Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
5 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,815 Year: 3,072/9,624 Month: 917/1,588 Week: 100/223 Day: 11/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Theory of Evolution and model of evolution
EighteenDelta
Inactive Member


Message 1 of 54 (416186)
08-14-2007 12:06 PM


Does the Theory of evolution dissolve if one were to attack the current views on the history or time lines of species? Does radical restructuring of the current tree of evolution mean that the tenets of evolution are proved false? This relates to remarks such as made by Gould where he states that to discover a rabbit fossil in the pre-Cambrian era would prove evolution false(granted this example is extreme). Is the currently accepted time line of Evolution of life on earth equivalent to The Theory of Evolution? Or should we distinguish them from each other?
I personally think this only leads to the fallacious logical leaps that alterations such as we are seeing now with the recent hominid fossils is a victory to creationist and IDologists. I feel its false but would like some better supported input to this idea. Do we throw the whole thing out with every new piece of evidence? I think about this every time I see the stuff about how humans and dinosaurs co-existed, yes I think its ridiculous to believe, but even if it were proved, would that negate all of evolution or just our currently accepted time line?
Evolution is dead!!!! Long live evolution!!!
Edited by AdminPaul, : Point to the right post
Edited by EighteenDelta, : less confusion
Edited by AdminPaul, : Undid earlier edit - not needed

"Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact ” which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!"
-Stephen Jay Gould

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by AdminPaul, posted 08-14-2007 2:35 PM EighteenDelta has replied
 Message 7 by PaulK, posted 08-14-2007 4:59 PM EighteenDelta has not replied
 Message 9 by RAZD, posted 08-14-2007 5:52 PM EighteenDelta has replied
 Message 30 by Fosdick, posted 12-11-2007 12:46 PM EighteenDelta has not replied

  
AdminPaul
Inactive Member


Message 2 of 54 (416197)
08-14-2007 2:35 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by EighteenDelta
08-14-2007 12:06 PM


I think that this is a reasonable topic but it could do with some improvements to the original post. There are some minor things like the fact that "tenant" should be "tenet" but there are some other issues I would like to see addressed.
Firstly, the use of "model" is confusing. Typically it would apply to the explanation of how species evolved rather than the reconstruction of ancestry. "The historical course of evolution" or even "phylogeny" would be better.
I also think that maybe you could expand it a little more. Maybe split it into two paragraphs and give a little more of your own thoughts.
And one point unrelated to this particular thread. I think that it would be a good idea if you trimmed your signature a bit. You've got three quotes and the longest is about the same length as the post on it's own. It really doesn't look very good on the screen if the .sig is bigger than the post - or even the same size. I suggest that you choose just one and change it from time to time.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by EighteenDelta, posted 08-14-2007 12:06 PM EighteenDelta has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by EighteenDelta, posted 08-14-2007 3:45 PM AdminPaul has replied

  
EighteenDelta
Inactive Member


Message 3 of 54 (416205)
08-14-2007 3:45 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by AdminPaul
08-14-2007 2:35 PM


Not sure if I am supposed to edit the original post or clean it up and make a second one, so I will try the later option first. Not sure if I have enough of my own opinions included, but I think my stance is pretty clear. I think my opinion is irrelevant since I am asking where others stand IMHO.
-----------------------
removed to hopefully create less confusion
-----------------------
As far as my sig, I am lazy, unimaginative and indecisive but reduced it anyways.
Edited by EighteenDelta, : not very bright
Edited by EighteenDelta, : clean up

"Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact ” which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!"
-Stephen Jay Gould

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2 by AdminPaul, posted 08-14-2007 2:35 PM AdminPaul has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by AdminPaul, posted 08-14-2007 3:55 PM EighteenDelta has not replied
 Message 6 by kuresu, posted 08-14-2007 4:10 PM EighteenDelta has replied

  
AdminPaul
Inactive Member


Message 4 of 54 (416208)
08-14-2007 3:55 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by EighteenDelta
08-14-2007 3:45 PM


Generally we'd prefer you to edit the original post. It's a bit less confusing when we promote the topic. But that'll do.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by EighteenDelta, posted 08-14-2007 3:45 PM EighteenDelta has not replied

  
AdminPaul
Inactive Member


Message 5 of 54 (416210)
08-14-2007 4:00 PM


Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
kuresu
Member (Idle past 2513 days)
Posts: 2544
From: boulder, colorado
Joined: 03-24-2006


Message 6 of 54 (416214)
08-14-2007 4:10 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by EighteenDelta
08-14-2007 3:45 PM


I'll take a gander.
I think Gould was totally wrong to say that the ToE would be wrong if a rabbit was found in the pre-Cambrian rocks. He would be right if he meant the natural history, because having a mammal appear when animals themselves are supposed to just be appearing (if you take the closest end of the pre-cambrian to us).
I hardly see how a rabbit back then would violate the formula [natural selection + random mutation/variation ]. In order to violate that formula you need to prove that variation doesn't happen or that natural selection doesn't work.
As to creating false impressions of victory, I don't think it really matters. The creos like to think they've won when the really haven't even in the normal course of the debate. For it to be a real victory, wouldn't they have needed to have predicted such finds? Oh wait, they can't, can they?
Okay, long way to get to a simple point.
Finding humans and dinoes together only disproves current timeline, not the actual theory (see formula above for most basic representation of the theory).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by EighteenDelta, posted 08-14-2007 3:45 PM EighteenDelta has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 8 by EighteenDelta, posted 08-14-2007 5:07 PM kuresu has not replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 7 of 54 (416219)
08-14-2007 4:59 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by EighteenDelta
08-14-2007 12:06 PM


The answer requires a little detour into the philosophy of science, but only a little one.
Firstly science is supposed to be tentative and hold conclusions only as strongly as the evidence supports them. Many of the details of the course of evolution are uncertain, and in general the finer the detail the weaker the evidence is going to be. So the recent discoveries aren't a huge surprise - but finding a rabbit in the Precambrian would be to say the least.
Science never gets to the level of absolute proof (this problem is called "underdetermination").There are usually a legion of hypotheses consistent with the evidence and we use other criteria, such as parsimony to choose which of these is the best. In fact every conclusion we come to depends on an array of hypotheses, and by modifying these we can save any hypothesis from falsification (this is called the Duhem-Quine thesis). In fact science will typically try to retain a good theory and it will make modifications to it or other hypotheses to save it - up to the point where the assumptions required start to become too excessive. Even then science will hold on to the theory until something better comes along.
The recent hominid finds require only minor modifications to our ideas of the course of evolution. Perhaps Homo habilis and Homo erectus had a common ancestor. Perhaps Homo erectus split off from Homo habilis earlier and the two species came together and coexisted for a while. Both are consistent with evolutionary theory and the evidence. It's really no problem at all, just more information that will hopefully let us get the details right - or closer to beign right.
The Precambrian rabbit is another story. We have a very good idea of where rabbits fit into the history of evolution and finding one in the Precambrian would be a huge problem. Personally I'd consider time travel to be the least bad explanation. We've got no evidence that would place any plausible ancestors for a rabbit or rabbitoid anywhere near the Precambrian, and every reason to suppose that we would find some if they existed. If it's an actual rabbit then we'd probably have to do a major rewrite of the tree of life. If it's something that looks identical to a rabbit (when fossilised) we'd have to invoke a hugely implausible degree of convergent evolution. It wouldn't prove evolution to be false but it would require some major rethinking.
On the other hand, given YEC views and Flood geology it should be amazing that we haven't found a Precambrian rabbit or something nearly as problematic. Scientists can do an astonishing job of predicting where particular fossils are likely to be found based on the ages of the rocks and the environment that formed them as determined by science. The discovery of Tiktaalik was a very impressive demonstration. But under YEC views that should not be possible - because they believe that science is completely wrong on both age and environment and even the sorts of fossils that should be found

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by EighteenDelta, posted 08-14-2007 12:06 PM EighteenDelta has not replied

  
EighteenDelta
Inactive Member


Message 8 of 54 (416221)
08-14-2007 5:07 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by kuresu
08-14-2007 4:10 PM


I don't mean for it to seem that the whole dino/human overlap argument was the focus of this question, it was merely a piece of the whole situation to trigger the thought process. I really do have a fundamental problem with blanket statements like the one Gould made. I feel that those who stand in the spotlight and argue for evolution should be a bit more thoughtful to the consequences of their statements. Five years down the road when new evidence is included in our view of evolution, things might change dramatically, hopefully not rabbits in pre-Cambrian fossils, but statements like that will be taken out of chronology and out of context.
I remember as a teen watching programs about dinosaurs and always laughing about how they always had grass, and I 'knew' that grass evolved after the KT extinction (If memory serves it was believed grass evolved about 55 million years ago). Now, years later its pretty well accepted that grasses were around during the age of the dinosaurs. Does this revelation shatter the theory of evolution? Hardly. It just means there was an adjustment to the time lines.
Edited by EighteenDelta, : No reason given.

"Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact ” which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!"
-Stephen Jay Gould

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by kuresu, posted 08-14-2007 4:10 PM kuresu has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by Brad McFall, posted 08-16-2007 7:46 PM EighteenDelta has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 9 of 54 (416224)
08-14-2007 5:52 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by EighteenDelta
08-14-2007 12:06 PM


Is the currently accepted time line of Evolution of life on earth equivalent to The Theory of Evolution? Or should we distinguish them from each other?
The "accepted time line of Evolution of life on earth" is the natural history of life on this planet. It is evidence, not theory.
"The theory of Evolution" is not so much a single theory as it is a synthesis of current theories involving evolution (see The Definition for the Theory of Evolution for discussion), where evolution is the change in hereditary traits in species over time. Theories of speciation involving the splitting of breeding populations of a species into two or more daughter populations leads to the theory of common descent, whereby all known evidence of life can be arranged in a tree of descent over time from common ancestors that make the various branches in this tree (or bush).
I personally think this only leads to the fallacious logical leaps that alterations such as we are seeing now with the recent hominid fossils is a victory to creationist and IDologists.
Actually what we are seeing is a fine detail of the tree of life being filled in (as do all new finds, much to the dismay of creationists and IDologists), whereby we now know that the time of divergence of Homo habilis and Homo erectus from a common ancestor must have been at least 1.55 million years ago if not significantly earlier. This is an adjustment of where the branch is along the trunk if anything -- especially as some current thought has Homo erectus evolving from Homo ergaster, with Homo ergaster and Homo habilis sharing a common ancestor (see Two New Hominid Finds (re: Time overlap of H. habilis and H. erectus) for discussion)
Evolution is dead!!!! Long live evolution!!!
With "THE" theory of evolution being a synthesis of many theories on how evolution actually works makes it extremely unlikely that a single discovery or event will disprove\invalidate it.
Enjoy.
ps - welcome to the fray.
If you haven't figured it out yet, type [qs]quote boxes are easy[/qs] and it becomes:
quote boxes are easy
also check out (help) links on formating questions when in the reply window.
Edited by RAZD, : ps

Join the effort to unravel AIDS/HIV, unfold Proteomes, fight Cancer,
compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click)


we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by EighteenDelta, posted 08-14-2007 12:06 PM EighteenDelta has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 10 by EighteenDelta, posted 08-14-2007 7:33 PM RAZD has not replied

  
EighteenDelta
Inactive Member


Message 10 of 54 (416229)
08-14-2007 7:33 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by RAZD
08-14-2007 5:52 PM


The "accepted time line of Evolution of life on earth" is the natural history of life on this planet. It is evidence, not theory.
That is part of the reason for my original word choice of Evolutionary model not being equal to Evolutionary theory. Though I think you put it well as 'evidence'. My intention is to devalue this kind of pointless attack. If creationists and IDologists want to be honest in their attempts to undermine this theory, they need to focus on something that would have genuine consequences. I have no doubt to the outcome of such confrontations. More of the same.
Actually what we are seeing is a fine detail of the tree of life being filled in (as do all new finds, much to the dismay of creationists and IDologists),
It is filling in and adding what was previously less clear, I agree. Many nah-sayers falsy think that change to a theory, or the evidence related to a theory is evidence of failure in that theory. I want to take this little slight of hand out of the play-book. That's the real point of my thread. So often I hear how this change or other changes are a death-knell for evolution. I think we waste much time and effort countering these arguments. I see so much effort to prove the pauluxy hoax by creationist who think that this is their magic bullet solution to convince all the evolutionist.
http://EvC Forum: Human & dinosaur crossing trackways authenticated -->EvC Forum: Human & dinosaur crossing trackways authenticated
It makes me think how much progress we continue to lose dealing with these irrelavant non-issues.

"Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact ” which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!"
-Stephen Jay Gould

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by RAZD, posted 08-14-2007 5:52 PM RAZD has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by Nighttrain, posted 08-15-2007 4:36 AM EighteenDelta has replied
 Message 13 by Modulous, posted 08-15-2007 12:02 PM EighteenDelta has not replied

  
Nighttrain
Member (Idle past 3993 days)
Posts: 1512
From: brisbane,australia
Joined: 06-08-2004


Message 11 of 54 (416310)
08-15-2007 4:36 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by EighteenDelta
08-14-2007 7:33 PM


Catchy headlines
Hi, 18D, and welcome. Rather than blame creos for trumpeting different discoveries, we should vent on sensationalist reporters on no-news days for coming up with recent doozies like 'Evolution overturned by new finds'. Anything to bump up sales. :-p

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by EighteenDelta, posted 08-14-2007 7:33 PM EighteenDelta has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 12 by EighteenDelta, posted 08-15-2007 10:42 AM Nighttrain has not replied

  
EighteenDelta
Inactive Member


Message 12 of 54 (416355)
08-15-2007 10:42 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by Nighttrain
08-15-2007 4:36 AM


Re: Catchy headlines
Rather than blame creos for trumpeting different discoveries, we should vent on sensationalist reporters on no-news days for coming up with recent doozies like 'Evolution overturned by new finds'. Anything to bump up sales.
If we are to believe statistics, a good portion of them are creos. A lot of them are Trojan horse creos waiting to strike like Richard Sternberg.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by Nighttrain, posted 08-15-2007 4:36 AM Nighttrain has not replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 13 of 54 (416364)
08-15-2007 12:02 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by EighteenDelta
08-14-2007 7:33 PM


If creationists and IDologists want to be honest in their attempts to undermine this theory, they need to focus on something that would have genuine consequences.
Generally they don't want to undermine the theory - they just say they do. What they want to undermine is natural history which they mistakenly call 'the theory of evolution'. You'll here sentences that begin like, "If the theory of evolution says we evolved from apes...", which of course it doesn't.
For the most part - most creationists and IDiots are quite happy with the theory of evolution - they agree that it accounts for microevolution. One way they try to undermine natural history is to suggest that the theory is not powerful enough to explain change in life over billions of years. Many IDiots have accepted natural history now, they just focus on trying to show that the theory of evolution cannot explain certain things and using that as evidence that an intelligence must have been involved.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by EighteenDelta, posted 08-14-2007 7:33 PM EighteenDelta has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 45 by Volunteer, posted 12-22-2007 8:07 PM Modulous has replied

  
Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5032 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 14 of 54 (416578)
08-16-2007 7:46 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by EighteenDelta
08-14-2007 5:07 PM


Gould probably meant rabbits, really!!
For some inscrutable reason I seem to be able to understand Gould particularly well.
If we find rabbits in the Cambrian and evolutionary theory has to adjust to a change of that dimension then there should be no reason that the political and social controversy against creationists can be in any way correct.
That is my feeling. If you think that it is too much to make this kind of a blanket statement then perhaps you have just simply not invested your own ideas about what evolution is as deeply as Mr Gould did. I think that is all there is to it.
Gould seems willing, to me, to make such a bald claim simply because he has a view contra Darwin about diversification that he appears to have read beyond Mayr's thoughts on Fisher. So when he is willing to gamble with the rabbit’s foot he really is only throwing in the institution of evolution not the supposed fact latterly claimed which creationists create crumpled papers over.
Thanks to your post, I am not having to give a detailed response to Straggler or Mike. I am working on an idea will call Quarternionic Phylogenetics, which would explain why, in terms of variation(see other posts in this thread), that Gould could make a claim such as you wonder about. Gould, as opposed to any other evolutionist is positioned to make such a statement because he is vying for THE PRODUCTION of species at the edges Darwin drew down a middle. I find that using the notion of Hamiltonian quaternions (rotations out of the plane into Cartesian space) enables strict definitions of Darwin's specification (only available since the 70s) of change over time (the push and pull of a vector is the missing ingredient).
I will come back to this later (I will show that quaternions can help to visualize the object of cladistics better than current computer programs permit, thus allowing the critic to judge "core Darwinian logic" vs Gould's hierarchical postulation (this is not possible under the current horizon of historical abduction)).
If one reads Gould for the English language words it contains rather than the forms its linguistics might exclude one can find that Gould really does mean what he says. He had taken the US creationist movement and wedged himself in based on it. This was a practical result of his testifying in Court. I think perhaps he should not have done that, at least not felt fealty with Bill Clinton (because two republicans in the family or two democrats in the same US time line is no different) after the event. So what Stephan should have said , in my apology, is that evolution as he thought was opened by his ostensively broader theoretical place, would be recorded contrary to his use of language in describing its raison de etre, no matter what the French call "life" if pre-Cambrian fossils are found reproduced likes the jackalope we all call today a rabbit. He tried to keep the countries straight. Creationists dont necessarily. They want imagination called for what it is. We should be careful what we create because what is produced from it is not what we can control.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by EighteenDelta, posted 08-14-2007 5:07 PM EighteenDelta has not replied

  
newflyer
Inactive Member


Message 15 of 54 (440029)
12-11-2007 9:44 AM


Evolution is simply a theory. There are plenty of problems with it. One of the first is that evolutionists cannot explain the origins of life, instead they counter that once life is generated, it can evolve into more complex forms. Creationists at least have the argument that God came into time and space and created life. What do y'all think of that?

Replies to this message:
 Message 16 by jar, posted 12-11-2007 9:48 AM newflyer has replied
 Message 18 by godbuster666, posted 12-11-2007 9:52 AM newflyer has replied
 Message 25 by Chiroptera, posted 12-11-2007 10:31 AM newflyer has not replied
 Message 29 by ringo, posted 12-11-2007 11:49 AM newflyer has not replied
 Message 39 by RAZD, posted 12-11-2007 8:34 PM newflyer has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024