So was Lamark just a teeny weeny bit right, after all?
No…
but the left wants to stretch it so the answer seems to be yes for the benefit of Lysenko and so on…
I find it a little frustrating that “science” is so often misused, mis-stated and mistaken. The tendency seems to be that either the process of getting some new discovery into the news corrupts the information OR that corrupting the information to make it more tantalizing gets it into the news. Either way it seems that if a new science study makes it into the popular media then what you are reading/hearing is false.
Two examples: 1. Diabetes is genetic you get it from your parents not your food. There is the same rate of diabetes today as there was 10, 20 50 years ago contrary to what the media tells us. 2. Obesity is genetic. Prior to 1998 the obesity rate was identical to what it is today but in that year obesity was redefined and as a result it doubled. Those who know this but still try to misuse this to claim obesity is dramatically on the rise are simply dishonest, sometimes criminally dishonest.
The net result of this intentional obfiscation of science is a growing distrust of “science”.
What I want to know is whether or not species evolve? Is that too tough? Both natural selection and epigentics seem to posit evolution, one by mutation the other, possibly, by design which occurs through interaction of environment and genetic code.
And yet, the fossil record shows no mutation or epigenesis for many species which have stayed constant from their beginning. How is it possible to have sharks and alligators? And then homos so much later? Is the fossil record now considered completely reliable?
And why has the academy become the inquisition?
There are many folks out there who want you and me to feel guilty for what we are doing. Ignoring them works for me.
ED was just a tiny weeny bit right:
Who are you? I’m Obama!
Are you nothing too?
Don’t advertise the truth.
Curtis, this is awfully pertinent question which almost nobody dares to ask. The simplest answer is “No, species do not evolve”, they just exist for some, not very long time, typically 6 mln years, and get extinct. And new species arise, some different in form and habits from parent species, but not always, and some designs are so well balanced that the descendants are hardly different from their parents so that fossil record shows practically no change. To be more precise, it can be stated that the notions of evolution and species are mutually incompatible: if there is an evolution as Darwin posed it, there are no real species, and if species are real, than evolution is an illusion. Darwin defended the first option: distinct species are illusion, fossil record is so incomplete that we can not detect the transitory forms in it. Now we know that Darwin was wrong, species are real and almost all the time of their existence they are stable, do not evolve, and all the changes happen in acts of speciation, which are not gradual, but abrupt, practically instantaneous at geological time scale, so these transitory forms are pure speculation, never present in fossil record.
Today is the anniversary of Hiroshima….
Sergey, isn’t this the same as Stephen Jay Gould’s well known theory called punctuated equilibrium?
Thanks Sergey. I did think about buying Dr. Shishkin’s book, but it was a little expensive and too advanced for me. I need a more general beginner’s book. I did come to the conclusion that Darwin was indeed a good scientist and he even provides for epigenetic possibilities.
I never doubted that Darwin was a very good naturalist. He was just a mediocre philosopher and theorist, and he himself admitted as much. “I don’t get a metaphysical head”, he wrote in one of his private letters. So he adopted a purely empirical approach to his study of evolution, and this is a poor choice when theoretical questions are considered. He based almost all of his theory on a very biased sample – fauna of Galapagos archipelago. Now we know that island races are exceptions in many ways, and first of all they lack stability which mainland species possess. His second empirical basis – practice of selective breeding, which was an English national sport and hobby, – also has little in common with natural populations, and also results in loss of morphological stability. So the central idea of his opus magnum – natural selection – is an oxymoron. In natural populations no true selection is possible, selective breeding demands isolation of deviant individuals and their matching with alike deviants. Artificial selection can change appearances very quickly, but it can not produce new species.
As for introductory reading, all popular books by Steven Jay Gould are “must read”. I do see a lot in common between “punctuated equilibrium” theory and epigenetical evolution theory, but the first came from study of fossil record, and the second from theory of ontogeny (developmental biology) and was put forward in 1940, while “punctuated equilibrium” theory was proposed 30 years later.
Please, all this talk of the conceptual and metaphysical implications of the evolutionary paradigm and its various mechanisms misses the wonderful news.
Finally, we – or all right thinking progressives – now have the evidence, or all the evidence we need, to begin the process of implementing more forward thinking, rather than merely reactive, legislation.
It’s clear that the issue of individual food consumption is much too important to take a laissez faire approach, when the health and welfare of generations, and the entire community is placed at risk, every time some self-indulgent wing-nut decides to gorge himself on harmful pleasures. Or even worse, decides in the name of some spurious concept of “liberty” to impede progressive legislation and selfishly deprive his fellow man of the needed guidance and direction to develop to his or her full potential as a contributing member of the community.
Conservatives must face the fact that science has now demonstrated not only that what you personally eat affects others through generations, but that the predictable conservative attitude of resistance, their indifference toward what others do, and their lack of communal zeal and cooperation, actively harms those who would most immediately benefit from the therapeutic ministrations of the state.
John Edwards understood the role the state should play in the maintenance of a healthy community when he in advocated for a government program which would ensure we all undergo mandatory yearly health checkups, and that these records be securely stored in the appropriate government data base.
How much more necessary than that, given this new science, is it that our government should be proactive rather than merely reactive in ensuring the biological and reproductive health of the whole community?
For a better future, for the health of our community, for sake of the children; we must end this present state food choice irresponsibility, which, as the Nobel Prize winning sage Paul Krugman said about poverty, is a poison, the effects of which span generations.
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So was Lamark just a teeny weeny bit right, after all?
No…
but the left wants to stretch it so the answer seems to be yes for the benefit of Lysenko and so on…
I find it a little frustrating that “science” is so often misused, mis-stated and mistaken. The tendency seems to be that either the process of getting some new discovery into the news corrupts the information OR that corrupting the information to make it more tantalizing gets it into the news. Either way it seems that if a new science study makes it into the popular media then what you are reading/hearing is false.
Two examples: 1. Diabetes is genetic you get it from your parents not your food. There is the same rate of diabetes today as there was 10, 20 50 years ago contrary to what the media tells us. 2. Obesity is genetic. Prior to 1998 the obesity rate was identical to what it is today but in that year obesity was redefined and as a result it doubled. Those who know this but still try to misuse this to claim obesity is dramatically on the rise are simply dishonest, sometimes criminally dishonest.
The net result of this intentional obfiscation of science is a growing distrust of “science”.
What I want to know is whether or not species evolve? Is that too tough? Both natural selection and epigentics seem to posit evolution, one by mutation the other, possibly, by design which occurs through interaction of environment and genetic code.
And yet, the fossil record shows no mutation or epigenesis for many species which have stayed constant from their beginning. How is it possible to have sharks and alligators? And then homos so much later? Is the fossil record now considered completely reliable?
And why has the academy become the inquisition?
There are many folks out there who want you and me to feel guilty for what we are doing. Ignoring them works for me.
ED was just a tiny weeny bit right:
Who are you? I’m Obama!
Are you nothing too?
Don’t advertise the truth.
Curtis, this is awfully pertinent question which almost nobody dares to ask. The simplest answer is “No, species do not evolve”, they just exist for some, not very long time, typically 6 mln years, and get extinct. And new species arise, some different in form and habits from parent species, but not always, and some designs are so well balanced that the descendants are hardly different from their parents so that fossil record shows practically no change. To be more precise, it can be stated that the notions of evolution and species are mutually incompatible: if there is an evolution as Darwin posed it, there are no real species, and if species are real, than evolution is an illusion. Darwin defended the first option: distinct species are illusion, fossil record is so incomplete that we can not detect the transitory forms in it. Now we know that Darwin was wrong, species are real and almost all the time of their existence they are stable, do not evolve, and all the changes happen in acts of speciation, which are not gradual, but abrupt, practically instantaneous at geological time scale, so these transitory forms are pure speculation, never present in fossil record.
Today is the anniversary of Hiroshima….
Sergey, isn’t this the same as Stephen Jay Gould’s well known theory called punctuated equilibrium?
Thanks Sergey. I did think about buying Dr. Shishkin’s book, but it was a little expensive and too advanced for me. I need a more general beginner’s book. I did come to the conclusion that Darwin was indeed a good scientist and he even provides for epigenetic possibilities.
I never doubted that Darwin was a very good naturalist. He was just a mediocre philosopher and theorist, and he himself admitted as much. “I don’t get a metaphysical head”, he wrote in one of his private letters. So he adopted a purely empirical approach to his study of evolution, and this is a poor choice when theoretical questions are considered. He based almost all of his theory on a very biased sample – fauna of Galapagos archipelago. Now we know that island races are exceptions in many ways, and first of all they lack stability which mainland species possess. His second empirical basis – practice of selective breeding, which was an English national sport and hobby, – also has little in common with natural populations, and also results in loss of morphological stability. So the central idea of his opus magnum – natural selection – is an oxymoron. In natural populations no true selection is possible, selective breeding demands isolation of deviant individuals and their matching with alike deviants. Artificial selection can change appearances very quickly, but it can not produce new species.
As for introductory reading, all popular books by Steven Jay Gould are “must read”. I do see a lot in common between “punctuated equilibrium” theory and epigenetical evolution theory, but the first came from study of fossil record, and the second from theory of ontogeny (developmental biology) and was put forward in 1940, while “punctuated equilibrium” theory was proposed 30 years later.
Please, all this talk of the conceptual and metaphysical implications of the evolutionary paradigm and its various mechanisms misses the wonderful news.
Finally, we – or all right thinking progressives – now have the evidence, or all the evidence we need, to begin the process of implementing more forward thinking, rather than merely reactive, legislation.
It’s clear that the issue of individual food consumption is much too important to take a laissez faire approach, when the health and welfare of generations, and the entire community is placed at risk, every time some self-indulgent wing-nut decides to gorge himself on harmful pleasures. Or even worse, decides in the name of some spurious concept of “liberty” to impede progressive legislation and selfishly deprive his fellow man of the needed guidance and direction to develop to his or her full potential as a contributing member of the community.
Conservatives must face the fact that science has now demonstrated not only that what you personally eat affects others through generations, but that the predictable conservative attitude of resistance, their indifference toward what others do, and their lack of communal zeal and cooperation, actively harms those who would most immediately benefit from the therapeutic ministrations of the state.
John Edwards understood the role the state should play in the maintenance of a healthy community when he in advocated for a government program which would ensure we all undergo mandatory yearly health checkups, and that these records be securely stored in the appropriate government data base.
How much more necessary than that, given this new science, is it that our government should be proactive rather than merely reactive in ensuring the biological and reproductive health of the whole community?
For a better future, for the health of our community, for sake of the children; we must end this present state food choice irresponsibility, which, as the Nobel Prize winning sage Paul Krugman said about poverty, is a poison, the effects of which span generations.