Evolution of Language (General)

by David Turell , Friday, November 01, 2019, 20:24 (1847 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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.

I don't hate Darwin. He didn't know enough to reach the right conclusions about evolution's methods. I think his followers are totally wrong. You are skipping over my point that the needs of a new species have to be anticipated in planning for the design of the species. The designer had to know in advance ears were necessary for the moth's like style. If moths had arrived without ears and couldn't pick up evidence of predators, they would not have survived. Survival needs have to be planned in advance. Species appear abruptly after gaps, no time given for modifications, remember Gould's point.

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.

dhw: 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.

You interpretation is from the outside of any organism. Significance is that everything looks designed, so by your lights, 'maybe' it is designed. Dawkins says we must ignore that obvious point.