Whether or not they are a waste of time varies from year to year. Last year, in my area, the predictions of the strains were wrong and the shots did no good. But there is a sense in which medical scientists can predict regarding such things, I grant. However, I was hoping for examples beyond one-celled organisms. Can you think of any?
So are you telling me that we now know the mutation rate in humans? I have no reason to dispute this. But if so, then knowing that mutation rate, what future developments in human evolution do you predict? Will our brains get bigger? Will our lungs become better at breathing polluted air? How does knowing the mutation rate help you to predict when the next evolutionary novelties will occur, and what they will be – or even might be? In humans, or in tigers, or in roses?
I’m not faulting you if you can’t make such predictions. I’m just asking you to be honest about whether or not you can.
Some of the efforts to protect endangered species depend on what has been learned from evolutionary biology.
That is not what evolutionary theory predicts. It predicts something else.
I’ve been telling you since the beginning of this thread that these are not the predictions evolutionary theory can reliably make.
You clearly did not follow.
Based on mutation rates, we can predict how genetically different humans (or other animals) will be, say, 1000 years in the future. We can predict which parts of their genomes will be most different, and in what way they will be most different.
That is true too.
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Good! Now we are getting somewhere. So please publish these predictions, with as much specificity as you can – oh, and make sure your prediction includes not just the genomes, but the phenotypes as well – so that 1,000 years in the future, the people of that era will be able to look back and see how good the evolutionary science of 2018 was.
How about a Time Capsule format? You and 999 other scientists will each, without consultation, write up your individual predictions (and the rationale behind them), and seal them in an envelope, with all 1,000 envelopes to be enclosed in a hermetically sealed box to be opened in 3,018 A.D. The capsule could be buried in some scientifically significant place, such as Darwin’s house at Down, or the favorite pub of Stephen Jay Gould, or the lawn outside of Behe’s office at Lehigh University.
@Eddie you are a very stubborn person. Evolutionary science cannot reliably predict the phenotypes. You are intentionally being difficult.
Better yet, we are testing it all the time with ancient DNA. Guess what? The predictions work.
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No, not intentionally. It’s in the nature of the case. It’s the phenotypes that natural selection (where it acts) directly acts upon. So if you can’t predict the phenotypes, you can’t predict how natural selection will act on your future creatures, and that means you can’t predict evolutionary outcomes, in any useful sense. All you can predict is population genetics outcomes.
Of course, if evolutionary science gets better, maybe it will one day be able to predict the phenotypes. But that would require a deeper understanding of the relationship between genetic change and organismal change. There’s a great deal still to be learned about that.
Unlikely.
I do find this amusing. Some folk spend a whole bunch of time complaining that science is too mechanistic. And then they turn around and complain that evolution isn’t mechanistic enough.
No real inconsistency there, because the two complaints have two different targets in mind.
The second complaint is based on the boasts of evolutionary champions, not on my own thoughts about what evolutionary science is ever likely to be able to predict. The NCSE was always saying things like: “Evolutionary science is as certain as Newton’s theory of gravity”; but Newton’s theory of gravity was mechanistic; in the hands of a Laplace, it boasted that it could predict or retrodict any future or past state of the universe from the present state. In other words, if you really have a handle on the science of dynamics (the study motion with reference to cause, as my old physics teacher defined it), you should be able to say how long it will be before some asteroid hits the earth, how much force it will hit with, what will be the size of the waves if it lands in the water and hits the ocean floor, etc. By analogy, if one has a fully mechanistic understanding of how genes produce proteins, how proteins act in the body, how bodies are formed from embryos, how the phenotypical features of the body emerge (which includes knowledge not only of genes but also of the expression of genes), how particular features of a body would react to heat, cold, rain, lack of moisture, etc., one could in principle predict whether or not a certain set of genomic changes would produce a woodpecker with a harder beak that would be able to survive in a new environment where trees had a different kind of bark.
Of course, we are nowhere near such a fully mechanistic understanding, but that is exactly the type of understanding that, we are told, modern science seeks, and it is the only type of understanding that, it seems, modern biologists seek. (We’ve seen how biologists here – I’m not speaking of Joshua – have rejected a vitalistic understanding, for example, and elsewhere they have rejected any possibility of designed features in nature. Even Christian biologists like Dennis Venema appear to be wedded to reductionist, mechanistic modes of explanation as the only “scientific” way of doing things.) So the implicit goal of what is held up as “mainstream” evolutionary theorizing is the complete understanding of all the causes of evolution, at all levels – genetic, developmental, environmental – and that should in principle yield predictability, at least approximate predictability, of evolutionary outcomes not yet realized. Maybe not to the last detail, but at least up to the level of predictability that, say, meteorology or economics has achieved. And maybe not as accurate for a billion years in the future, but reasonably accurate for shorter periods.
Personally, I think it is unlikely that evolutionary theory will ever attain this goal, but I’m merely extrapolating from its claim to be as rigorous as Newtonian science and its mechanistic strictures about how living systems are to be understood. Given those premises, the claim that “Evolutionary theory doesn’t “do” future predictions” is a little puzzling. Scientific understanding of nature, especially a mechanistic understanding of nature, has been linked with the prediction and control of nature since the clarion call of Bacon and Descartes at the beginning of modern science, and there is no reason why evolutionary theory or any other branch of science should suddenly grow weak-kneed about the ability of science to predict future outcomes.
Now, the first complaint is more my own, and, as far as I understand it, the complaint of Turner (though he can speak for himself when he comes here – something I’m glad to hear about). I think that living organisms are more than just the sum of their physical parts, and that (not to deny the mechanical aspects of some of the operations of living things) we will never understand life if our science of life refuses to go beyond thinking in terms of chemical and physical laws. So I don’t think we will ever be able to understand evolution in purely mechanistic terms, or predict evolutionary outcomes beyond ones that are so obvious as to be nearly tautologies (e.g., if you kill off all the bacteria in your body that can’t resist an antibiotic, the only individuals left will be those that can resist the antibiotic – duuh). Joshua or someone else might be able to predict, on a statistical basis, what genes will be found in the human population 100,000 years from now, but because life isn’t mechanistic, that won’t give us enough information to predict exactly how those humans will differ from humans today.
And note the nature of my doubt. My doubt isn’t based on the notion that evolution is just too darned complex for us to track all the results very far into the future. It’s based on my sense that life does not lend itself to fully reductionist explanation, so a purely reductionist science is not appropriate to the subject “life” – and therefore to the subject “evolution of life”.
So, despite the appearance of self-contradiction as you have laid it out, my position is coherent.
Given that Newton’s theory of gravity has been overturned by General Relativity, that isn’t much a claim.
However, I agree with your point, that the supporters of evolution do overdo their boasting. However, I also recognize that this is partly a reaction to the claims of creationism. Rhetorical wars always seem to go to overstatement.
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Statements like this are usually made in reference to evolution being “true”, as in “it happened”. I’ve never taken those statements to mean “we understand evolution in the same mechanistic way we understand gravitational mechanics”, or anything similar.
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You are picking on NCSE for that? NCSE is working to improve science education in our public schools. It should be supported not vilified by Christians who hold creationists views and other anti-science biases. Another Dover storm is brewing in Arizona and NCSE is in the middle of it:
Meanwhile the American Institute of Biological Sciences called on the Arizona state board of education to reject the draft science standards.
This may end up in court as many organizations including non-creationist parents with children in school may sue.
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You are probably correct, in the main. However, it’s good to keep in mind the context: many of these statements by NCSE worthies and others were made in combat with, not creationists who denied evolution had even happened, but ID proponents, some of whom did not object to evolution, but only to non-teleological views of evolution. And on various blog sites the meaning of “evolution is as certain as Newton’s theory of gravity” was sufficiently ambiguous that it often seemed as if both the fact of evolution and the purported mechanisms (e.g., mutation, natural selection) were beyond question, i.e., it was just as bad to question the Modern Synthesis as to question common descent itself. And Scott’s organization opposed not only questioning of common descent in the schools; it rejected every call by Discovery to supplement the standard account of evolution with accounts by the critics of the standard account: that is, the NCSE didn’t just want to keep Ken Ham out of biology class, but wanted to keep the criticisms of Shapiro, Margulis, Newman, etc. out of biology class. So it often seemed that not only the fact of evolution but a certain standard account of the mechanism was sacrosanct. But probably you are right that in many cases nothing more than common descent was being equated with gravity.
For a start, I don’t see the Discovery Institute pushing for the teaching of new ideas in evolutionary biology without an ulterior motive. Of course the NCSE is going to resist the DI, given their track record. I know about Shapiro and have an inkling at what you might be getting at mentioning Margulis, but what exactly are you purporting Newman’s criticisms to be? I’m familiar with some of his work, and it’s quite commonly shown in undergraduate textbooks. Maybe I’m biased because I’m an evolutionary developmental biologist, but most of what Newman (and Wagner) says doesn’t seem particularly controversial.
Remember that the NCSE isn’t trying to be the arbiter of what is “allowed at the table” of evolutionary biology - their focus is on teaching standards. That means emphasising the solid core of evolutionary theory to high school and undergraduate students. They’re not going to discuss much of the bleeding-edge controversies, that’s the responsibility of later education.
This is simple, isn’t it??
God’s activity in the origin of species cannot be considered scientifically because an intelligent being might do almost anything, and so is unpredictable.
But current evolutionary theory involves so much contingency that it cannot, and does not attempt, to make predictions about the origin of species.
Ergo, the origin of species is not lawlike. It can be attributed, on necessarily non-scientific bases, either to unguided ontological chance, or to divine purpose, with equal empirical confidence. Any choice between them is theological, or philosophical, or aesthetic - but not scientific.
The lawlike aspects of evolution, which do lend themselves to scientific manipulation, are equally attributable to divinely, or non-divinely, appointed laws, but since these cannot predict the origin of species, that question has not been answered. So, as Asa Gray wrote:
So the issue between the skeptic and the theist is only the old one, long ago argued out — namely, whether organic Nature is a result of design or of chance. Variation and natural selection open no third alternative; they concern only the question how the results, whether fortuitous or designed, may have been brought about. Organic Nature abounds with unmistakable and irresistible indications of design, and, being a connected and consistent system, this evidence carries the implication of design throughout the whole. On the other hand, [ontological] chance carries no probabilities with it, can never be developed into a consistent system, but, when applied to the explanation of orderly or beneficial results, heaps up improbabilities at every step beyond all computation. To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The alternative is a designed Cosmos.
Are you saying that evolutionary developmental biology is now mainstream? If so, I’m not objecting, but it wasn’t always so, was it?
Newman (I assume we are both talking about Stuart Newman), before the Altenberg conference, perceived evolutionary theory as needing some fresh ideas. There is an interview of him, done after the Altenberg conference, in which he indicates that progress has been made, but that there is still a good deal of entrenched “old thinking” about evolution that needs to be superseded. The interview can be found at:
I quite like Newman’s presentation. He carefully qualifies his statements, his tone is non-polemical, and he resists the temptations offered by the interviewer to become more aggressive. Aside from that, he says a number of useful things about Darwinian thinking – in what respects it is still valid, and in what respects it has been transcended. Relevant to the NCSE and the Dover trial, he laments the close identification of evolutionary theory with Darwinian thinking; he thinks it was a strategic error (and scientific error) for the prosecution at the trial and the NCSE cheerleading over the trial to push for such a close identification. He sees that as actually harmful to the overall goal of the NCSE, i.e., to obtain greater public consent to evolution.
It seems to me that Newman’s approach to discussing these matters is infinitely preferable to the mode of discussing them we see in Coyne, P.Z. Myers, Eugenie Scott, Dan Dennett, Ken Miller, Richard Dawkins, etc. I think that the public reaction against evolution would be much less if people like Newman were the spokespersons for evolution, rather than those others.
The field of evolutionary developmental biology itself? Of course it is - it occupies an entire subdepartment in my university, for example. That’s not to say that literally every idea that’s come out of the field is “mainstream” yet, but the basics are there. It’s trivial to say that evolutionary developmental biology hasn’t always been “mainstream”, at least in some sense, although obviously there is a long history of the study of development and evolution being linked.
I don’t much of what Newman said in that interview would be controversial today, at least it’s not to me. Newman gave a talk at a conference I went to a few months ago on this subject, in fact he and Gerd Muller organised an entire symposium on it, and it didn’t cause any controversy or consternation in the (large) audience. Maybe this isn’t representative as it was an Evo-Devo conference, but it’s really not as though Newman et al. are proposing anything particularly radical, from the perspective of the field. I haven’t spoken to any scientists in a radically different field to see what they think about it, but I have no reason to believe they’d be particularly against it. The same goes for the people you listed like Coyne, Miller, Dawkins, etc. If you sat them down for a chat with Newman I doubt they’d disagree in principle with the ideas he’s talking about. The only “debate” would be the relative contributions of the different mechanisms. P.Z. Myers especially would probably raise little objection, since he’s a developmental biologist himself.
What a terrible interviewer though. I’d read some of Susan Mazur’s articles, but she really outdid herself in this interview, talking about the NCSE and its “cronies”, and the “fattening of the Darwinian industry tapeworm”. Vile.
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I have no problem with that, but it was only in 2011 that a working population geneticist commenting at BioLogos poured scorn on Evo Devo pretensions to explaining anything.
Now was he speaking for the mainstream, or is Evo Devo? Or, as I have long suspected, there is no global theory, but variant evolutionary theories are best viewed as legitimate in their own fields and only partly compatible with each other.
It’s hard for me to comment without seeing exactly what he said, isn’t it?
I hate to break this to you, but this can be said for any scientific theory. Different subdisciplines will always fight over the relative contributions to the greater discipline.
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You’re not breaking it to me, but it seems to speak with forked tongue. On the one hand, a population geneticist says of a molecular biologist such as James Shapiro (say) or a physiologist like Denis Noble that they speak outside the mainstream in promoting their particular angle on things.
On the other, it is admitted that different disciplines actually do fight over the relative importance of their contributions.
So does this mainstream actually exist, and how is it defined?