I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. All members of a nested hierarchy can share lots of features, they just can’t share all their features.
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True. But if branches are already defined and distinguished as the Motorola and Intel branches, and a common feature like USB appearing at the tips derives from another independent trunk, IEEE standard whatever, that is not a fork. Thus we have some sort of web instead of a tree. N’est-ce pas?
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Wouldn’t that compare to horizonal gene transfer?
Yes. HGT messes with the tree in nature. But putting feathers on bats is unrealistic.
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Bill, please stop this.
You obviously don’t have a clue. The uses of nested hierarchies have no bearing whatsoever on the definition. Please make an effort to learn before pontificating.
Since you can’t define it, you have no basis for making that accusation. Please stop.
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I’m sorry Bill, but this claim is not only ludicrously wrong, in fact a category mistake, but is further clear evidence that you have no idea what a Nested Hierarchy is.
A fishbone diagram, Pareto chart, a tree diagram or a Venn diagram are data representations.
A Nested Hierarchy is a specific relationship in the underlying data. Yes, it is one that can be represented by a tree diagram, but it is one that can be also represented by a Venn diagram of non-overlapping (thus “Nested”) sets.
You appear to be conflating the relationship with a specific graphical representation of the relationship.
Probably some form of many-to-many, rather than one-to-many (Ewert’s H0) relationship. Particularly in computer features, this would appear to be a better representation of how a feature will frequently appear in one family, and then often spread to all computer families. It is not a hierarchical relationship, therefore any imposed hierarchical relationship (including Ewert’s H0) will be a poor fit.
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It’s possible that I don’t but currently this is what I believe. I have used trees and read up on how they are used in phylogenetic analysis. I have yet to hear a good argument why we would not expect a nested hierarchy from design. It the pattern cannot eliminate common design then the claim is only valid if you invoke methodological naturalism as a rule.
The brush off dismissal of those providing a competing hypothesis (Winston) is not convincing. What’s also not convincing is that you hound people about evidence and it turns out from your post to @Eddie that your main objection is philosophical.
Please reread:
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I would like to see this officially defined but for arguments sake how do you then account for genes unique to humans and zebra fish in the Howe diagram along with other examples not following an inheritance pattern. How do you account for flight and aquatic ability re appearing in mammals How do account for flight separately emerging in insects. How do you account for eyes separately emerging in different animals.
Life does organize in a nested hierarchy (the less specific version in Winstons paper) but the evidence does support design as a competing hypothesis for the pattern if we remove the constraint of MN.
Ultimately it is very difficult to eliminate design with the pattern as there are many exceptions in biology to the ideal NH you described.
Already answered:
Convergent evolution that while it approximates the same general feature, does so without reusing the specific features (e.g. feathers, gills) of the other sub-hierarchies it is converging with.
There are dozens of whole books on the evolution of the eye. Reproducing all that in a single post would appear unreasonable.
But you have presented no evidence! And no Bill, Ewert’s paper is not evidence, given that all it shows is that a NH is a better fit than his H0, when both are likely a poor fit for the data being represented.
Given you have provided no evidence that Methodological Naturalism provides any substantive constraint, I call utter balderdash! You seem to treat invocation of MN as some sort of universal ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card for your flimsy arguments. In fact I regard it as evidence that you’ve managed to paint yourself into yet another corner, and are flailing around.
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This is not an answer to the pattern of gene loss and gain. It is hand waving. This shows you have not followed the arguments.
This is a violation of the “pristine NH pattern” you are claiming.
Again an exception to the pristine pattern you are claiming.
This no evidence mantra is nonsensical assertion. What Winston shows has not been differentiated by you as you cannot show a perfect fit to the tree as you claimed.
Your argument is “utter balderdash”.as you set up a straw man NH and it does not fit the pattern we are observing.
Winstons argument appears to be the strongest so far as in all cases we are not dealing with patterns we can simply assign to descent with tested methods of modification.
Tim, I will let you have the last word on this.
Several people here keep harping on the “nested hierarchy” thing, Bill. I gave up arguing with them about it long ago. First they always try to give the impression (even if they don’t claim it directly) that design is incompatible with a nested hierarchy, and bully their opponents into submission that way, but then, when it’s demonstrated that design is not incompatible with a nested hierarchy, they change the argument to: “Well, design is only compatible with a nested hierarchy, whereas unguided evolution predicts a nested hierarchy, so unguided evolution is the right view.” But of course, since either view is compatible with a nested hierarchy, the existence of such a hierarchy doesn’t constitute a proof that unguided evolution is true and design is false. A philosopher can see this, but apparently some scientists can’t.
It’s definite, and belief doesn’t enter into it.
No argument is needed. You’re ignoring the explanations.
Huh?
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Actually, evolution guided or unguided, both feature reproduction with variation, and both predict a nested hierarchy. NH presents a severe challenge to creation ex nihilo, as one could go on forever presenting instances, both morphologically and genetically, where traits are arbitrary and would serve no purpose other than suggesting a false common descent.
Akin to a false history of supernova light created in transit, I think when considered in detail the NH presents a problem of theodicy.
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Given it involves processes that have been empirically demonstrated to exist, it is a far far far less hand-wavey answer than the entire corpus (or maybe dead-horse-corpse) of ID ‘God … er … a designer did it.’
No Bill. It merely “shows” that the Howe diagram is an extremely brief summary of the underlying data. A more detailed explanation would require far more detail in terms of what the individual genes lost actually did, which organism populations lost them, and which retained them, than is contained in the Howe diagram.
It is however a perfectly adequate explanation for somebody who is simply vacuously waving the Howe diagram in front of us and demanding that we explain it.
No it is not. As no features are being reused, merely mimicked.
Already explained under convergent evolution, and I would point out that I never claimed it was “pristine” (of course it isn’t, given small amounts of HGT known to exist), merely that the borrowing is not nearly as promiscuous as you would expect under design. Why don’t flying mammals, i.e. bats, have feathers, given that they are far more efficient for flight than bare skin?
Also at this stage I would suggest that your vacuous taunting has devolved to the level of blatant pigeon chess.
ROFLMAO1,000,000!
If we’re going to talk about mantras that are nothing but "nonsensical assertion, then let’s look at your own mantras:
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repeatedly demanding an explanation of the Howe diagram, ignoring the fact that it describes exactly the sort of Nested Hierarchy that we’d expect from “descent with modification” (probably because you have no understanding of what a Nested Hierarchy actually is – otherwise you wouldn’t be bringing up irrelevancies like fishbone diagrams and pareto charts).
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repeatedly citing “Behe’s method”, as though “a purposeful arrangement of parts” wasn’t simply a bald assertion that Michael Behe pulled out of his neither regions.
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repeatedly citing “Ewert’s paper” as though it wasn’t some rudimentary, and likely not particularly robust, initial exploration of an idea that, as it was published in BIO-Complexity, was likely to not have been subjected to particularly rigorous peer review.
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repeatedly citing the “Behe Lynch discussion”, as though that is prima facie scientific evidence.
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repeatedly citing the purported “constraints of Methodological Naturalism” whenever you have painted yourself into a corner
We could play ‘Bill Cole bingo’, seeing who can build a full set first from your mantras on any given thread. Certainly if we eliminated your posts making use of these mantras, we’d be left with almost nothing from you.
Getting back to my original point, the only ‘evidence’ you have presented is the Ewert paper – and that is rather narrow, weak, preliminary, and likely flawed, evidence.
In fact I have. Ewert’s Null Hypothesis is a simple, single-level hierarchy. Contrasting this with a more complex, multi-level nested hierarchy is just a comparison between two hierarchies, which will of course fail to distinguish any data patterns that involve horizontal/non-hierarchical transfers of features.
Lacking any substantiation of how I am meant to have misrepresented your argument, this just is further evidence that Bill Cole doesn’t know what a straw man is, and that you are continuing to flail around for a distraction from the fact that you’ve painted yourself into a corner.
This appears to be one of the patented Bill Cole word-salads that @John_Harshman so often admires.
Thank you. The word I choose, to describe both your, and ID’s, argumentation is …
vacuous, adj
Not properly filled out or developed.
Empty of matter; not occupied or filled with anything solid or tangible.
Empty of ideas; unintelligent; expressionless.
Devoid of content or substance.
Unoccupied, idle, indolent; not filled up with any (profitable) employment or activity.
I will conclude by asking why a designer, rather than efficiently reusing design elements across all applicable new designs, would choose to limit themselves to only introducing elements where their employment closely matches a Nested Hierarchy? Other than emulation of “descent with modification”, I can see no good reason for doing so.
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(I might bring myself to at least pretending to care, if I had any evidence whatsoever that either of these two towering intellects had the slightest clue what a Nested Hierarchy is, let alone why it is important in Evolutionary Biology.)
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The NH is a real world pattern. Bats have wings and birds have wings, but bat wings are entirely unlike bird wings in keeping with their descent, so you cannot group them together. Sharks and whales have pectoral fins, but whales have forelimb bones and sharks do not, so again, they do not group. Just as you cannot group crows, widows, and panthers together just because they are black, unless black is all you care about. So convergent wings and pectoral fins do not present any problem or violation to the NH.
Convergent evolution, however, is a instructive demonstration of environmental selection operating on independent lineages to adapt existing traits to common challenges.
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Remember, Ron, I’ve never argued against “evolution” (in the sense of descent with modification). As John Harshman said somewhere, the “nested hierarchy” discussion pertains to common descent, and leaves untouched the question of mechanism. If I held to a version of ID that rejected “evolution” then your point would apply to me, but I don’t. God could produce a nested hierarchy ex nihilo, or he could produce a nested hierarchy by using an evolutionary process. So nested hierarchy doesn’t settle the question that is interesting to me, i.e., even assuming common descent is entirely true, why couldn’t the hierarchy it produces have been intended by the designer of the evolutionary process? For me, the major debate is between those who say that evolution has no direction, guidance, purpose, or plan, and those who say it does – not between “evolution” and “creation”.
Again, I have never defended any such thing. I don’t offer a history of the universe any different from that offered by standard evolutionary views. What I dispute is the interpretation of that history, not the events in it. This is where ID per se differs from creationism; creationism must affirm actual differences in the events, whereas ID, in some of its forms anyway, can agree on the history while differing in the interpretation.
I restate my original point: Nested hierarchy does not prove that a designer did not intend that hierarchy as the outcome of an evolutionary process.
You never even began.
Edit: Oh and it’s @colewd who doesn’t understand the difference between common descent, design, and separate ancestry. For example he can’t wrap his head around Michael Behe accepting common descent yet being an ID proponent at the same time.
No they don’t. Flat out lie. Why do you lie?
That is what we say to begin with, not as a response to anything creationists say. Why do you lie? The statement is also true. It is the philosophically right view to only posit what is needed to explain the observation. Show some ontological modesty please.
First of all why are you conflating discussions about common descent with discussions about intelligent design?
Nobody says a nested hierarchy is “PROOF” of common descent over separate ancestry (much less that it is proof against design). You understand the concepts of evidence and expectation? Proof doesn’t occur in science.
If we expect a certain pattern P to be way more likely on hypothesis A than on hypothesis B, then finding the pattern P is therefore evidence favoring hypothesis A over hypothesis B. It really is that simple.
It’s not that the pattern is impossible on B, it is however unexpected and you have to concoct some sort of ad-hoc story that is philosophically (and I might add theologically) problematic to raise the probability that B produces pattern P. The designer created the pattern that is inexorable on A by accident, or even deliberately, even though A did not occur, which is deceptive.
Now that is of course only about common descent vs separate ancestry. Nobody says common descent is a disproof of “design” (it can still be evidence against design if it is unexpected on design, even if it is not strictly logically incompatible with it). This has been explained every time to ID-creationists. Every time.
When it comes to design and the nested hierarchy, there is just no need for design at all. Common descent inexorably produces a nested hierarchy, so what the hell is the purpose of stuffing design in there to begin with? It’s like saying we need to add design to gravity to explain why things fall down. How does that help? Why would we do that? The force of gravity explains that already!
It is exactly a healthy respect for philosophy that teaches us how to understand the differences between evidence, expectation, and proof. About likelihoods of patterns on different hypothesis, and the problem of ad-hoc rationalizations.
You are no philosopher, nor a scientist.
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One has to wonder why we need to posit that a designer has to intend a nested hierarchy as a product of evolution, when evolution produces one automatically?
What’s next, we need to posit that a designer intends for waves to sort pebbles by size on the beach, when the mechanical action of the waves has that effect on their own?
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