Evolutionary Science, not Darwinism

[John_Harshman]

@jongarvey

Maybe better not to pick on minor and irrelevant perceived errors in the first place.

What else are internet discussion groups for? Anyway, while it is minor and irrelevant, it’s not just a “perceived error”. It’s a real error.

Clearly, I have trouble telling internet posters apart, as I didn’t notice that you had changed from Eddie to yourself. Sorry.

Regarding the point (a minor and irrelevant error):

1. Darwin said it, and Darwin was wrong; not the only time.
2. Lungs evolved prior to the split between Sarcopterygii and Actinopterygii, possibly much earlier. There’s a very well-preserved placoderm with what appear to be lungs.
3. Your use of the term “lungfish” was ill-advised, as words do have meanings. Polypterus is definitely not a lungfish. And of course it’s not ancestral to other actinopterygians either.

@jongarvey

Chondrichthyes diverging somewhere above the root of the placoderms, implying that bone loss is more likely than original cartilage.

Relationships among chondrichthyans, placoderms, and bony fish are currently still unclear. However, one should be clear on what “bony skeleton” means. There is, for example, a distinction between dermal bone and endochondral bone. The ancestors of sharks clearly had dermal bone, as did placoderms. But they probably didn’t have endochondral bone, and placoderms didn’t either. Same for the various groups of “agnathans” that preceded the jawed fish, though some of them had a third type, perichondral bone. Scales are a type of dermal bone, and sharks still have that.

@jongarvey

So far every single case has turned out to be disputed or uncertain

Wow. You have bad luck in sampling. Most taxa are not disputed or uncertain. Of course long-extinct taxa are more difficult to place than living ones, but still the clear cases outnumber the doubtful ones.

[T_aquaticus]

@jongarvey

However, it does confirm your point that “evolutionary histories aren’t as simple as we sometimes think.” That’s another way of saying that nested hierarchies nest in alternative ways, and that’s the one major thing I have learned since school, when it looked as if the tree of life was done and dusted apart from the details.

I’ve got into the habit, whenever a particular taxon comes to my attention either on a blog, in an article on in the garden, of checking out its phylogenetic origins. So far every single case has turned out to be disputed or uncertain, and the Chondrichthyes are no exception, so thanks for prompting me to look.

@swamidass has been vocal in reminding me that the nested hierarchies have noise, and it is a very good point to remember. Homoplasies, incomplete lineage sorting, and severe lack of data for deep nodes are all real things that scientists have to deal with and be cognizant of. If nothing else, gaps in our knowledge should excite us because those gaps are telling us we have new things to learn.

[Mark]

I will find the link later, but related to this question, I noticed that PBS’s website described the convergence of the animals of South America and Australia simply as an example of natural selection “selecting” the same types of animals in two different instances. This seems right in line with the EES’s understanding of how the modern synthesis understands things and the explanation seems wholly inadequate to me.

What is everyone’s opinion on this chart from the EES?
https://extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com/about-the-ees/how-the-ees-differs-from-the-modern-synthesis/

It seems that an MS person might be fine with leaving the PBS explanation as is since it’s for a non-scientific audience. However, an EES person might insist that niche construction and developmental bias MUST be mentioned to explain this convergence because although an MS person would acknowledge these mechanisms, she he might not see them as crucial. An EES might see them as MORE crucial than selection.

It seems to me that the biggest difference between the MS and EES will show up when discussing how to teach evolution to high schoolers/non science persons.

For example, somewhere on here @swamidass said that Ken Miller’s presentation of evolution might come off as Neo-Darwinian because he was oversimplifying things. Yes! Exactly.

But if an EES person simplifies things, we might hear much more about developmental bias, niche construction, epigenetics, etc. because she would see these mechanisms as more crucial to the evolutionary process than would an MS person.

It seems that @sygarte is absolutely right. The difference between the MS and EES is one of emphasis. @Eddie @swamidass @Mung @jongarvey what are your thoughts?

[jongarvey]

@Mark

It seems that @sygarte is absolutely right. The difference between the MS and EES is one of emphasis. @Eddie @swamidass @Mung @jongarvey what are your thoughts?

I’m probably a bit cynical about the MS, seeing it now as describing an attempt to maintain discipline when the science has moved on. Astonishingly sometimes it seems it’s in case the Creationists get ammunition against Evolution - which doesn’t suggest huge self-confidence!

That said, there’s apparently a range of angles, which in many or most cases is not even so much emphasis, as classification. By that I mean that the person wanting to keep the MS in shape will sometimes simply sort all the new mechanisms into “variation” or “selection” (mostly the former), and say that it’s still essentially the same theory. Indeed, some folks seem indistinuishable from the EES guys in opinion except what they want to call the theory. A rose or an extended rose?

But there are others who seem to say that all the other mechanisms are really just trivial and largely irrelevant, and that classic MS (or rather, the mutationist form of it) is still the driver of evolution.

Another small group seems to enjoy proving that none of the new mechanisms are new, either by simply snorting that somebody mentioned something like it in 1970 (even if it was ignored by all!), or best of all by saying that Darwin included it in the Origin of Species. I see the danger here is what you seem to suggest - paying lip service to other mechanisms simply because they have been mentioned in the literature, but in practice sidelining them.

[Mung]

@Mark

The difference between the MS and EES is one of emphasis.

I would disagree with this unless it can be shown that proponents of EES think it’s only a matter of emphasis. I think that the EES side believes there are real differences. I like the chart you posted and I wonder if there is any response to it from proponents of the MS.

The EES might be an interesting topic for discussion in it’s own right. Personally I am looking forward to the publication of the proceedings from the London meeting. I’d really like to know more about how the two positions are interacting.

For the EES side (though perhaps a bit dated):

Evolution: The Extended Synthesis

I’ve long kept track of the debates within evolutionary theory as it is prime ground for quote-mining.

[Mark]

I think the response from the MS would be, “yeah, we acknowledge all that as well.” But then when writing for popular literature, they still EMPHASIZE the more Neo-Darwinian aspects of evolution. What does @swamidass think?

And @Mung if you do a search, there have been a few discissions of the EES on these forums.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@John_Harshman

Darwin said it, and Darwin was wrong; not the only time.

You’ll also have to say that the well-known evolutionary geneticist H. Allen Orr, writing much later than Darwin, was wrong. In his review of Darwin’s Black Box, Orr wrote:

“The transformation of air bladders into lungs that allowed animals to breathe atmospheric oxygen was initially just advantageous: such beasts could explore open niches—like dry land—that were unavailable to their lung-less peers.”

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@Mark

I think the response from the MS would be, “yeah, we acknowledge all that as well.” But then when writing for popular literature, they still EMPHASIZE the more Neo-Darwinian aspects of evolution. What does @swamidass think?

I disagree. Most scientist I know see it this way:

@jongarvey

That said, there’s apparently a range of angles, which in many or most cases is not even so much emphasis, as classification. By that I mean that the person wanting to keep the MS in shape will sometimes simply sort all the new mechanisms into “variation” or “selection” (mostly the former), and say that it’s still essentially the same theory. Indeed, some folks seem indistinuishable from the EES guys in opinion except what they want to call the theory. A rose or an extended rose?

@Mark

It seems to me that the biggest difference between the MS and EES will show up when discussing how to teach evolution to high schoolers/non science persons.

I disagree. That is not the center of it. The biggest disagreement is about who gets credit for evolutionary theory. EES has a group of people angling to be the next Darwin. They go to great extent to ressurect him so they have a strawman to slay.

Most scientists I know think this is lll ridiculous. A whole lot of bluster with essentially no essential disagreement. The argument is about the meaning of words.

[Mung]

@swamidass

The biggest disagreement is about who gets credit for evolutionary theory. EES has a group of people angling to be the next Darwin.

Mullerism? Jablonkaism?

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@Mung

The biggest disagreement is about who gets credit for evolutionary theory. EES has a group of people angling to be the next Darwin.

Mullerism? Jablonkaism?

This appears to be a vanity project for people like Shapiro.

[Mung]

@swamidass

This appears to be a vanity project for people like Shapiro.

I can’t judge that. I can say however that in the volume I linked in my post above Shapiro does not have a chapter and is not mentioned in the index. But it looks like it came out a year before his book.

It’s good to hear that scientists are just as human as the rest of us.

[Mark]

Shapiro is not listed on the EES site as supporting it. Maybe he wants MORE of an overhaul, hence his Third Way site.

[Mung]

That’s an interesting observation. what distinguishes “Third Way” proponents from EES?

[John_Harshman]

@Mark

What is everyone’s opinion on this chart from the EES?
https://extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com/about-the-ees/how-the-ees-differs-from-the-modern-synthesis/

I think there is much that is true and much that is new. Do you know how that description traditionally ends? #i would seem to be the Baldwin effect. The one about developmental bias (a form of evolutionary constraint) has been in the literature for many years, and plug for Jonathan Losos’s book Improbable Destinies is appropriate here. The rest seems to be mostly implied Lamarckism.

Not sure what an MS person is. But the sort of convergence between South American and Australian mammals seems to be just the sort that we expect natural selection to produce: similar evolutionary trajectories in similar selective regimes acting from similar starting points.

The EES person would be wrong in seeing any of those things as more important than natural selection. Developmental constraints exist and are important. Niche construction exists and is important in a fairly small number of cases. Epigenetics, in the sense used here, is of no evolutionary relevance.

[John_Harshman]

@Eddie

You’ll also have to say that the well-known evolutionary geneticist H. Allen Orr, writing much later than Darwin, was wrong.

Yep, he was wrong. I’m surprised. But of course that isn’t his field.

[John_Harshman]

@swamidass

A whole lot of bluster with essentially no essential disagreement.

I think there’s considerable essential disagreement, most strongly regarding the hype around “epigenetics”, the newest nine-days wonder.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

That is something different, IMHO.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@John_Harshman

Yep, he was wrong. I’m surprised.

Well, then, you can see why the public finds it hard to discern what “modern evolutionary theory” teaches. Orr and Coyne wrote a book, Speciation, so the average member of the public is going to assume that Orr is an expert on evolution. If he casually says lungs evolved from swim bladders, as if that is everyday knowledge to the evolutionary biologist, the average member of the public will assume that this is a standard view in “modern evolutionary theory.” It’s unreasonable to expect the public to know which scientist is the “official spokesperson” for “modern evolutionary theory” when disagreements as stark as yours and Orr’s exist. Only a very small % of the public will be reading this site and following the threads closely enough to catch your correction on this point. They are far more likely to have read Orr’s review of Behe.

The problem of communication persists, and it won’t be solved even by a perfect three-week, creationism-free unit on evolution in ninth-grade science. The public, by and large, will take its view of “evolution” from Ken Miller, Richard Dawkins, Bill Nye, PBS science programs aimed at lay people, etc. And these are exactly the places where just-so stories about swim bladders abound – and where an account of evolution that still sounds very much like classic neo-Darwinism abounds. So you specialists have to figure out a way to change the popular presentation of evolution.

But given what I’ve been told here – that scientists don’t write books, that writing books to explain things to the masses is considered a sub-scientific activity and will probably harm their chances of getting tenure, promotions, and research grants – it’s likely this problem will continue. It will generally be the near-retirement, “coasting” scientists, no longer active in research, or the scientists who are located mainly in undergraduate teaching institutions, or even science journalists from outside the field of biology, who do the popularizing, and they will often not be up on what is current in the field. Only when it becomes acceptable for a top researcher, at the peak of his career, to devote some of his time to serious (high-level) popularizing as part of his output, will the popular and specialist versions of evolutionary theory better harmonize.

This used to be done. Mayr and Gaylord Simpson and Gould all did it. But from what I hear on this site, it would be career suicide for any biologist to do it now. Well, if that’s the case, then the evolutionary biologists have only themselves to blame for inaccurate popularization that’s floating around out there. If professional career considerations prompt the evolutionary theorists to hide out in their ivory research towers, leaving the quality of the popularization of evolutionary thought to chance, whose fault is that? Certainly not the general public’s. Nor is it the fault of the writers of the popularizations who are filling in for the role which the professionals are neglecting. Nature rushes in to fill a vacuum. If the experts aren’t willing to fill in that vacuum themselves, then they can’t reasonably complain when someone else does it badly.

[John_Harshman]

@swamidass

That is something different, IMHO.

What is something different from what?