Pierre P Grasse, one of the most eminent zoologists of his time, insisted on this very fact that creative evolution clearly appears to have come to an end. You can do the experiment: plot the biological innovations that occurred throughout life history with time and see what the pattern will look like.
Reference please. If he did he was wrong.
What do you mean by biological innovations? If you look at lifeâs history after every major extinction event there were bursts of evolutionary creativity. What makes you think the process no longer works because we donât witness pigs evolving wings in real time?
Youâre going to have to show that it is a fact first.
Iâve learned that from Pierre P Grasse, not exactly what you would call a poor, ignorant creationist.
Youâve learned what, specifically?
Reference please. Grasse was a proponent of Lamarkism and his claims were not accepted by mainstream science.
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As I said, plot the biological innovations that occurred throughout life history with time and see by yourself what the pattern looks like.
You made the claim, you make a plot and show us. Be sure to include the 5 major mass extinction events in the last 500 MY.
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I have no idea what you mean by a biological innovation, and as such I have no idea how you would measure that across the tree of life
Some of his claims were not accepted by the neo-darwinist establishment. That doesnât mean that his claim regarding the amortization of evolution wasnât accepted.
Again, plot the biological innovations that occurred throughout life history with time and see by yourself what the pattern looks like.
I already know what they look like. After each of the 5 major mass extinction events there were large bursts of biological innovation as the now empty ecological niches were explored. When the niches began filling the pace of innovation naturally slowed because there was little room for more. Why do you think that means the ability of evolution to produce innovation has somehow been lost?
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It also doesnât mean it was accepted.
Several people here are biologists and have expressed total surprise that anyone would make such a claim. I have read quite a lot on biological evolution, and I find the claim to be fatuous on itâs face.
It would be really strange if youâve managed to find the subset of people with an interest or even significant qualifications in evolutionary biology that have all failed to catch on to what evolutionary biologists say, while you only have a single person to refer to, who was born before the turn of the century, died 35 yeas ago, and was a proponent of a type of evolution today widely rejected.
No, you start by defining what you mean by a biological innovation, and then you go and do that work yourself, or you bring a reference to someone who has.
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By the way, youâve now considerably changed the story from Douglas Axeâs asinine claim that: âThe current stance is that evolution was so successful that it perfected life to the point where modern forms no longer evolveâ - to blathering about a plot of âbiological innovationsâ across the history of life, which are very far from the same things.
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On a related note, if you want evidence of continuing evolution, turn on the news. I hear thereâs this new highly contagious virus going around. Hey, isnât virulence supposed to correlate with fitness according to you?
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Table 1 and 2 of the paper below will give you examples of biological innovations.
https://www.pnas.org/content/103/6/1804
Letâs bear in mind here that Axe is not saying that SOME biologists think evolution âwas so successful that it perfected life to the point where modern forms no longer evolve.â He is saying that this is the âcurrent stanceâ of evolutionary biology â the consensus view, or, if not the consensus, certainly at least the dominant view.
So, on the dishonesty/incompetence issue, letâs imagine for the sake of argument that Axe had Grasse specifically in mind (very unlikely, of course), that Grasse actually said something to this effect (for which we still seem to be awaiting evidence), and that Axe either (a) had no idea what actual biologists now living thought or (b) knew it, but also knew he was writing for a lay audience that would not be familiar with what actual biologists think. Adopting this this extremely charitable assumption, how could one possibly square Axeâs statement with a claim that Axe is both honest and competent?
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Your post appears to be missing a link or something?
Hoops! Iâve made the correction. Thanks.
Okay, so whereâs the evidence these have stopped evolving? The paper you referenced seems to show the opposite of what you claimed. The tables show a relatively continuous emergence of innovations over the history of life.
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When a naturalist as eminent as Pierre P Grasse observes that there is a clear amortization of evolution, you had better take note. Why? Because this is not a theory but an observation based on an exceptional knowledge of the animal world and its history.
To have a glimpse of his work, see below:
Publications
Grassé began publishing a very big project in 1946 entitled Traité de zoologie . The 38 volumes required almost forty years of work, uniting some of the greatest names in zoology. They are still essential references in the field for the groups that are treated in their pages. Ten volumes are dedicated to mammals, nine to insects. Apart from this treatise, he led two collections published by Masson: the first, entitled Grands problÚmes de la biologie , has thirteen volumes and the second is entitled Précis de sciences biologiques . Alongside Andrée Tétry, he composed the two volumes dedicated to zoology in the collection BibliothÚque de la Pléiade , published by Gallimard. He also supervised the edition of the Abrégé de zoologie (two volumes, Masson).
He also composed the Termitologia (1982, 1983, 1984), a work in three volumes totalling over 2400 pages. In it Grassé compiles all available knowledge concerning termites. It was by studying symbiotic flagellates in termites that he eventually began studying their hosts. In this publication, Grassé introduced the concept of Stigmergy :
He also created three scientific reviews: Arvernia biologica (1932), Insectes sociaux (1953) et Biologia gabonica (1964). He participated in several reviews like the Annales des sciences naturelles and the Bulletin biologique de la France et de la Belgique . Apart from his numerous scientific publications, he published several works popularising science such as La Vie des animaux (Larousse, 1968). He also signed the articles âĂvolutionâ and âStigmergieâ of the EncyclopĂŠdia Universalis .
Now, if you want to contest his claim regarding evolution amortization, please give evidences or references.