tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post5692035859439979779..comments2024-03-27T14:50:47.345-04:00Comments on <center>Sandwalk</center>: Kevin Laland's new view of evolutionLarry Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-91789933553593484442016-12-07T04:55:39.305-05:002016-12-07T04:55:39.305-05:00"Evolvability" is a likelihood function ..."Evolvability" is a likelihood function for evolutionary trajectory, cf., a 3D solution space for a species, from any point in time, or a 4D solution space for any species, from all points, at any time. Problem is that you're assigning serial causality, or at least some tractable version of determinism, to an emergent property of smaller scale processes, interacting with abiotic processes occurring for a larger scale. The arena for the outcome of this tussle ("Struggle for survival") is of course played out at the scale of individual fitness, so giving survival and reproduction, and is not played out at the "evolvability" level, essentially group selection as a species. It is meaningless, and as Larry points out, bound to teleological interpretation, and has as much contribution to make as using the idiotic terms macro- and micro-evolution. As Darwin McCloud might have put it, "There can BE ONLY one". Anyway, here's p517 Futuyama (2005) Evolution (1st edition, Sinauer) …<br />https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CzD-tVDXcAAh_Fo.jpg <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-59136989784475937382016-12-06T11:27:23.028-05:002016-12-06T11:27:23.028-05:00My question is pretty basic: what is evolvability?...My question is pretty basic: what is evolvability? Increased diversity? Increased mutation rate? What? I've apparently missed something in my education. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-22147105450327166872016-12-06T09:43:08.519-05:002016-12-06T09:43:08.519-05:00I don't understand the objection to evolvabili...I don't understand the objection to evolvability. As a climate scientist, I often see amateurs raise obvious and often important questions. Such as why do climate scientists ignore the Sun? Or how can increasing CO2 matter when the absorption of infrared radiation is already saturated at the surface? The amateur can either conclude that climate scientists are therefore idiots or corrupt, or conclude that they don't understand something and then raise the questions as an opportunity to learn something.<br /><br />It seems to me that selecting for evolvability is simple. Random genetic drift in a stable environment will produce a population with organisms that have a spread in their evolvability. Then a rapidly changing environment will select those organisms able to evolve more quickly. Since I don't think biologists are idiots or corrupt, what am I missing here? Why did Gould discount this?jbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10835283301887184369noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-34172412977990252322016-12-06T09:02:07.865-05:002016-12-06T09:02:07.865-05:00Reeling at the stupidity of Roy Soc hosting what w...Reeling at the stupidity of Roy Soc hosting what was essentially a discussion of the project on Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, funded by the Templeton Foundation. Why are they funding it? Because they’re always looking for a way to legitimise spirituality in science. Moving from gene to organism, and some woo claptrap about directed evolution. is not progress. It was rightly rejected as far back as the mid-nineteenth century. And regarding Leland's claims for nîche construction, his is only one voice, and not the dominant one, in the Princeton "Monologue". John Odling-Smee's nîches do no more than introduce complexity into the enaction of genetically-coded behaviour and the received consequences: feedbacks, lags, indirect effects. It's still neo-Darwinian. As of course is epigenetics. Gene control, switching, etc, does not change the potential function of that gene, as coded. Modifying the expression in any way, that moderates the same function is still neo-Darwinian. Find a mechanism that CHANGES the function so that a distinct selectable and inheritable trait results with modified functionality to the original protein, then you’ve got an evolution revolution. Meanwhile, status quo, except for the gradual whittling away of science’s leverage in shaping and informing society: be it through Trump-style denial, or insidious encroachment like the gameplay of Templeton, getting headlines suggesting there’s doubt in evolutionary science, or adopting pluralism because the goalposts are wider than a barn door so surely even intelligent design can get published. These approaches are all happening now, independent of one another. The maintainers of scientific standards in our society should be closing the door to them, not inviting them in for canapés and a chat about semantics.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-75367057221669851052016-12-06T08:58:38.563-05:002016-12-06T08:58:38.563-05:00Repeated warnings and laughing at the proponents w...Repeated warnings and laughing at the proponents won't work, what would be needed is showing the proponents are mistaken in the scientific literature. I know the literature in this field first hand, and the remaining critics of it have been getting regularly trounced for decades now. If you think you can manage this task then by all means go for it, but plenty before you have tried and failed. Your first step ought to be hitting the library to learn about the field - since uninformed critics are the most common kind - but their contributions are next to useless.<br />Tim Tylerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06623536372084468307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-5926300094158358212016-12-06T04:09:31.917-05:002016-12-06T04:09:31.917-05:00"Attempts to tie evolutionary theory to DNA g..."Attempts to tie evolutionary theory to DNA genes are parochial - that would exclude many of our ancestors and many of our descendants and many existing living systems. The application domain of Darwin's theory is bigger than that - and to think otherwise is both small-minded, and contrary to Darwin's own writing on the topic."<br /><br />Parochial indeed. A living systems approach (Laszlo would be jealous!). <br /><br />To over-inflate the 'application domain' of Darwin's 'natural selection' idea is likewise both humourous and wrong-headed. Some people really don't know the proper limits of (neo-)Darwinian evolution, even when warned repeatedly and carefully by leading scholars around the world in the mainstream and by many more others who are not in the mainstream, but nevertheless understand the distortion of evolutionism and the crumbling ideology of 'memetics' coined by a biologist with culturology-envy. So, who's laughing with who, Tim Tyler? Gregoryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07291468210466261271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-73617771508730862932016-12-05T23:54:12.761-05:002016-12-05T23:54:12.761-05:00"mutations should be named as accidentally mi..."mutations should be named as accidentally mindlessly blind, unguidedly purposeless, functionally catastrophic, chaotically random copying-accidents"<br /><br />That's pretty accurate, but not suitable for textbooks. You know what they say; we must keep up appearances.txpiperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03645156881353741058noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-58129942435869846832016-12-05T21:05:33.883-05:002016-12-05T21:05:33.883-05:00Surely the blooming literature deals with flowerin...Surely the blooming literature deals with flowering plants and algae, which don't have cultures (although you can have cultures of the latter).Jonathan Badgerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04921990886076027719noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-36110852224371320512016-12-05T18:53:48.495-05:002016-12-05T18:53:48.495-05:00Inheritance matters in evolutionary theory because...Inheritance matters in evolutionary theory because it involves survival-related information being copied down the generations. Whether that information is encoded in DNA, in books or digital media is a side issue - an implementation detail, so to speak. Attempts to tie evolutionary theory to DNA genes are parochial - that would exclude many of our ancestors and many of our descendants and many existing living systems. The application domain of Darwin's theory is bigger than that - and to think otherwise is both small-minded, and contrary to Darwin's own writing on the topic.<br />Tim Tylerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06623536372084468307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-56093851604887455082016-12-05T17:36:07.749-05:002016-12-05T17:36:07.749-05:00If Laland et. al. have anything to contribute they...If Laland et. al. have anything to contribute they will of course, with Templeton's millions deliver experimental data which can only be explained by their notions. Don't hold your breath. They won't.billgahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00964456727320300690noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-4352187552400712842016-12-05T15:59:44.042-05:002016-12-05T15:59:44.042-05:00"We cannot deny that these features of evolva... "We cannot deny that these features of evolvability deeply "matter" in the history of lineages; but how can benefits for futures arise by any causal process in the here and now? (Gould, 2002 p. 1274) "<br /><br /> .... by also conferring an advantage in the present?<br /> The first I heard of 'evolvability' was in the work of Gerhard and Kirshner. They gave the cytoskeleton as one example of something that conferred evolvability by allowing eukaryotes to evolve greater cellular complexity, cell movement, cell shape and multicellularity. But of course the cytoskeleton didn't evolve <i> for </i> that. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-68169538171085229522016-12-05T14:11:53.819-05:002016-12-05T14:11:53.819-05:00Neo-Darwinism, in historical scholarship, generall...Neo-Darwinism, in historical scholarship, generally means Darwin's "natural selection" (smooth change based on how the struggle for life shapes a mass of heritable variations into adaptations), without Darwin's other mechanisms (Lamarckism, direct effects, etc). <br /><br />Neo-Darwinism emerged prior to genetics and was first associated with Weismann and Wallace, and the first neo-Darwinians rejected Mendelism. The Modern Synthesis or modern neo-Darwinism is a Mendelian justification for neo-Darwinism. <br /><br />One should not imagine that this rationalization is inherently reductionist or gene-centered just because it makes reference to genetics. This is a very serious mis-reading of the works of the Modern Synthesis. Unfortunately it is a very common mis-reading promoted by the synthesis-extenders. Mayr, for instance, certainly did not have a gene-centered view. The view of Dobzhansky was very genetically focused, but not reductionistic AT ALL. Evolution for Dobzhansky was not individual genes mutating and getting selected, but high-level forces operating on an entire "gene pool" at once. Interactivity and epistasis were a part of this view. <br /><br />Critics like Denis Noble completely mis-understand this when they accuse the "Modern Synthesis" of genetic reductionism. Mayr, Simpson and Dobzhansky are all on record fighting against the reductionism of molecular biologists in the 1960s. Arlinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03243864308260498878noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-30580006309884674682016-12-05T14:03:38.291-05:002016-12-05T14:03:38.291-05:00:-):-)judmarchttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03111006189037693272noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-40011455559583945542016-12-05T14:02:17.930-05:002016-12-05T14:02:17.930-05:00bwilson295, but we don't need a new name. If ...bwilson295, but we don't need a new name. If we want to refer to contemporary scientific thinking, we can call it "contemporary scientific thinking". The idea that there is a grand unified explanation for all of evolution died when the MS died in about 1969. <br /><br />That is, evolutionary biology has been going without a grand unified theory of evolution for almost 50 years. Obviously, WE JUST DON'T NEED ONE. Chemistry doesn't have one. Physics doesn't have one. We don't have one, and don't need one. <br /><br />Any future account of evolution will simply be a collection of whatever works and not a unified conjectural theory, as was the MS. <br /><br />This is another part of the failed strategy of the "extended synthesis" people, who keep trying to claim that their new theory is unified. It isn't. It is simply a pluralistic laundry list of mechanisms thought to be important. Arlinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03243864308260498878noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-32148901642348496592016-12-05T13:20:02.287-05:002016-12-05T13:20:02.287-05:00Yes, Joe, some people use the phrase "Modern ...Yes, Joe, some people use the phrase "Modern Synthesis" to refer to "whatever we think today", a constantly moving target. <br /><br />They are objectively wrong. In fact, there is a historical record showing the MS to be a substantive explanation of the causes of evolution at odds with their beliefs, and the beliefs of anyone today working in evolutionary genetics, molecular evolution, or microbial evolution. <br /><br />This MS theory depends on the idea of a totipotent "gene pool" in which variation is "maintained" by a complex dynamic involving sexual mixis, recessivity, chromosome assortment, recombination, frequency-dependent selection and balancing selection. The magic of the "gene pool" ensures that selection always finds abundant variation to shift to a new optimum, with no need for new mutations. Though mutation is ultimately necessary, recombination is the engine of evolution-- which is why Simpson, Mayr, Dobzhansky, et al frequently said that the rate of evolution wouldn't reflect the rate of mutation. The ability of selection to create new forms without mutations is the _sine qua non_ of this view, and thus is the centerpiece of Provine's 1971 account of its origins (he calls it "the effectiveness of selection"). <br /><br />Having shown that it was possible to rationalize a neo-Darwinian view of creative selection on a Mendelian basis, they quickly went on to argue mistakenly that this was now proven and that all other views must be rejected, as per the first chapter of Fisher 1930. But this theory was a conjecture, one that fit with certain pre-established neo-Darwinian beliefs. It was adopted because it justified the creativity of selection over the objections of early geneticists that mutation, not selection, is creative. <br /><br />Yet the MS theory just doesn't apply to prokaryotes, the organisms that have dominated the planet for most of its existence (only frequency-dependent selection could play the same role in the prokaryotic "gene pool"). Molecular evolutionists today have abandoned the MS and routinely invoke origin-fixation models (invented in 1969, and unknown to Fisher, Wright and Haldane) in which the rate of evolution depends directly on the mutation rate. <br /><br />If we explained to Mayr or Dobzhansky or Simpson the views of someone like myself or Mike Lynch, they would say that we are confused about the causes of evolution, and they would lecture us that the old mutationist lucky mutant way of looking at evolution has been rejected and that modern science tell us that selection is the creative force of evolution because it drives shifting frequencies in the gene-pool in response to environmental change, with mutation acting merely as a source of raw materials. Everything we know about evolution, they would lecture us, is consistent with shifting gene frequencies in the gene pool. <br /><br />The people who are saying "we've expanded the MS already" either don't know their history, or more likely, they just don't really care to find out. Their position is not scientific, but cultural: their first loyalty is not to science or to historical facts, but to intellectual ancestors and a tradition that they revere. Arlinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03243864308260498878noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-67270321621003700992016-12-05T10:07:47.049-05:002016-12-05T10:07:47.049-05:00You should consider using the word, "inherite...<i>You should consider using the word, "inherited" instead - to avoid bias in your definition against non-genetic forms of inheritance. If you do that, cultural evolution fits within the remit of your definition.</i><br /><br />Why should anyone wish to do that? What scientific power of explanation does this grant us?<br /><br /><i>Almost everyone agrees that cultural information can be inherited across multiple generations. Suddenly you will find that you can start to make sense of the blooming literature on Darwinan cultural evolution.</i><br /><br />Ah, OK - to make sense of the "blooming literature."<br />judmarchttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03111006189037693272noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-45379160710860164492016-12-05T10:06:06.539-05:002016-12-05T10:06:06.539-05:00Of course! How else would it conform so perfectly...Of course! How else would it conform so perfectly to the shape of the land that surrounds it?Faizal Alihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00937075798809265805noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-12861523383091370272016-12-05T10:02:21.524-05:002016-12-05T10:02:21.524-05:00The coastline of the Mississippi is incredibly com...The coastline of the Mississippi is incredibly complex. Does this come from inspired water molecules?judmarchttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03111006189037693272noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-42474027031310035392016-12-05T08:59:52.229-05:002016-12-05T08:59:52.229-05:00Genetic drift, evolvability, niche construction, a...Genetic drift, evolvability, niche construction, and epigenetics have not been rejected, they have been assimilated into contemporary evolutionary theory. Whether you call the resulting theory "new" is the main issue, and I argue <a href="http://evolution.gs.washington.edu/rants.html" rel="nofollow">here</a> that we should be hesitant to do so.<br /><br />I know that Russ Lande and Doug Futuyma acknowledge all these phenomena and call them part of the Modern Synthesis. Larry prefers to call them Modern Evolutionary Theory instead. The people touting the centrality of epigenetics and niche construction at the Royal Society meeting exaggerate their importance. It is hard for me to tell that from self-publicizing -- a wrong reason for announcing to the public that there has been some major overthrow of evolutionary theory.Joe Felsensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06359126552631140000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-73442860545393003202016-12-05T08:47:00.702-05:002016-12-05T08:47:00.702-05:00Inspiration and invention require conscious intell...Inspiration and invention require conscious intellect and cognizance. txpiperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03645156881353741058noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-55120388579199879952016-12-05T08:06:54.552-05:002016-12-05T08:06:54.552-05:00Hmmm ... that quote demonstrates pretty conclusive...Hmmm ... that quote demonstrates pretty conclusively that my assumption was correct.Larry Moranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-88424334353930409662016-12-05T05:35:01.603-05:002016-12-05T05:35:01.603-05:00"Maybe someday some notable person will wake ...<i>"Maybe someday some notable person will wake up with a truly novel view, one that recognizes that random DNA replication errors cannot produce hyper-complex, integrated, highly specific and functioning biological systems."</i><br /><br />Surely you forgot functionally Digitally cybernetic, Irreducibly CompleKs (DICK) multicomponent machines with numerous, mutually co-dependent and intrinsically interlocking subsystems, to make <i>sublimely</i> integrated, electrochemicallynically engineered biochemiosmotic circuits that absolutely require a highly detailed digitally encoded blueprint to cyber-chemo-mechanically build the object, enhanced by algorithmic recursively sequentially parallel decision-making routines running on deliberaly clustered and cooperating super-computers, integrating instantiations of switch-node software/hardware mutuality that store extreme levels of directionally instructional, <b>HYPER</b>-Complex, specified coded information?<br /><br />And they're not just "random DNA replication errors", remember the 1st rules of creationist rhetoric: It can't be overdone. <br />Henceforth, mutations should be named as <i><b>accidentally mindlessly blind, unguidedly purposeless, functionally catastrophic, chaotically random copying-accidents.</b></i>Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07670550711237457368noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-8529416839644904392016-12-05T04:35:49.943-05:002016-12-05T04:35:49.943-05:00Directed, but nevertheless evolution, has been pra...Directed, but nevertheless evolution, has been practised in animal breeding and agriculture for thousands of years. No big deal but very efficient. Don't tell me that the 'games' played by so many animal species aren't played for a reason and purpose.<br /><br />txpiper: Evolution has inspired the invention of genetic algorithms that produce hyper-complex, integrated, highly specific and functioning ... systems. What's the difference?Rolf Aalberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12878337054438652463noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-90495145657499695722016-12-05T01:43:54.038-05:002016-12-05T01:43:54.038-05:00Already there is a truly novel view, txpiper. The ...Already there is a truly novel view, txpiper. The evolution we are watching as microscopyand biological beings is anything more than the routines steps of a universal process of reproduction reproduction of a natural system that triguered the Big Bang by a commom genetic process like the origin of your own body was triguered by a microspic big bang when exploded the membrane of a spermatozoon. This new view is called " The Universal Matrix/DNA for All Natural Systems and Life's Cycles", or "The Matrix/DNA Theory". So, this "evolution" has a direction and random mutations can occurs but will be selected only if fits in the reproductive process. O Cabrito Politicohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04974880234487680749noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37148773.post-18200872024636219452016-12-04T23:11:02.939-05:002016-12-04T23:11:02.939-05:00Another new view of evolution.
Maybe someday som...Another new view of evolution. <br /><br />Maybe someday some notable person will wake up with a truly novel view, one that recognizes that random DNA replication errors cannot produce hyper-complex, integrated, highly specific and functioning biological systems. <br /><br />But probably not. txpiperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03645156881353741058noreply@blogger.com