Posted on 05/08/2003 10:11:06 AM PDT by Nebullis
Arlington, Va.—If the evolution of complex organisms were a road trip, then the simple country drives are what get you there. And sometimes even potholes along the way are important.
An interdisciplinary team of scientists at Michigan State University and the California Institute of Technology, with the help of powerful computers, has used a kind of artificial life, or ALife, to create a road map detailing the evolution of complex organisms, an old problem in biology.
In an article in the May 8 issue of the international journal Nature, Richard Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert Pennock, and Christoph Adami report that the path to complex organisms is paved with a long series of simple functions, each unremarkable if viewed in isolation. "This project addresses a fundamental criticism of the theory of evolution, how complex functions arise from mutation and natural selection," said Sam Scheiner, program director in the division of environmental biology at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funded the research through its Biocomplexity in the Environment initiative. "These simulations will help direct research on living systems and will provide understanding of the origins of biocomplexity."
Some mutations that cause damage in the short term ultimately become a positive force in the genetic pedigree of a complex organism. "The little things, they definitely count," said Lenski of Michigan State, the paper's lead author. "Our work allowed us to see how the most complex functions are built up from simpler and simpler functions. We also saw that some mutations looked like bad events when they happened, but turned out to be really important for the evolution of the population over a long period of time."
In the key phrase, "a long period of time," lies the magic of ALife. Lenski teamed up with Adami, a scientist at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Ofria, a Michigan State computer scientist, to further explore ALife.
Pennock, a Michigan State philosopher, joined the team to study an artificial world inside a computer, a world in which computer programs take the place of living organisms. These computer programs go forth and multiply, they mutate and they adapt by natural selection.
The program, called Avida, is an artificial petri dish in which organisms not only reproduce, but also perform mathematical calculations to obtain rewards. Their reward is more computer time that they can use for making copies of themselves. Avida randomly adds mutations to the copies, thus spurring natural selection and evolution. The research team watched how these "bugs" adapted and evolved in different environments inside their artificial world.
Avida is the biologist's race car - a really souped up one. To watch the evolution of most living organisms would require thousands of years – without blinking. The digital bugs evolve at lightening speed, and they leave tracks for scientists to study.
"The cool thing is that we can trace the line of descent," Lenski said. "Out of a big population of organisms you can work back to see the pivotal mutations that really mattered during the evolutionary history of the population. The human mind can't sort through so much data, but we developed a tool to find these pivotal events."
There are no missing links with this technology.
Evolutionary theory sometimes struggles to explain the most complex features of organisms. Lenski uses the human eye as an example. It's obviously used for seeing, and it has all sorts of parts - like a lens that can be focused at different distances - that make it well suited for that use. But how did something so complicated as the eye come to be?
Since Charles Darwin, biologists have concluded that such features must have arisen through lots of intermediates and, moreover, that these intermediate structures may once have served different functions from what we see today. The crystalline proteins that make up the lens of the eye, for example, are related to those that serve enzymatic functions unrelated to vision. So, the theory goes, evolution borrowed an existing protein and used it for a new function.
"Over time," Lenski said, "an old structure could be tweaked here and there to improve it for its new function, and that's a lot easier than inventing something entirely new."
That's where ALife sheds light.
"Darwinian evolution is a process that doesn't specify exactly how the evolving information is coded," says Adami, who leads the Digital Life Laboratory at Caltech. "It affects DNA and computer code in much the same way, which allows us to study evolution in this electronic medium."
Many computer scientists and engineers are now using processes based on principles of genetics and evolution to solve complex problems, design working robots, and more. Ofria says that "we can then apply these concepts when trying to decide how best to solve computational problems."
"Evolutionary design," says Pennock, "can often solve problems better than we can using our own intelligence."
Yup, it requires human intelligence in setting up the simulation.
Readers are invited to go back and reread post #1526 to see just how dishonestly Gore3000 has sidestepped the point being made.
I'm not sure, why don't you go set up a research program to resolve that question?
Readers are invited to go back and reread post #1526 to see just how dishonestly Gore3000 has sidestepped the point being made.
Nope, it is not I who is being dishonest, but evolutionists. The simulation was set up by humans. As I showed (and no one wishes to address) the simulation did not punish unneeded and useless functions which natural selection certainly does. So on those terms alone the simulation is totally bogus as any sort of evidence for evolution.
Further, and again something which I mentioned many posts ago and the evolutionists continue to ignore. If evolution is science, with all the scientific experiments going on in real life, in biology, how come they cannot give proof for their theory from real life and must resort to simulations which we all know can be manipulated any which way one wishes. For example, in almost all game simulations which I have seen, there are actions which are unduly rewarded and not sufficiently punished. In such a way any simulation is able to prove whatever one wants to 'prove'.
Another example of your dishonesty. Lying by misquotation.
Really? Where? Be specific and precise.
You did indeed assert that the Cambrian explosion was somehow "unexplainable", and that (you alleged) Gould backed you up on that, as you go on to admit:
My statement in post#123 said:
Seems I am not the only person that says that it is unexplainable by Darwinian evolution. The quote from a recent book by Gould completely justifies the statement:
Now, let's look at Gould's quote to see whether it agrees with you that the Cambrian explosion is "unexplainable by Darwinian evolution":
"Contrary to Darwin's expectation that new data would reveal gradualistic continuity with slow and steady expansion, all major discoveries of the past century have only heightened the massiveness and geological abruptness of this formative event..." (Gould, Stephen J., Nature, vol. 377, October 1995, p.682.)
Nice try, but this does *not* support your bizarre belief. First, being a "massive" event of "geological abruptness" in no way equals being "unexplainable". In fact, anyone who has read Gould's voluminous works on the Cambrian explosion could not possibly miss the fact that he consistently believes that evolution is entirely able to account for it. Pick up a copy of his book "Wonderful Life" for just one massive example. Even a cursory examination of Gould's writings makes it entirely clear that he sure as hell does *not* agree with you on this point. So if anyone is "lying" by selective quotation here, it's you.
Furthermore, if you're under the mistaken belief that Gould's disagreement with "Darwinian gradualism" is the same thing as a rejection of "Darwinian *evolution*", you're grossly mistaken. While Darwin did lean towards a belief that evolution would usually proceed slowly, that doesn't change the fact that even though we've learned in the past 144 years that evolution can proceed at varying rates (sometimes rapidly by geological standards, sometimes almost coming to a standstill), the processes driving the transformation are still those which Darwin laid out. In other words, "Darwinian evolution" is vindicated even though a presumption of "nothing but gradualism" is not. Gould writes:
"We believe that Huxley was right in his warning. The modern theory of evolution does not require gradual change. In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record. It is gradualism that we must reject, not Darwinism."Or:
- Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb (1980), p. 182, emphasis added.
"It [punctuated equilibrium] represents no departure from Darwinian mechanisms."So much for Gould "agreeing" with you and disagreeing with "Darwinian evolution", eh?
-- Gould and Eldredge 1977, Section IV, "PE as the basis for a Theory of Macroevolution", page 139
Furthermore, Gould has long been faulted for overstating Darwin's belief in gradualism. The following quote from Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" makes clear that he fully expected sudden events to appear in the fossil record, *and* that evolution would proceed at varying rates at different times:
"Widely ranging species vary most, and varieties are often at first local, -- both causes rendering the discovery of intermediate links less likely. Local varieties will not spread into other and distant regions until they are considerably modified and improved; and when they do spread, if discovered in a geological formation, they will appear as if suddenly created there, and will be simply classed as new species. Most formations have been intermittent in their accumulation; and their duration, I am inclined to believe, has been shorter than the average duration of specific forms. ... During the alternate periods of elevation and of stationary level the record will be blank. During these latter periods there will probably be more variability in the forms of life; during periods of subsidence, more extinction."Or even more succinctly:Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species", 1859
"But I must here remark that I do not suppose that the process ever goes on so regularly as is represented in the diagram, though in itself made somewhat irregular, nor that it goes on continuously; it is far more probable that each form remains for long periods unaltered, and then again undergoes modification.In fact, it's obvious that Darwin himself foresaw at least the basics of punctuated equilibrium, if not the full scope of it.
Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species", 1859
As usual you are just plain lying and are showing your complete disregard for the truth by distorting my statements and distorting the evidence.
I'll let readers draw their own conclusions about who is more guilty of such things.
Further, both he and Eldredge split completely with Darwinian evolutionists on account of this and proposed the totally moronic, punctuated equilibrium theory which postulates that no evidence of evolution is proof of evolution
There you go again, going off the deep end. As even the above quotes should make clear, Gould hardly "split completely with Darwinian evolutionists". And again, anyone who has actually bothered to read his works couldn't possibly make such a bone-headed mistake about his position.
You would be well advised to read All you need to know about Punctuated Equilibrium (almost): Common misconceptions concerning the hypothesis of Punctuated Equilibrium. Table of contents is as follows, you might find some of the points familiar:
Much confusion has surrounded the concept of Punctuated Equilibrium (PE) as proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould in 1972. This essay addresses a few of the erroneous views held by many creationists and even some evolutionary biologists concerning PE. There are several main points I wish to make:That on occassion he might have tried to speak nicely to Darwinians,1. There are two common uses of "gradualism," one of which is more traditional and correct, the other of which is equivalent to Eldredge and Gould's "phyletic gradualism."
2. Darwin was not a "phyletic gradualist," contrary to the claims of Eldredge and Gould.
3. PE is not anti-Darwinian; in fact, the scientific basis and conclusions of PE originated with Charles Darwin.
4. PE does not require any unique explanatory mechanism (e.g. macromutation or saltation).
5. Eldredge and Gould's PE is founded on positive evidence, and does not "explain away" negative evidence (e.g. a purported lack of transitional fossils).
One moment while I roll my eyes...
does not change the fact that he dedicated the whole last decades of his life to justifying a non-Darwinian, non-gradualistic theory of evolution.
Non-gradualistic, yes. Non-Darwinian, no. Try to learn the difference.
Oooo, oooo! That's right up there with the best of G3k's Greatest All-Time Blunders & Bloopers e.g., "1720" being a large number, "a circle is not an ellipse," and "wildly eccentric" planetary orbits.
Great catch!
The quote from the website plainly says that if there is enough uranium concentrated in one spot a chemical reaction is likely to occur. We believe that that is how the sun produces light. There is no assembly required here. As I said, your link was a plain lie (if you bothered to read it).1,560 posted on 05/18/2003 11:54 AM EDT by gore3000
Not one, but TWO scientific gaffes in a single reply by the Clown Prince of Scientific Bloopers and Blunders, G3k!
Fission is, or course, a nuclear process, not a "chemical reaction." And, as well you know, the sun produces light by fusion of light nuclei, not fission of Uranium.
Just when I begin to think that he's made every numb-skulled blunder any single human being is capable of, he amazes me yet again with another stunner, or in this case, a matched pair.
God, I do love it when you are blatantly stupid. It makes it so much easier to point out to the lurkers what a waste of skin you truly are.
Some Examples of Plant Phyla. And it only took me 30 seconds on a Yahoo search to show what a complete moron you truly are.
Indeed you did, because, either a) apparently, your memory capacity does not exceed that of my old atari 800 computer, or b) you know that actually grappling with any of the possibilities I have been at pains to lay out for you would show up the shabby, transparent nature of your argument all too obviously. -- as you have once again demonstrated by listing all the requirements of a prokariote, and trying to pretend that these are requirements for abiogenesis.
Since you are unable to meet the challenge above you resort to the usual 'proofs' of evolution given here by evolutionists: lies, insults and doubletalk.
Tell you what. If you can show me where I offered you a "proof" of evolution, I'll withdraw my suspicion that you are a transparent, repetitive confidence artist who makes hay by demanding that I defend a thesis I do not subscribe to, but which you'd prefer that I did.
Really? So...when the prokariotes leaped into existence instantaneously at God's behest--that was something different from creating life from non-life? Namely what?
Here, lets test you:
God created life from:
a) draino
b) nothing
c) a vortex in the ether
d) rainbows on roses and whiskers on kittens
1. Blooper one.PLACEMARKER
2. Blooper two.
3. Blooper three.
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