Re: Haldane's Dilemma and quantitative genetics
- From: "John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:01:25 -0400 (EDT)
lamoran@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Larry Moran) wrote:-
Wirt Atmar <atmar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This is my opportunity to be the group's curmudgeon for the fortieth
time, but these models are not at all representative of how evolution
works and have almost no value in advancing any physical understanding
of the evolutionary process. If I can't be any more blunt and offensive
than that, I don't know how.
The evolutionary clock does not run at any where near a constant speed.
Filled ecological niches occupied by highly coevolved communities are
very difficult to invade, and thus evolution tends to come to almost a
dead stop in such situations. Intense competitive interaction doesn't
allow much change.
That's a false view of evolution. You don't know what you're talking
about.
How's that for blunt and offensive? :-)
JE:-
Of course an entirely random evolutionary clock runs at a constant speed.
So What? What is so offensive to science is Dr Moran's insistence that a
random pattern of heritable change produced by sampling error can somehow be
allowed to be redefined to become evolution and not remain exactly what it
is: just another random act of heritable variation.
Your false view of evolution includes the ridiculous idea that species
become perfectly adapted to their environment and will stop evolving.
JE:-
Perhaps Dr Moran may like to define adaptation so that we can all share his
misconception of it. Also, could he state if he requires ANY variation? If
so, could he please define the difference between variation and evolution?
snip<
Another completely false idea is that natural selection is the only
mechanism of evolution.
JE:-
Natural selection remains the only refutable theory of evolution that
evolutionary science has. It appears never to matter to Dr Moran that
allowing random sampling error to constitute evolution and not just temporal
variation, reduces evolutionary science to the status of a non refutable
belief with bed fellows like "intelligent design" and numerous other
unintelligent ideas. It appears to me that Dr Moran really does think that
mathematics is a science.
The third false idea is that "the evolutionary clock does not run at
any where near a constant speed." This silly statement is directly
contradicted by real data in the scientific literature. I can only assume
that you are using some strange definition of evolution that eliminates
all change at the molecular level. Perhaps you meant to say that the
rate of "positive natural selection" isn't clocklike over millions
of years?
JE:-
Note that the rate of evolution via natural selection i.e. the rate of any
NON RANDOM evolutionary change is predicted NOT to be constant where this
has been empirically verified. Note that a constant rate of change produced
by a random process requires a critical frame of reference which cannot be
found within just a random process.
Moreover, the presence of a biogeographic map, which is ignored in
standard mathematical genetics, renders the substitution of neutral
changes almost impossible. A novel neutral mutation in an individual
must compete with its sibling competitors coming from all directions,
and because the change is neutral, it has no selective advantage for or
against it by definition, thus if it is to survive, it must climb
against the Gambler's Ruin tide, a Markovian process that virtually
guarantees not only the new mutation's relatively immediate elimination
but also a very short time on the biogeographic map.
Hmmm ... you have just eliminated random genetic drift as a mechanism of
evolution. Why don't you try and publish this? :-)
JE:-
I am sure the majority of Dr Moran's colleagues agree with him. This being
the case science remains secure in the knowledge that they can employ their
considerable political muscle to prohibit such a publication. The rubbish
politics of irrefutable propositions aside, simple common sense is all that
is required to understand that genetic drift (random sampling error) is not
evolution within evolutionary science just temporal variation. To regard it
otherwise reverses empirical cause and effect. Many gene centric Neo
Darwinists who are competent mathematicians routinely reverse cause and
effect within uncorrected and misused oversimplified models. Note that in
this particular model random sampling error cannot provide more evolution
but evolution can provide more sampling error, e.g. via sex.
Walk the streets of any large city. Look at the people. Do they all look
the same? Can you recognize people whose ancestors came from Afica,
Europe,
Asia, or North America? Have all of the differences been selected? You
*must* assume that every genetic feature is an adaptation of some sort
otherwise your "theory" is refuted. Are you prepared to make that claim
and defend it?>
JE:-
Dr Moran's fallacy is so striking that sbe reader's should give it a name. I
propose Moran's "Science Adrift" fallacy. The logical structure of it is as
follows: take an assumed random process and then argue that it alone can be
causative to whatever you wish to just explain away on an entirely
irrefutable basis. You can never be wrong only because you can never be
right. Wonderful.
The fact that we humans remain recognizable as human despite suffering a
veritable onslaught of random spatial and temporal events over eons of
evolutionary time demonstrates that a _selected_ blueprint employs randomly
generated heritable temporal variation to maintain a blueprint as well as to
alter it where just a random process cannot make this choice. Just as a
house may be regarded as an arrangement of bricks but not every arrangement
of bricks can constitute a house, non random evolutionary events can be
assumed to be an arrangement of just heritable random events where however,
not all of these random events constitute an evolutionary event.
Mathematicians who claim that a non random process is no more important than
just a random process within evolutionary theory should be made to live in a
house "built" in just an entirely random way. I'm sure it would be about as
livable as the random music "composed" by John Cage.
Mutation and drift rates are constant only because they are random events
happening within an entirely NON random process. Without at least one non
random process being employed as a critical point of reference nobody could
measure that this was the case. Nature assimilates (in the C. H. Waddington
use of the word) random genetic events within _highly buffered_ Darwinian
selectee's (fertile forms). This means that over time assimilated random
events can indeed be employed as a useful index of evolutionary change. Of
course this does NOT allow Moran's Science Adrift fallacy that all random
heritable events must therefore constitute an evolutionary event. Heritable
variation can limit selection but only selection can control heritable
variation providing an entirely non circular (non reversible) proposition
for evolutionary theory.
Regards,
John Edser
edser@xxxxxxxxxx
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