Let’s recall what Douglas Axe wrote: “The current stance is that evolution was so successful that it perfected life to the point where modern forms no longer evolve”
[The current stance is that] - Must mean something along the lines of “the majority of evolutionary biologists hold”, or “current mainstream views among biologists”, or “contemporary evolutionary theory says”.
[evolution was so successful that it perfected life to the point where modern forms no longer evolve] - Seems to say that all lifeforms currently on Earth are pretty much perfect. That they have been perfected as if on some great upward trajectory towards perfection. That no further adaptation is possible. They are all the best possible versions of what they are. And that because they are so perfect and optimal, change has completely stopped. There is no longer any adaptation. No longer any change going on. No descent with modification. No mutations. No shift in allele frequencies. Nothing. It’s all stopped, and all life is perfect.
This is of course all completely ridiculous and beyond the realm of rational discourse.
Actually all I have to do is look at the evidence. Not the claim, or the number of volumes the man wrote, or how many reviews he established. Just the evidence. And you haven’t provided any.
All you’re doing is namedropping a single man with that view, and then waving your hands in the direction of his putative eminence, the length of his career, and the number of volumes he wrote.
Is there any evidence that evolution has stopped, that life has been perfected, that adaptation is no longer happening, or that innovations are over? Nope.
If you had this evidence, you wouldn’t be trying to inflate the authority of this single man, you’d be posting that evidence.
Yeah I can go find lots of articles on the continuous and ongoing evolution of the biosphere up to the present, authored by hundreds of distinguished experts in a diversity of fields of biology, from paleontology, to genetics and biochemistry, all of whom have exceptional knowledge of their field of expertise.
So, Grasse evidently, from the only quote anyone has offered here, did NOT agree with Giltil’s position. The authority for the idea that the current biological consensus is that things have stopped evolving, then, is the alleged views of a man who died 35 years ago, and who apparently thought exactly the opposite. I am unsure whether to laugh or cry.
It does remind me of the anachronistic bizarreness of much of ID Creationist literature, though. Tom Bethell’s book Darwin’s House of Cards quotes Gavin de Beer to the effect that the search for homologous genes has been given up as hopeless, for example. Never mind that de Beer wrote this in '71 before anyone had ever seen a genome, never mind that we now know of incredibly deep and pervasive genetic homologies – a guy with excellent qualifications once made an isolated remark, so that must be the scientific consensus of today.
Again: the claim Axe is making is not about what Grasse did or didn’t think. It’s about the consensus of modern biologists. It is patently, absurdly false. It simply does not help Giltil’s case to argue that one eminent biologist once may have said (though no quote to this effect can be actually located, apparently) this.
Doesn’t look like anything has stopped to my eyes, even given the very restrictive definition of innovation used in the article:
Characterizing Innovations
I define an evolutionary innovation as a newly evolved structure or condition that enables its phylogenetically derived bearer to perform a new function or that improves its bearer’s performance materially in an already established function. This definition therefore excludes the reduction or loss of structures, changes in the number of iterated parts such as segments and appendages, and changes in body size or proportions (10).
Notice that the author doesn’t consider something like the evolution of flippers in semi and fully aquatic mammals, the migration of the blowhole, the emergence of baleen in whales, or many, many other obvious evolutionary changes of note, to be innovations in this way, because these appear to “just” involve changes in proportions and sizes of already existing structures.
I think so, though the quote was specifically in relation to genes, rather than the products thereof. And the de Beer quote was a weird one. It came from, if I recall correctly, an interview with a magazine for teenagers (back in the days when all the cool teenyboppers wanted to be embryologists), and it seems to me that it was not entirely clear, in context, that he meant it quite the way it came out. But, of course, no quoteminer cares about any of that.
To me the funnier aspect of it was simply that this was so anachronistic – Mayr had said some similar things, too, about the likelihood that we would find few homologous genes. But lifting those quotes out of history, and then ignoring decades of research which shows that these statements didn’t hold up, in order to represent them as the current state of science, is typical work for the DI.
First, a diction-quibble: I think you mean “tack.” It’s a sailing metaphor.
Second: yeah, in the video that surprised me, too. One of the problems with intuitive reasoning is that we typically cannot defend it in non-intuitive terms, and other people may simply not share our sense that something DOES feel intuitively right. When they don’t share that, the discussion pretty much is over: it seems this way to me, and it seems that way to you, and neither of us can present a compelling rationale.
I was at the University of Washington, discussing Axe’s book with a paleontologist there. I explained to her that the theme of the book was that we all have an intuitive sense that living things are designed, and that we should let our intuition guide us. She simply responded that she had no such intuitive sense that living things are designed, and I said that I had to agree – it may seem so to Axe but it certainly doesn’t to me.
But this is the merit of science, isn’t it? I have a rather compelling intuitive sense that heavy objects fall faster than light ones. I still have this intuitive sense despite knowledge to the contrary. So what do I trust: my intuition, or physics?
I disagree with that. It is also a self evident fact that our intuitions are often wrong that education shapes our intuitions. There also are ways to counter an intuitive but false argument by “building intuition” that is correct. This is what good teachers do and what is necessary to advance science.
In this case, I counter his intuitive argument by:
Pointing out that biology was non intuitive.
Asking questions that had Behe noting that theology (and science!) was non intuitive too.
Explaining that biology is not unique in this, as it’s also true if chemistry.
Truthfully inviting a deeper conversation to clarify the details. Tour took me up on this invitation,
That is a set of factual and relational counters that everyone in the audience could understand.
Died 35 years ago, probably made that statement even further back. So it’s not “current”, nor are his views representative of science, for example he’s open to Lamarckism.
ICR likes to show him off. I wonder how if that’s where Gil learned about him?
Just look at @nlents work on Human Errors, the premise of the bad design argument (whatever it’s theological problems), and the fact that we all say that evolution doesn’t produce perfect structures.
Our DNA shows evidence for recent selection for resistance of killer diseases like Lassa feverand malaria. Selection in response to malaria is still ongoing in regions where the disease remains common.
Humans are also adapting to their environment. Mutations allowing humans to live at high altitudes have become more common in populations in Tibet, Ethiopia, and the Andes. The spread of genetic mutations in Tibet is possibly the fastest evolutionary change in humans, occurring over the last 3,000 years. This rapid surge in frequency of a mutated gene that increases blood oxygen content gives locals a survival advantage in higher altitudes, resulting in more surviving children.
You should neither laugh nor cry, but be embarrassed either by your ignorance or your bad faith. I have in front of me « The Evolution of Life », the famous work of Grasse in which he synthesized his conceptions of evolution and where there is a 4-page paragraph entitled “amortization of evolution” where he discusses precisely this remarkable phenomenon.
You seem to be the one who should be embarrassed. Citing a single long dead scientist whose views were not accepted when he was alive and certainly aren’t accepted now.
Do you have any actual evidence? Anything besides your fallacious argument from authority?
