Re: Gould criticism and reviews

Tim Tyler wrote:
John Harshman wrote:
Tim Tyler wrote:
John Harshman wrote:
Tim Tyler wrote:

I won't quarrel about multi-level selection - but "punk eek"
seems like a simple misunderstanding about what "gradualism"
meant.

The idea was alays that the changes were gradual - not that
there were no periods of stasis:

``Authors such as Richard Dawkins argue that such constant-rate
gradualism is not present in academic literature, serving only
as a straw-man for punctuated equilibrium advocates.''

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyletic_gradualism

Everyone in the field knew about stasis /long/ before Gould,
from fossils:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_fossil

However, Gould probably sold a lot books on the back of
the idea - so maybe we should marvel at "punk eek" as a
successful marketing effort based on a controversy
constructed out of an author's own misunderstandings -
rather than blasting it as a pointless scientific
storm in a teacup.

You misunderstand Gould's misunderstanding.

BS.

And everyone in the field didn't know about stasis before
(Eldredge and) Gould.

Uh, yes they did. Crocodiles, Ginkgo, Nautilus, Coelacanth, etc. were all plainly visible in the fossil record long before 1970. Stasis exists
in overwhelming abundance, as every paleontologist has always known.

Eldredge and Gould pointed out a disconnect between what paleontologists had supposedly always known and what they had generally claimed in print.

So /now/ you apparently /agree/ with my claim that everyone
in the field knew about stasis before Eldredge and Gould!

Depends on what "the field" and "knew about" meant. Eldredge and Gould said that stasis was "the trade secret of paleontology"; their claim was that paleontologists (or at least invertebrate paleontologists) knew that species remained the same throughout their histories but were embarrassed by it (because it supposedly conflicted with what evolution ought to show) and didn't consider it interesting as data. And that evolutionary biologists in general were unaware of this "trade secret". Now I think they exaggerated the belief in stasis among paleontologists, but certainly most neontologists were unaware of any such phenomenon.

Or perhaps are you leaning on the word "supposedly". Are
you seriously doubting this?

Yes, I do doubt that. But Eldredge and Gould didn't.

Living fossils were considered the exception.

Reference?

It should be obvious. If most living species were considered living fossils, the term would be meaningless.

Doesn't that retrospective interpretation rather explode your own
subsequent claim that Gould made living fossils "the rule".

You seem to be swiching context beteen posts in a manner
which is either confused, or intended to confuse readers.

Sorry, yes, that was confusing. I should have said that there were a few cases of a sort of stasis generally known (the living fossils), though in fact they weren't examples of stasis in the PE sense.

Gould made it the rule.

Reference?

Eldredge and Gould 1972.

That doesn't demonstrate any change as a result of Gould's
efforts. Before Gould, all paleontologists knew about stasis.
After Gould all paleontologists knew about stasis. Stasis
was a well-known fact long before Gould.

That may be true, though in fact I have only Eldredge and Gould's word for it. But it wasn't known outside paleontology, and paleontologists didn't consider stasis as a phenomenon that needed explanation. We all knew apples fell before Newton, but the Principia is still an important work of science.

(Though in fact living fossils are not the sort of thing PE is about.)

They are an instance of equilibrium in evolution.

Like I said, you have no idea what PE is about.

Like I said, BS.

It's about events on the species level. Species (supposedly) remain unchanged throughout their lifetimes. This has nothing to do with living fossils, which are seldom considered the same species as the ancient taxa they resemble.

Uh, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_fossil

Why? What does it say that contradicts me? It's a bit confused on species, certainly. None of the examples given are considered to be the same species as their fossil relatives, even though poor wording seems to imply that they are. I agree with the notation that the article needs cleaning up.

"Crocodiles" are an order. No modern species is particularly old. PE has nothing to do with the idea that modern members of an order are not much changed from their remote ancestors. (I might add in passing that crocodiles are a poor choice for living fossils, since they have changed and radiated extensively since their origin; the idea that they're living fossils doesn't survive a real examination of their historical diversity.) The same applies to your other examples. If you want a relevant example, find a *species* that is unchanged for millions of years.

So you want me to /prove/ that some existing species could
interbreed with their distant ancestors. What claim have I made that
requires such a thing of me? Obviously I have made no such claim.

No, I don't want you to prove any such thing, which would of course be impossible to do anyway. You are free to use a morphological species concept if you like; that's what Eldredge & Gould did. (I pointed out that this is invalid, but if we're discussing stasis in their terms, we have to talk about species, and morphospecies are all that can be seen.)

Living fossils are not examples of stasis in the sense used by PE unless they are claimed to be the same species as their fossil relatives. Do you disagree? If so, why?

I find you hopelessly confused on the subject of stasis and PE.

Yet you have no coherent criticsm of anything I have said.

I hardly know where to start.

That is obvious.

But we can start with the idea that living fossils are relevant
to stasis and PE. What makes you think so? What in fact is your understanding of the claims made by the PE theory?

So you have /still/ have no coherent criticsm of anything I
have said - and are instead hoping that I will make some
misstep in comments which you might provoke me making in
the future. Not a very impressive argument you have there.

It may not be impressive, but you haven't responded to it. I repeat my claim that "living fossils" have nothing to do with PE. PE is a theory about stasis *of species*, in which morphological change is coincident with speciation. If crocodiles look rather like other species of crocodiles did 300 million years ago, that has nothing to do with PE or stasis. Have you ever actually read any of the technical literature on PE, particularly Eldredge and Gould 1972, the first publication on the subject?

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Relevant Pages

  • Re: bats flew before echolocation
    ... majority of species appear with geological abruptness in the fossil ... record and then persist in stasis until their extinction. ... Gould was a brillant ...      admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Gould criticism and reviews
    ... If a lineage changes less than that, it's stasis. ... Stasis in the context of PE, which is what we're presumably discussing, is within species. ... Then living fossils are not relevant to it, which is the nub of my argument with you. ... No, it's one explanation for stasis, and your suggested form of stabilizing selection is only one among many explanations that incorporate stabilizing selection, not to mention those that don't. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Gould criticism and reviews
    ... Living fossils are generally different enough from the fossil species they're compared to that they are considered different species. ... PE is about stasis *within* a single morphospecies. ... But this is not true for coelacanths or for most living fossils -- they are not the same morphospecies as the fossil species. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Gould criticism and reviews
    ... If a lineage changes less than that, it's stasis. ... Stasis in the context of PE, which is what we're presumably discussing, is within species. ... Then living fossils are not relevant to it, which is the nub of my argument with you. ... Hmmm...you seem to be assuming a form of phyletic gradualism here. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Gould criticism and reviews
    ... If a lineage changes less than that, it's stasis. ... Stasis in the context of PE, which is what we're presumably discussing, is within species. ... Then living fossils are not relevant to it, which is the nub of my argument with you. ... PE has nothing to say about taxa being at rest on adaptive peaks. ...
    (talk.origins)