Evolution of Language (General)

by dhw, Friday, November 01, 2019, 10:44 (1847 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You were trying to prove that moth ears were invented before they were needed for the fight against bats. The article shows quite clearly that they had other uses and were then adapted to meet the new demands. So now you switch the argument to the origin of ears. Nobody can possibly know the circumstances in which every new organ, lifestyle and natural wonder first came into existence. The article itself is naturally vague on the subject: “Moth hearing organs arose multiple times...” (my bold).

DAVID: You are still with Darwin-think, as the author's are. The designer recognized ears would be useful if flying in the dark. Who new when moths would fly before the appearance of the moths? The design requires recognition of the future for the moth's style of living.

More Darwinophobia. You say you believe in common descent. Your moths now seem to have no antecedents. See the next exchange for a full response.

DAVID: I asked above, how did speciating cell committees know ears would be needed when the new organisms arrived on the scene? Requires analysis of future needs, which Darwin-thinking folks consider magically happening, like Margulis. You are still full Darwin, and don't recognize the problem.

dhw: They didn’t know ears would be needed! New species/organisms would be the RESULT of their immediate ancestors RESPONDING to new conditions! Common descent means that new organisms descend from earlier organisms. So an earlier organism for reasons unknown began to hunt by night, just as a pre-whale began to hunt in the water. A change of environment requires a change in the anatomy. Ability to hear becomes more important than ability to see, just as ability to swim becomes more important than ability to walk. There is no “analysis of future needs”. The analysis concerns how best to meet present needs (hunting in the dark, or swimming in the water). There is no “magic”. We know for a fact that cell communities cooperate and are able to adapt to changing conditions. What we don’t know is the extent to which they are able to innovate – although the borderline between adaptation and innovation is not clear. I have always accepted that this ability may have been designed by your God, but the “magic” jibe is far better directed at your own theory: the unknown being called God forecast the future, and somehow provided programmes for every future undabbled organ and strategy etc., to be magically passed down and then switched on in advance of every future change in the environment over billions of years to come. But “you don’t recognize the problem.”

DAVID: Typical Darwin think. It doesn't explain the gaps before new well-designed competent species appear. Even Gould recognized they appeared with no itty-bitty steps and invented punc-inc to gloss over the problem. David Berlinski describes Darwin theory as 'smudge evolution', things morphing into each new step in tiny hardly noticeable steps.

Your obsessive hatred of Darwin has you lashing out in all directions. You began by telling us that moth ears were designed in advance of any need. I pointed out that the article showed the opposite. You then asked how cell communities knew in advance what they would need. I explained that they didn’t, and that they RESPONDED to current needs. And so now, for no reason whatsoever, and once again totally ignoring my response to your claims about clairvoyance, you have switched to gaps and itty bitty steps. You do not even bother to defend the “magic” you believe in. We have already agreed that Darwin was wrong when he claimed that natura non facit saltum, and even his faithful bulldog Huxley disagreed with him. Perhaps you will now respond to my post.

dhw: (under “bacterial gut role”): You could hardly have a better example of cooperation. Here we have single cells – bacteria – all busily combining into communities fulfilling different roles within the great big community of communities that make up the single organism. We are not even conscious of the fact that they’re there, let alone of what they are doing for us. And what they do for us is what keeps them alive. But you like to sneer at Margulis, who emphasized the role of cooperation in evolution and was a firm believer in cellular intelligence.

DAVID: A good stretch of Margulis' view of related cells. Bacteria help us but they are not us.
DAVID (summarizing the article): Each person has his own biome in his gut.

No, they are not us, but they form part of the individual community which IS us, and they typify the way evolution works: cells and cell communities cooperate, and they all seem to know what they’re doing. So maybe they do know what they’re doing.