Symmetry in Evolution

International Society for Complexity, Information and Design ^ | 11-30-02 | Philip L. Engle

[CalConservative]

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Symmetry in Evolution

by Phillip L. Engle


ABSTRACT#8212;In this paper, evidence is presented that multicelled plants and animals are organized in accordance with a strict typological hierarchy consisting of a nested structure of monophyletic taxons (i.e., clades). It is further shown that, if this strict monophyletic hierarchy is to be regarded to be the result of an evolutionary process, then it must be the case that (in general) evolution has proceeded in such a way that each more-generic taxon has split symmetrically into two more-specific taxons: By symmetrically I mean that each moregeneric taxon has ceased to exist as an independent entity after the split, instead continuing to exist only in the generic features of the two more-specific taxons into which it has become divided..

It is next demonstrated that there is no formulation of the evolutionary theory of neo-Darwinism that can account for this fact of symmetry in evolution, but that Robert F. DeHaan’s theory of macrodevelopment (suitably expanded using concepts from nonlinear science) can explain evolutionary symmetry.

Finally the Stewart/Cohen formulation of the principle of evolutionary symmetry is presented and is then expanded to include cases of “temporary” imbalance in nested evolutionary bifurcations. The resulting law of macrodevelopmental symmetry is shown to provide for a far-more-elegant explanation of protein molecular-sequencing data than neo- Darwinism’s clumsy and intricate “molecular clocks” hypothesis.

(Portions of this paper have been adapted from my book Far From Equilibrium, which can be found at www.laurelhighlandsmedia.com, as well as from portions of the paper “Teleology and Information in Biology”, which I presented at the first e-symposium of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) on October 3, 2002)

To read the entire paper, please click here

[VadeRetro]

Is molecular clock data valid or isn't it? You cited them to me. If you're going to cite them to me, you might as well learn what you're talking about. I'm not making any of it up. Read more here. Pay particular attention to the explanations of cytochrome c, as it's exactly the kind of clock used where the older divergences are measured.

And, stop babbling!

[f.Christian]

Oh? You don’t do metaphysics?

Excellent post, Betty. I've always been astonished-- and continue to be-- at how the mind can accept utterly contradictory propositions with comfort. I can understand why the materialist avoids ontology if for no other reason than the metaphysical problem of cause and effect. But it is one thing to reject metaphysics entirely and another to reject it when problematic yet embrace it when convenient. The love/hate relationship with metaphysics turns out not only be the sword which pierces the heart of materialism but the armor with which it is defended.

There also seems to be (please correct me if I'm mistaken) a correlation between the suppression of criticism of evolution in state high schools and colleges and the elimination of logic as either a course in itself or as an element in the introduction to philosophy.


294 posted on 02/01/2003 1:15 AM PST by Dataman


fC...

Trained circus seals - - - evo indoctrination // smelt !

[PatrickHenry]

Incoherent posting automatically ignored, a service of FreepScript^TM.

[gore3000]

Is molecular clock data valid or isn't it?

No it is not. And your link is not to anywhere that I said that the molecular clock is legitimate - it is to the often refuted garbage in TalkOrigins for which I have no interest. If you wish to use their argument, use it yourself and it will be destroyed because it is bunk.

Whenever you are completely lost you start citing links which you claim prove people wrong but are either TalkOrigins propaganda or Don Lindsay nonsense totally unsupported and written by total nobodies who do not have a single thread of honesty in them.

[f.Christian]

The bottom half of the geologic column (( no fossils )) formed from below . . .

and the top half formed rather quickly from above (( no intermediary fossils )) - - -

uniformism (( time )) // evolution is ==== gone // over // never happened (( babbling === not ticking )) !

[Dataman]

I am talking about serious men (often Christian men) who raise their families based on tests which tell them where the oil, gold, copper, uranium might be due to geological movements of millions of years.

I took enough geology in college to know that prospecting has everything to do with probablility and nothing to do with evolution or so-called geologic time.

I have a meeting in 20 minutes so I'll be brief and give a few reasons why the earth is young:

Because the growth of coral reefs has been measured, no coral formaton need be over 3400 years old

The same with stalagmites and stalactites

Radiometric contradictions abound, making it unreliable.

The geologic column exists only in text books. If the earth's layers were formed over millions of years, they should be relatively consistent everywhere.

Human artifacts have been found in layers dating back millions of years.

Human footprints dating back 150 million to 600 million years ago have been found in Utah, Kentucky, Missouri, possibly PA and TX.

Radioactive decay of only uranium and thorium would produce all the atmosphere's He in only 40k years. The atmosphere has not yet stabilized.

Lead diffuses from zircon crystals at a known rate. The rate increases with temperature. Greater depths and temps should reveal less pb in the crystals. If the earth were even a fraction of the supposed geologic age, we should be able to measure a difference in the crystals found in the first 2 miles of the earth's crust. Instead, no measurable difference is found between the crystals near the surface and the crystals deep in the hot earth.

Since you claim to be familiar with the oil drilling business, you may know that gas, oil and water are trapped in relatively permeable rock. The pressure disappears somewhere between 10k and 100k years. There is no possible way for the oil to be trapped for 50 million years.I am talking about serious men (often Christian men) who raise their families based on tests which tell them where the oil, gold, copper, uranium might be due to geological movements of millions of years.

Volcanoes belch a cubic mile of debris into the atmosphere each year. If the earth is 4.6 billion years old, about 10x the earth's volume should have been put into the atmosphere and that's at current rates. Evos claim that volcanic activity was higher in the past.

The rate of continental erosion indicates a young earth.

River sediment transport indicates a young earth

The rate of accumulation of minerals and salts in the ocean indicates a young earth.

Meteorite material is found in relatively shallow earth.

Meteoric dust accumulation indicates a young earth.

The rate of decay of the earth's magnetic fields indicates a young earth.

The rate of cooling of the earth indicates a young earth.

The rate of recession of the moon indicates a young earth.

The accumulation of dust on the moon indicates a young moon.

There are many more reasons such as OOP artifacts but I'm late for the meeting.

[VadeRetro]

I think you have the basic idea. The furniture-chewers are in full spew.

[VadeRetro]

The Recession of the Moon and the Age of the Earth.

[VadeRetro]

How good are those Young Earth arguments?

[f.Christian]

Evolutionist // liberals only want to make themselves look good --- conservatives bad ...

no matter how kooky they look // 'think' !

[VadeRetro]

The evolutionary model says that modern smallmouth bass should be as far from "some Devonian fish" as modern mammals and all other modern descendants of "some Devonian fish." Why? Because the last time everything was together was before amphibians diverged from fish.

Perhaps a better answer would have been, "There has been just as much time and about as many generations in the line leading from the Devonian fish to the smallmouth bass as in any other line, so why wouldn't there be a corresponding number of neutral mutations?"

[ContentiousObjector]

You should probably try talking to a biology professor or a geologist, rather than the Freeper chapter of the Flat Earth Society

[PatrickHenry]

Placemarker.

[jennyp]

Your name looks familiar enough that I suspect you should know better than to still be posting the kinds of statements you make here. Radiometric Dating, a Christian Perspective, by Roger C. Wiens. All your recycled old chestnuts are dealt with there. Number 14 is your Mt. St. Helens story, which only shows that if some willful idiot wants to deliberately create a "bad" reading, he can. By the same logic, you can prove your old junk car is young by citing cases where somebody "fooled" an odometer. (By spinning his wheels on the ice or with the car up on blocks, for instance, or just tampering with the counter.)

Hey, I love the odometer analogy - it perfectly describes the kind of anomalous readings these ICR-types generate & then trumpet in the creationist press.

[jennyp]

re: your Young Earth arguments, here's a link to several refutations.

I haven't heard this one before:

Volcanoes belch a cubic mile of debris into the atmosphere each year. If the earth is 4.6 billion years old, about 10x the earth's volume should have been put into the atmosphere and that's at current rates. Evos claim that volcanic activity was higher in the past.

Yeah, and volcanic debris never precipitates out when it rains!

[jennyp]

To be precise, Darwinism contributed to Fascism or National Socialism. Marxism has older roots - paradoxically based in the free market ideology of England in early XIXc (which could be inspiration for Darwin), French socialist ideas and German philosophy until Hegel.

To be more precise (IMO), Naziism, Fascism & Marxism all came from explicitly Hegelian roots...

The direct source of the Nazi racial ideas was the theoreticians of racism.... These men accepted wholeheartedly the collectivist sentiment of the period's intellectuals, and then sought to gain for that sentiment the appearance of scientific support - by translating collectivism into the language of the favorite science of the time, biology. The result was a mounting torrent on the following order (from Vacher de Lapouge, a nineteenth-century French Aryan-glorifier): "The blood which one has in one's veins at birth one keeps all one's life. The individual is stifled by his race and is nothing. The race, the nation, is all." No amount of passion for biology (or for Darwin) could produce such an utterance. A dose of Hegel, however, could.

What the theoreticians of racism did was to secularize the Hegelian approach, as Karl Popper explains eloquently. Marx, he observes:

replaced Hegel's "Spirit" by matter, and by material and economic interests. In the same way, racialism substitutes for Hegel's "Spirit" something material, the quasi-biological conception of Blood or Race. Instead of "Spirit," Blood is the self-developing essence; instead of "Spirit," Blood is the Sovereign of the world, and displays itself on the Stage of History; and instead of "Spirit," the Blood of a nation determines its essential destiny.

The transubstantiation of Hegelianism into racialism or of Spirit into Blood does not greatly alter the main tendency of Hegelianism. It only gives it a tinge of biology and of modern evolutionism. [Karl Popper, 1962, The Open Society and its Enemies]

[Leonard Peikoff, 1982, The Ominous Parallels, pp 34-35.]

[A. Pole]

To be more precise (IMO), Naziism, Fascism & Marxism all came from explicitly Hegelian roots...

[...]

The transubstantiation of Hegelianism into racialism or of Spirit into Blood does not greatly alter the main tendency of Hegelianism. It only gives it a tinge of biology and of modern evolutionism. [Karl Popper, 1962, The Open Society and its Enemies]

Popper is wrong with this claim. (As with many other things). His statement about "transubstantiation" of "Hegelianism" which you quote is stupid. Marxism can be seen as a type of Heglism, Volkism/National Socialism cannot, unless one is as pigheaded as Popper was.

[Burkeman1]

Yes- correct. Marxism has older roots than Fascism.

[Burkeman1]

It is a little frustrating. As someone who is not convinced by the current explanations of evolution (I don't think it could have occured the way it is explained now) but who is not a creationist who believes the Earth is only 8000 years old- I am in a weird position.