Evolution: Science, Pseudo-Science, or Both?

Could you have meant his cousin Galton?
Darwin reporting in NATURE
If it was not Galton, you thought of, I would be interested in the info.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-12-2005 07:30 PM

still coming into its own! Why you ask?because, no one across the board significantly has followed up on Woodger's "axiomatic method in biology" and c/e is likely on my guess masking the TENSION between Wright and Fisher that Mayr was unable to mediate and Gould simply went beyond. Simon Levin bowed out of a new axiomatics based on Hilbert's project within coincidence geometry as being too philosophical but when I proposed it in 87 in terms of alpha and beta keratin it was not metaphysical enough!! I didnt know how easy it would/did have become to understand the new background of science (quantum mechanics). Oh, well.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-12-2005 08:06 PM

right,
and so we dont seem to know yet in the sense that chemistry does wit elements if there are anysuch things as "fundamental forms" that are universally id'd such that if we mix any two reproductively we can NEVER get a third descriptive category. It is in this sense I mean to say that our understanding of biological change continues. I had thought often that this is only a matter of better use of math but seeing how the issue in quantum mechanics as to what can commute and what can not etc it is possible that the forms that can commute during reproduction might be subsets of chemical bonds that can or can not form (supramolecularly) etc. The individualistic nature of Darwinian thought processes makes it rather difficult to address this lower level of organization in the same algorithmic system as occurs during the death of inviduals.So if really there IS a reduction possible here, it seems that there is some sense to the "pseduo" science claim but if the discontuity that comparative biology CONTINUES to bring practically is only widened then it is less likely that one is dealing with the kind of change from say phlogiston to atoms no matter how the metaphysics plays itself out. Darwinian organacism seems bound to certain notions of this change within lingusitic heirarchies and so can be slowing down the determination of something like if indeed we are actually wittling away the mistakes or simply making the same mistakes in different newer technical ways.I agree somewhat fully with your last post above this one.

I think indeed i understand your "point". Rene Thom related his notions of catastrophe theory in morphogenesis in his mid70s book on structural stability from a prior use of magic but his points about maps and mutations seemed never to impress Francis Crick much despite our lack of understanding of how the brain works. Richard Lewontin rejected topology as overarching all conditions in "The Triple Helix". If catastrophe theory was actually taken up by biology fully it might be possible to differentiate to circuits of biochemical rxns that Thom discusses if indeed there is more magic or none left at the reduction I suggested relating chemistry and form that Faraday glimpsed when he suggested that matter might be "thrown" into the electrotonic state.

quote:

---

Thom's theory is an attempt to describe, in a way that is impossible using differential calculus, those situations in which gradually changing forces lead to so-called catastrophes, or abrupt changes. The theory has widespread application in the physical and biological sciences and in the social sciences. Presented by Thom in Structural Stability and Morphogenesis (1972), the theory has since been developed by many mathematicians. However, writing in [6], Thom explains why the theory which was marked by enormous popular success has fallen from favour:-
It is a fact that catastrophe theory is dead. But one could say that it died of its own success. It was brought down by the extension from analytical (or algebraic) models to models that were only smooth. For as soon as it became clear that the theory did not permit quantitative prediction, all good minds ... decided it was of no value. When it comes down to it, this extension resulted from B Malgrange's extension of the preparation theorem.

---

Page Not Found - MacTutor History of MathematicsI am uncertain this is the last word, even though Thom is dead. There is still a place for this work in extinctions but the math of death is hard just to think. The alternative to Thom in biology in France is COLLET who writes on lexicographic infinity and complexity in ways that Gladyshev would not like much. Collet respected Thom because the discretness of his math approach in biology did not seem to suggest forms (analyticity).Maxwell wrote up Faraday's ideas and gave them an imaginary existence and equations but it was never applied. It seems that Herz discovery of em waves took physics down a different alley. I have analyzed it, perhaps incorrectly, to Farady's noticing that there was a bipolarity but no multipolarity. The enumeration of chemical combinations seems to be a reason it has not gotten a better hearing but the standard view is that the "line of force" does not exist so that then this notion would not. Ill edit some more here as well.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-16-2005 08:38 AM

I would say Wright's "adaptive landscape". Fisher probably and Provine recently have said that it is "unintelligable" and yet Will Provine has documented many instances where evolutionary biologists have used it and taught it. I tend to think Fisher and Provine mistaken but this would bring evos a long way baby if I am correct else it seems to fit MD's pattern of pseudo, evos using something "that doesnt even begin to work"(Provine in the Sewall Wright biography), to think they were doing something and investigating evolution therethrough despite it even after Will denied it. The only alternative is to assert that Will is correct and not only were they (some evos) NOT doing science but that use of the adaptive landscape fails. That is what I disagree with but if that was consenus I would not have this point. I think I do.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-14-2005 05:45 PM

It seems Will could not get the info on maths out of Wright in the early 80s and wrote up his conclusions in 86.
Page Not Found - University of Chicago Press
I was in Africa with a grad student studying electric fish and learning more about the landscape related to forms than I had found in New Jersey then.Gould in his last big book
Subjects and Series | Harvard University Press
seems to support this analysis of Will's (I was amazed at how conservative Gould was on this) but just as I got back from fighting off the psychiatrists in Florida, Simon gave me his paper that he wrote with Stu

quote:

---

Despite the limitations of the adaptive landscape metaphor

---

(is largely a reference to Will's analysis).right as it was being published and I talked with Dr.Kauffmanabout actual infinty and his cycles of rxns, but I did not find it very interesting (the paper with Dr. Levin)because they did not advance the notion of "mutatioin" in the process of working up their application off Wright's. Simon was visibly taken aback by my lack of interest but I had just been involuntarily confined against my will because I DID UNDERSTAND that stuff, so I wanted to see progress. I didnt see it.Judging from the citiations
http://gunther.smeal.psu.edu/context/7283/0 of this later 80s paper alone I think the landscape still has some life untainted by doctors against jesus. Will was analyzing science before this date. He got stuck on /with non-linear maths.It is true that there arent a lot of theoretical biologists. That is why I am not one of my own kind but rather a c/e commentator and how it happens that this tension has not been resolved as of it/yet.Will used this analysis to argue against any development from the adaptive landscape but you see Gladyshev has reasonably argued etc
EvC Forum: GP Gladyshev's paper (s)or mine?
down to the supramolecular level of organization that these nonlinear situations though they MIGHT apply need not for some progress to be made. Will apparently conflated quantum teleportation with orthogonal symmetries under the use of phase transitions to claim that the recursivity of Wright could not attend to natural cases of nonlinear relations AT THE PHENOTYPIC level of selection!!!!!!!! But if Will had the relation (relation of fish phenotype to ecology say , which I KNOW he had wrong) wrong phenetically he would never get the invariant set correct genomically. Instead he attempts a detailed discussion of Dobshanky and Kimura rather than attend to WHY it was that Wright said Will was barking up the same tree Feynmann slept under at Cornell on his first day here(non linear situation does not defeat the tension between Wright and Fisher!).This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-16-2005 08:45 AM

That's very interesting. I am starting to wonder who you really are.I had not seen that series of statements from Richard before.I had had lunch with him at the Statler Hotel on the Cornell Campus some couple of years after that was written and after reading the DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST with quite keen interest ( especially concerning the clear confindence the he and Levin had in presenting HOW math relates to biochange).I came off that lunch with the UNDERSTANDING ( we never got around to discussing the maths much) that Dr. Lewontin had no mental space/place for the different FORM of a snake tail different than a fish tail.So now after seeing the errors in his way (by comparing what you said and what I experienced from the man himself) I have no doubt that he was making the same mistake to me in 84? as he did in print in 81.Thanks for clearing that up. He must reason that coupled differential equations without deep issues in topology are enough to understand EVOLUTIONARY FORM MAKING!! It looks like smoothness or softness got the better of him.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-15-2005 08:31 AM

Yes I guess I thought some field because you do have the FORM of the correct position.I have edited in
http://EvC Forum: Evolution: Science, Pseudo-Science, or Both? -->EvC Forum: Evolution: Science, Pseudo-Science, or Both?
http://EvC Forum: Evolution: Science, Pseudo-Science, or Both? -->EvC Forum: Evolution: Science, Pseudo-Science, or Both?
in my prior posts IYI inter alia.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-16-2005 08:54 AM

I'm not so sure. What Mayr is saying if I understood him was that punc eq is conceptually NOT based on populations but on species but that ultra-Darwinism(or more narrowly geneic selectionism) can trump ANY theoretical position of population thinking seems suspect. I thought *that* is what Mayr meant. First use population thinking before you use species rate thinking. This does not mean that "Dakwins' gradualism" wont survive within that view of Mayr but I dont see it prima facie supproting RD's point of view.Sure species are made of populations but Mayr is arguing for a specific view on the synthesis that vindicates his view between Fisher and Wright say.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-17-2005 04:20 PM

From Gould's The Strucutre of Evolutionary Theory page 777

quote:

---

During speciation, a new species diverges from its parent species as a small isolated population.

---

using this figure 9-6 that depends on what the strech between the two parts of the branching system that enter this triangle means. I think new tools of spatial analysis following Croizat's method are determinative here. They have not been formed in the literature. People have different opinions.

quote:

---

According to the gradualist model, species descended from a common ancestor diverge more and more in morphology as they acquire unique adaptations.

---

I think it was Mayr's place that the area of this traingle is determined by population phenomena but Gould's space is that species can be treated as if they were individuals such that the connection ACROSS the triangle is with some relative frequency mediated by species level phenomena. I took it Dawkins' thought would have been that the small first extension of the root"" system into the triangle is determinative of the whole process of higher hierarchicalization THAT OCCURS IN TIME as the bradytelic populations would have become horotelic.

quote:

---

According to proponents of the punctuated equilibrium model, a new species changes most as it buds from the parents' lineage and then changes little for the rest of its existence.

---

The problem is that if one admits design into the topology of a lineage (parent vs decendent without an explict genetical hypothesis) then there are three concepts that play into the diagramatic view of the history (creation ex nihlio, common descent, natural purpose) but the literature generally only approves of substituting common descent for ex nihlio excuses for the artificiality. Common descent however creates situtations where ex nihlio might be reintroduced should the artificiality succeed economically in advancing social hierarchies. It all gets quite complicated when one thinks beyond the mere names of the lineages. So if genic selectionism out survies pun eq it might not be that the larger conceptual scope of PE gave anything but an appearence still under test and Mayr would be correct. I dont think this will happen. PE still insists however that "stasis IS data" but the current relations depend on there being NO NEW SPATIAL ANALYSIS TOOLS than already exist. I doubt that is what is happening either.

quote:

---

Is this accurate?

---

it is fairly so/such as, unless Gould is mistaken with, TSETp888
It is also possible that fractal geometries build allometric correlations but this depends then on thier being a conflict contra Paulk.

quote:

---

In addition to this, what about Daniel C. Dennett?

---

Dennett's book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" page 307-8

quote:

---

We have answerd our second question. We are finally ready to tackle first base: why would this thesis be of great importance, whichever way it came out? Gould thinks that the hypothesis of "radical contingency" will upset our equianimity, but why?

​

We talk about the "march from monad to man (old-style language again) as though evolution followed continuous pathways of progress along unbroken lineages. Nothing could be further from reality[Gould 1989b, p 14]

​

What could not be further from reality?...There aren't global pathways of progress, but there is incessant local improvement...Can it be that Gould thinks his thesis of radical contingency would refute the core Darwinian idea that evolution is an algorithmic process? That is my tentative conclusion.

---

I can say a few things . I dont think Dennett was correct to assert that Gould usurped micro mechans but I also dont tend to think along species selection lines. Gould's problem is that he claimed to have read Panbiogeography in grad school. Nelson's closer reading than Gould's failed to reproduce in the abreviation Croizat called for a means to acquireing new tools in spatial analysis for the synthetic practice in taxonomy so "what" Gould refers to here that Dennet is asking about is based on there being NOTHING CROIZAT WISE EVER AVAILABLE TO BIOLOGY IN THE FUTURE ( that Nelson's worrying about circle vs star systematists is as far as it will go classification wise when discussing form making and translation in space). That's how it was that Gould could make the transition to the sentence "Nothing could be further from reality" AND confuse Dennet enough that D wrote about it. Gould read Croizat quite well indeed! But DD misplaces this conceptually as an issue about progress. Yes, that is true but not in what Gould is doing for Gould refuses to accept progress except as a nationalistic pasttime. So Dennet misses the point that there MIGHT be global (panbiogeographic) pathways some of which are progressive as to natural purposes and others which might not be artfical but introduce in Desgin after some monod to man continuum ex nihlio but this is only because of his algorithmic position (not sociobiology) for he did not use discussions in the history of biology which it seems Gould is or had done. This does not mean that contingency is out of the picture however. The abbreviated form of Croizat's method might accomplish that but the method as it still stands is incredibly sharp as to matching earth and life that unless we decide some specifics on MATHEMATICAL CONTINUA in Dennet's "what?" of Gould there will still be but a linguistic error here rather than an issue of abduction of mathmatical induction. I dont think that meant that radical contingency would refute an algorithmic process for Gould is simply espousing the probabilitic nature of current evolutionary theory but on an expanded hierarchial set of levels. Contingency will show up MORE in man-made use of evolutionary theory than as props for old style thinking (sic). I have ideas about the analytic nature of this all that would change the discussion as if true but that is contingent on me be correct only.The crucial diagram is on page 668 of Gould's where Gould discusses Grantham's 95 paper for invoking species selection in hierarchical models.The difference between Gould and me is in thinking about cross level effects as potentials or things. As for what the community of evos are doing enmass I am not longer the person to think of as asking as I have not been circulating among 'em since the 80s. The analysis however is not really all that difficult and anyone with a mind can figure this stuff out.

quote:

---

I thought that there was some greater discussion going on between proponents of punctuated equilibria and gradualism.

---

I can construct one. I havent done a literature search or used Science Citation on it.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-18-2005 03:22 PM

quote:

---

note in their book Evolution from Creation to New Creation: The Controversy in Laboratory, Church, and Society the late Stephen Jay Gould, who advocated punctuated equilibrium, offers an argument that supports Darwinian gradualism over against what ID proposes. This is how the debate should proceed.

---

this is certainly possible.For me it seems to come up to Croizat's use of orthoselection vs orthogenesis in SpACe TIME AND FORM @ GOuld's ^spectrum^ of orthogenesis focusing on Gould's citations of Fisher and the 2nd law as Dirac had made it VERY clear (to issue of mathematical beauty) that ket and bra vectors combos can say something material about orthogonality!oN PAGE 352 of THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY Gould lists

quote:

---

1. Some prominent non-Darwinians may justly be designated as "theistic evolutionists" - St.George Mivart and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, for example. But orthogenesis does not fall into this category. Rather, and entirely to the contrary, all leading orthogeneticists insisted vociferously that their arguemetns for internal directionality included no teleological or theistic component. Most leading orthogeneticists held strictly mechanistic views in the mainstream of the highly deterministic late 19th century scientific consensus. They argued that internal channels arose as products of conventional, physical causes, based upon properties of hereditary and developmental systems. (These properties may have been unknown, hence "mysterious" in the vernacular sense, but certainly not spiritual or teleological.)

---

I still prefer a noncontronfrontational multipolarity in a feeling that all is not as apodictic as Gould acertains but if a debate IS this does seem to be one. I would argue for quantum mecahincal parallels in 1-D symmetry connections that are revealed orthogonally to BE IN Kant's term "physical teleology". To do this designs would need to be blueprinted. It may not be that orthogenesis that contains the preparation to theology but instead orthoselection which was. I have not made up my mind because I have not made a final judgment on Penrose's ROAD TO REALITY. The road is certainly not new.

Contra my Friend,
That is NOT true. I hope you take this in a constructive way (I have just been mostly kindly corrected by EZ about plant-insect relations in a quite informative way).There IS a "rush to simplicity" apparent. It is not the "ideological" content that causes the subreation but the LACK OF very obviously possible PHILOSOPHICAL IMPROVEMENTS in the largely liberal universities. It is of course not that people dont know that they exist but that they are not being developed. They are not being significantly developed in humanities departments either.Kant wrote down THIS complaint quite well with

quote:

---

We may then suppose the case of a righteous man[e.g. Spinoza], who holds himself firmly persuaded that there is no God and also (because in respect of the object of morality a similar consequence results) no future life; how is he to judge of his own inner purposive destination, by means of the moral law, which he reveres in practice? He desires no advantage to himself from following it, either in this or another world; he wishes, rather, disinterestedly to establish the good to which that holy law directs all his powers. But his effort is bounded; and from nature, although he may expect here and there a contingent accordance, he can never expect a regular harmony agreeing according to constant rules (such as his maxims are and must be, internally) with the purpose that he yet feels himself obliged and impelled to accomplish.

---

audible complaining(now continuing with Kant again...

quote:

---

Deceit, violence, and envy will always surround him, although he himself be honest, peaceable; and kindly; and the righteous men with whom he meets will, notwithstanding all their worthiness of happiness, be subjected to nature, which regards not this, to all the evils of want, disease, and untimely death, just like the beasts of the earth. So it will be until one wide grave engulfs them together (honest or not, it makes no difference) and throws them back- who were able to believe themselves the final purpose of creation - into the abyss of the purposeless chaos of matter from which they were drawn. The purpose, then, which this well-intentioned person had and ought to have before him in his pursuit of moral laws, he must certainly give up as impossible.

---

It didnt matter that these things surrounded me in high school but it apparently made) every difference once I started at Cornell. I simply then made the choice to not just be said righteous man but to believe in righteousness (as i already gave an oath towards) and not bear ANY EVERY OR ALL false witness. I suspect this might have been how BRussel came to the saying "when I die I shall rot!" & said he was trying to find something 'certain'.If you think that Kant is merely making a trick about "chaos" read his System of Nature
new material on Kant
I was thinking of his first book. I think it was his first but this one is probably better.
. He is not.These quotes are from CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT @87.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-19-2005 09:53 AM

I had said in mess18

quote:

---

Maxwell wrote up Faraday's ideas and gave them an imaginary existence and equations but it was never applied. It seems that Herz discovery of em waves took physics down a different alley. I have analyzed it, perhaps incorrectly, to Farady's noticing that there was a bipolarity but no multipolarity. The enumeration of chemical combinations seems to be a reason it has not gotten a better hearing but the standard view is that the "line of force" does not exist so that then this notion would not. Ill edit some more here as well.

---

but this only gives my opinion. I did not give you the info for you to make up your mind on it on your own.Did you forget your
http://EvC Forum: Evolution: Science, Pseudo-Science, or Both? -->EvC Forum: Evolution: Science, Pseudo-Science, or Both?
?
Perhaps you thought you already covered it.
I try to give info that is as unbiased as I can.
In responding to TUSKO i had to support the imaginary as real.
I guess this is still the "state" the matter is thrown into if indeed it moved there.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-21-2005 04:07 PM