How children pick up a language: new review of Wolfe (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, November 07, 2016, 13:44 (2937 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Note, you are again quoting Darwin. We do not see small individual changes. We only see the sudden appearance of new species. Even the transitional forms have large gaps before and after their appearance.
dhw; I have made no reference whatsoever to Darwin’s gradualism! I was explaining that improvement was not NECESSARY, and bacteria remained the same because innovation does not take place in whole species but in individuals, and so successful multicellularity did not REPLACE successful unicellularity but diversified from it.

DAVID: You are speaking Darwin: Let me explain our difference in interpretation: I don't believe in the idea that a new set of a tiny number of newly mutated individuals starts a new species. The huge gaps in phenotype in the fossils suggests that a new species appear with the new individuals in large number by saltation. I completely remove Darwin's gradual concept taken from an example of breeding. New species appear suddenly.

In total contrast to Darwin I accept saltation, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with your brand new contention that new species appear immediately in large numbers. How can you possibly know that? A saltation can take place in a single individual. As I envisage the process, a successful innovation will be passed on by individuals and within a few generations will have created large numbers. Do you expect to find a fossil labelled: “I was the first”?

dhw: All these discussions centre on interpretation! It’s OK for you to say humans are special by comparison with all other organisms, but it’s not OK for me to say that a brain is an improvement over a non-brain. Without interpretation there can be no discussion of ANY of the issues we tackle on this website!
DAVID: Of course your interpretation about a brain is correct. But I have a different emphasis about the concept of complexity, which of course will bring improvement. Only an emphasis on complexity can bring about humans, the most complex of all results of evolution. You petulantly sound like I am trying to censor you. We just illustrate disagreement.

No, you are not trying to censor me, but you are trying to invalidate my hypotheses for reasons that apply equally to your own. You challenge me on the subject of God’s purpose, and when I offer an alternative to your own, you dismiss it as “humanizing” God, which is precisely what you do yourself with your own version of his purpose. In the context of evolution I keep explaining that need is not the only driving force, but improvement is another. Your response: “Of course as evolution advances from simple to complex, which involves innovations, new species appear. Improvement, however, is in the eye of the beholder, an interpretation.” Complexification for the sake of complexity and ultimately for the sake of humans is also an interpretation. These are non-answers to my proposals. I want to know why you cannot conceive of God creating a mechanism that will produce all the different forms of life as a spectacle he can enjoy, and why you consider complexity for its own sake a more rational driving force than complexity for the sake of improvement.