Re: [some stupid Pagano-changed thread title]
- From: "Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:29:05 -0500
"John Harshman" <jharshman.diespamdie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:DfO2l.6402$8_3.2218@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Perplexed in Peoria wrote:
"Steven L." <sdlitvin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:B5Wdnea12fQwl9bUnZ2dnUVZ_jidnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxIn other words, Tony is right that natural selection does nothing but
[snip stuff in response to Pagano defense of Behe, leaving this cool
analogy]
Every time you change the tire on your car, you have to deal with this.
If you could only "act on the existing functions" of the car, you
would have to change the tire while all four existing tires of the car
rest on the ground, which would be impossible. Instead, you add a
*temporary* function (the jack), jack up one wheel, change the tire on
that wheel, lower that wheel back to the ground, and then remove that
jack function again. At all times you were acting on existing function.
But what you did was a *nonlinear* process--you introduced a temporary
element (the jack) only to get rid of it again at the end.
But if you didn't know that's how tires are changed, and you looked only
at the finished end product (a car with four fully-inflated tires), you
would conclude that it's impossible to change a car's flat tire--you
can't get the tire under the wheel rim as long as that wheel is sitting
on the ground.
In engineering, many things work this way: Skyscrapers are erected with
temporary scaffolding that is removed before the building is open for
business. Highway overpasses are erected with hydraulic rams that hold
them up until the overpass is built and can stay up on its own, after
which the hydraulic rams are removed.
With species that are constantly gaining and losing function in order to
adapt to new environments, it's easy to lose track of the "temporary
scaffolding" that got a species to where it is. That "temporary
scaffolding" is an ancestor species that no longer needs that highly
specialized function.
The tire-change analogy is a nice one that I hadn't heard before, but
I'm afraid it doesn't serve your rhetorical purpose very well. The
problem is that the intermediate state (car jacked up, tire not changed
yet) is non-functional. Hence NS has no reason to go to this state,
other than the teleological reason that it 'wants' to get to the tire-changed
state and a jacked-up wheel is the intelligent way to get there.
Yep, what I'm saying is that you have actually produced an argument
*in favor* of intelligent design. The only way to repair your argument
and turn it into a defense of the ToE would be to add to the fable.
You need to hypothesize some odd and probably temporary stage
of the environment in which having one wheel jacked up is beneficial
to the car in and of itself, and not just beneficial in that it allows the
tire to be changed.
I would like to help (since I dislike Pagano gloating as much as
anybody else) , but my imagination just isn't up to producing
a just-so-story with these properties.
climb hills. It doesn't cross valleys. People have proposed various
valley-crossing mechanisms, but they are of limited application. The
apparent real explanation is that the landscape changes.
I agree. The biggest piece of the answer to Tony and to Behe is that
the landscape changes. And Steven L. actually made this point in
his posting. My only complaint was that his tire-change story
didn't include the needed subplot about how the landscape changed.
But you are also right that a small part of the answer might involve
ways of crossing narrow valleys (But the valley has to be very
narrow in order to keep Sean Pitman quiet.) It may be possible
to rehabilitate the tire-change analogy along these lines by pointing
out that a tire-jack constitutes a fairly narrow valley in the context
of a full automobile.
Hills and
valleys aren't permanent, and are affected both by the physical
environment (regions get hotter or colder, wetter or dryer, etc.) and
the genetic environment, including other individuals in the same species
and other genes in the same individual. A population that was once on a
hill may find itself in a valley, and will be attracted toward the
nearest hill. It may not make it to that hill, and will thus go extinct.
Or there may be two nearby hills, with parts of the population attracted
in different directions -- disruptive selection. Once you get rid of the
static adaptive landscape, Tony's notions disappear.
Right on.
.
- References:
- 'Irreducible complexity' utterly irrelevant: I don't get it.
- From: Iain
- Iain confuses Behe's test for IC with a claim about historical development of a system-among other mistakes
- From: T Pagano
- Re: Iain confuses Behe's test for IC with a claim about historical
- From: Steven L.
- Re: [some stupid Pagano-changed thread title]
- From: Perplexed in Peoria
- Re: [some stupid Pagano-changed thread title]
- From: John Harshman
- 'Irreducible complexity' utterly irrelevant: I don't get it.
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