ENV: Behe and Swamidass Debate Evolution and Intelligent Design at Texas A&M

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102

Here is the passage of the book where Grasse discusses this phenomenon he called “evolution amortization”

Amortization of evolution

Recapitulating the facts set out in the preceding pages, we can see that the margin of manoeuvre of evolution has been constantly shrinking: in the Ordovician, the genesis of phyla stops, in the Jurassic, that of classes, in the Paleocene-Eocene, that of orders.
After the Eocene, the evolutionary sap still flowed in a few orders, since Mammals and Birds continued to specialize in various directions and took over all the marine terrestrial biotopes that Reptiles had previously occupied.
Little by little, the evolutionary novelties changed in amplitude. They now concern only details and leave the organizational plan intact. Speciation is the form in which evolution has been maintained since the Oligocene in insects, the Miocene in molluscs, the Pliocene in birds and Simians, the Holocene in certain Glires and the Hominians (Homo sapiens, last place, probably dates back 100,000 years).
Evolution not only slowed down but, as the biosphere aged, its amplitude diminished.
It is certain that it no longer operates today as it did in the distant past. Something has changed. It would be of great importance to know what, as it would shed light on the intimate mechanism of the phenomena. Organizational plans are no longer disrupted, new things no longer flow in. The evolution, after the immense effort, the last one, which the formation of the orders of Mammals and hominization cost, seems to be running out of steam, it is dozing off. All this is only a metaphor, but paints a good picture of the present state of evolutionary phenomena.
/…………/
The phase of high fertility is over: The present biological evolution has the appearance of an amortized, decadent or dying process. Are we not witnessing the remanence of an immense phenomenon on the verge of extinction, are not the small variations that we are registering everywhere not the residues, the last oscillations of the evolutionary movement? Isn’t there not a mechanism missing in our plants and animals that was present in the springtime of the flora and fauna?
It is, often, observed that all its supposedly efficient causes being there, evolution nevertheless stops. Vandel (1972) has just provided an excellent example of this.
The two species of sowbugs of the genus Australoniscus, one in Nepal (A. alticolus), the other in Western Australia (A. springetti), have been separated due to the division of the continent of Gondwana and continental drift since the beginning of the Cretaceous, i.e. about 140 to 135 million years ago. They are separated by a minimal character: “the endopodite tip of the first male pleopod is different…: it is straight in springetti, hooked in alticolus”.
Thus, in 140 million years, neither segregation, nor mutations, nor selection operating in different environments have modified these crustaceans. The cause of their stability must therefore be sought in the intimate constitution of the animal.
/……/
We will retain from our investigation that today evolution is not what it used to be. This state of affairs, with its many consequences, has hardly caught the attention of biologists who, however, must not limit themselves to the search for the mechanism of evolution, but also reveal the causes that have stopped the creation of new types and caused the speed of the process to vary.

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That lends ZERO support to your claim that evolution has stopped, that it is a mainstream view that evolution has stopped, or to Axe’s claim that “the current stance is” that all modern life has evolved to perfection and then stopped.

Michael Lynch is talking about a pervasive view among biologists(and that isn’t all biologists) that all organismal attributes are adaptations. Not that they are perfect and that evolution has stopped.

You have utterly failed to carry your case.

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104

Fascinating. When all else fails you just DECLARE the “indisputable” truth of what you have completely failed to substantiate.

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105

I was responding to Tim’s post at 82.

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Thank you for that quote. You now have a single man having made an assertion. And it appears to take the form of nothing more than a subjective opinion.

You take that ONE man’s words to substantiate Douglas Axe’s claim that it is the mainstream view of evolutionary biologists that modern life has evolved to perfection, and that evolution has stopped.

Look at what you are doing.

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107

Strange to hear Perre Grassé cited as an exponent of modern views on evolution. Grassé was actually a Neolamarckian! An opponent of the Modern Synthesis.

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108

How many of the ID vanguard attended (or will attend) meetings like this?

109

OK, you have shown that one dead biologist thought that evolution had slowed down a lot, but not stopped. Does that advance Axe’s claim? No.

Further, does Grassé’s claim hold up to examination? No, not that either. Of course phyla do arise before classes, classes before orders, etc. That’s the inevitable result of classification by groups within groups. Now, there is some evidence that the Cambrian explosion may have seen an unusually rapid rate of evolution. See for example Lee, RSY et al. Rates of Phenotypic and Genomic Evolution during the Cambrian Explosion. Current Biology 2013; 23:1-7. But that’s nothing like Grassé’s claim.

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110

Open access:

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111

I should have mentioned that there have been two common explanations for increased evolutionary rate during the Cambrian explosion, often referred to as the “loose genes” and “empty barrel” theories. Erwin is pushing the former. But you should still note that he makes no claim whatsoever that evolution has stopped, merely that we are unlikely to see another Cambrian explosion.

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Oh my… this seems to be getting progressively worse for Axe.

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113

Does that paper argue that all present life has evolved to perfection and that evolution has stopped? No.

Is there some sort of poll in it which indicates that it is the the current mainstream view of biologists that current life has evolved to perfection and then stopped? No.

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Pierre P Grasse
We will retain from our investigation that today evolution is not what it used to be. This state of affairs, with its many consequences, has hardly caught the attention of biologists who, however, must not limit themselves to the search for the mechanism of evolution, but also reveal the causes that have stopped the creation of new types and caused the speed of the process to vary.

Douglas H Erwin
Evolution has been implicitly viewed as a uniformitarian process where the rates may vary but the underlying processes, including the types of variation, are essentially invariant through time. Recent studies demonstrate that this uniformitarian assumption is false, suggesting that the types of variation may vary through time.

It seems that Grasse has found an ally!

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In the view that rates of evolution are not uniform across time, which does not substantiate the claim that evolution has stopped because current lifeforms have evolved to perfection.

So there’s still no evidence in support of Douglas Axe’s lie that it is “the stance” in evolutionary biology, that life has supposedly evolved to perfection and then stopped.

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Good morning, Paul. It would be interesting to see your perspective on Axe’s quote that has garnered so many responses.

“The current stance is that evolution was so successful that it perfected life to the point where modern forms no longer evolve, making the whole process even further removed from the category of observable phenomena.”
(Thank you, @Puck_Mendelssohn, I had never seen this quote before)

Is this view commonly shared at DI?

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117

You’ll also find that I agree life has remained cellular for over 3.8 billion years. It’s still just cells. That doesn’t mean evolution has stopped or that extant lifeforms are thought to have become perfected.

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Why are you saying this? You know, Axe work on enzyme evolution has its critics. Obviously, no one better than Axe knows what the content of these critics are and he is simply reporting them. What’s all the fuss about?

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This is not what Axe said.

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Yes it is:
“The current stance is that evolution was so successful that it perfected life to the point where modern forms no longer evolve, making the whole process even further removed from the category of observable phenomena.” - Douglas Axe

My emphasis. If you fail to see how this is the same thing I wrote, I recommend you see a neurologists as soon as possible as you could be developing a degenerative neurophysiological condition of some sort.

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Most of the fuss in this thread is that Axe made a blanket statement that is patently false.

The current stance is that evolution was so successful that it perfected life to the point where modern forms no longer evolve, making the whole process even further removed from the category of observable phenomena.

The reason I added a comment is that his patently false comment was not just an isolated, poorly-worded sentence in his book, but Axe made an second equally-erroneous statement along the same lines.

We were wrong, critics say, to expect enzyme A to be capable of further evolution because enzymes, like animals, have been perfected to the point where they’re no longer pliable in the hands of natural selection.

Obviously, Axe is paraphrasing, and he is paraphrasing in a way that is completely false. I don’t want to guess further into why he made such false statements, but the facts are laid out directly in front of us.

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