"Sudden Origins" by Jeffery H Schwartz

"Sudden Origins
Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species"
by Jeffery H SchwartzI now have this book and will be writing bits about it as time permits.In the acknowledgments he says (among other things) "And, as so often happens, a chance conversation with Nile Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History provoked me to consider in greater depth the implications of some of my earlier conclusions."So I find it difficult to believe he was not aware of Punk Eek.He starts the book by saying that often we need to reinvestigate old theories that have only lost out by "intellectual victory" (presumably rather than by the evidence against them), as this "does not, however, necessarily equate with correctness" and then he proceeds to list a number of "gaps" in the fossil record and he goes back to the thinking of Georges Cuvier and his theory of multiple floods and multiple edens as places of refuge during the floods as an early explanation of saltation and sudden appearance of new types of species.SO far it looks like he is just laying the philosophical background similar to Eldredge and Gould on Punk Eek.Enjoy.Links and Information forum pleaseEdited by Zen Deist, : spling

He seems to revisit almost every old idea that supports his position with no evaluation of their validity, makes several arguments from incredulity with regard to hox genes and their role in evolution, and combines this with a dated (more than 8 year old) view of human evolution. So far I see nothing compelling in his book, and lots of fodder for creatortionista quote mining.Curiously his discussion of the australopithicus tibia being human like (p31 paperback ed) seems out of context with the rest of his argument (refers to picture):

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The tibia of an adult chimpanzee (left), and adult Australopithicus (middle), and an adult modern human (right), all viewed from behind. The two surfaces onj the tibia on which the two parts of the lower femur sit in the knee joint are sightly concave in the hominids. In the ape, only one surface (the one on the right in the drawing) is concave; the other is convex. The shaft of the tibia is also straighter in the two hominids than in the ape. But the shaft of the human femur flares more markedly outward as it approaches the upper end than do the fossil and the ape.

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Note this picture has the tibia upside-down with the knee at the top. In the text discussing this he says:

quote:

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Basically the shapes of the articulated surfaces are very different. Homo and Australopithicus also differ from the apes in that they have straighter tibial shafts. Homo and Australopithicus differ from each other, however, in the shape of the upper part of the tibial shaft in the region just below the knee joint. In Australopithicus and apes, the broad articulated surface for the knee joint sits atop a thin shaft that resembles a flat-capped mushroomin Homo, however, the upper end of the tibial shaft fans out like a trumpet to meet the broad margins of the knee-joint surface. Given the geological age of A. anamensis, most paleoanthropologists would have expected this hominid to have the tibial configuration seen in apes and other species of Australopithicus. Contrary to expectation, however, the shaft ofA. anamensis's tibia presented the same shape as Homo: The upper end flared out in a trumpet like fashion to meet the margins of the knee-joint surface.

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Two problems with this. (1) the Australopithicus tibia shaft in the picture flares on one side almost identical to the Homo and on the other side flares half way between the ape and the Homo so it is more similar to the Homo than the ape. It could even be described as "flared out in a trumpet like fashion" in the same manner that A. anamensis is described (with no comparison to the completeness of the flaring compared to Homo. (2) There is no picture of a A. anamensis tibia for one to make their own comparison so one has to take Schwartz's word for it. This is shoddy and the kind of "evidence" usually found on creatortionista sites.The first chapter recapitulates almost every old saltational theory every written with no review of their validity, and the first half of the second chapter is full of references to archaic classifications systems of animals from the greeks to lineaus, page after page of really irrelevant history.So far: what he says of scientific evidence is questionable and seems to be missing some important things, and the rest of what he says is verbose and irrelevant. He could cover the evidence issues so far covered in about 10 pages (I'm on p 63). And I'm still waiting for something out of the ordinary.So far the evidence I can take from this is that the Australopithicus tibia is flared at the top and straight shafted like the homo tibia, and clearly indicates adaptation to bi-pedal walking based on this evidence, compared to the non-flared, bent shaft, and convex cupped top of the ape tibia. That A. anamensis is similar to Australopithicus, but the relative details of development are not given.Enjoy.

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The section starting on p63, subtitled "Toward a better definition of Homo sapiens" and going into chapter 3, takes a turn for the better. Here he delves into the differences that make us human, with particular attention to details of skeleton and anatomy that differentiate us from the apes. He continues his theme of showing how the thinking was originally bedded in the thinking of the times and evolved as information became available.I think he could start the book here and not lose much, especially if he takes the stuff he had on the tibia to a later section to show it found in it's time and how thinking about humans versus hominids versus apes evolved. He makes a point of referring to Buffon's and then Blumenbach's classification of primates as "quadramanous" or four handed. This is an interesting point because the human foot is really evolved from a hand with a vestigial "thumb" as the big toe, and a the ankle is formed from wrist bones. That many (if not all) apes CAN and DO walk (occasionally) on their two hind "hands" really makes it no surprise that one ape should adopt it for permanent ground perambulation: the only question is when it happened.Chapter 3 goes into the trouble people had accepting fossils as something not mineral or supernatural (hand axes were the tips of thunderbolts), and really shows the intellectual climate of the age and the culture (Victorian England, sure of their conquest of the world and their right to do so as a superior race\culture).The rest of the chapter continues to place things in context with their times, from the term "evolution" being adapted from embryology in general and Haeckle in particular (cue randman) and Haeckle's prediction of "Pithicanthropus" to placing the neanderthals in the human lineage as a species or a race.This continues in chapter 4 with finding the of Pithicanthropus erectus (Java man) and then Pithicanthropus dawsoni (Piltdown fraud), again with the context of the times and the limited information of hominid development and competing theories of what the "missing link" would look like. Then he goes to the Tuang child, but unfortunately ends there in 1924 with the picture incomplete: where are the rest of the australopithicus fossils talked about in passing in chapter 1? (and here is where the tibia could be, as well as the pelvis and other elements.Chapter 5 jumps back to "Humans as Embryos" at this point.Seems to me the editor of the book could have done a better job.Enjoy.

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Perhaps I was not clear. The book is 8 years old, so the comment was that it was dated at the time it was written. This view he used was still a linear progression of all hominids, and that has not been held for some time.

Yes I've read the intro and the preface. I find the book dull, repetitious and dodging back and forth, rather than concise. Hardly brilliant to me. The book does not grab me.Yes the history information is interesting, but it at this point (half-way through) it is not anything new, and some of it is rather selective in what is said and what is not said.Enjoy.

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I am now at the point where Punk-eek is being incorporated into the mix of evolutionary thought, having passed through his take on the modern synthesis.A conclusion that I have come to is that what he means by "Darwinism" is solely long term gradualistic, if not uniformitarian, change. You can see this in the message you linked as well: Thus if all he is saying is that long term uniformitarian mutation and selection is not sufficient to explain all the diversity of life as we know it, then this is nothing new (now - it may have been when the book was written 8 years ago). If he is saying that long term uniformitarian mutation and selection is not sufficient to explain any of the diversity of life as we know it, then this is debatable. According to the original post on the linked thread this latter position seems to be the case: Where presumably "evolutionary changes" are bigger changes than those produced by normal mutation and selection.In this book ("Sudden Origins") I've also gained the impression that where he is heading is emphasizing evo-devo and relegating molecular and population genetics to a subsidiary role. This is also hinted at in his post #39: Haven't gotten to the chapters\sections on HOX genes yet, so I can't say for sure where he is going, but once again in his review of the modern synthesis sections he discussed several competing theories and people that argued for more saltational levels of change (Goldschmidt, Schindewolf, Williams).Enjoy.

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Well I've finally finished it, and I am less than impressed.Chapter 11 goes into HOX genes and waxes eloquent on the large amount of change that a little change to a HOX gene can accomplish. He goes to great lengths to discuss the amount of change that can occur by disrupting HOX gene expression, most of which is just addition or deletion of digits ... significant change, yes, but not radical.Chapter 12 is where he goes off the deep end. Specifically he equates the loss of a fully evolved HOX gene complex together with the cascade of orchestrated elements needed for the production and assembly of features ... to the development of that HOX gene by one mutation. He specifically dismisses the argument Dawkins makes on eye evolution and ignores the evidence of intermediates. He suggests that eyes evolved fully developed, because when you destroy one specific HOX gene in a population that any homozygous individual is sightless -- no eye and no eye socket. He goes on to propose that other "novel" features are likewise developed whole by single HOX mutations.Chapters 1 to 11 may be considered useful, however I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone on their basis as the organization is rather haphazard and tends to confuse by jumping back and forth.Enjoy.

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