with Darwin-type evolution – so I don’t see that as a “chink”. Yet.

 

 

Others, please direct yourself to the OP.

[Realitycheck]

Why should we give you ammunition to help waste our time refuting the arguments that we give you?

[Vexer]

(You haven't given me any arguments. I'm not *asking* for arguments. I'm wondering if anyone has Kepleresque insights to share).

 

And, who is "we"?

 

(There's a "we"?)

[Realitycheck]

What's this "Be brave" crap? The reason why no one is actually answering your OP is because you're coming off exactly how you claim you're not - a crypto-creationist. "Let's challenge it. Be Brave?" - that's exactly the kind of irrelevant, emotional, traditionalist appeal I would expect from a creationist. As if fear is responsible for the propogation of the theory of evolution. Weird. A scientist would have little reason to throw in such a left field statement like that for seemingly no reason at all.

 

You don't understand scientists very well if you believe that. There's nothing they like better than disagreeing with each other and challenging big ideas.

 

I think you're either a creationist, an anti-evolution anti-science type, or a troll. Otherwise, you wouldn't be using psycho provocative verbiage.

 

My feelings echo these.

 

There is no other theory that is so vastly supported by the geological record and our scientific knowledge. Everybody else has already been beating it to hell for a hundred years that it just keeps getting more and more perfect.

 

This says it all.

 

Today there are several creationist organisations who hire Ph. D. biologists to do work to try to destroy the principle of evolution. To date, they have consistently failed.

[swansont]

I think you must be joking.

 

 

I have pretty much had almost zero intelligent response.

 

That's not the direction to take this discussion.

[PhDP]

Seems to me that Darwin-type bio-evolutionary theory has no (scientific) theoretical opponents.

 

It depends what you mean by "Darwin-type". If you're looking for evolutionary scientists disputing the existence of natural selection, you're not going to find many.

 

On the other hand, among theoretical population geneticists and molecular evolutionary biologists, there's still no consensus about "Darwinism". The relative importance of the 3 main mechanisms of evolution is still debated. But we don't hear much about the debates within evolutionary biology, IMO, for 2 main reasons;

 

1; Outside the scientosphere, most of the things we hear about evolution are related to the so-called "creation-evolution debate".

 

2; The debate is complicated and often counterintuitive. I had the hell of a time trying to explain how "junk DNA" was predicted by the neutral theory (but not Darwinism, btw). Which is in fact a simple prediction supported by pretty much all evolutionary biologists.

 

It's something that is debated using advanced maths (theoretical population genetics) or molecular biology, either way, it's not very accessible. In a way, it's a continuation of the theoretical debates between Fisher and Wright.

[Phi for All]

But people (as I knew they would) are too trigger-happy to burn the witch. Kinda amusing to watch, up to a point.

What's really amusing to watch is an ID proponent who comes to a science forum looking for ammo against evolution, who proceeds to stir up "controversy" by claiming a witch hunt, then derides every answer he gets from the membership and calls them cowards for not trying to force a better theory than evolution into the discussion.

 

And Vexer, please understand that if you're *not* an ID proponent in disguise, you're acting like every single one who has ever visited here. Your next move will either be to storm off in a huff, claiming that we're no scientists, or you will realize that people have tried to respond to your OP but there currently are no chinks in this theory's armor. While any theory is challengeable, evolution remains the best answer to how organisms change over time.

[Paralith]

Be brave: where would I start looking, if I were interested in challenging Evolution? Where are the anomalies? What doesn’t quite make sense about the theory(s)? Where are the chinks?

 

Vexer, you should really think about what exactly you are asking here. What is the "big idea" of evolution? It is the "idea" that life undergoes descent with modification; it is the "idea" that the gene frequencies of a population of organisms changes over time. There are no chinks or anomalies here. Life descends with modification. This statement is as good as fact. There is no where to look if you want to challenge this statement in a way that has not already been thoroughly refuted.

 

Though I'm risking your calling me yet another witch hunter, I have to point out that you are perpetuating a common misconception (purposed confusion?) often held by people who attempt to challenge evolution. You are mistaking the "big idea" of evolution with the minutiae if it's mechanisms, of how the modifications and the changes occurring to populations of organisms happens. The mechanisms of evolution and the big idea of evolution are not the same thing, so if you are including the mechanics in your amazingly-and-uniquely-unchallengeable-theory-of-evolution, you are really talking about two things, not one. The mechanisms have been consistently challenged and changed, sometimes dramatically, throughout history, as has been described by many of the previous posters, and they continue to be researched and argued about today. There are chinks and anomalies and alternate theories aplenty at this level of study.

 

So, which one are you talking about? Evolution, or the mechanisms of evolution?

[Sayonara]

Off-topic posts on ape/human divergence moved to a new thread here:

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=32329

[CharonY]

Also, although it already has been mentioned, I just want to stress again that evolution and theory of evolution are two distinct things.

In addition the current theory of evolution is quite different from the original Darwinian notion. For example Darwin could not be sure how inheritance. The original Darwinian theory evolution included for example Lamarckian inheritance as a possibility. This was only refuted by the Neo-darwinistic theory. This again was surpassed by the modern synthesis which started to develop around the 1930s and 40s. However many basic tenets of the modern synthesis have been found not to be as universal as believed half a century ago and a new modern synthesis, sometimes referred to as postmodern synthesis is starting to form.

Note that in all case not evolution as a process is challenged, evidence for this are rock-hard (literally in some cases), however the actual mechanisms are the element of the theories. What has survived from the Darwinian notion is that a populations are inherently variable and that natural selection is acting on it. What has been challenged is the relative importance of natural selection compared to other effects and mechanisms, especially when it comes to speication.

[Vexer]

(Auto "Merge-Post" is the cause of the messed-up thing below)

 

There is no other theory that is so vastly supported by the geological record and our scientific knowledge.

 

I said that in my OP. How can you be so inattentive that you quote me, to oppose me? Read my OP. That's verging on rude.

 

It's knee-jerk city, in here.

 

 

 

Why should we give you ammunition to help waste our time refuting the arguments that we give you?

 

What? You really didn't read my OP, did you.

 

 

 

But Swansont I am surely more sinned against, than sinning.

 

 

 

 

I bravely tried. And owe no apologies.

 

 

 

 

So, which one are you talking about? Evolution, or the mechanisms of evolution?

 

My OP makes it clear. It's simple, as a question.

 

 

 

And Vexer, please understand that if you're *not* an ID proponent in disguise, you're acting like every single one who has ever visited here.

 

That's a tough one. Should your prejudice silence me? Or should your prejudice silence you?

 

 

Nah. Can't you just be scientists for one second and respond to my OP as though you weren't in a political war?

 

Or can't you. (Be scientists).

[swansont]

You OP has been responded to. There were some answers and some requests for clarification. If people are saying the question isn't clear to them, you don't get to say, "yes it is." You don't get to berate them for it, either.

 

Are you asking about unanswered questions of evolution, or areas of current research? A history of those things?

 

Please learn to use the quote function, and please tone it down.

[Vexer]

You OP has been responded to.

 

“Responded to”, well yes. But not intelligently addressed, with the exceptions I’ve mentioned.

 

 

There were some answers and some requests for clarification. If people are saying the question isn't clear to them, you don't get to say, "yes it is." You don't get to berate them for it, either.

 

With respect, I can indeed tell people I’ve said it as best I can, and that they’ve completely ignored my OP.

 

And if their responses seem to be directed at something I never said, they need to quote what I (never said) that they are responding to.

 

There are no questions unanswered.

 

Except mine.

 

 

 

(The "quote function" is inefficient, and will not be used)

[Sayonara]

I suggest that people should only reply to this thread if they have a genuine burning desire to directly answer specific questions from the OP. We really don't need any more hissy fit threads with so many keywords in them.

[Vexer]

Seems to me that Darwin-type bio-evolutionary theory has no (scientific) theoretical opponents. None. Never has had.

 

That makes it pretty unusual, if not unique.

 

(I can only think of our concept of ‘time’ as an equally large and mostly unchallenged set of ideas - though, I have read ‘the End of Time’ (Balfour). (And one day, I’ll understand it)).

 

Which makes me suspicious.

 

It seems to me that the most scientifically interesting thing that could happen, would be if ‘Evolution’ was challenged.

 

Be brave: where would I start looking, if I were interested in challenging Evolution? Where are the anomalies? What doesn’t quite make sense about the theory(s)? Where are the chinks?

 

It’d really be something, if there aren’t any. Unique, even. Wouldn’t that be… odd?

 

 

(I only wish I didn’t feel I have to say this, but: I’m not a crypto-Creationist looking for ammo. I’m an atheist who thinks that Evolution is the single Biggest idea, ever. I’m not interested in creationist replies of any kind. Especially those dressed up as Science. I would like people who know what they’re talking about to tell me things I haven’t heard before).

 

(I can only hope for the best, even though I suspect the politics of this are impossible).

 

I’m a big-picture guy, and Evolution is the biggest (human) picture there is. Let’s challenge it. Be brave.