Weird animal forms (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 18, 2016, 21:13 (3110 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: As always we can only speculate, but if there is a problem which needs to be solved, the solution is an improvement! Whales started as land mammals, so maybe where their ancestors lived, food was more abundant in the water. Every subsequent stage in their evolution may have resulted from different adjustments to aquatic conditions.-Your flights of fanciful explanations are wonderful just-so stories. Were pre-whales so isolated they couldn't migrate to find land food. They were trapped on an island! Or maybe you'll tell me they liked swimming so much they just decided to stay in the water and self-invent all their complex physiologic adaptations. Phew! -> dhw:I really can't believe that organisms would decide to become more complex just for the sake of complexity. -Remember the organism are given a complexification mechanism which makes them more complex. It is NOT under their control per my thesis.
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> DAVID: This article, while looking at the genetics that might have created them, also discusses the many physical adaptations that come with the giraffe:-> 
> dhw: Again we can only speculate, but does anyone know precisely what the conditions were when the giraffe first evolved its long neck? Is it not possible that in a particular region at a particular time, food became scarce and it was advantageous to reach higher? ...Organisms will take whatever food is available at the time, high or low.-What happened to the ability to move and migrate. How long do you think it took for the neck to elongate out of need? Were they trapped with only tall trees around?-> dhw: I'm afraid I can't take this seriously as a motive for innovation. Their ancestors managed to mate without long necks, and there is no reason to assume the males didn't fight. So why on earth would the males evolve long necks just in order to fight one another? -You skipped the point that their skull bones are thicker. This suggests the change is purposeful.-> David: Not all evolution is obvious improvement, but instead a built in structural inventiveness, which doesn't seem to account for the physical complications as deterrents.[/i]
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> dhw: If it's that disadvantageous and dangerous, why do you think the phenotype complexification mechanism bothered to invent it in the first place?-Just for the sake of complexity, for the purpose of complexity, from which the most advantageous will then fight to survive. It is a drive to complexity (my first book). It is an extension of the structuralism theory.-
> dhw: As above, does it really make sense that organisms should invent new complexities, or your God should dabble, just for the sake of complexity? Even with your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution, what possible advantage can it be to humans to have pre-giraffes reorganizing themselves so they can have long necks?-Why relate the two events? I don't. why not look at the odd-ball species as aberrant attempts at complexity which really are side channels to evolution, resulting in the weird bush of life.-> dhw: Doesn't the conventional view make more sense: that at some time in some place conditions were such that a longer neck made it easier for the pre-giraffe to get food (THAT would be the improvement)....,-You sure don't want to give up on Darwin and the drive for improvement implicit in his dependence on natural selection. Look at it from structuralism theory which happens to have been developed before Darwin arrived on the scene. I think Denton is on to something.