Professor challenges evolution (Pittsburgh Professor's article in The New Anatomist)

Pittnews.com ^ | 02/09/2006 | NAN AMA SARFO

[orionblamblam]

It's not really a "challenge" to Darwinism, and certainly not to evolution. Just pointing out that sometimes things change rapidly.

[GLDNGUN]

LOL So, it really is just a "theory". Huh. How about that.

[tallhappy]

Just pointing out that sometimes things change rapidly.

Yes, to the extent anything was pointed out. But, that would or could be a "challenge" to Darwinian evolution.

I think that articles like this show that hand-waving and over supposition taken as fact goes on on all sides.

[Nathan Zachary]

It's nothing but a wild guess. Genetic changes are always recessive and results in a loss, never a gain, and never an improvement.

[BeHoldAPaleHorse]

"LOL So, it really is just a "theory". Huh. How about that."

It would help if those who claim to disagree with the Theory of Evolution would (a) understand what scientists mean when they say "theory" (it is not the colloquial definition) and (b) understood what the Theory of Evolution actually is (many of them have an abysmally poor understanding of the basics of science, period).

[wallcrawlr]

ping

Revelation 4:11Intelligent Design
See my profile for info

[Right Wing Professor]

“Cells don’t like change. They have many different proteins that protect them from extreme changes,” Schwartz said. “With all these different mechanisms that they have, it’s unlikely that they change willingly over time, as Darwin’s theory says.

The guy's a numbskull. Willingly? Where'd he learn about evolution, a cereal box?

[Snowbelt Man]

"Modern cell biology doesn't support Darwinism."

Say it ain't so. Evolution is settled, pure science and anyone who says otherwise can't possibly be a scientist. If the above statement is not a challenge to Darwinism, then what is it?

[js1138]

What a stupidly written article. Darwin knew nothing about cell biology, mutation, inheritance, and the like. Biochemistry is an invention of the last fifty years.

This article is discussing details of the process, not whether evolution proceeds along Darwinian lines.

[ThinkDifferent]

So, it really is just a "theory".

Yes, it is. Like the Theory of Gravity. Did you have an actual point?

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

“We don’t know what the stressors are that cause extinction in animals,” Schwartz said. “So we need to be much more sensitive about the environment and be aware of local and global events. It’s all a domino effect. One small change affects everyone else.”

Which leads me to wonder how scientists think we got this far on a theory that never put them in charge before. I mean, if survival depends on their own great wisdom and knowledge, how the heck can they buy a theory that brought us where we are today? Aren't they inserting the necessity of a sort of "intelligent design" into our very survival?

[Right Wing Professor]

Actually, I take that back. Whoever wrote the column is a numbskull.

This is a review of Schwartz's book that wasn't written by a complete moron.

'Sudden Origins : Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species' by Jeffrey H. Schwartz

New species develop more quickly than is widely believed, Pitt anthropologist says

Sunday, December 12, 1999

By Fred Bortz

Sudden Origins : Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species

By Jeffrey H. Schwartz

John Wiley $27.95

Jeffrey Schwartz, a University of Pittsburgh anthropology professor, has written a book that will challenge -- even overwhelm -- its readers with a wealth of detail. Yet if they can stay the course, they will be rewarded with a thought-provoking new view of the history of life.

“Evolution is not a theory,” argues Schwartz. “It is a phenomenon. What evolutionists … strive to understand are the processes that make evolution tick. This is not an easy task, because evolutionary events occur over greater periods of time than any scientist, or generations of scientists, could observe.”

Without taking on so-called “creation science” directly, Schwartz demonstrates that evolutionary theory is itself evolving, as all good scientific theories do in the face of new knowledge. What creation scientists cite as the theory’s weaknesses, Schwartz presents as its strengths.

With a thorough detailing of the history of this century-and-a-half-long quest, even including notations in Darwin’s original notebooks, he traces the development of our current understanding.

That understanding emerges not as Darwinian doctrine, but rather as the result of a rich scientific conversation among colleagues and adversaries, all of whom are seeking to understand the origin and development of, and relationships among, the diverse creatures that have lived on our planet.

A recurring theme in that conversation is one that creation scientists often seize upon. If life evolves gradually, where are all the “missing links”? Although that term conjures images of “ape-men,” the challenge to the theory is much more serious than that. The fossil record is riddled with gaps.

Life forms evolve, it seems, in a kind of punctuated equilibrium. Successful species change slowly and gradually over millions of years, then new species originate suddenly, arising in dramatically different forms with, in many cases, no intermediate examples.

There are two general theories to explain this absence of transitional creatures. One group has insisted that the intermediate examples will be found; the other has argued that geographic separation and environmental change drive rapid development of new species.

Schwartz sides with the latter group and tackles two important unanswered questions in his “New Evolution” as to the underlying cause of novel characteristics that lead quickly to new species: “How will novelty look when it does appear?” and “how does more than one individual come to have a novel structure?”

The answer, he writes, lies in a class of genes called homeobox, whose importance was not fully appreciated until recently. These genes regulate the development of creatures from embryo through adult.

Mutations in these genes propagate invisibly through the species as recessive and unexpressed, says Schwartz, until they are common enough that some individuals inherit them from both parents. That leads to fully developed novel features. Within a few generations, a new species emerges.

To Schwartz, this is the origin of species: “The same kinds of structural building blocks are found among a wildly diverse array of organisms -- from yeasts to humans -- that have fashioned the resultant structures differently,” thanks mainly to the differences between their developmental sequence. As a result, “seemingly distantly related and very dissimilar groups we call invertebrates and vertebrates are, in their genes, much closer than scientists even ten years ago could have imagined.”

One developmental sequence leads to animals with skeletons inside their musculature; another leads to the opposite arrangement.

“Given the potential of homeobox genes to be fully rather than partially expressed,” Schwartz concludes, “we can appreciate why ‘missing links’ are so elusive in the fossil record. They probably did not exist.”

[Dimensio]

Do you have an actual reasoned, rational and researched argument to make, or just stupid strawman attacks?

[FormerLib]

This sounds curiously similar to Stephen J. Gould's "Punctuated Equilibria." Perhaps the difference is in the details.

[VOA]

bump

[tallhappy]

The gravitational constant is 6.67300 × 10-11 m3 kg-1 s

Gravitational force is represented by the equation F = G x m1m2/r^2

G is the constant, m represents the mass of two objects, r is the distance between them.

G is a universal physical constant.

Now, what are the corresponding physical constants and equations concerning evolution?

Evolution and gravity are theories, but not all theories are like each other.

[Nathan Zachary]

The theory of evolution isn't based on science. It's based on unprovable theories for which no science exists to be able to prove.
In fact science has disproved many parts of the theory, which is why it keeps having to change and require billions more years. For example, the earth is now 4.3 billion years old.
The problem with that statement is if it is, why do we still have a moon, knowing it moves 3cm further from the earth each year?
At 1.2 billion years, it would have been so close to earth, the tides would have swept over the mountains, ignoring the fact gravity of the earth would have pulled the moon apart, much like jupiter pulls comets apart when they get to close it's gravitational influence. All sorts of laws of gravity in space are broken and need rebending.
The laws of gravity also dispell the notion that planets form from stellar dust, no matter how many billions of years you add on to the age of the universe.

[Right Wing Professor]

Nathan is the guy who, while posing as an American conservative on FR, posts anti-American diatribes on Free Dominion, and calls himself Canadian.