I'm sorry, KM, but I think you'll need to be a little more specific in your erudite references. (And maybe you need to be more careful about actually understanding the sources you are referring to.)
Kaichos Man writes:
... vast amounts of time spent in stasis greatly reduce the time available to evolve. For example, Haldane's Dilemma sets a limit on human/common ancestor evolution over 10 million years of 1667 mutations.
I did a quick wikipedia check on Haldane's dilemma -- if you feel this is insufficient, do please direct me to a better source. The term stems from a 1957 publication (not very current, as these things go). The opening paragraph of the wikipedia entry mentions that "Today, Haldane's Dilemma is raised mostly by creationists opposed to evolution, who claim it is evidence against large-scale evolution..." The 2nd paragraph is succinct:
quote:
Haldane stated at the time of publication "I am quite aware that my conclusions will probably need drastic revision", and subsequent corrected calculations found that the cost disappears. He had made an invalid simplifying assumption which negated his assumption of constant population size, and had also incorrectly assumed that two mutations would take twice as long to reach fixation as one, while sexual recombination means that two can be selected simultaneously so that both reach fixation more quickly. The creationist claim is based on further errors and invalid assumptions.
The math in the wikipedia entry is admittedly "above my pay grade", but I didn't see any reference to 1667 mutations or 10 million years -- do you have a better reference for those numbers you mentioned (especially one that isn't 50 years old and subsequently refuted)?
I believe Gould and Eldredge suggested that most organisms spend 99% of their life span in stasis. That would mean man would have to evolve from the common ancestor in just 17 mutations!
(Steven) Gould and (Niles) Eldridge seem to have published a lot together (and singly), so if you're going to cite particular assertions of theirs with particular numeric values, it would really help those of us who try to learn things if you could provide a specific reference -- so please provide the reference you got this from. But apart from that...
Either you have a peculiar inability to express your belief coherently, or else your belief is the result of a staggering misunderstanding. G&E speak of "stasis" as being the typical quality of genetic descent over long periods of time that stand between relatively brief periods of significant adaptation due to relatively intense changes in the pressures applied by natural selection (e.g. climate change). This has no relation whatsoever to any notion of "stasis" over the life span of organisms within the population of a given species.
Is it the case that you totally misunderstand the concept of punctuated equilibrium as applied to the ToE, or are you simply not able to describe the concept correctly? (I'm inclined to accept the pedagogical approach that says if the student is unable to explain the idea, s/he does not adequately understand it.)
In any case, the next time you try to present conclusions based on quantities, you'd better "show your work" (e.g. "1% of 1667 = 17"), as a courtesy to the people who actually know more about these things, so they can point to the specific steps where you make your mistakes.
autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.
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