nested heirarchies as evidence against darwinian evolution

The recent discussion is off-topic. Discussion could pick up in other threads, such as Human Evolution (re: If evolved from apes, why still apes?), or people could propose new threads over at [forum=-25].

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Okay, Boss: We'll get back on track.Here is a question from DogtoDolphin that provides a segue back to the original topic: This is a function of the concept of nested hierarchies. There is no "pinnacle" in evolution, because evolution is not the Great Chain of Being, as people used to think (that link leads to the Wikipedia article on the Great Chain of Being, which is a decent introduction). Evolution does not occur in a line, with the "highest" organism at the top and the "lowest" organism at the bottom.Rather, lifeforms diversify, with one parent speces giving rise to two, three, four, or more daughter species. Each of those daugther species can give rise to others. Therefore, there is a fan-like expansion from each point of divergence, each arm of which gives rise to more fans. Thus, each fan is "nested" within another fan.We (humans) are only only little line poking out of one little fan of literally millions, each of which is pointing out in different directions and has an entirely different lineage from the beginning until now. See This post for a visual.This thread started with the idea that these nested hierarchies) support creation, not evolution. However, the realization that we humans are only one of the youngest, tiniest branches in the big tree of evolution should be taken as a good indicator to us that God (assuming he exists, and created everything) doesn't see us as anything special, just because we make cars and computer and nuclear bombs. Actually, it seems like He's put more effort into making slime molds and flies than into making us.Furthermore, each animal and plant and fungus has a unique evolutionary history, some of which date back further than ours, and involve several more intermediaries (which relates to more "effort" to get to their current state). So, I wouldn't call us the "pinnacle" of anything evolutionary.And, on another note: the ability to destroy everything is often very anti-Darwinian in nature, because natural selection works toward "survival," not self-destruction. Thus, we could be considered the least evolutionarily "fit" species currently in existence.

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Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

Here is the bottom line...Evolution is the scaffold or template for taxonimic classification. When organisms are classified it is done with the assuption that all organisms arose from one ancient ancestor. Therefore, as the physiological distinctions between organisms become greater they will also be older. The question could be "why haven't we seen a new Kingdom emerge?" and the answer would be the same. All life on earth has come from the phyla that previously existed, because that is the why we decided to classify organisms. The earth will never see a "new phylm" because all species have descended and will continue to descend with the pylogenetic differences we have already defined.

Welcome to the fray pumaz. Actually the original system was developed by using comparative anatomy and grouping existing organisms by their visible similarities. The basic assumption of the original system was that animals could be sorted into various "kinds" -- see Carl Linnaeus:

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Carl Linnaeus (Carl Linné, latinised as Carolus Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné (help·info), May 13, 1707[1] - January 10, 1778) was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist[2] who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of nomenclature. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy.

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... He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 60s he continued to collect and classify animals, plants and mineralia; publishing several volumes. At the time of his death, he was widely renowned throughout Europe as one of the most acclaimed scientists of the time.

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You will note that this all precedes Darwin and Wallace and the theory of evolution. Further in the article states:

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At Uppsala, in the University's botanical garden, he arranged the plants according to his system of classification; he then made three more expeditions to various parts of Sweden and inspired a generation of students. Linnaeus continued to revise his Systema Naturae, which grew from a slim pamphlet into a multivolume work, as his ideas were changing and more and more plant and animal specimens were sent to him from every corner of the globe. His pride in his work was very much evident; he thought of himself as a second Adam. He liked to say ' Deus creavit, Linnaeus disposuit, ' Latin for, "God created, Linnaeus organized". This self-perception was further shown by the artwork on the cover of his Systema Naturae, which depicts a man giving Linnaean names to new creatures as they are created in the Garden of Eden.

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When not on travels, Linnaeus worked on his classifications, extending them to the kingdom of animals and the kingdom of minerals. The last may seem somewhat odd, but the theory of evolution was still a long time away. Linnaeus was only attempting a convenient way of categorizing the elements of the natural world.

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The Linnaean system classified nature within a hierarchy, starting with three kingdoms. Kingdoms were divided into Classes and they, in turn, into Orders, which were divided into Genera (singular: genus), which were divided into Species (singular: species). Below the rank of species he sometimes recognized taxa of a lower (unnamed) rank (for plants these are now called "varieties").

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His groupings were based upon shared physical characteristics. Only his groupings for animals remain to this day, and the groupings themselves have been significantly changed since Linnaeus' conception, as have the principles behind them. Nevertheless, Linnaeus is credited with establishing the idea of a hierarchical structure of classification which is based upon observable characteristics.

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That's the nuts and bolts of it.What the theory of evolution has done is provide a reason for the physical characteristics to show nested heredity of traits, homologies, that can be traced back to common ancestors.The theory of evolution and descent from common ancestors does not necessarily predict or depend on life evolving from a single common ancestor, just that descendants from a common ancestor will share hereditary traits.The evidence - biological, genetic, fossil, etc - shows that life appears to have a single common ancestor population of simple single celled organisms. Exactly.Any newly evolved organism will de facto be descended from some previously existing organism that already belongs to a taxonomic branch, and it will never be classifies as anything other than a new species no matter how different it is.Taxonomy does not depend on the degree of difference, just on the hereditary relationships.Enjoy.ps - for you, and other new people, some format tips: type [qs]quotes are easy[/qs] and it becomes: or type [quote]quotes are easy[/quote] and it becomes:

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I am aware of the history of classifcation. However, I was referring to modern taxonomy which as the passage you provided demonstrates is vastly different than that which was originally developed by Linnaeus. Mordern classification efforts are entirely based on the ToE, inevitably creating, as I was attempting to convey, a nested heirarchy. I guess the point I was trying to make was that the original posters arguement was moot because taxonomic classification as we known it today is premised upon ToE.PS Thanks fro the warm welcome.

I also add my welcome to you, Pumaz. I'm fairly new, myself, but I've been very pleased with this discussion board so far. I agree that you've hit the crux of the matter with this statement. The notion that a new phylum could emerge first makes the assumption that the mainstream ToE is incorrect, thus rendering the argument tautological. I think it's also telling that modern taxonomy is moving, by degrees, away from the usage of such terms as "phylum." In fact, the phyla currently recognized are not actually equally placed in the hierarchies. Thus, we get groupings of phyla into "superphlya" or "subkingdoms": Arthropoda+Tardigrade+Onychophora=Ecdysozoa. Mollusca+Annelida+(several phyla of "worms")=Lophotrochozoa.We instead prefer to use the word "clade" to describe any cluster of related taxa, without applying absolute naming strategies to any level in the endlessly-complicated "tree of life."My personal opinion is that, if we wanted to continue using distinctive terms like "phylum," "order" or "species," we would have to change their meanings slightly as evolution continued. For instance, in 100 million years, vertebrates will likely have diversified into a wide variety of lineages that are as distinct from one another as today's molluscs are from today's annelids. Under those conditions, I think it would be appropriate to rename such subgroups "phyla," given the definition of distinctiveness (as I have championed in this thread). If you view distinctiveness as insufficient to merit a renaming strategy, I would submit that any alternative method is largely arbitrary (such as RAZD's idea of hierachies defined by increments of time).As RAZD also pointed out earlier in the thread, randman might be thinking, since we evolved from basal eukaryotes, and "basal" eukaryotes still exist, that something else should be able to evolve from the remaining groups of basal eukaryotes, just as we had. The answer to this concern is, of course, that other things did evolve from basal eukaryotes. In fact, what he may be seeing as "basal eukaryotes" today are actually the derived ancestors of the things from which we evolved, and not the same plesiomorphic organisms that their ancestors were. In other words, today's bacteria are just as evolved as we are, they just evolved in a different direction from us.Edited by Bluejay, : Grammar.

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Signed,
Nobody Important (just Bluejay)

Exactly, and the reason is that the traditional classification system is becoming unweildy, that there aren't enough classification groups and new ones ARE being added:Cladistics - Wikipedia

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Prior to the advent of cladistics, most taxonomists used Linnaean taxonomy to organize lifeforms. That traditional approach, still in use by some researchers (especially in works intended for a more general audience[11]) uses several fixed levels of a hierarchy, such as Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, and Family. Cladistics does not use those terms, because one of the fundamental premises of cladistics is that the evolutionary tree is very deep and very complex, and it is not meaningful to use a fixed number of levels.

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(comparison table)Linnaean Taxonomy
Often must invent new level-names (such as superorder, suborder, infraorder, parvorder, magnorder) to accommodate new discoveries.

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That's part of the answer, the other part is how much opportunity exists for existing bacteria to evolve into multicellular life etc. With the diversity of life we know, most of those opportunities have already been taken, and the ecology includes predator prey relations that meke it difficult for a new one to evolve.Enjoy.

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When Einstein published his work “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” it was an interesting curiosity. After decades of testing and verification Special Relativity has become so effective and strong that, today, it is the major tool used to test all other hypotheses in physics. If some new hypothesis violates SR then we know there is a major hole in the hypothesis.When Darwin’s proposal was published it was also a curiosity. One of the evidences used to show its effectiveness was that, even then, taxonomy showed a nested hierarchy just as Darwin predicted. The Modern Synthesis of the Theory of Evolution has been through the same cauldron of test and evaluation without any glaring fault.The ToE has become so effective and strong today that, yes, taxonomy uses the ToE as a major tool to test the efficacy of the result. There is no need for scientists to shoehorn a taxonomy into a nested hierarchy just to satisfy the ToE. The ToE predicts and has shown in thousands of different tests that nested hierarchies are the result of the natural evolution of all life on this planet. Now, like SR, if some new hypothesis comes along that violates in a major way the principal of nested hierarchies in the ToE then we know there is a major hole in the hypothesis.