Re: Part 1 (of 3): What are major aspects of evolutionary theory?

> > (I invented that term "fitness adaption pressure"
> > just now, to replace the misnomer "selection pressure" that has been in
> > use until now. Anybody like the replacement better than the original?)
> No.

Hey, what gives you the right to speak for *everyone*?
How about just saying "Not I" and speak only for yourself?
If all of the Little Red Hen's neighbors all say "Not I", then she
really knows nobody likes her idea, but none of them have the right to
speak for the others, right?

Anyway, speaking only for yourself, do you have any third term to
nominate to replace the original and confusing "selection pressure" in
lieu of my proposed replacement "fitness adaption pressure"?
Maybe something like "selection-drift bias" perhaps?
Or "fitness-hill-climbing gradient"?

> > So anyway, after we outline the evidence
> Evidence for what, precisely? This seems like evidence for common descent.

No no no, don't pre-judge what the evidence is "for". Just collect
evidence like any good police detective, and then after you have
all the evidence, see where it leads. For example, if you pre-judge
that the husband probably killed his wife, you'll be so busy collecting
evidence to "prove" he did it that you not bother to ask neighbors if
they saw any one-armed men around the neighborhood, and as a result
you'll achieve a false conviction Dr. Richard Kimble.

So the evidence is characteristics of various fossils, and their
location and date buried. Upon analysis, we determine that common
descent is the most likely (parsimonious and reasonable) explanation
for the evidence, and also anti-explanation of the many kinds of
evidence we never see (such as chimeras of parts from widely separated
times and places). But we come up with common descent only after
collecting and examining and analyzing the evidence. The evidence is
*for* determining where the species came from, not *for* proving a
pre-conceived idea of common descent. (In fact when such evidence was
originally collected and studied, the a priori belief was that
everything was specially created by a supernatural being during a
single week only a few thousand years ago, and the evidence was so
overwealmingly opposed to that belief that paleontologists were forced
to then think of some other theory to replace their old belief.)

In our case, if we pre-judge the case and collect evidence only in
support of common descent, the Creationists can legitimately argue that
we stacked the deck, collected only evidence in support and ignored
evidence against, so our conclusion is bogus. We don't want that. We
want to present honest evidence, and *then* show that common descent is
the only reasonable theory to explain it. We want to invite the
Creationists or anybody else to propose any other theory which equally
well might explain the evidence and anti-explain the non-evidence.
(Goddidit isn't a good theory, because it explains both the evidence
and anything else whatsoever that godmightdo. It fails to anti-explain
the non-evidence, to explain why cross-time cross-space chimeras don't
occur. On the other hand, Omphalos, whereupon a supernatural being
deliberately planted evidence to make it *appear* as if common descent
occurred, is a valid philosophical thoery, scientifically
indistinguishable from ordinary common descent.)

> what do you mean by "fossil chains"?

Fossil species A B and C appear successively within approximately the
same geographical region, and each appears to be very similar to its
chronological neighbors, but clearly the three species are not
identical to each other. How to explain that? Perhaps they form a chain
of ancestry? By comparison we do *not* see species A B and C in such
chronological sequence but each in a totally separate geographic area,
nor three such species so very similar yet separated by gaps of
hundreds of millions of years, at least hardly ever. Often we see ten
or more such species in sequence, spaced over time, with small
progressive change from each to the next, but rather large end-to-end
total accumulated change. The only *other* species we ever see so very
similar to any of these, are at what appear to be species-split
branch-points. Those side-branches sometimes go extinct promptly, but
sometimes start their own "fossil chains" which then run in parallel
with the one we were already looking at.

> In reality, what we have here is a single nested hierarchy,
> formed by data from various different sources. That's all.

When we fold together all the fossil chains, with the branch points
that replace one ancestral fossil chain with two or more new fossil
chains, we have a forest of trees. These trees are consistent with a
single tree where lots of links are missing from our evidence so-far.

We can state strongly that there are fossil chains, and branch points,
yielding lots of small common-ancestry trees. We can guess with less
assurance that they all belong to one universal common-ancestry tree.
We can state with intermediate assurance that we have a single
common-ancestry tree for each phylum, and sometimes for several phyla
together, from the Cambrian explosion to the present. The case for
joining all those trees into one universal tree before the Cambrian
explosion is not firmly established by fossil evidence alone.
This is where we need the other two lines of evidence (comparative
embryology, and DNA cladograms) to piece together the separate trees
into a single universal tree. And last I heard the best we could do is
establish three trees for the three major domains, with unknown linkage
earlier than that.

> > when we then state the underlying theory to explain such amazing
> > agreement of evidence, do we agree on the specific parts of the theory,
> > namely:
> > (t1) replication,
> > (t2) mutation (new variation),
> > (t3) stochastic mechanism for selecting who begats and who dies without
> > begatting, which can be mathematically factored into:
> > (t3a) "fitness adaption pressure",
> > (t3b) "random drift"?
> Those are, more or less, some of the parts of a particular theory of
> evolution. I think the first two are necessary for any evolutionary
> theory.

Replication is accepted by everyone, even YECs.

The source of new mutation is a point of debate between Darwinists and
some IDIots. Other IDiots reject the whole idea of mutation, preferring
special creation of each new species, where any "mutation" is actually
deliberate re-thinking of the design within the mind of the Designer.
Other IDiots compromise between those two extremes, allowing
micro-mutation to actually happen in live begatting-chains, but saying
that macro-mutation never happens, any species change is attributed to
installing a new Design, such as when MicroSoft starts shipping a new
major version of Windows rather than distributing patches to an old
version that convert it to a new minor-upgrade version.

Nit: A theory that denies physical evolution, which admits only
Design-evolution and shipping a new major version of the product, *is*
an evolutionary theory, since it involves evolution in the mind of the
Creator/Designer, but does *not* involve mutation in the physical
sense. So not all evolutionary theories require mutation as you claim.
But all *scientific* evolutionary theories do.

> The third is specific to some subset of theories.

Again, IDiots (actually more properlty ITiots) may claim some
supernatural Tinkerer (not Designer) is responsible for deciding which
of the random mutations to keep and which to discard, replacing natural
selection with deliberate breeding just as humans breed dogs.

But it's impossible for any physical process to be 100% correct, to
perform some task correctly 100% of the time, so no matter how accurate
a phyiscal process is, there is *some* stochastic element in the
process. So whereas a supernatural Intelligent Tinkerer might be
totally infallable in its breeding efforts, any natural process,
including humans-breeding-dogs, sexual selection, arms races, etc., all
have a stochastic element. Any *scientific* theory must restrict itself
to such natural processes, hence any *scientific* theory of selection
must be some form of stochastic selection. I don't think it's
mathematically possible for replication and mutation, with no selection
of any kind whatsoever, to yield the Origin of the Species, do you?
Accordingly *any* theory of evolution (to fit the evidence on Earth)
*must* involve some kind of selection, hence any *scientific* theory of
evolution must include stochastic selection.

Do you accept my argument to that point?

Then by simple math, we can separate the forcing toward a particular
result (the "selection pressure" or whatever we call it) from the
unexplained/random variance from that path (the "random drift").

> None of these seem to have all that much to do with e1-e3.

If you run simulations based on t1-3, assuming current theory about
polymeric DNA language and mapping to phenotypical characters, you get
evolutionary trees like e1, nested hierarchy in latest-generation
populations like e2, and DNA cladograms like e3, each agreeing with the
other two. Do you know any other local theory (some mechanism that
performs all action within local time and space, without any global or
time-travel coordination) that when simulated gives results likewise
matching all three lines of evidence?

It's not that t1-3 "have anything to do with" e1-3 in form, but that
if you simulate t1-3 you get e1-3 as consequence, so t1-3 explains
e1-3. It's like Kepler's orbits and Galileo's mechanics deal with conic
sections, while Newton's laws of gravity and motion deal with
differential equations, with no obvious similarity between the two. But
when you simulate Newton's laws with very small test masses (kilogram
size) under constant-gravity conditions you end up with Galileo's
mechanics, and when you simulate Newton's laws under zero external
gravity but very large test masses (planetary/stellar size) you end up
with Kepler's orbits, so Newton's theory explains both Kepler's and
Galileo's observables.

I want to clearly separate the evidence e1-3 from the explanatory
theory t1-3, partly because everyone except YECs agrees with the
evidence, so we can just stipulate that at the start of debates with
everyone else, but there's a lot of debate about the underlying theory
among IDiots etc. Most IDiots really do believe in evolution in the
narrow sense of e2 only (common ancestry), and even the YECs accept the
nested hierarchy e1, and the DNA cladograms can be shown live in the
laboratory so only a fool would dismiss them. But the IDiots don't
accept the Darwinian explanation as to how it works, *why* e1-3 turned
out that way. So our challenge should be to have them present any
alternate to our t1-3 to explain our agreed-upon e1-3 (and anti-explain
anti-e1-3, for example why don't we see each species using a totally
different hereditary mechanism, a different biochemistry, yet somehow
still containing the same basic units of organic chemicals so that food
webs work as they do, after all God could have designed life that way
if He chose, so why didn't he? Goddiddit fails to explain why such
differences are *not* present in life. IDiots gotta come up with
something better to anti-explain anti-e1-3.).
..

.

Relevant Pages

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