Re: Wistar conference math quote mining. QMP needs to cover this
- From: "Dunc Harris" <dunc_harris@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 12 Jul 2006 09:18:37 -0700
Harlequin wrote:
Casey Luskin has repeated some quote mining of the Wistar
conference of 1960s. It is not unusual to see creationist quote
mining from this conference. I in particular notice a quote by
Sir Peter Medawar that has to be blantantly out of context.
<http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/07/mathematicians_and_evolution.html>
There are some comments, though no debunking of the quotes, at:
<http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2006/07/math_and_creation.php>
Is there anyone familiar with the math of evolutionary biology who
wants to take a crack at this?
--
Anti-spam: Replace "usenet" with "harlequin2"
The idea that biology isn't mathematical is today very much out of
date, as are of course the mined quotes. Historically biologists were
reluctant to embrace mathematics, except for population genetics, and
biology suffered for it, but by the 1960s there were quite a number of
young researchers who acknowledged the relevance of mathematics and
statistics to biology. We also now have a lot more genetic/genomic
and proteomic data than we had in the 1960s. These data have to be
interpreted with mathematics.
Mathematicians are perfectly entitled to critique evolutionary biology.
Several have tried and all have failed. Basically, if you make
unrealistic assumptions about biology, then the model of the system is
poor, or in other words WRONG. Perhaps then some mathematicians would
be better learning some biology than trying to convince themselves that
their asinine faith-based arguments from incredulity are scientifically
sound.
Conrad Hal Waddington made the point at the same symposium:
"The point was made that to account for some evolutionary changes in
hemoglobin, one requires about 120 amino acid substitutions...as
individual events, as though it is necessary to get one of them done
and spread throughout the whole population before you could start
processing the next one...[and] if you add up the time for all those
sequential steps, it amounts to quite a long time. But the point the
biologists want to make is that that isn't really what is going on at
all. We don't need 120 changes one after the other. We know perfectly
well of 12 changes which exist in the human population at the present
time. There are probably many more which we haven't detected, because
they have such slight physiological effects...[so] there [may be] 20
different amino acid sequences in human hemoglobins in the world
population at present, all being processed
simultaneously...Calculations about the length of time of evolutionary
steps have to take into account the fact that we are dealing with gene
pools, with a great deal of genetic variability, present
simultaneously. To deal with them as sequential steps is going to give
you estimates that are wildly out." (pp. 95-6)
For that, and more on this general issue see
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html#Wistar
But finally we finish with another (yawn) reference to the "random /
selective process". Intelligent design creationists seem to like
equating selection with randomness, with phrases such as "random
mutation and selection" in which it is unclear whether the "random"
adjective is in reference to "mutation" or to "mutation and selection".
So let's finish with another quote, this time from Fisher:
"The objection is more in the nature of an innuendo than of a
criticism, for it depends for its force upon the ambiguity of the word
chance, in its popular uses. The income derived from a Casino by its
proprietor may, in one sense, be said to depend upon a succession of
favourable chances, although the phrase contains a suggestion of
improbability more appropriate to the hopes of the patrons of his
establishment. It is easy without any very profound logical analysis to
perceive the difference between a succession of favourable deviations
from the laws of chance, and on the other hand, the continuous and
cumulative action of these laws. It is on the latter that the principle
of Natural Selection relies." The Genetical Theory of Natural
Selection, 1930 (p. 37)
.
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- From: Harlequin
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