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I don't have time to read all the comments although I wish I had.

Polar bears are mutated grizzly bears which are mutated black bears which are mutated brown bears, (If I have my order right). They can interbreed and have viable, fertile offspring, which is the definition of a single species.

So why do we call them different species?

The same is true for wolves, coyotes, dogs and dingoes. They can all interbreed and have viable, fertile offspring. (The N. American red wolf is nearly extinct from interbreeding with coyotes. The Australian dingo is disappearing from interbreeding with domestic dogs.)

Zebras and donkeys, horses and jackasses can interbreed but their offspring are sterile, so they are considered separate species. Same is true of lions and tigers.

However, cheetahs are still considered 'felines' but cannot breed with anything else. Their claws don't retract, a required characteristic for the 'feline' familiy.

So why aren't cheetahs considered a 'transitional form' to a new species? Which they clearly are.

In this case they would be a 'mutation' that was positive in its context, a branch of superior survivor, that refutes the proposition that mutations are 'almost' always negative. That 'almost' is the problem, isn't it. As my grandfather used to say, the exception proves the rule, and in this case the rule is found wanting.

Same is true of a tick, which is really an arachnoid, in the familiy of spiders. Recent DNA found the same thing was true of centipedes and millipedes. Which makes sense since they are poisonous and insects are not. But they are not insects as previously thought.

The problem here is a matter of epistemology, definition and reification. People tend to think that the WORD makes the thing, rather than the thing making the word. Words come from observation, they don't create the object, they define it.

"Species" are mental buckets by which we "define" objects in reality, but they are not that reality.

The "four ways that genomic variations occur" doesn't mean that such variations are limited to those four, just the four buckets we have defined so far.

Or, as in the terms of a new phrase I learned just today:

All generalizations are false. {What FUN !!!}

It is true that there can be no final determination of the truth in our lifetimes, if ever, of the nature of how life came about on this planet. In that regard, one can only proceed from available evidence.

If one does not accept fossil evidence for the apparent progression of life on this planet, so be it. But that doesn't prove any other theory valid.

If one proposes a hypothesis that is incapable of verification by its very definition, then no one has to take that hypothesis seriously, even if others do.

And if a hypothesis proposes neither of the former, then that cannot be ruled out either.

The fact is the truth may be something that has yet to be proposed. Well, I did propose such a thing formerly, but nobody wanted to hear it.

Nobody is going to want to hear the Hewitt Conjecture !! either but I would submit it has a flaw.

Convergent evolution is actually what you mean when you say:

"That it is a combination of factors, including the environment which the forms develop in, which directs the final shape, and that the shape found in all animals, (with a series of minor variations) is so, not because of “descent” from a common ancestor, but because in the environment of this world, it cannot take another.

You have just defined evolution, not refuted it. If the environment "defines the final shape" this implies a less perfect shape that preceeded it, or there could be no "final shape". (A cheetah, a cat with no retractable claws, a more perfect "final shape" that what is needed for a lion or a panther.)

Finally:

"A huge variety of human artefacts, flint tools and bones identical to homo sapiens sapiens have been found in strata confidendently dated to the mid-Pliocene - 3.5 million years ago. A Professor of Geology found, in the lower Pliocene strata of Castelnodolo, near Brescia, a complete human skeleton indistinguishable from that of a modern woman. The staining in the bones, the depth and number of different strata above the skeleton and its position made it very highly unlikely it could have been a more recent burial. The inescapable conclusion is that this speciment of homo sapiens sapiens was walking around 3.5 million years ago."

Ok, so do you accept fossil evidence or don't you. If every species always existed, (an earlier assertion) then why not 50 million years ago? 100 million years ago? Where do you draw the line?

And if you draw the line the hypothesis falls.

Something came from something and there were no mammals 200 million years ago. So where did they come from?

Logic is a terrible thing to waste (as this article proved).

Well now. Lets try tying this “theory” to some reality. (You know, the stuff we can see).
If you put a pinprick on a globe in every spot we’ve ever found any fossil remains related to humans, and then added them together, they’d still be the size of a pinprick. Which means, we’ve looked just about nowhere.
Then you look at the number of fossil remains - two trestle tables. Which means, just about damn all. From these astoundingly convincing sources, your fossil record is built and touted as “absolute, proven, not open to discussion”.
Well, you might be happy with that. Doesnt do a heap for me.
Now, let me offer a hypothetical.
Lets say I live in Australia, a continent which also houses Aboriginals who have lived there for - as far as we can tell, which aint far - 10,000 years.
Lets say something comes along - a new ice age - and wipes everyone out.
In a couple of thousand years time, in the new Interglacial, bright eyed young minds dig up bits of my bones, and bits of some old burial sites of Aboriginals. (Perhaps by chance then never found the remains on todays Aboriginals. Or perhaps they all got swept out to sea).
What, given todays beliefs, would they assume was the only possible “true, unarguable” conclusion?
Well, of course, first came the Aboriginals, 12,000 years ago, then came me obviously descended from them 10,000 years later.
Of course, they might by that time have developed intelligence, and be able to say “there could be a variety of explanations. We cannot prove anything. It could be a case of descent because of genetic changes acquired over time. Or maybe two types of people were living concurrently. Or maybe the more recent structure turned up later from somewhere else and something different killed them off. Or maybe, just maybe, we dont have enough data to say anything for sure”
Nah. Never catch on. Got to have a dogma which only the elite “understand”, and then use to say of anyone else “ill educated layman” !!
So no, I dont accept the fossil record. And before you try saying that this isn’t an application of logic, offer some thought of your own, not just another droning choiristers hash of the central dogma your university priests have imposed on you.
Because the series of possible interpretations of the fossil record is logic, devoid of any desire to make it fit a story, or a subjective desire of any kind. It’s just what the facts give us.

Lions and Tigers do have fertile offspring. A Tigon was bred to a tiger and produced a “Ti-Tigon”.

We call them different species because the definition of a species is “an interbreeding population” not “a populations that is capable of interbreeding”. Polar bears mate with other polar bears, the fact that they could breed with Grizzly bears and produce fertile offspring doesn't make the two the same species. They simply do not interbreed in the wild.

Also I agree with you that the “Hewitt conjecture” in as much as it is not a tautology (things are the way they are because of the way things are, and if things were different they would be different) is indistinguishable from convergent evolution.

All in all a good summation of the problems of defining species. A word is not the thing, and things are more complex than can always be conveniently labeled.

If one has ever walked from a forest into a swamp one may notice that there is no particular dividing line where the forest becomes swamp; it just gets swampier and swampier until there you are in the swamp.

Thanks for a good post!