Does the Darwinian theory require modification or replacement?

Dr. Adequate writes: Again, I would ask you to find me anyone, on this thread or elsewhere, who denies the existence of the mechanisms that he and Wright are talking about. Otherwise he is fighting against an orthodoxy that no-one in the world believes in, and which is therefore neither ortho nor a doxy.

Dr. Adequate writes: His statement of them is vague and imprecise. Given that difficulty, I should say that "the connections between evolutionary change and ecological disruption" is something that is fairly well understood; and that "the origins of complex adaptive novelties at moments of macroevolutionary change" is a phenomenon for which there is as yet no evidence and which therefore doesn't really need an explanation. But as I say, his writing is vague and it's not completely clear what he has in mind.

Dr. Adequate writes: And then you try to bolster your nonsense by quoting a paper which explicitly says how delighted Charles Darwin would have been with the results!
Sheesh.

The authors then state.
This sentence conveys two important messages: first, that the root apex may be considered to be a ‘brain-like’ organ endowed with a sensitivity which controls its navigation through soil; second, that the root apex represents the anterior end of the plant body. In this article, we discuss both these statements.

taq writes:What types of changes are we talking about? Changes in gene regulation or gene sequence?

shadow 71 writes:What most on this board are doing is stating WHAT is happening in the cell, i.e. the mechanics . You do not address the WHY and HOW it happens, you just assume it is a Natural process.

Dr.Adequate writes:It is very hard for me to conceive of the mental state that could lead someone to produce those two sentences. However, given that you have done so, might I tactfully suggest that participation on these forums might be too difficult for you, and advise you to take up some hobby that is less intellectually taxing?

Corrections to chance fluctuations: quantum mind in biological evolution?
Damiani G.Istituto di Genetica Molecolare / Evolutionary Genetics, CNR, Via Abbiategrasso 207, 27100 Pavia (Italy). damiani@igm.cnr.itAbstract
According to neo-Darwinian theory, biological evolution is produced by natural selection of random hereditary variations. This assumption stems from the idea of a mechanical and deterministic world based on the laws of classic physics. However, the increased knowledge of relationships between metabolism, epigenetic systems, and editing of nucleic acids suggests the existence of self-organized processes of adaptive evolution in response to environmental stresses. Living organisms are open thermodynamic systems which use entropic decay of external source of electromagnetic energy to increase their internal dynamic order and to generate new genetic and epigenetic information with a high degree of coherency and teleonomic creativity. Sensing, information processing, and decision making of biological systems might be mainly quantum phenomena. Amplification of microscopic quantum events using the long-range correlation of fractal structures, at the borderline between deterministic order and unpredictable chaos, may be used to direct a reproducible transition of the biological systems towards a defined macroscopic state. The discoveries of many natural genetic engineering systems, the ability to choose the most effective solutions, and the emergence of complex forms of consciousness at different levels confirm the importance of mind-action directed processes in biological evolution, as suggested by Alfred Russel Wallace. Although the main Darwinian principles will remain a crucial component of our understanding of evolution, a radical rethinking of the conceptual structure of the neo-Darwinian theory is needed.

Dr.Adequate writes: No. If he is, as you say, a scientist, I'd suggest that he take up a whole different profession, such as chicken-farming.

"On a logical difficulty in the directed mutation debate"QI ZHENGDepartment of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Rural Public Health, Texas A&M Health Science Center, College Station, TX 77843, USASummaryThis paper calls attention to an overlooked logical difficulty that has impeded the directed mutation debate for over half a century. It further suggests that the random mutation hypothesis be regarded at present as a null hypothesis in evolutionary biology.

AZPaul writes: shadow, do you know what a "null hypothesis" is in science?

Wilkepedia writes: The practice of science involves formulating and testing hypotheses, assertions that are falsifiable using a test of observed data. The null hypothesis typically corresponds to a general or default position. For example, the null hypothesis might be that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena,[1] or that a potential treatment has no effect.[2] In most legal systems, the presumption that a defendant is innocent ("until proven guilty") can be interpreted as saying that his or her innocence is the null hypothesis. Other legal systems may exist in which the null hypothesis is that the defendant is guilty.[edit] PrincipleHypothesis testing works by collecting data and measuring how probable the data are, assuming the null hypothesis is true. If the data are very improbable (usually defined as observed less than 5% of the time), then the experimenter concludes that the null hypothesis is false. If the data do not contradict the null hypothesis, then no conclusion is made. In this case, the null hypothesis could be true or false; the data give insufficient evidence to make any conclusion.

Coyote writes: Where in all of this do you see support for creationism or ID? I suspect the author would be aghast at the uses to which creationists are putting his research.

NoNukes writes: What event might that be?

Wright writes: As this minireview is concerned with the importance of the environment in directing evolution, it is appropriate to remember that Lamarck was the first to clearly articulate a consistent theory of gradual evolution from the simplest of species to the most complex, culminating in the origin of mankind (71). He published his remarkable and courageous theory in 1809, the year of Darwin's birth. Unfortunately, Lamarck's major contributions have been overshadowed by his views on the inheritance of acquired characters. In fact, Darwin shared some of these same views, and even Weismann (106), the father of neo-Darwinism, decided late in his career that directed variation must be invoked to understand some phenomena, as random variation and selection alone are not a sufficient explanation (71). This minireview will describe mechanisms of mutation that are not random and can accelerate the process of evolution in specific directions.

Shadow 71 writes: I know Cairns and others have challenged the Luria & Delbuck experiment, but it this scientist is correct, we may have no proof of random mutations.

Dr Adequate writes:Please quote him saying so.

Shadow 71 writes:Do you agree that plants have sensitivity, the power of directing the movements of their adjoinging parts, and that the brain receives impressions from the sense organs and directs their movements is consistent with the current theory?

Dr Adequate writes:Yes, of course. That is why I have said so very emphatically.The question is, do you deny it?If not, then you must agree that these obvious facts, well known to Darwin himself as well as to all "neo-Darwinists", do not constitute a challenge to orthodoxy but a wholehearted agreement with it.

Tanypterykx writes: Good Grief, shadow!No wonder everyone thinks you don't know what you are talking about. Darwin's theory was Natural Selection not mutation, random or non-random. He knew there was variation in populations but he did not know what caused it or how it was passed on

Shapiro writes: Since Darwin, three issues have been seen as central to formulating a coherent theory of evolutionary change:(i) descent with modification (that is the inheritance of novel characters),(ii) the origins of hereditary variation, and(iii) the operation of natural selection.All evolutionists accept descent with modification as fundamental to the evolutionary process, but views towards issues (ii) and (iii) have depended on the existing state of biological knowledge in each historical period.In the 19th century, Darwin based his thinking on the observations of animal breeders and naturalists. Lacking detailed studies of inheritance, he postulated that change arose randomly as 'numerous, successive, slight variations' [2]. Applying the uniformitarian principle he learned from Charles Lyell, his professor of geology [3], Darwin extrapolated that these small changes would accumulate over long periods of time, under the guidance of natural selection, to produce major adaptive characters, such as the eye, and eventually would lead to the branching off of new species. Thus, classical Darwinism was characterized by its gradualist view of change and ascribed the major role in adaptive innovation to the positive action of natural selection in sequentially favouring ever fitter variants.

Shapiro writes: In the 20th century, evolutionists were confronted by an apparent contradiction between Darwinian gradualism and the abrupt changes in individual traits that were observed to undergo Mendelian segregations in genetic crosses. This contradiction was resolved at mid-century by the neo-Darwinian 'modern synthesis' that integrated Darwinian gradualism with mathematical population genetics [4,5]. Like Darwin, his neo-Darwinian followers postulated that the mutational process, which generated allelic variants of individual genes, has to be random in nature. In opposition to Lamarckian ideas, any possibility that organismal history could influence hereditary variation was excluded. The primary role in determining evolutionary novelty remained with natural selection.

Shadow 71 writes:My question was "Has NATURAL GENETIC ENGINERING changed the modern Darwinian theory of evolution as we know it today?

Shapiro writes: "Of course. Going from random accidents to regulated biochemical systems as the source of genetic variation is a fundamental change. It allows us to understand how outside events can trigger change (see table in my 2006 "Genome informatics" article), makes it clear how combinatorial change can occur using established adaptive components (e.g. protein domains, regulatory modules), and provides a way to investigate what kind of heuristic guidance may be operating in genome change."

Shadow71 writes: "Do you have an opinion whether mutations are random with respect to fitness per the modern Darwinian Theory?"

Shapiro writes: I gave examples in my 2010 article (e.g. biasing retrovirus insertion upstream of coding regions) where certain changes are non-random with respect to their potential biological utility.