Evolution: Science, Pseudo-Science, or Both?

It seems to me that your "pattern" represents a very selective view.In the case of heliocentricity the "larger claim" is essentially a hold-over from the pre-existing view. It is a smaller step to move from holding that the Earth is the centre of the universe to the idea that the sun is, than it would be to even move to the idea that our solar system does to hold a privileged position let alone to the idea that there is no real centre.The larger claims of Newtonian mechanics would presumably be to hold that the theory was universal. Yet to a very large extent this is true - it is only under some conditions that we must resort to Relativity or Quantum Mechanics.Likewise chemical elements are universal. We sometimes discover or more usually synthesise elements predicted by the theory but not known in nature but a "different periodic table" is the stuff of bad (very bad) SF.Darwin's claims are not so universal - while the principles may apply elsewhere they may only apply where the right conditions are found. Here on Earth, common ancestry - which surely counts as a larger claim - has been thoroughly confirmed. In the area of mechanism Darwin never claimed that Natural Selection was the only mechanism and the range of mechanisms included within evolution has been expanded (for instance the symbiotic theory's explanation of mitochondria).Even if the supposed "pattern" did exist what larger claims are there that we can reasonably say has not been established ? And could they turn out to be badly wrong like the Heliocentric Universe or would they be more likely to be accurate except for special cases, more like Newton ?Mayr identifies 5 major ideas (What Evolution is Box 5.1 p86):1) The nonconstancy of species2) Common Ancestry3) No saltational change4) Multiplication of species (i.e. branching evolution)5) Natural selectionWhile 3 and - in principle 1 - might not apply in unusual cases none of these could even possibly be as wrong as the heliocentric universe. Biologists have been criticised for understating 4, for instance in the case of horse evolution.

Well I find it interesting that rather than looking at scientific theories your further "evidence" for your "pattern" is pre-scientiifc astronomy. It confirms my view that your evidence is selective.Moreover you misunderstand the point that Galileo's "larger claim" simply continued older thinking. It is also evidence against your supposed pattern.What you write about Newton is also largely irrelevant. Rather than addressing his mechanics you deal with his views on light and theology.Nor do you address the points raised about evolution.All in all something of an evasion.

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PaulK, I have explained all these points in careful detail.

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I've even requested further clarification on some of the points that you've made so that I might better understand your position -- just in case I was actually in error.

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I have reviewed your initial reply and neither of these things are true. You ignored substantial parts of my original, short post, and avoided genuinely answering the points you deigned to notice.Perhaps you would like to explain how your pattern appears in thermodynamics or the theory of electromagnetism ? They would surely be more relevant than pre-scientific astronomy.And you seem VERY shy about offering any idea about how your ideas might apply to evolutionary theory, despite the fact that it is the supposed subject of discussion.

Now, please do not accuse me of lying unless you have good grounds to do so.Your question about Ptolomy was irrelevant to any point I raised. THe other questions appeared in a later post which could not be distinguised as being obviously relevant.As to your other questions I do not know what you wish to be expanded on.
The question is as to which of these you conside likely to go the way of heliocentrism - it seems a simple enough question.As for the idea of science arising from pseudoscience that is old hat to say the least. It's the received wisdom in the case of chemistry, for instance. Yet it has no clear link to the question in the title.

I thought it was entirely clear that what I referred to was the points I quoted. Not your claims about Ptolomy which seem to be a complete and utter waste of time with no relevance to any point under discussion. Equally I thought it was clear that I had no easy way to find and identify your later post given the huge amount of writing you seem to do while still not touching on your original claimIt matters not where the idea that the Earth was tne centre of the universe came from - it is enough that it is the view that was accepted at Galileo's time, and that Galileo's 'larger claim'of heliocentrism has owes more to preexisting beliefs than to Galileo's own work. This itself undermines your claimed pattern of "smaller claims" being true while "larger claims" are false. Nor have you dienged to discuss further examples of this supposed "pattern" instead diverting the discussion to an idea that has been generally accepted and common knowledge for - to my personal knowledge - thirty years and likely far longer.As to the items mentioned by Mayr I would have hoped that anyone with a basic familiarity with actual evolutionary theory would be familiar with the concepts. The major point in your original post was that there was some "larger claim" in evolutionary theory that was likely false. Are you claiming that you are not sufficiently familiar with evolutionary theory to say what that larger claim might be ?If on the other hand you do know then can you explain why you are so reluctant to say what it is ?

Here's your original claim: So far instead of discussing this you seem to prefer discussing the idea that some sciences had their early roots in pre-scientific beliefs which, if (or when) professed now we would call pseudo-science.I, on the other hand, have attempted to discuss this point and ask how it could be said to apply to evolution.And, by the way, if you intend to claim familiarity with evolutoionary theory you would do better than to say things like:

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No. I'm checking my bases to see if we are talking on the same level. For example, do you support Dawkin's concept of gradualism or Gould's concept of puncutated equilibrium?

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Punctuated Equilibira fits within Dawkins idea of gradualism as he explains in The Blind Watchmaker. Thus it is not an "either or" situation.

The statement quoted by Giberti agrees with Dawkin's assessment. It clearly states that there is no conflict. So I don't know why substituting Mayr for Dawkins helps you in the slightest.

Really I don't know why you go on with these trivial and well-known facts aboute Kekule and Capek when they really have nothing to do with your supposed point.Where's this supposed pattern of theories includng "larger claims" that turn out to be false ?

The main dispuste over PE is over whether it is a radical departure from neo-Darwinian ideas or not. Gould sometimes claimed that it was and was criticised for doing so by Dawkins, Mayr, Dennet and others. Dennet's main complaint about Gould is that he did make overblown claims that PE represented a departure from the neo-Darwinian theory.Generally speaking it seems to be agreed that some evolution happens according to PE while some is more gradualistic.Gould's idea about contingency are a different issue.

Saltation as proposed by Goldschmidt is almost universally rejected by evolutionary biologists because it has severe theoretical problems. Especially in sexually reproducing species. Punctuated Equilibria as proposed by Gould and Eldredge is not a saltational theory. Please don't confuse the two.Evolutionary theory neither proposes "unlimited plasticity" nor does it argue that we should be able to reproduce long-term evolutionary change in vertebrate species in a few tens or even hundreds of years simply be selective breeding. Selective breeding allows us to work on the variability already present within the species, and to work faster than ordinary evolutionary rates. But it it does not speed up the rate at which new variations enter the population - and that is the limiting factor.As for your earlier suggestion that string theory might be involved I really have to see that that is almost certainly false. The elements that distinguish string theory come into play in the domains of cosmology and high-energy physics. You would do far better to look into our growing understanding of developmental processes ("evo-devo") and work done on the mechanisms of mutation (see Caporales Darwin in the Genome) to see where evolutionary theory is heading.

So evolution propsoes "unlimited plasticity" in the sense of proposing quite definite limits on plasticity. For instance the basic tetrapod body plan has been altered in various ways but remains recognisable in everything from frogs to bird to humans. And need I point out other famous examples like the panda's "thumb" ?As to the point about time, if you have the results of breeding experiments that have run for tens of thousands of years, please let us know.The rest of the stuff is just speculation - humans and chimps have been seperated long enough that interbreeding is unlikely to be suvvessful even without the chromosomal difference. Experimenting on the human-chimpanxee line is also fraught with ethical questions - which you seem to take no account of at all.

Look is you say "unlimited plasticity" I have to assume that you actually mean it and aren't instead referring to something more like Gould's idea that evolution is highly contingent and that if we "replayed" the story of life on Earth we would get something rather different from what we see today. However true it is (and that is one big argument in itself) it isn't the same thing.In fact given your references to the limits of selective breeding I am certain that you DID mean exactly what you said. Because that certainly isn't about the long-term potential of the distant ancestors of the tetrapods.And what are you going to do with near-human "chimps" ? Here are some pretty serious ethical concerns which have nothing to do with anything as questionable as "inherent chimpanzeeness". Given that increased intelligence is presumably a major goal the ethics of experimenting on them becomes murkier and murkier. Experimenting on chimps alone is questionable and it gets more and more ethically dubious as the experiment advances.Worse, what would it tell us ? The creationsits would simply point to the genetic engineering and artificial selection as intelligent intervention and claim that that invalidated the experiment. Surely it would be better to simply reconstruct a plausible series of mutations on paper - that at least is less ethically dubious and achieves the same aim. If there is no theoretical barrier to known mechanisms accounting for the evolution of chimps and humans from a common ancestor why resort to ethically questionable experiments ?

The material you quoted clearly indicates that you did indeed refer to limits to actual change and therefore referred to plasticity rather than contingency. Please stop confusing the issue.Now I don't see how your experiment could be done without reversing any inconvenient genetic changes in the chimp line and then trying to duplicate the changes that happened in the human line. Which means you would already need a plausible pathway for both lines of evolution, to even do the experiment. Yet that in itself would be sufficient counter to the assertion that humans could not be descended rom "lesser primates".However assembling such a pathway on paper is NOT the experiment you asked for - it is a theoretical exercise. It does NOT involve ANY genetic manipulation. It does not require even your first step of "Fuse two of the smaller chimpanzee chromosomes to genetically produce a new species that has 23 chromosomes like humans do (instead of 24 like chimpanzees)." Clearly a paper exercise is NOT what you had in mind.As for your suggestion that I take on the task of doing such an exercise - a major scientific project which would take years - even with the funding and expertise which are not even plausibly available to me I just have to laugh. Obviously I can't start to do it.As for this:

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I'm getting tired of those who continue to invoke Godwin's Law when all that I'm asking for is a hypothetical reconstruction of aplausible series of mutations.

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Do you understand what I'm requesting?

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Yes. You're tired of people pointing out the unethical nature of the experiments YOU suggested. So you want to a) falsely accuse them of calling you a Nazi and b) pretend that you didn't ask for major genetic engineering experiments on chimps to produce a "human" species.Here it is again from Message 101

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...However, it would be interesting is they could use genetic manipulation to simulate mutations and natural selection in order to accomplish the following very quickly over many generations what would normally require millions of years:

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1: Fuse two of the smaller chimpanzee chromosomes to genetically produce a new species that has 23 chromosomes like humans do (instead of 24 like chimpanzees).

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2. Reduce the 23 kilobases of repeating DNA sequences on the chimpanzee telomere to 10 kilobases of repeating DNA like that of the human telomere.

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3. Although 18 pairs of chromosomes are ‘virtually identical’ between humanity and chimpanzees, chromosomes 4, 9 and 12 show evidence of being ‘modified.’ in some way. It would be interesting if genetisists could manipulate the chimpanzee generations so that the markers on these chromosomes would go in the same order as in the human -- the Y chromosome in particular would have to made into a different size and have many markers line up where ordinarilly they do not do so.

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4. Genetically re-engineer chromosome 21 in particular so as to remove the large, non-random regions of difference between the two different types of genomes.

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5. Determine the regions that might correspond to insertions that are specific to the human lineage -- and attempt to reproduce them genetically as appropriate.

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While certain animals rights groups might object to the genetic violation of these creatures inherent "chimpanzeeness", it seems to me that a project of this magnitude would certainly attract a large base of researchers. Instead of trying to clone humans, perhaps the better
experiment is to try to produce humans via generations of genetically altered chimps.

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This is JOHNSON'S trick. It is certainly relevant to produce examples of "small scale" evolution as EVIDENCE for evolution - even in the wider senses - because it establishes that the mechanisms proposed by evolution do operate as claimed. Indeed the examples are often used only to rpove evolution in the smaller sense - examples of specitiation are trotted out to show that speciatin happens. The peppered moth demonstrates that natural selection happend. The trick is to jump on such an example, claim it is being used as pr oof of something more and then dismiss the evidence on that pretext. This quote or paraphrase is both dishonest and hypocritical.

Lets put this simply.1) The peppered moth story is a valid example of natural selection.Even if other factors were involved it is still clear that there was a selective force related to industrial pollution (and it is very likely that bird predation was the major part of that selective force).2) Thus it is evidence for evolution in that it establishes that one of the mechanisms proposed works in the wild3) If I use it as EVIDENCE for evolution as expained in 2) it is a misrepresentation to claim that I am asserting that it is proof of evolution4) To accuse me of dishonesty based on a clear misrepresentation of my claims would itself be dishonest.5) To dishonestly make accusations of dishonesty is hypocritical.
And that is what Johnson is doing.And if you want the basic equations of evolution you need to look into Population Genetics.