Pardon me but is this you conceding the point here?
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I’m sorry, did this guy really include a table with that title in his “scientific” paper?
My cup runneth over.
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I think that at least in the case of whale flippers we have fine counter-examples, in the pectoral fins of various fish clades as well as penguin wings.
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That was noted earlier. The comparison in the Burgess paper is highly limited, which suggests that we can’t conclude that vertebrate limbs are even optimal for flight let alone being an optimal solution in terms of general versatility.
It also doesn’t support your earlier claim that, “the wings of birds are far superior than the wings of any device designed by humans.” (my emphasis)
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It should be noted that Burgess is likewise “mixing apples with oranges” and not giving the “correct, relevant comparison”.
It should be blatantly obvious that our completely hypothetical designer-of-lifeforms, and our completely real designer of “high performance drones” are under radically different constraints – in terms of power-sources, construction materials, and practical limits on complexity.
Burgess’ comparison is thus completely irrelevant, and nothing but more vacuous apologetics.
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You are the one who has difficulties to understand here. As I already told you at 115, when designing a system, one main purpose of the designer can be to confer the system with as much versatility as possible in order to allow for future adaptations of the system.
Below is the abstract of the paper I’ve given you as evidence of my claim. Hope you get the point this time.
The design of systems and components during the design stage of the systems life cycle requires specific purposeful actions to ensure effective designs and viable systems. Designers are faced with a number of adaptation concerns that they must embed into the design in every instance of thinking and documentation. The ability for a systems to change is essential to its continued survival and ability to provide requisite functions for its stakeholders. Changeability includes the non-functional requirements for adaptability, flexibility, modifiability and robustness. Purposeful design requires an understanding of each of these requirements and how to measure and evaluate each as part of an integrated systems design.
And yet the title of this thread is “optimal designs, rugged fitness landscapes…” which seems to imply a contradiction between the idea of an optimal design for adaptiveness, and a rugged fitness landscape, which you’ve clearly stated you think hinders or massively slows down adaptation.
Surely you can see the tension between the two ideas?
I would hope you’re not saying something so trivial as the idea that the design is as optimal towards future adaptation as the ruggedness of the fitness landscape allows, but still requires the designer to intervene to help adjust the further adaptations of the tetrapod limb. Because that would just be silly.
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I can see how human designers might in some cases be limited by the considerations you mention. But aren’t we talking about an omnipotent designer who could without effort make any changes necessary, including complete replacement of a system by another entirely dissimilar one, at any time? Even human designers are not limited in the way you claim, or an airplane would be just an adapted car just as a bird is an adapted tetrapod. Now, if you want to claim that the Designer is forced only to tinker slightly with existing designs for some reason, please do that explicitly, and explain why that would be the case.
To elaborate, human designers are capable of making massive changes without reference to the prior system, as when carburetors were over the course of a few years universally replaced by fuel injectors, which were not in any way modified carburetors. Or when propellers and internal combustion engines were replaced by jets in many aircraft; again, not in any way related to their predecessors. We see nothing like this in the history of life. Even the supposedly designed “vertebrate limb” (really the tetrapod limb) is only a development of the fins of prior fish. Look at Eusthenopteron and Tiktaalik. No design, only, at most, tinkering.
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But if you need to keep returning the device to the manufacturer for further modification every time you want it to perform a different function, it was not “optimized” for versatility.
This should not be difficult to understand.
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This very well might be true. But what is interesting in your formulation is the word development, which in biology refers to a controlled/programmed process. If indeed the tetrapod limb evolved from the fins of prior fish, my view is that it happened through a similarly controlled/programmed process.
Playing with words is your whole argument, and that’s not a good thing. And you dodge the point again. Why is your “Designer” limited to slight, gradual tinkering with what’s already there? Why does he so convincingly simulate what we expect from unguided evolution?
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I don’t know why you say I am playing with words here, for I am not.
This question doesn’t arise for me for I don’t share your view that the fins of fish morphed into the tetrapod limb through slight, gradual tinkering. Does the fossil records or something else provide evidence for this view?
I will accept that you don’t know what you’re doing. But fixating on the word “development” is nothing more.
Of course it does. I even provided you with two examples, Eusthenopteron and Tiktaalik, which you apparently didn’t even notice or weren’t in the least curious about. There are of course others I could have mentioned. You consistently ignore most of what people say to you, perhaps because it would be inconvenient to your claims to notice.
Yes. Nested hierarchy with what appears rather like a process of tinkering with existing materials, just as we see. No surprise, as what we see is just what led to the hypothesis of unguided universal common descent.
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That’s because you have remained ignorant of the biology.
Here’s a chance to test your hypothesis. What is your estimate of how many new genes should have been required for the redesign of the fin to the tetrapod limb? How many to get back to a whale fin?
I predict that you will not answer, because you have no confidence in your notion of ID.
Fossils, embryology and genetics provide massive evidence for evolutionary theory (not a mere “view;” your attempt to belittle it through language is blatant).
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How would a controlled/programmed process work? And how would you distinguish it from natural evolution?
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One way me can make the distinction: In the case of the development from a fertilized ovum to a complete organism, there is a defined set of steps that are nearly identical for every species and result in the same outcome from the same starting point. We have also been able to define the physical and chemical processes that control or guide these steps.
This is very different from what happens in evolution. There, from a single starting point, countless different processes follow, one for each species that followed from a single common ancestor. This is consistent with a random and unguided process.
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Only as concerns that specific system, for instance anticipating plant expansion, or future extra bridge lane.
But for clean sheet design, nobody cares about past or future systems. Wing designs in the past pose no constraint on a new plane, and future possible designs are irrelevant to the present. Back when architects were designing steel girder high rises, they were not making them versatile for future adaptation to form and concrete construction.
Ultimately, Burgess is not arguing for an adaptable design being passed on by any biological means, but for common design of independent ex nihilo creation of Biblical kinds. His intention is to diminish homology as evidence for common descent.
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I also have to note that development, that is the growth and differentiation of tissues in an organism during it’s life, is as gradual and smooth in it’s transitions as you can possibly get in biology. And yet @Giltil simultaneously questions the gradual and smooth nature of evolution while also suggesting that the history of life is better described as a developmental rather than evolutionary process.
These two notions don’t square. Where do I find the sort of saltational(?) development @Giltil seems to be suggesting in place of evolution.
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Sure. Take a walk in a park.
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Because the same arrangement to meet the demands for strength, dexterity, and manipulation applied just as well to the initial development of limbs, as for subsequent development of flippers and wings.
Further, especially for flippers, I find Burgess’s argument for optimal general architecture to be strained and entirely unconvincing.
What arrangement for early terrestrial locomotion would you expect?
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