Fossil Fish (named "Tiktaalik") Sheds Light on Transition

Yea, but look, I mean look at the head. I was meaning to tell our EVCer from Ocala Fla(BELFRY) that I once chanced onto a gator head perfectly picked apart while chasing tortises down there in South USA and ya know there are legless snakes, legless lizards, legless amphibians (caecilians)&so what is wrong with legless gators. I hope the evidence for ichythology is VERY strong and less icky because it L00ks to me like just a scarce reptile rather than a scar or scare for Gish.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-06-2006 07:02 PM

Here's what the problem is. I will try to keep it on topic of an evolutionary transition and if the heady creature really fullfills the problem. Craik(THE NATURE OF EXPLANATION
Guide to the World's Philosophers - philosophers.co.uk
p 20) says

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Darwin makes the same point in his Origin of Species emphasising that most men are unwilling to admit the possible unity of two different things unless they see the transitional stages

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"Same point" refers to (p19-20)

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We must consider whether the language of philosophy and psychology is not unsuitable for expressing their problems. It uses nouns freely to designate immutable substances, incapable of changing into one another or ceasing to exist; and these substances are in consequently sharply delimited from one another. An attempt is made to proove that the self and other substances to be simple lest complexity should suggest any continuity between categories. When we examine physical reality, as now understood, we find that very few of the 'things' which we denominate by nouns show these properties. Energy or matter or both together are conserved, and do not appear to come from nowhere or pass into nothingness; but all their combinations into higher units or 'things' are capable of changing into one another, and in a sense, of coming out of nothing; for they can arise from a mass of units so dissimilar as to seem incapable of producing them. A mass of iron ore is so unlike an engine that the uninitiated might disbelieve that an engine could ever be made from it. In the same way, consciousness seems so unlike matter that many deny that it can possibly arise from it; they say that unless one admits consciousness as a fundamental substance one is 'denying' it altogether.

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Now as I saw it (the two gator heads (one in Ocala and the other pic in this thread)) there are two problems here, one is of course the design issue that Criak calls subconsiously to iron and the engine withing the issue of "unit" of evolution let us say, that is how the result for Gish or Morris may always be scarcely a scar and simply a scare for it might be argued till oops day that "transition" "consciousness" and "heirarchy" are subjetively incompatible, but the other one is where I think biologists themselves are not conscious enough about the logic of the particular transition supposed FROM fish-throughamphibians-to parental care more cold-bloods. Even granting an evolutionist Criak's point that one can cognize arbitarily (and this is what a cver might suspect (but would be out of topic here I guess) without the 'transitional'"'STAGE'", this works WHERE there is rigidity or substance appearin like impenetribility ("what we might designate as immutable"). This given platform starts with SOME MATERIALITY but must consciously show the "higher unit" (whatever it is that the fossil is supposed to connote as an EVOLUTIONARY CHANGE) arsies "from nothing" as to what existed through translation and space and form-making prior.What I was saying was ,that if the only new visual/substantive contribution that the gator-fish makes, is some kind of stunted arm bones,... then I propose that the "higher unit" is not consciously arrived at, but is instead assumed; based on simple adherence to the evolutionary notion of general change only:: The problem for fish to herp transition is, in HOW the bones themselves divide (moving from cartilage etc), so, just showing that there are divisions in the extra-vertebral bones WHILE the head appears (on it's side) like a gator but [/b]not[b] with as many divisions in THE SAME UNITS' appendiges, as the higher unit already posses("ed" for evos) AND given that these units also have kinds without said divisions at all(legless this and that)... it seems ONly to me that, anyone is using a general prescription to a lack of need for a transitional stage to be in place of the purported "contrarily" transition (when there was none to begin the debate with anyway in Criak's "sense") and THEN saying elliptically that, that by reason of having the cake and eating it too that this is what was the old problem of the fact of evolution and that it is NOW solved. I think that is rather soap I would need to wash my mouth out with than deft move in the c-e game no longer played through the glass but with all our marbles.I can be convinced otherwise if the icythyological evidence were a lot stronger than the simple part head outline I sketeched. My own attempts at looking in detail at the fish reproduction to amphibian life cycle tends to foucs on soft parts and I have not been overwhelmed by literature on bones only, so though I may be wrong here, I would have to work on a lot more biology in to get to that position.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-08-2006 07:36 AM

I think what is happening is that scientific discovery is catching up with Darwin's use contra his own position that otherwise people are complaining about catastrophes or laws of the extinction of forms.In the only letter I directed to Henry Morris, I suggested that he find a way "to predict" the gaps. Then creationists could have a subject that evolutionists, (still arguing over Fisher, Wright, and Gould), who do not generally see HOW the plan of strucutres can be actually, rather than case by case, cut out of space. Morris responded to me about "simulation" which is what Wright is(was) arguing about to Fisher over computer simulations(caried on by Wade vs etc.) of generations vs popuations vs number of alleles etc. So there was no go there.Darwin was clear about the use of terms "infinite complexity", series of forms, and Agassiz had his own use, with God, of "Earth's forms" which David Jordan changed into "present forms" and segregation/selection being extensive to the intensive science of inheritance and variation.If there are laws for the non-extinction of forms, and this seems to be what Darwin used Malthus for, perhaps wrongly, then THIS is what this fossil is about. But because evolutionists are too held up on sexual and selection since the 60s I always expected creationists to look closer at how Gould may be wrong about D' Arcy Thompson (all is not Kaufmann order for free). Darwin had said he could not single file a class of creatures. This fossil is suggesting that Darwin was wrong.I have given some thoughts "to the soft" parts, as I had not, so far , in my contribution above in this thread. But the rough results, which explain electric field receptivity in fish, reptiles and mammals, may be more coarse than Wright's complaint to Fisher, but I will post it nonetheless, in the near future. This may show how bones can exist in muscle and not be supportaive of caught flat footed weight and in the extended implication of the relation of force and form show how the creationist position is not lessened. It was Darwin who raised the issue of electric organs in fish. Faraday asked if fish can be ALTERNATIVELY a conductor and an insulator BUT NO ONE HAS SHOWN how Wright's surface of peaks and valleys may be related to co-optation of the lateral line system into a general nerverous system functionality of the sphere of Maxwell's thought that Heavyside dissed for vectors. I think quarternions show that an average environment under Darwin's notion of laws of extinction of forms can be revised under computer simulations of roations in 3-space thus Lewontin would also be wrong to say that no such thing exists for biology as does motion in a straight line without impressed forces does (did ) for physics.Off soap box, substance pending...Edited by Brad McFall, : link-->thread