A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis

I am pleased that I have been invited to once again join in discussion at EvC. I look forward to this opportunity to defend this new hypothesis concerning the mechanism of organic evolution. Since, beginning in 1984, I have now published several papers which have served as the basis for this hypothesis, I recommend they, along with my unpublished Manifesto, be given careful consideration by those who might choose not agree.For my signature I propose:A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.

---

John Amerpohl Davison

This hypothesis which was published under that title in Rivista di Biologia, 98: 155-166, 2005 is the subject of this thread. I am here to defend it.

Yes indeed. "A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis" is available at ISCID's "brainstorms" forum as are others of my more recent papers, both published and in press. My original 1984 paper is also now available there. All of my evolutionary papers were at one time available on the side bar at Uncommon Descent until David Springer deleted them without explanation. I am now banned at Uncommon Descent, ARN, Pharyngula, FringeSciences and Panda's Thumb. I must be doing something right to warrant such universal attention! That is why I am very grateful to be able to defend my thesis here at EVC.Just plugging "Davison evolution" into Google will produce all of my evolutionary papers right along with some fascinating responses to them. It would be useful to digest this material before proceeding with a critical analysis of its significance. I recommend the same for the contributions of my several distinguished sources upon which the PEH firmly rests.

Excuse me. I do not regard ANYTHING that I have ever published as something "best left to the past." I stand by all my publications as well as my unpublished Manifesto.I regard that as an inflammatory and quite unnecessary introduction to what I hope to be a reasonable, objective, civilized discussion. If my opponents choose not to read my papers or those of my sources there of course is nothing I can do about it. To modify an old saw:"You can lead a man to the literature but you cannot make him read or comprehend it."

---

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."

I see no reason to provide links to anything I have ever published. I am very well known on internet forums and so are my publications. I have told you where they may be found, along with the commentary they have evoked. That should be sufficient. The PEH has developed over a period of twenty-two years. Ye Gods, I introduced "A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis" right here at EvC even before it was submitted for publication! Any challenge to it should include those publications that preceded it and can be considered part of any response I might choose to make.Who will represent the opposition if there is one? I hope they do not insist on anonymity. It is one of my pet peeves with internet communication. I do not take seriously comments from anonymous posters either here, elsewhere or on my blog. I will however respond provided they are civil.I say lets get on with it!

---

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."

Nonsense. You invited me here. I have responded. You either have those who oppose me or you don't. If they must remain anonymous that is fine with me. Do what you have to do. I will not choose my adversaries. That is your job apparently. I will respond to them however they represent themselves. If they must remain anonymous that suits me just fine. In fact it will please me. I repeat - lets get on with it.

---

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."

I am here at your invitation and anxious to proceed. Start where you want, when you want and with whomever you want. I am not getting an younger as any one can tell from my profile.

---

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."

AdminNosyThis is getting ridiculous. EvC has invited me here to defend my papers and I can't even get you folks started. You make the rules here not I. I am beginning to believe you have no intention of engaging me and all this is but a diversionary tactic of some sort designed to make me look bad. I'll accept and respond to comments from anyone, anytime, any place. Is that clear enough for you? The ball is in the court of EvC. Let's get it on!

---

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."

I can't wait.

---

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."

Your use of an alias doesn't upset me . It is characteristic of EvC and most other forums. It is revealing nevertheless of a certain amount of insecurity, a problem I don't have. I gave up aliases long ago so please don't call me salty.I also think you should be aware of who your real adversaries are as I am largely only their spokesperson. Here are some of them in no particular order. Mivart, Berg, Broom, Bateson, Grasse, Goldschmidt, Schindewolf and Grasse. Since I am largely ignored I often let these great scholars speak for me and will do so today in response to some of the matters you have raised.With respect to both allelic mutation and the site of species information I quote Grasse with whom I am in complete agreement."A cluster of facts makes it very plain that Mendelian allelomorphic mutation plays NO PART in creative evolution. It is, as it were, a more or less pathological fluctuation in the genetic code. It is an accident on the 'magnetic tape' on which the primary information for the species is recorded."
Evolution of Living Organisms, page 243, my emphasis.To anticipate any further mention of chance as having a role in evolution I will quote Leo Berg with whom I also agree." Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance."
Nomogenesis, page 406The only thing that selection, artificial or natural, has ever been able to accomplish is the establishment of varieties and in some instances perhaps subspecies.As far as the significance of subspecies to creative evolution, I agree with Goldschmidt."Microevolution does not lead beyond the confines of the species, and the typical products of microevolution, the geographc races, are not incipient species."
The Material Basis of Evolution, page 396.It is considerations like these that caused me to completely abandon the Darwinian model in favor of what I feel is the only acceptable alternative, the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis.

---

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."

Oh but it is a discussion about chance and to put that title on your response is irresponsible. The role of chance is the major element in this discussion.It is only natural that when one is confronted with a phenomenon like evolution, or anything else for that matter, to immediately look for a cause. That is the job of the scientist and I have practiced that myself as a developmental biologist with some success I might add; three solo papers in Science and others in the Journal of Heredity, the Journal of General Physiology, American Naturalist and elsewhere. Those experiments are what led me to the Semi-meiotic Hypothesis (SMH) which I published 22 years ago. I know a lot about the experimental method and what it can and cannot disclose.The question I asked long ago was this one. What, if the most intensive efforts to transform species through artificial selection fail, and they have, is one to conclude? Even before I examined the historical literature I drew the formal conclusion that selection had nothing whatsoever to do with the emergence of new life forms or their subsequent changes. Imagine my deight when I subsequently discovered that Leo Berg, Reginald C. Punnett and St George Jackson Mivart had independenly anticipated that very same conclusion long before I was born. One of my stated objectives is the resurrection of these scientists from the oblivion to which the Darwinian spokespersons have deliberately and cynically submerged them. Now we all know who these primary spokespersons have been. Ernst Mayr, Stephen J. Gould, William Provine and most recently Richard Dawkins. Each of these abandoned science early in their careers to spend the rest of their lives writing reams of what I regard as science fiction stories. Not one of them has contributed a single tangible bit of real data to the problem of organic evolution. Don't expect to find my sources in their Bibliographies because they aren't there or if they are it is for some trivial matter. One of the dirtiest literary tricks is to cite an author in the Bibliograhy and never mention him in the Text. Erst Mayr was a master at this.Dawkins, the quintessential Darwinian, has become the laughingstock of evolutionary science if you ask me. No real scientist even cites him. He lives in a fantasy world of his own design.Now I don't even blame these people any more because one of the inescapable conclusions of the PEH is the recognition of what Einstein declared long ago."Everything is determined... by forces over which we have no conrol."Einstein died a convinced determinist and so will I. I regard the word "determined" for all practical purposes as synonymous with "prescribed." Even the way we view the world is "prescribed" as the studies on separated homozygotic twins so clearly reveals. We are all victims of our "prescribed" fates. Some of us have been luckier than others. I regard my sources and myself as among the luckier ones. Gilbert and Sullivan realized this about the same time that Einstein was born."Every boy and every girl,
That is born into the world alive,
Is either a little liberal,
Or a little conservative."
IolantheSo you see this exchange has EVERYTHING to do with chance. Having completely rejected its role in both ontogeny and phylogeny, I have been driven to the only conceivable explanation which is summarized in the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis.I repeat that chance had absolutely nothing to do with a long past evolution just as it has nothing to do with ontogeny now. Once again I am not alone."Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance."
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 134

---

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."

Sure, but they certainly are not being attempted any more. The most famous attempt was by Dobzhansky with Drosophila and it is very much to his credit that he admitted failure. The reason the Darwinians no longer experiment with controlled selection is because they are scared to death of the results. If they had really been interested in testing their hypothesis they would have done it years ago with Darwin's finches. Maybe they did. Nothing would surprise me. Finches are among the easiest of all birds to domesticate. The canary is a finch. Now it doesn't really matter anyway because the Grants have demonstrated that the various varieties spontaneouly interbreed and produce fertile and genetically fit offspring.As for the scanning of Gilbert's lyrics, take it up with Gilbert. he is dead.I challenge anyone to take any two species, living or extinct. and provide convincing evidence that one of them is ancestral to the other. What we see going on around us is not evolution in action as the Darwinians continue blindly to assume. We observe the terminal irreversible products of a long past evolution. Just as ontogeny terminates with death of the individual, so phylogeny is terminating with the extinction of its final products. I agan suggest that Homo sapiens is the last mammalian species to appear with a documentable age under 100,000 years. Also once again I am not alone. Even Julian Huxley, author of "Evolution: The Modern Synthesis" (he coined the term) stated in no uncertain terms that a new genus has not appeared in the last two million years. page 571. I still maintain that a documentable novel species has not been produced in historical times; that is in the last 4000 years. Even if I am wrong I remain certain that it could not have been done through the agency of bisexual (Mendelian) inheritance. It is much too conservative a mechanism to ever support what has been largely, if not exclusively, a saltatinal evolution without gradual intermediates. Bateson admitted the same near the end of his life as I have documented in my papers and in the Manifesto. Neither allelic mutation nor the sexual mode of their inheritance ever had anything to do with creative evolution. Furthermore, all that we see today is rampant extinction without a single verified replacement.Phylogeny, exactly like ontogeny does now, proceeded entirely on the basis of prescribed latent information by a means in which the only conceivable role for the environment was that as a releaser for that stored information. Such creatures apparently no longer exist. Again I will let another speak for me."Any system that purports to account for evolution must invoke a mechanism that is not mutational and aleatory."
Pierre Grasse. Evolution of Living Organisms, page 245. His entire sentence is in italics.The Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis does exactly that.

---

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."

Excuse me. I forgot to add that I have no idea how the information was derepressed and neither does any one else that I know of. We do know that just changing the position of chromosomal blocks of information can have profound effects on gene expression however. I documented that in the PEH paper. I see no need to introduce any new information into an evolving genome to account for all of Primate evolution. How much further this can be extended remains to be seen.

Of course I am interested but I do not speculate on matters in which I am not an authority. Frankly I feel that everything we are now learning is in full accord with the PEH and absolutely none of it can ever be reconciled with the Darwinain paradigm based as it is on randomness and natural selection. My views have been published and are now for all time. How do you feel about my position is the question I now ask you. Do you support the neoDarwinian model in any way or don't you? I wouldn't give a nickel for it myself and neither did any of my sources.

---

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."

The neoDarwinian fairy tale is very much a part of the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis. It has been completely rejected not only by me but by every one of my sources which was instrumental in leading me to the PEH. I have arrived at the PEH through the time honored method of the elimination of all alternatives. If you choose not to present your version of the mechanism of organic evolution you have forfeited your right to criticize mine. This ceases to be a dialogue when that point is reached. The issue at stake here is a very important one. What WAS the mechanism of organic evolution? I have published my version and I stand by it. It is only natural that I should ask others what their version is. That is exactly what I did on my first blog when I sponsored the "First Annual Tournament of The MECHANISM of Organic Evolution." I even extended personal invitations to all the luminaries on both sides of the debate. Only two responded, Michael Behe and Jonathan Wells, both indicating they were too busy writing. To make a long story very short, nobody submitted their 500 word essay summarizing their version of the MECHANISM of organic evolution. I concluded, naturally enough, that either they had no convictions or they were ashamed to disclose them. If you are unable or unwilling to support your convictions, I will be forced to the same conclusion with respect to this presumed dialogue.I was invited here to defend my thesis and I have responded. I don't think it is appropriate to be interrogated concerning matters about which I have admitted I know very little. In other words I do not choose to speculate. I never have.I have carefully constructed my thesis on a basis provided by some of the finest minds of two centuries, not one of whom was either a Darwinian or a Christian Fundamentalist. I say without hesitation - A plague on both their houses.

---

"A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable."