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

by David Turell , Monday, November 07, 2016, 17:26 (2936 days ago) @ dhw
edited by David Turell, Monday, November 07, 2016, 17:35

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.

dhw: 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.

You are still using Darwin, whether you recognize it or not.. A saltation in a single individual is a new mutation, nothing more. You have forgotten the Wistar Institute math conference in 1966 (quoted in my first book) on the mathematical impossibility of evolution as envisioned by Darwin. J.B.S. Haldane ten years previous, a famous math/geneticist/Darwinist had published a paper with the same conclusion, now called 'Haldane's Dilemma', not enough time. Now it is known that it is not a single mutation but a series of cooperative mutations are required for a new species, further making the time intervals too short. A true saltation in a new species involves body plans and new biologic processes. Look at the whale series as an example. Those gaps are huge. The human species have huge gaps with long maturity cycles that average 20 years a generation. That is the saltation issue I see.

dhw: 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.

God as 'a person like no other person' can have a goal without being humanized. His goal is obviously producing humans, since they are here against all need or reason. Enjoyment is a human emotion, and certainly does not have to be His thought!

dhw: 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.

I think God maintains full control without the human emotion of enjoyment. And complexity is the key in order to reach the most complex organisms of all, humans! Improvement, of course, comes with complexity, but evolution proves complexity is not needed as shown by bacteria. Very obvous.