Posted on 04/07/2006 4:16:49 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Even as the evolution wars rage, on school boards and in courtrooms, biologists continue to accumulate empirical data supporting Darwinian theory. Two extraordinary discoveries announced this week should go a long way to providing even more of the evidence that critics of evolution say is lacking.
One study produced what biblical literalists have been demanding ever since Darwin -- the iconic "missing links." If species evolve, they ask, with one segueing into another, where are the transition fossils, those man-ape or reptile-mammal creatures that evolution posits?
In yesterday's issue of Nature, paleontologists unveiled an answer: well-preserved fossils of a previously unknown fish that was on its way to evolving into a four-limbed land-dweller. It had a jaw, fins and scales like a fish, but a skull, neck, ribs and pectoral fin like the earliest limbed animals, called tetrapods.
[big snip]
Another discovery addresses something Darwin himself recognized could doom his theory: the existence of a complex organ that couldn't have "formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications," he wrote in 1859.
The intelligent-design movement, which challenges teaching evolution, makes this the centerpiece of its attack. It insists that components of complex structures, such as the eye, are useless on their own and so couldn't have evolved independently, an idea called irreducible complexity.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
moreover, I stated "once hypotheses go beyond what is empirically testable, there *is* no difference between them and supernatural explanations"
I did not say "beyond what is empirically testable YET"
I said "beyond what is empirically testable(Full Stop)"
BIG difference, as I'm sure you know.
To clarify, the "unreasonable effective of mathematics" speaks to the methodology itself - for instance, in dualities and mirror symmetries.
if these arcane maths make predictions about the real universe, they are (or eventually may be) empirically testable.
Nevertheless, I assert that even if a thing or event can never be tested or observed, it is not therefore equivalent to the "super-natural". Nor would I say the super-natural can never be observed.
if something is posited which can't (implicit: can't EVER) either be observed or tested, directly or indirectly by its effects (which latter method IS part of empiricism), then it cannot with any confidence be said to exist at all.
if such a posited utterly undetectable something nevertheless DOES exist in one or another manner, it is beyond nature - super-natural - by definition.
it's 3:36am here. tomorrow begins in 3hrs. good night.
yes. exactly. but not, perhaps, the way you believe it:
What a thing IS is not defined by the tech level we have at any given moment.
Everything which IS testable now WAS testable 1000 years ago - but the tests themselves (and tech needed to conduct them) had yet to be devised.
Similarly, all that WILL BE testable in the future IS testable now, irrespective of the lack of tests and tools in our current arsenals.
Just a round number. I wasn't sure what the dogs' lifespan was, so I chose something well in excess. I could have said, "within a few decades" or something...
do you think it's possible, given your scenario, that if the breeds had the desire to mate...could.
In other words, do you think it is dynamically impossible for the act to occur
That's what I'm assuming - that the disparity in sizes is simply too great.
Setting aide for a moment the irony of claiming that the seemingly incompatible nature of unnatural breeds is evidence for a natural mechanism
The original claim was that if paleontologists found fossilized dogs of very different sizes they would classify them as distinct (but related) species. The "dogs-on-the-island" thought experiment was to show that in fact they'd be right to do so.
The intervention of human breeders has done nothing but what happens naturally - certain animals have traits that lead to survival and reproduction. The human intervention is more thorough, so that the differentiation happens more quickly, and the traits that are selected for are often not anything like those that would confer success in the wild (This is more true of fancy goldfish that dogs).
Basically, I'm using dogs as an example of a ring species, one that's more familiar to everyone than the classic wild examples of birds or lizards.
In the classic examples, the paleontologists would find more-or-less identical fossils and classify them as the same animal, when, in fact, they never mate.
The whole concept of species is interesting. Domestic dogs are all one species, in that a mutation in a chihuahua could make its way to the great Danes by means of terriers, spaniels, and other intermdiate-size dogs. But if the only breeds alive were the Danes and chihuahuas, they'd have to be counted as two species, since genes cannot flow naturally from one to the other.
Well, it COULD, if the bassett hound would put him up to it.
I just got back from a trip and read the Nature articles on this fossil. I think the neck situation is more complicated than you are thinking of it.
In looking at this fossil, the ability to move the neck was secondary to modifications in the way the fish/whatever breathed. In going from fish to tetrapods we go from the fish pumping water through its gills to an animal breathing air into its lungs. It looks like this animal had gills still but was developing some sort of lungs, perhaps like the lungfish we have now. In this fossil the structures associated with pharyngeal pumping through gills with opercula have diminished, allowing neck flexibility that before was absent.
So it's rather like a chain--the shift in breathing mechanism coincidentally allowed the initial neck flexibility to develop, and then from there more flexibility was gradually added. So as the interfering structures diminished the fish went slowly from, say, 1/32 neck to 1/8 neck without the neck doing that much for it, and then from 1/8 neck onward natural selection kicked in.
Although this fish/whatever had little neck mobility there is evidence that it had already adapted its feeding mechanism to take advantage of this.
Your faith in Testocracy and the Shamans of Testocracy is noted..
You seem to make a point that I made a few posts back..
That you seemed to disagree with..
Or did I miss something..
Depends on who the "WE" is..
There are quite a few SuperHeros..
Wearing a SuperHero suit don't make you a SuperHero..
A real SuperHero don't even need a suit..
I am sorry, but you are simply wrong about that. The most you could say is the two breeds are a subspecies. The ancestor of both breeds (probably less than 15,000 years ago) was a wolf. Genetically they are almost identical.
You're operating from an overly strict definition. Red wolves, grey wolves, coyotes, and dogs are considered individual species in spite of the fact that all can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. They are considered individual species because they have characteristic phenotypes and because they are reproductively isolated by behavioral, physiological, and geographic factors.
If they can't mate, they can't be counted as part of the same species.
See Wikipedia article on subspecies for examples and discussion.
The ancestor of both breeds (probably less than 15,000 years ago) was a wolf
The timing is irrelevant. For example, the mosquitoes in the London Underground are a distinct species from the above ground ones, because, among other things, they mate at different times of the year.
Remember that dogs are a ring species; chihuahua can mate with terrier, terrier can mate with spaniel, ... with great Danes, but that chihuahuas can't mate with great Danes. (put more abstractly, "members of the same species" is not a transitive relationship)
If, on the island, there were representatives of all breeds, they'd all be considered members of one species, with different subspecies. But, if there are just the two extreme sizes, then they have to be counted as two species, since they can't mate.
possibly. which point did you make which you believe I have restated?
If they can't mate, they're not in the same species.
Rather than simply repeat myself, or re-post the same links, why don't you point me at a definition of species or subspecies (or variety, breed, race..) that says they aren't required to be interfertile (by natural mating, not artificial insemination).
Then tell me what you call things that are interfertile.
Remember species membership, unintuitively, is an intransitive relationship
The Masters of the Universe, for one . .
"And who passes judgement on the test as to the result?.."
Those self-same Masters. A judgement that is final and categorical . . by proclamation.
"Empirical tests are limiting.."
By design . . . as they must be. If the answer to the question 'is that all there is?' is indeed 'matter in all its motions,' as I so often read in this forum, or 'microscope to telescope' as one of our more gracious associates is wont to put it, then so they must necessarily be 'limiting,' as you observe.
But, I can't agree that this puts the Masters of the Universe on the tip of a melting iceberg, as some declare. That is the language of a search for domination, not accomidation.
Accomidation is as difficult a path to find for some who count themselves among the Masters of the Universe, as it is for some of those who profess to follow their God.
Thank you for including me in your response. Although I oft can contribute little, I always find your conversations interesting and of great value.
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