Life as Evolving Software... (Chaitin) (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, December 20, 2011, 19:06 (4521 days ago) @ David Turell

David,

and this quote from Gould is priceless, making his point that fossils are not 'snapshots' but the real story of evolution:

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.” [[Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), 'Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?' Paleobiology, vol.6(1), January 1980,p. 127.]

The problem here, is that even with this quote, this doesn't actually explain what the problem is. Can't evolution have some feedback mechanism that ramps up or down according to some major need or breakthrough? (First land animals, for example.)

There's explosions on the path of life, but the "story" lays not in the fossils but in the molecular genetics that lead down those paths.

“All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between the major groups are characteristically abrupt.” [[Stephen Jay Gould 'The return of hopeful monsters'. Natural History, vol. LXXXVI(6), June-July 1977, p. 24.]

Between the *major* groups. Usually blamed on catastrophe in all but the Cambrian, if I'm not mistaken... still doesn't give enough of a lever to dislodge current thought.

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record:

"The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find intermediate varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps [[ . . . . ] He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record will rightly reject my whole theory.[[Cf. Origin, Ch 10, "Summary of the preceding and present Chapters," also see similar remarks in Chs 6 and 9.]

Darwin’s argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution. In exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots). I wish only to point out that it was never “seen” in the rocks.

How big are these geologic time slices that we're missing? If we're talking 100-200 years David, then, maybe, we can consider that something miraculous was happening. But we're not talking about that kind of time scale are we? And we're dealing with life forms that *All paleontologists agree would probably not fossilize.* You're pinning your hopes [on something you know has no answer.]

Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin’s argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.” [[Stephen Jay Gould 'Evolution's erratic pace'. Natural History, vol. LXXXVI95), May 1977, p.14.] [[HT: Answers.com]

What were his thoughts on all this in the latter part of his career? I realize he was trying hard to revitalize a relatively stable field, but none of these quotes explain why fossils are not snapshots.

[EDITED]

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"