Re: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

On Jun 5, 3:32 am, Greg Guarino <gdguar...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"All these features would seem, at first sight, to be highly
deleterious, and it was claimed
that natural selection could not possibly have favored or even
tolerated their evolution. However, the studies of Rensch, Simpson,
Gould, and various other paleontologists have demonstrated that the
species that had these "excessive" characters always flourished for
considerable periods of time when these characters clearly were of
selective advantage and that their ultimate extinction coincided with
a climatic or broad faunal change which simultaneously led to the
extinction of nummerous other species without such `excessive'
characters."
E. Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an
Evolutionist
, (Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 250.
These species "flourished", so their structures must have been favored
by selection after all? Well, glad we got that cleared up.

Makes sense to me. Why not explain what's wrong with it, in detail.

I have given you four similar versions. In each one the author is
engageing in after the fact rationalization. We observe sharks are
adapted to their environment. What the authors are doing is saying
that because sharks are adapted they are adapted , they are not
providing any sort of theory as to why it was a shark and not
something else. If it were another creature they would have told us
the exact same thing. The whole debate is being framed in terms of
survival. But they must survive or the creatures wouldn't be there in
the first place. And their survival is alwasy framed as competing
against some other animal. By this reasoning if you found a tiger
instead of a lion the exact same story would have been told.

http://www.arn.org/docs/berlinski/db_deniabledarwin0696.htm
Berlinski says:"...Once asked, such questions tend to multiply like
party guests. If evolutionary theory cannot answer them, what, then,
is its use? Why is the Pitcher plant carnivorous, but not the thorn
bush, and why does the Pacific salmon require fresh water to spawn,
but not the Chilean sea bass? Why has the British thrush learned to
hammer snails upon rocks, but not the British blackbird, which often
starves to death in the midst of plenty? Why did the firefly discover
bioluminescence, but not the wasp or the warrior ant; why do the bees
do their dance, but not the spider or the flies; and why are women,
but not cats, born without the sleek tails that would make them even
more alluring than they already are?

Why? Yes, why? The question, simple, clear, intellectually
respectable, was put to the Nobel laureate George Wald. "Various
organisms try various things," he finally answered, his words
functioning as a verbal shrug, "they keep what works and discard the
rest."

But suppose the manifold of life were to be given a good solid yank,
so that the Chilean sea bass but not the Pacific salmon required fresh
water to spawn, or that ants but not fireflies flickered enticingly at
twilight, or that women but not cats were born with lush tails. What
then? An inversion of life's fundamental facts would, I suspect,
present evolutionary biologists with few difficulties. Various
organisms try various things. This idea is adapted to any contingency
whatsoever, an interesting example of a Darwinian mechanism in the
development of Darwinian thought itself."

.

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