Nested Biological Hierarchies

Hi, nemesis.I apologize, but I can't really figure out what your point is. If you will allow me, I will present a simplified version of Dr. Theobald's case; if you can find criticisms of this simplified version, we can discuss them, otherwise you can add the complications that you find relevant.(1) If the theory of evolution is an accurate description of the history of life, then we should be able to classify the species in a nested, heirarchical scheme.I'm hoping that there is not much dispute over this, but if this isn't accepted, then I suppose we can discuss this point and talk about why common descent must produce a nested heirarchical pattern in the species.(2) The species can be classified in a nested hierarchical scheme.I will point out that this pattern was discovered prior to Darwin's theories, so is not a result of scientists forcing their data to fit a prior held belief in common descent.Now (1) is a prediction of the theory of evolution, and (2) is the confirmation of the prediction. The reason that this is a confirmation is that there is no a priori reason to suspect that the species should be classifiable in a nested hierarchy. Certainly, creationism does not predict what patterns, if any, we should see, and if the creator wanted, the creator certainly could have confounded the future evolutionists by creating each species with a mix-and-match set of characteristics that would have confounded any attempt at finding an objective nested hierarchical pattern.Without the theory of evolution, there is no reason to suspect that this pattern should exist. With the theory of evolution, this pattern must exist. And, lo and behold, we do see this pattern.What are your thoughts?

---

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
-- H. L. Mencken (quoted on Panda's Thumb)

quote:

---

So, how is that supposed to prove anything?

---

It is evidence, just like the evidence that confirms any scientific theory. Theory A says that we should see phenomenon B. If B is seen, then that counts as confirmation of A, especially if there was no prior reason for suspecting that B would be seen. If an investigator thinks that Amy killed Bob with the chainsaw, what does she do? She makes a prediction: if Amy killed Bob with the chainsaw, then Amy's fingerprints should be on it. If, indeed, Amy's fingerprints are on the chainsaw, that counts as evidence for the suspicion. It is not proof, but it is evidence that will be presented to the jury. Then the investigator says, "If my suspicions are correct, Bob's blood must have splattered all over Amy's clothes." If a search of Amy's house turns up clothes that have Bob's blood on them, then that, too, counts as evidence. Not proof, but that is for the jury to decide how good the evidence is. If either bloody clothes or Amy's fingerprints are not found, then either a good reason must be preented why they have not been found (she wore gloves and burned the clothes), or the theory must be changed or discarded (Amy hired a hitman, or maybe Carla did it!)In the same way, If evolution is true, we should see a nested heirarchical pattern.We look, and, indeed, we see a nested heirarchical pattern.There is no reason why we should see a nested heirarchical pattern, but we do, and evolution has predicted that we should see it. Proof? On its own, no, but good evidence, evidence that we will present to the jury with all the other evidence.-

quote:

---

I don't really care if someone said that its a fish because, it has fins, it lives in the water, it has the anatomics of a fish, and so on.

---

A dolphin does not have the "anatomics" of a fish - the only anatomic traits it shares with fish are the same traits that it shares with all vertebrates. The only traits it shares with crocodiles are the traits it shares with all tetrapods. It is definitely a mammal -- there is no abiguity in this. It has the anatomy of a mammal. It doesn't even have fins -- it has five-digit paws, except that the flesh seperating the digits didn't disapear during development like it does in all other tetrapods.No matter how you look at the dolphin, it's anatomy clearly places it unambiguously in a definite spot in the hierarchical classification, just as the theory of evolution says it should.Now if the dolphin gave birth and nursed its young like a mammal but had eyes like an insect and jointed legs like a lobster -- that would be difficult to classify!-

quote:

---

What it fails to capture is that all living things are ultimately related.

---

What it implies is that all species that can be placed in the same tree are ultimately related. By the 1960s, all metazoan animals (with the possible exception of sponges) could be placed on one definate tree. So the impliation is that all metazoans are related. Now, with the development of molecular biology, all life can be placed on one or another tree, and so far all tested species can be placed on a single tree indicating that all life (so far) is related.-

quote:

---

One such is homo floresiensis, which aparently has the entire paleontological community in disagreement as to what exactly it is.

---

Actually, what is being argued is whether H. floresiensis microevolved from H. erectus or whether it is H. sapiens with some sort of disease. At any rate, these three species are closely related -- I was thinking of mixing and matching characteristics of distant taxa, like otters with bird wings, or sequoias with mammalian circulatory systems, or some such. At any rate, everyone agrees with H. floresiensis' place on the phyletic tree; they just don't know on which very closely spaced branches it belongs to exactly. Now if H. floresiensis teeth like a velocraptor, a turtle shell, and feet starfish tube feet around its mouth, that would be hard to classify!-

quote:

---

Just looking at them, could you make the distinction of which ones are actually related? How many of them that weren't related bear a striking resemblance to another?

---

By examining their anatomy? No, the morphological characteristics that taxonomists use can distinguish species and their relationships, but not the relationships of individuals within a species. Why do you think this failure is relevant to taxonomic classification? It is like saying you don't believe in the existence of space and volume because you cannot measure the space between my teeth with a yardstick. And remember, we are discussing the relationships of species, not individuals. Species evolve, individuals do not.On the other hand, modern molecular biology and genetics can do a very good job of determining the individual relationships between individuals -- the basis of paternity testing, for example. This is now providing an important tool for determining the relationship between taxa for which morphological techniques failed (like bacteria).-At any rate, the heirarchical classification exists. As far as I know, even the creationists accept it -- you may be the first that I know of that is trying to dispute it. At any rate, let's see whether this has cleared anything up.

---

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
-- H. L. Mencken (quoted on Panda's Thumb)

Hi, Wounded King.I figured that nemesis was speaking of the superficial resemblance of dolphins to fish. My point is that this resemblance is only superficial; any detailed examination of dolphins shows without amibiguity that dolphins are mammals.Of course, we expect things like these superficial differences (between the fish-like dolphin shape and the salamander-like shape most other mammals have). After all, if all species were identical, then there would only be a single species, and the whole discussion would be largely moot. But each species is a species precisely because it has differences from the other species. So each species is going to have characteristics that are different from even the most closely related species -- if it didn't, it wouldn't be a different species.That is why it is important to look at many, many different characteristics to determine where in the classification scheme a given species lies. Overall, the gross anatomy indicates the large, general area in which to place the species (dolphins are indisputably chordates), and a not-much-more detailed examination will narrow down the proper category even more (dolphins are clearly mammals, despite superficial appearances). To narrow down the placement further, we start examining the characteristics that differ from the over all, general body plan and compare them to those of other species that share similar differences from the overall body plan.Of course, this is not necessarily easy (I believe that Linnaeus may have classified whales as fish originally), but, then, most of the accepted scientific discoveries and classifications are the result of years and decades of hard, careful work.The interesting thing is as long as you choose a large enough sample of characteristics, it becomes clear which are part of a general plan that characterizes large taxa, and which are the more specific characteristics that determine its proper smaller taxon within the larger one. As long as people choose a large enough number of characteristics, it doesn't matter which ones they choose -- different investigators will produce the same classification.Of course, there will be minor details in how to place individual branches, but two different placements will be very close. (A and B clearly branched off very close to one another, but did A branch off first, or did B? Did C branch off A near its base, or did it branch of the closely related B branch?) Just because one investigator measured the speed of light to be 299,792,458.2 m/s and another measured 299,792,457.9 m/s does not imply that light does not have a speed.(P.S. I am not a taxonomist -- as always, I welcome any corrections from the actual experts.)

---

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
-- H. L. Mencken (quoted on Panda's Thumb)

quote:

---

What I'm saying is that its completely subjective....

---

Yes, that is what you are saying, but you are wrong. It is not subjective. The same pattern arises regardless who does the classification. That is the entire point of this piece of evidence. If the classification were subjective, whereas the theory of evolution predicts a nested hierarchy that is not subjective, then it would count as a falsification.Do you realize that you are making a claim here that other creationists do not make? Does the fact that the other creationists agree that the hierarchical classification pattern is independent of the person doing the classification make you wonder about your claim here? At any rate, if you want to provide evidence against common descent, you now have a way to do it. When you go to college, study biology. Become a taxonomist. Then show the world how you can come up with a new, very different hierarchical scheme for classifying the species. You can revolutionize biology!

quote:

---

Suppose that you agree that a Creator exists and that He created all sorts of kinds of animals.... Out of those millions of species, aren't some going to look more alike than others?

---

Now you are missing the point -- this is similar to other creationist arguments, but this argument does not understand the point. It is not similarities that are important, it is the pattern of the similarities. Dolphins do not just share a couple of random characteristics with mammals. Dolphins bear live young, the embryos gestate in a uterus, and they are connected to the mother via a placenta, dolphins lactate, they have a backbone, a four-chambered heart, a brain that has a definite mammalian shape and definite mammalian regions, the inner ear contains three small bones, their flippers contain exactly the same bones in your arm in the same places (just shorter), and so forth and so on. They do not have bird-like feathers, they do not have lobster-like legs, they do not have jellyfish-like stingers.-

quote:

---

Cetaceans resemble fish more than it does any other mammal.

---

They don't. They resemble other mammals much, much, much more than they resemble fish. That is why they are classed as mammals, not fish. Any taxonomist, anywhere, cutting open a dolphin to examine the inner organs and the skeleton will come to the same conclusion: this creature is a mammal, this creature is much more like a human being than it is to a cod.-

quote:

---

If you were to ask any child that is currently ignorant of the taxonomy classification, what a Dolphin is, their basest instinct tells them that its a fish because it lives in the water and fins (flippers).

---

Yes, and if you ask a child, she will probably tell you the sun and the stars go around the earth -- they also have to be taught that in actual fact the earth rotates on its axis and goes around the sun.-

quote:

---

But what does the evidence spell out if the end result or the intermidate steps to take us there has never been witnessed?

---

The intermediate steps have been found; however this is irrelevant to the point. It doesn't matter whether the intermediate steps have been found or not; the hierarchical classification is evidence all by itself. According to the theory of evolution, we should be able to arrange the species in a nested hierachical pattern, and this pattern should not depend on who does the classification (that is, it should not be subjective). The species can be arranged in a nested hierarchical pattern, and different people using different sets of characteristics all come up with essentially the same pattern. This is a confirmation. On the other hand, if different people did come up with completely different patterns, then that would have been a falsification. But that hasn't happened. At least, not until you study taxonomy and show us all how it can be done.-

quote:

---

Suppose that automobiles were living and could procreate.

---

If automobiles were living and could procreate, if the replication was very good but not perfect, and if we started with only a couple of different kinds of automobile (maybe only a single one), then we should see that there is a single, non-subjective hierarchical classification for automobiles. But automobiles don't reproduce, they were each designed by humans, and the designers took good ideas from one kind of automobile and used them in others to produce automobiles that mix and match all kinds of characteristics with no real pattern. That is why different people, if they were to classify automobiles, will produce different nested patterns. In fact, if Genesis were true I would expect (perhaps naively) that the creator would have mix and match various characteristics together in such a way that a single nested hierarchical pattern would not be evident. For some reason, the creator decided to match camera eyes with the retina behind blood vessels with backbones, uteruses with lactation, four-chambered hearts with warm bloodedness, and so forth and so on.-

quote:

---

For instance, chimps don't have as closely related DNA to humans that was once previously believed.

---

How closely related are the DNA? How closely related do you think the DNA should be? The fact is, the chimp DNA is more closely related to human DNA than to any other animal (except the bononbo); human and chimp DNA are each more related to gorilla DNA than any other animal; chimp, human, and gorilla DNA are more closely related to elephant DNA than to any non-mammal; any mammal's DNA will be related to any reptile (or bird) DNA than to any non-vertebrate; and so forth and so on. The theory of evolution predicts that genetics should replicate the traditional taxonomic classification, and it does.

---

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."
-- H. L. Mencken (quoted on Panda's Thumb)

Hello, Scrutinizer, and welcome to EvC.

quote:

---

Inferring from the biblical story of creation, God intended man to be able to comprehend the world around him.

---

I guess I don't inferr that from Genesis myself; but that is the problem with these types of interpretation of the texts; the exact interpretation of deep meaning is subjective.-

quote:

---

Rather, there would need to be some form of apparent pattern among the different species for humans to be able to make sense of the immense biological diversity.

---

Why does the immense biological diversity need to make sense? If all the different kinds were specially created, then there is no sense to make of it; things just exist because the creator decided that they would exist. The nested hierarchical pattern does not make any sense of the immense biological diversity, since there is no sense to be made of it, other than they were simply created as they are. In fact, the nested hierarchical pattern becomes an unnecessarily misleading phenomenon.The difference between the theory of evolution and literal Genesis creationism is that if no one knew about the Linnean classification system, someone would have predicted that such a nested hierarchical pattern should be found if common descent were a fact. On the other hand, no creationist would have thought of a nested hierarchical pattern based on Genesis alone; this is a fact that needs to be explained after the pattern is discovered.

---

"The monkeys don't want to die./ So the monkeys make up gods/ And then they worship them./ Then the monkeys start to argue over whose made-up god is better."
-- Ernie Cline

quote:

---

If God commanded Adam to name every living creature, a pattern would make this task far easier, allowing him to keep track of each animal by mentally grouping similar kinds.

---

Other people have already commented on this; I will just add another point. Patterns of this sort can often be seen in any group of objects. Species are often grouped together in different categories by many different societies; this is a natural tendency to see "patterns". However, different societies place different species in different categories than other societies, based on what each individual society feels is an important distinction (sometimes including what use the society makes of the particular species).So this objective nested hierarchy would be unnecessary to Adam; if he needed to, he could have easily categorized the species based on superficial similarity, clean/unclean, and so forth. Bats could be birds, for all Adam cared, and dolphins could be fish. Certainly there is no indication in Genesis that Adam dissected a representative of each species and carefully examined the finer details of anatomy to discover the true classification (and, seeing how there was no death at this time, the thought of doing so would be rather gruesome).So, creating each kind to fit an objective, real nested hierarchical pattern would be unnecessary even for the simple classification that Adam would have to do (assuming that he would have to do one), and the discovery of this objective pattern would not be within his means anyway.

---

"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

quote:

---

But it should be overwhelmingly obvious by looking at the fossil record.

---

And it is!-

quote:

---

f it was, TalkOrigins would have more than '29 evidences' of a macroevolutionary process.

---

Actually, the transitional lineages attested in the fossil record is one of the 29 evidences.

---

"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

quote:

---

What about saying that a creator made both humans and chimps with a broken gene for vitamine-C production with which not to produce vitamine-C?

---

Not only that, but the vitamin C genes of humans and chimps are broken in exactly the same way.Guinea pigs are another mammal with a broken vitamin C gene. The interesting thing is that the guinea pig vitamin C gene is broken in a different way than the higher primates'.Very consistent with the idea that the common ancestor of guinea pigs and primates had fully functioning vitamin C genes (like the vast majority of mammals do), but the vitamin C gene became broken in different differently in an ancestor of guinea pigs and in a common ancestor of humans and chimps.

---

"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

quote:

---

My example with Adam was only to show that we would expect some pattern among creatures even from the premise of creationism.

---

Actually, you didn't quite succeed in that. As I have explained, nested hierarchies are easy to construct; if Adam needed one, he could have easily have made up a nested hierarchy; an single objective hierarchy would be unnecessary. Furthermore, determining the real hierarchy would have required dissection of specimens and careful comparisons, and years and years of work, beyond the means of Adam at that time.So, the objective hierarchy would have been unnecessary for Adam's work, and would have been beyond his ability to determine.

---

"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

quote:

---

So, because the claim is that remnants of once functional genes have been abandoned in a non-coding sequence, the fact that humans and chimps share it means nothing, especially if there is no compelling evidence to marry all mammals together in the first place.

---

Fortunately, there is a reason to link all mammals together, namely the nested hierarchical classification. In fact, the same classification links all primates together, and links humans, chimps, and gorillas even closer. It is a significant fact that after the nested hierarchies have been determined, this pattern of broken genes conforms to it, verifying that the observed pattern is, in fact, real, not subjective.Edited by Chiroptera, : original post was badly written

---

"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

quote:

---

So, to you any corresponding genes must then be indicative of ancestry. Sorry, but as i said earlier, out of billions of species, the fact that many would have similarities is obvious

​

There is no reason for there to be any similarities for an all powerful God who can build things from dust any way he wants.

---

He's also missing the point here; the important idea here is not that similarities exist, but that there is a specific, detailed pattern to the similarities.

---

"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

quote:

---

Your conjecture does not help us understand why natural selection would favor the weaker over the stronger.

---

It depends on what you mean by "weaker" and "stronger". If by "weaker" and "stronger" you refer to traits that you seem to think are preferable, then evolution doesn't care one whit about "weaker" or "stronger".In the case of vitamin C production, if a creature lives in an environment where food full of vitamin C is plentiful, then an individual who cannot make vitamin C is no weaker than one who can.

---

"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline