Re: Co-optation Today

Treus wrote:
John Harshman wrote:
Treus wrote:
The
situation would be very different if you downloaded a collection of
text documents whose minor variations could be arranged in a nested
hierarchy. What conclusions about sequential transcription errors
could you make there?
The same conclusions. Unless you would care to present an alternative
theory of how a nested hierarchy could arise.

Well, there's the difficulty. I don't recall anyone observing an
applicable complex nested hierarchy arising. Maybe you can think of
something.

Why is it necessary to observe it happening in order to know that it exists and how it arose? You have agreed that hand-copied manuscripts exhibit common descent, but you didn't observe that happening either.

The most obvious general example is the periodic table of elements.

Example of what? It's not a nested hierarchy.

Of
course, the current explanation for that is also evolutionary, though
with a critical difference. The array of observed atomic species was
entirely predictable through demonstrated principles given the
hypothetical starting state without need of extrapolation from
incremental phenomena to presumed (and untested) causal sufficiency
for categorically dissimilar effects. This does not mean it actually
happened as described, but we do have a possible causality which fully
accounts for all the necessary details at every stage of the process.

If you're trying to say that we can't know anything about phylogeny until we have a theory that predicts from first principles every species we see in the present, that's absurd. If you're trying to say something else, I don't know what.

(In fact I do have an alternative theory: somebody consciously attempts
to fake common descent by creating such a hierarchy. But I don't think
it reasonably applies in any of the cases before us. How about you?)

You mean a Piltdown Man situation on a very large scale? That hardly
seems feasible.

That's why I said it doesn't reasonably apply. I note that you have not come up with any alternative process that can result in a nested hierarchy.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Co-optation Today
    ... theory of how a nested hierarchy could arise. ... but you didn't observe that happening either. ... I'm not saying you can't know anything about phylogeny, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Co-optation Today
    ... theory of how a nested hierarchy could arise. ... The array of observed atomic species was ... incremental phenomena to presumed causal sufficiency ... (In fact I do have an alternative theory: ...
    (talk.origins)