Re: Mayr's Way



John Wilkins john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:-
Now, he might write something like this: "The motion [in Design Space]
that
occurs if there are no forces at all is called random genetic drift. You
might
think that drift, being random, would tend always to cancel itself out,
bringing the path back to the same genomes again and again in the absence
of
any selective forces, but the very fact that there is only limited
sampling in
the huges space ... leads inevitably to the accumulation of "distance"
between
genomes (the upshot of "Dollo's Law")." [125]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollo's_Law

"Dollo's Law is a hypothesis proposed by French-born Belgian paleontologist
Louis Dollo (1857-1931) in 1890 that states that evolution is not
reversible. This law was first stated by Dollo in this way: "An organism is
unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in
the ranks of its ancestors." (Dollo, quoted in "Ammonites, Indicates
Reversal," in Nature, March 21, 1970). According to this hypothesis a
structure or organ that has been lost or discarded through the process of
evolution will not reappear in that line of organisms."

JE:-
Yes, evolution is not reversible. However this does NOT mean that all non
reversible events constitute an evolutionary event. An increase in the
"distance between genomes" created by just a random loss of alleles via
random sampling error (which only occurs within small sub populations)
cannot provide a _directional_ change, i.e. evolution, anymore than random
mutation could. This remains true even if each tiny sub population never
ever combined with any other (which of course they do). The basic fact that
tiny randomly sampled sub populations (demes) mostly recombine with others.
This can nullify random drift effects but not before nature has had time to
experiment with a randomly chosen reduced set of genes. The critical effect
of drift is to provide time for selection to do its work within
significantly genetically restricted demes which can then recombine to
produce combinations of more specialized solutions for similar biological
problems. The recombination of temporality isolated demes is extremely
important for selection because mostly temporarily isolated demes provide
many opportunities for selection to act on spatial AND temporal UNIQUE gene
combinations within similar or quite different environments.

There is nothing that is different in PRINCIPLE between any random process
simply because all random patterns represent the same pattern. Only non
random patterns can be different. Just as random mutation provides random
spatial variation for non random selection to select from, random sampling
error provides random temporal variation for the same purpose. Random
heritable variation can only LIMIT evolutionary outcomes via natural
selection it cannot not CONTROL any of these outcomes. Natural selection is
all about this act of control which is absolutely required to produce any
DIRECTIONAL change. The car limits where a driver could drive to while the
driver controls where the car shall be attempted to be driven. Confusing the
two provides limitless comedy. Unfortunately it remains common for
mathematicians to confuse limiting and controlling factors because such
things are not important to mathematics. However, being able to distinguish
empirically between limit and control remains absolutely essential for
evolutionary theory simply because evolutionists must never reverse proposed
cause and effect within their arguments.

Dr Moran's argument represents a mathematicians rehash of the discredited
mutationist argument which temporarily eclipsed Darwinism after Muller
discovered random mutation at the turn of the century. The failure is
always the same: mathematicians failing to understand the critical
difference between science and mathematics. It has been my experience that
you can explain the difference to empirically based scientists but not to
mathematicians. It seems that most mathematicians cannot experience anything
outside of their own domain (Gödel being a notable exception).

Regards,

John Edser
Independent Researcher

edser@xxxxxxxxxx










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