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

by David Turell , Friday, December 30, 2011, 15:28 (4511 days ago) @ dhw

To sum up, the confusion here arises because you have a different definition of gradualism from that used by David and myself. You appear to accept the theory of punctuated equilibrium (i.e. there is no “real difference between evolution that ‘speeds up’ and PE”), and so there is no disagreement. Epigenetics is being discussed as a possible mechanism for rapid evolution. David’s pre-planning theory is another conjecture.

Gould tends to throw gradualism out the window:

long term stasis following geologically abrupt origin of most fossil morphospecies, has always been recognized by professional paleontologists. [The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002), p. 752.]

. . . . The great majority of species do not show any appreciable evolutionary change at all. These species appear in the section [[first occurrence] without obvious ancestors in the underlying beds, are stable once established and disappear higher up without leaving any descendants.” [p. 753.]

. . . . proclamations for the supposed ‘truth’ of gradualism – asserted against every working paleontologist’s knowledge of its rarity – emerged largely from such a restriction of attention to exceedingly rare cases under the false belief that they alone provided a record of evolution at all! The falsification of most ‘textbook classics’ upon restudy only accentuates the fallacy of the ‘case study’ method and its root in prior expectation rather than objective reading of the fossil record. [[p. 773.]

If Gould is correct, and why shouldn't he be (?), Darwin's gradualism conjecture is wrong. Darwin proposed his gradualism from seeing breeders at work. Don't blame him, but the cement-headed followers who feel any attack on original Darwin is an attack on the theory of evolution. Darwin made a great step forward, but consider the knowledge base he worked from. Descent with modification is correct. It is just that modification is a local and immediate process, not species changing for the most part. See Sudden Origins by Jeffrey Schwartz, 1999. Gould is not alone.