What I was not saying was what Ernt Mayr admitted as to the "stomach" or gut in relation to the "tree" of Haeckel which on a view of embryology Mayr was not able to disuade himself of even AFTER trying. I have not picked apart the meat in Gould's book but he may have avoided this problem that is really about the continutiy of genetic connection despite that a "revoltion" of the perspective from the genes is going on. I do not understand Paulk on what is more serious than this as this was first (aside from a protocol of topobiology for instance to which another Harvard guy Lewontin begged off on etc)made in materiality by a Cornell scientist on leave to Europe to try to CATEGORICALLY stop creationism by basis of drawable phylogenies onto molecular evidence to which Gould not so smartly seperated phsyscial and mathematical effects by postulating a token time tremeor of discontinuity in all probalisms.
When I was reading my Grandfather's note books from his (graduate?) Zoology class at Urbana I got the impression that the "soft" parts COULD NOT be distiguished from Hackel's notion of the this part of anatomy but that the work on homeobox and molecular embryology to which Gould also removes himself textually from may have gain said this earlier education of biologists. For a time I had thought that I would have to stick with the fluke of my grandfater's own hand drawings of dissections when it came to the real biological difference I have with discussing what I have seen in the difference of heads of herps and fish (not what I have seen as the same)which would have relied on Haeckel to an extent maybe only ecological it is hard to say.
The web had chaged this. The discussion on ICR forum established in my mind a way to avoid Haeckel electronically but I was not sure how to until quite a few posts down the c/e rabbit trails etc etc.
The amazement however needs to extend to a discussion of lower vertebrate relations of upper and lower jaws, ears etc. I do think that maybe horned toads spikes and toad warts are used by the lower verts to transition longitudianl waves into transverse to the typanmum but then one would have to really/actually look at snakes and salamanders IN THE SAME COMAPARATIVE way to be rigorus which I do not. The closeness of anatomical proximit and different taxa creates the problem but this IS THE JOB of the systematists to which I thought I had a job in. I am not longer amazed but I need to use TWO arguments and not one in order to be conviceing but I have NEVER even got one to work on the web so it is still not possible for me to reveal everythin I know I have read.
You need for instance to be very concerned about for instance why salamders have only ONE and frogs have TWO nerves into the ear. And I have not touched the issue of the claimed change which is seen in human youngs. I also have not thought about this for about two months so I do not have the whole gory details on my toungue tip. You need to interpret homones witout only saying "instinct". THIS IS BIOLOGY and I am glad your son was impressed for that is what starts one's interest in a given taxonomic group.
So I agree to the similiarity but the PROBLEM part comes in when you try to do more sicence agreeing with what your eyes APPEAR to indicate, and now there is a standard evolutionary apprecation which is no different than notions such as "genes for horns" to explian tiatotheres across geo-horizons or one could remand a better statistical significance before concluding in that standard evo-devo way by attempting to consturct with a morphometrics some acutally no visual continuity. We need this higher mathematical continutiy if we are ever going to link up the form with the geographic distributions of the various forms. I know Croizat had done a better job than me looking at point distributions but instead we get some functional paleoecology which is really as specious and on the same degree of confidence as the visual impression. This is the same degree of ability as to read a letter such as double U. We need better as biologists if we are going to impress our physicist friends and we dont get it precisely as evolutionists BLAME creationists but it was the evolutionists who FIRST attempted to discount the cretaionists on this point of non-mental voluntary continutation (without any spirit).
I spent all the time in the herpetology club trying to draw out the similiarites. that IS a good thing but an IMMEDIATE PREDECESSOR is not a successor and need not be a common descendant. Just by looking will not enable one to sort this out, some kind of interpreation or higher cognitive ability is involved. Best.