Posted on 03/30/2009 9:27:03 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics
Eugene V. Koonin*
National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
ABSTRACT
Comparative genomics and systems biology offer unprecedented opportunities for testing central tenets of evolutionary biology formulated by Darwin in the Origin of Species in 1859 and expanded in the Modern Synthesis 100 years later. Evolutionary-genomic studies show that natural selection is only one of the forces that shape genome evolution and is not quantitatively dominant, whereas non-adaptive processes are much more prominent than previously suspected. Major contributions of horizontal gene transfer and diverse selfish genetic elements to genome evolution undermine the Tree of Life concept. An adequate depiction of evolution requires the more complex concept of a network or ‘forest’ of life...
(Click link for full paper)
(Excerpt) Read more at pubmedcentral.nih.gov ...
No, fossils are proof that feathered dinosaurs existed. We have quite a few of them, with the first dug up 150 years ago. Scientists have discovered something like 30 different genera of feathered dinosaurs.
One of many examples of feathered dinosaur: the Velociraptor, a genus popularized in Jurrassic Park was covered in feathers. We know that not from artistic depictions — in fact, the movie mistakenly portrays an unfeathered dinosaur — but from real tangible fossil remains.
Think of the incredible consequences for them if they have to acknowledge an unappealable, objectively good, just judge of their choices in life.
“The Law” is written on everyone’s hearts, and they know where they fall short of it, and instinctively know that they will be held to account.
I really miss those guys.
Thank you ever so much for your excellent essay/post, dearest sister in Christ!
Thank you so much for your encouragements, dearest sister in Christ!
If one of you would be so kind as to break down “quantizing the continuum for me it would be most appreciated. You guys have brought some variation of this up on multiple occasions, but for some reason I’m still not getting it. Thanks so much. All the best—GGG
PS What happened to our most beloved physicist? He sounds like a VERY interesting character!
and those fossils are?
As far as I know, Physicist is still an active Freeper but hasn't posted here since last December. He is truly a brilliant scientist who spent of lot of time educating Freepers who really wanted to know things and was never haughty or rude or mean. I miss him.
The new logical fallacy of quantizing the continuum says that the quantization is a fallacy per se. Picking a number such as $100,000.00 to differentiate between a rich and non-rich man is a logical fallacy.
By extension, picking a point on the theoretical tree of life when a dinosaur became a bird is also a logical fallacy.
What I found so amusing with this new logical fallacy is that the "origin of species" itself would fall because of it: every species is a quantization of the theoretical continuum, the tree of life rising up from a common ancestor.
Of course they didn't mean it this way and came back on later threads with such things as the color spectrum showing the range of green, etc.
But the amusement factor is still there. After all, the geologic record does not contain empirically testable remains of every creature that ever lived. It is a quantization by definition.
And that is a key point we were explicating on betty boop's recent thread about micro v macro evolution.
To put it another way, micro-evolution can be shown by laboratory tests where "the absence of evidence is evidence of absence." But it is an overstatement to project those findings to explain the paleontologist's discovery in a dig where "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
Or to put it yet another way, there are no laboratory tests which can falsify an alternative explanation for what the paleontologist sees, e.g. Special Creation, Alien Seeding.
Thank you, Alamo-Girl. So when you refer to quantizing the continuum you are refering filling in the holes in the fossil record with unobserved hypotheticals. Is that correct?
Yes, I looked there too. Informative and interesting but really one sided. But so be it, we can find the con to the pro.
Here in abstract is the con argument:
Feduccia, T. Lingham-Soliar, and J.R. Hinchliffe, Do feathered dinosaurs exist? Testing the hypothesis on neontological and paleontological evidence, Journal of Morphology 266:125–166, 2005
Ah, you mean “proto-feathers”? Did you read the abstract I referred to?
Not feathers, not covered, not generally for velociraptors, not for warmth, not for flying, then for what? Maybe mating or maneuvering are the guesses.
Of course they didn't mean it this way and came back on later threads with such things as the color spectrum showing the range of green, etc.
It seems the color spectrum showing the range of green would, in fact, be what we mean by a continuum — "a continuous extent, succession, or whole, no part of which can be distinguished from neighboring parts except by arbitrary division."
It seems arbitrary to apply a model like this to macro-evolution theory; for the geological record is filled with gaps. Based on what we can actually observe, there's no reason to suppose that macro-evolution is a continuum at all.
Just as you said, dearest sister in Christ, "But the amusement factor is still there. After all, the geologic record does not contain empirically testable remains of every creature that ever lived. It is a quantization by definition."
Ah, I misunderstood. I thought you were talking about the "gaps" between existing species--some anti-evolutionists want to see the half-dog, half-cat alive today. That was what I was addressing.
The gaps you're talking about keep getting filled in all the time. And we're also finding out that the steps might not always be that small anyway--Darwin might have been mistaken about that, at least for every evolutionary step.
The Cambrian “explosion” is that Grand Canyon.
It's not really such a big gap when you consider how long it took, and the fact that we're finding pre-explosion fossils that indicate the appearance of new forms might not have been a sudden as we thought.
You’re jesting, right?
No.
I guess it’s just the word “quantum” that’s throwing me.
The tree of life is a theoretical continuum that proposes all life sprang up from a common ancestor. Each fossil that is discovered is one instance, a quantization, in that continuum.
Because few creatures that lived left a historical record of themselves, the continuum is mostly empty.
The humorous part was that if "quantizing the continuum" is a logical fallacy, then there is no logical basis for the tree of life at all, none of the quantizations (e.g. fossils) can suggest a branch of the tree.
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