Huh? Everything? No, it's more like changing the last decimal on some physical constant, not deciding that hydrogen is really phlogiston after all. Keep in mind that Gould appears to be a publicity hound, and exagerates the differences between his work and that of his predecessors.
The observed fact of evolution (changes in species over time) is still a fact, just as it was before Darwin's observations and theorizing; Cambrian rocks still have trilobites, Jurasic ones have dinosaurs.; the scientific problem is to account for these observations.
My new software has demonstrated this aspect of sudden evolution shifts, so I have no problem with Gould's theory.
I display the images as the transformation matrix evolves and often see sudden shifts, but most of the time things remain rather static.
Here is how my software works:
1) A population of 200 transforms are created. Each transform has 6 variables, which are initialized with random number.
2) A random coordinate in one image is selected. For each of the 200 transforms, a new coordinate is predicted.
3) The image at the predicted coordinate is compared with the original image. If the pixels are the same, a count is incremented. A final score of the number of matching pixels is awarded to that transform. This is repeated for all 200 transforms.
4) All of the transforms are sorted by their scores and the best one is selected. The top 50 percent of the population is allowed to breed the next generation.
5) Breeding is rather simple. Pairs are selected from the top 50 percent and will create two "children". Each child will have 50 percent of the transform variables from it's two parents, which are exchanged in random order. The new children will replace the lower 50 percent of the population.
6) Twins (transforms with the same variable values) are replaced with a new set of randomly selected variable values.
6) Each parent is incremented in age and the children are initialized as being new.
7) The process repeats at step 2 until the best candidate selected in step 4 has achieved maturity.
As you can see, there is nothing fancy going on. But from this simple algorithm, I am able to evolve a six variable transformation in about 50 generations, which is my arbitrary maturity level.
The result? I am able to match multiple cameras with different orientations together in 30 seconds.
Changes in species does not imply descent. Furthermore, there is strong evidence against such change. The simplest creatures, one celled organisms, are still around, still reproducing like crazy, and are in fact the most successful species on earth. After some 3 billion years of supposed evolution, one would think they would have gotten on with the program, they have not.