Definition of Evolution

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If one takes to time to consider this definition, it still allows for some creationists to believe in the theory of evolution. I have known some creationists to believe that evolution (by this definition) can occur but started occurring only after God created the Earth. So this definition does not disallow creationism. (Like I said, the question is to what extent evolution occurs).

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It is my personal reading of evolutionary literature that most of the disputes about processes of evolution come from a time period in biological history when it was generally the focus of the participants on life on Earth. I think all kinds of differences of opinions can be read from the literature if one assumes that the extant evolution being discussed is that which can be described as occurring or having occurred on Earth. This is why the Darwinian notion is important to these differences.When you reapeat, "the extent that evolution occurrs", do you mean the density of evolutionary action per space? or are you trying to specificy something purely temporal here??Heritability was introduced fairly broadly in the 60s to dispel fears that phenotypeless notion of Neo-Darwinain change was what was being discussed but Waddington for one, indicated that this does not keep the older thought that is not focused on the object of the disucussion from remaining purlely static.Without a clear communication of what you intend by "extent" of evolution I can not see how making a more material requirement to the conversation is very helpful.I, myself, have found that the continued denial of creationists is largely because the forms of life need not fill the "theoretical" discussion of evolution. This is obvious to the student. The teacher has a harder job, if this entails presenting a forward moving prospect where evolution is extant for any momemnt.Are you trying to tie the "extent" of evolution happening directly to heritiablilty here? if so then how are you considering that one is supposed to structure envirnomental paramters that make of niches where no ecology but only gases, liquids and solids exist???

Thanks for your "in real time" reply. That was greatly appreciated.I do know why I brought up extant ("present forms" - David Star Jordan vs "Earth's forms" - L. Aggassiz, but let me not make a side consequence of something that need not..., thanks again for your quick response..) as opposed to your use of 'extent' but now I can see more pointedly what you meant anyway.There is also an issue or problem or question if one is not having to say how "genetic" variation becomes available to the biologist's observation. It can be done in experiment or interpreted from surface counts etc. I see that this is not an issue for you note that , "anyone can accept that mutations or changes in genetics occur and..." so I see I was trying to read a little too hard into what you were thinking.Sorry for just being me.While thinking of evolutionary theory, the visualization in the theory gets more intricate than sticking one's eyes under a microscope to look at a bird feather hook, so if there really is an issue about how involved(involuted/evolved) the design of a non-designed object it should be finable in the theory even if not available in any combinations of viewed forms currently extant or extinct (and preserved in the fossilized 'record'), that is why I was asking as I did (given your clarification in this post).You have already made the particular discussion, with regard to your posts easier to follow, as you delimit that species as less complex than primates as a whole or inother words, evolution may be able to tinker in the junk yard to create a volvox but not much more than small pox. Ok, I get that(only I think that theoretical conversation entails consequences for that kind of transition in complexity etc).Dropping my own concern about time vs epigentic sequence vs ontogeny vs phlogeny, is one is reading Darwin (rather than Lamarck etc) who explictly stated that what he thought was not special creation then not only would the intensity be enough to FORM a new species but it would be from a continuum of causality that first occurred in non-single file line of effects of whatever it was that was back of the species itself.To say that there is no "force" to have 'possibly' done that seems inadequate to me but possibly is not actually, which is what any student of creationism is or can point out and thus short of a description of the actual forces acrosss the generations, the proximate web of mutations in the historical populations and a rational overarching theory you are correct the evolutionist in debate may be stuck having to argue for a more restricted exent, up to the limit of the readers comprehension of the science involved and the extant nature of scientific discovery.I do understand what you have said.A genetic change however entails life itself so it not really a simple thing to state whether the change occurrs in the population or generation or species etc.If I evolved from a worm it seems to me the same to say I evolved from gram positive bacteria and that these creatures are a differnt species than me seems rational enough for me. I see other reasons to disagree with the use of techonology by man than making this division in extent of occurance as you have but to each his own.Good luck on EVC.

I am more on Wright's side than the Fisher and Fords, I guess of the world, given a discussion from dividing the Evo Synthesis into phases and or claims about restrictions or constrictions etc. etc.In Chapter 17 VOLUME 2 Evolution and Genetics of Populations, Conclusions of The Theory of Gene Frequencies(references BACK to volume appear as well as indications of what to expect in the sequal (volumes))Wright wrote fully; "At one time, natural populations were often thought of as being essentially bomalleic at all loci with qualification only because of the occassional occurrence of mutations, soon eliminated if, as usual, unfavorable. Favorable mutations appear very rarely and fixation o fone was considered a typical step in evolution. The basic viewpoint of population genetics is, on the contrary, that large populations tend to be heterallelic at all loci and strongly so at many. Mathematically, the species is thought of a as located at apoint in a gene frequency space with ‘(ki -1) dimensions, ki being the number of alleles at the ith locus ans ummation being over all loci. Evolution consists of movement in this space."The entire volume 2 is necessary for one to visualize what this space "looks" like, but if one STARTS from the place of this space theoretically, rather than the difference of favorable or unfavorable mutations (Wright asserts that Fisher and others continued to misrealize, to say quickly, the algebra of the difference, while different rates of mutations are added to the usual perspective on the course of the changes in an environment that would otherwise soon have had it eliminated).I did not realize that immigration and mutation are independent or orthogonal of the geometry of this space as to peaks and shifts which though overdetermining the relation of algebra and geometry in the theory is probable cause of most confusions over getting FROM the SPACE to the genetic accounts, whether reductionist or wholistic, regardless of if one thinks in terms of memes or irreducible epigentics etc.There IS an issue here. Gould calls it a hardening. Provine a constriction. Wilson thinks biology can proceed a pace without strict reliance on fact contra Lewontin. Mayr wants the population put back in Punc Eq. etc etc etc.I think Wright establishes what evolution is with this sentence, last, but since Provine who knows as much Wright as anyone, does not think nor promote it,(in fact by focusing on neutralism he suggests the theoretical outworking IS NOT occurring in nature (recently at Penn State)) shows that few are the people able to use it anyway. I can see my way through the theory and if Fisher is more correct than Wright than this will only be becuase Fisher's use of the heat equation actually unintentionally introduced thermodynamics into the evolution that is evolving that way no matter how much entropy is produced in the process. Instead, since, there is a discussion of static vs dynamic realisms the discussion can not get to where philosophy and creationism often intends to be sounding.

Of course Mayr says this. Have you ever compared the geographic distribution of snakes to a bird cline?? If one reads Provine’s book on Wright, (and I heard Will say twice two decades apart that he and Mayr differed “all down the line”) Provine documents that Mayr coming to Wright’s defense on Fisher’s attacks nonetheless insists that ”bean bag genetics’ had not contributed to evo much (read natural history or evolution in nature).Now if one reads Gould one finds in this place the statements that only Russian biology was able to combine natural history and genetics, continuing a false, in my opinion, dictomy so as to wail against Mayr from and evo-devo perspective. My grandfather WAS an experimentalist of the Morgan school but considered himself an ornithologist and conservationist first. He established a field station for a university and yet brought, bought and designed the biological labs for a SUNY school. The combination of a field man and fly guy are not the sole province of a particular nation.Mayr was so ingrained in his ideas that he REFUSED to think he was wrong. I simply tried to show him how useful irrational numbers might be to catalog trait variations and before he took in what I was suggesting he was off on his ideas about typology, essentialism, and speciation at the edges of ranges. That was 1987. He was a Cornell AD White Prof at large. He became very small to me and deflated overnight.The whole, recent, notions of peak shifts, fails to follow up Wright’s geometry fully. In 1987 when Levin and Kaufmann came out with their own versions, much more friendly to Wright than Mayr, they still insisted on the concept of a “next” mutant, again the best theoreticians could not grapple with the visual place the theory opened. Gould has somehow managed linguistically to open this space without maths. But the criticism remains that Wright failed to differentiate gene combinations per individual and gene frequencies in a population. This IS NOT Wright failure but the failure to understand the phenotype GIVEN a genotype. More attention to math is all that is required. Mayr was more concerned with whether birds fly north to south or south to north and never adequately dealt with Croizat. The 70s is not the final chapter.For me, I was always a naturalist first and foremeost. I was most influenced by Oliver’s book The Natural History of Reptiles and Amphibians. I did not want to be a fireman, I wanted to be Oliver’s natural historian. It was either as a Senior in High School or Freshman at Cornell (going on memory of memory) that I realized and decided that a natural historian can not simply compare objects but must also use mathematics, and then began my search for the correct maths, still continuing a little. Mayr and no one else , as far as I know has shown how Wright’s deme fits within Darwin’s diagram and supplements that only came out in the 1 9 70s!! I can see that it does! Provine AND Gould insist on “incomprehensibility”, this is due to a lack of figuring out what math to use in comparing symmetries. I know this. It does not help if others do not. It seems to me that by using quaternions one DOES NOT sacrifice the evolutionary individual to reductionism. If Mayr would not listen to me on irrationals to label specimens I a jar just imagine what he and Gould would say to me today!!!!There needs to be a whole new field of quaternion phlyogenetics. With such an apparatus even my own notion of baramins (on EvC) would be subsumed.

Ok I am going to try to guess what is happening between Ray and Razd. I do not know if this is correct or not.Wright had made a comment in Volume Two about whether or not systematic pressure or random sorting be theoretically identical or not. The move by Mayr in "the end" seems to be establish the older debate with creationism about "fact of evolution" (which I think was traceable to Simpson if I got that right) as having intellectually survived the placement of static modeling of biochanges. This static system modeling is used by Wright to place his own visualization in real paper. I take it that Harvard's establisment of Evolutioanry Dynamics is the formation of a subdiscipline where this static situation is passed and past. I found however, by going to Oxford England and talking with JD Murray in the "Biomathematics Department" that whatever this "Dynamic Biology" is it permits the use of models indscriminatly applicable FROM Zebras to Snakes. This violated my own sense of natural history. I think the static positioning is needed in relating math to biology via expermients because Biology unlike Physics has an added problem of structure or some would in another time call design.I think that moving evolutionary theory in this direction fails the evidence from simple comparisions and is only organized for more recent philosophy science considerations. Because Gould had moved some lingo of evolutionary talk, (aptation, exaptation, spandrel, franklin, core morphospace, constraint) into a "new theoretical space" Mayr was forced to come out strong against , so as to put Gould in place among dynamical researchers who had already moved nonlinearly beyond the static argument of Wright (Provine did this ( by continuing to expect Wright to answer where in evo theory the non-linearity show up "GENETICALLY"!!) in 1986 rather than BE "the mentor" (Cornell Adminstrative Label of what Will was SUPPOSED to have done with me) of me, which including using Kant to discuss bilateral symmetry). The consequence was that creationism would ipso facto not be able to keep up.But this is not how I read the literature because I find that Mayrs' sense of anti-reductionism may be sustained from the gene frequency view if the gene frequencies and gene combinations per individual be worked on from ... enter Brad's discussion....I think I found that Mayr over applied Aristotle into the current discussions etc etc.If the move was to get rid of creationism by making the "fact" of evolution, lineage of horse etc , to come through the relation of static models to kinematics regardless of the dynamics then special creationists would be stuck between the allele and its loci. This "seemed" to have been Wallace's attack on creationism in 60s when he left NY for Italy and wrote up some stuff about salivary glands in drosophila etc.I do not know If I have been able to ferret out , "the behind the scenes"goings on, but perhaps it will help to turn the temperature down on the Razd-Ray pressure cooker.So on my version the whole thing comes down to if "systematic" applies (species selection vs species sorting {might"" be a subproblem of this as well) across individuals, demes, populations, geological layers, or the lines in Darwin's diagram or who knows what else when not random/ chance is what was thought to have happened generationally.