Are there problems with the evolutionary scenario?

[beaglelady]

@NonlinOrg

Simply prancing around proclaiming stuff in post after post means nothing. It is wasting time that could be better used in actually studying science.

[NonlinOrg]

More likely you misunderstand my valid questions and don’t have valid answers. In this case, “getting off the bus” is actually smart.

[NonlinOrg]

It’s more like ‘asking elementary questions no one seemed to have asked before’.
We do not have to agree or even debate.

[beaglelady]

@NonlinOrg

It’s more like ‘asking elementary questions no one seemed to have asked before’.

That’s like going to Antarctica and claiming you are the first one to notice the ice.

[NonlinOrg]

You sent replies on four conversations so I will reply only to this one.

@benkirk

Not unless allele frequencies have changed. You’ve offered two environmental changes that may or may not drive evolution

This reply of yours doesn’t make sense. I will not address.

@benkirk

We test hypotheses, not definitions.

If the definitions associated with said hypothesis are lacking, then hypotheses are not testable, hence the 150 yrs. debate after Darwin. Unlike Evolution, no one debates the electron because it is well defined by mass, charge, spin, etc. which can be verified by many.

@benkirk

Changes in allele frequencies in populations over time

Not a good definition. Allele frequencies change with every newborn. Example: you have 1,000 blondes in a population of 1,000,000 and one new blond baby is born. The frequency has changed. And that’s just one allele, but how many alleles do we have?

@benkirk

Evolutionary biology and population genetics are sciences

Don’t mix the two. Genetics is science because you can test. Evolution is not because you cannot test.

@benkirk

Evolution happens to populations. A species is just one type of population

Population is defined as “a particular section, group, or type of people or animals living in an area or country”
spe·cies
ˈspēsēz,ˈspēSHēz/Submit
noun
1.
BIOLOGY
a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding.

I don’t see your contention. Not only that, but neither one of these are scientific definitions. there’s way too much room for interpretation. Go back to the definition of an electron - given a particle properties we can immediately identify/reject it as an electron. But whether an individual belongs to this or that population/species is always up for debate.

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

@NonlinOrg

You call that evolution? By all definitions, they’re part of the same species

Yes, we’ve been telling you repeatedly that we do call that evolution; it’s part of what we study when we study evolution. As for being the same species, sure, they are – but they wouldn’t be if other dogs didn’t exist. The morphological differences are great enough that they can’t mate, and without other dogs to mate with, they would go their merry ways as distinct species.

More to the point, the amount of morphological change we can see here is much larger than, say, between humans and chimpanzees. But in this case the differences evolved in less than one-thousandth the time than humans and chimpanzees have been evolving separately. That’s the pattern we see repeatedly: when we directly observe evolution in action, whether in the lab or in the wild, we see it moving much faster than the rate of change we see over geological time. So not only do we see evolution happening, we see it happening even faster than we might have expected.

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

@NonlinOrg

Far from it. If Lenski’s E.Coli experiment is evolution, then the Japanese people have also evolved after WW2 seeing that they grow bigger and have adopted the citrate (I mean western) diet. And not all of them mind you, just some strains of them Japanese. See? Just like in Lenski’s experiment.

That is exactly wrong. No, people getting larger because they’ve adopted a new diet is not evolution, because it does not involve a genetic change. That’s what the point of the allele frequency definition is: it tells you what counts as evolution and what doesn’t. Phenotypic change resulting from a change in diet doesn’t count.

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

@NonlinOrg

Unlike electron which are all identical as far as we can tell, organisms are all different and across time too.

Your response seems to have nothing to do with my post. You’re complaining (incorrectly) about the lack of a definition for evolution. I’ve pointed out that other fields of science do just fine without single, clear definitions of their subject matter. I asked you why it matters. Why does it? Do you think particle physics has a clear definition of “particle” or not?

@NonlinOrg

So how do you define evolution without a baseline?

I don’t know what the question means. Baseline of what?

@NonlinOrg

What change constitutes evolution?

Any change in the allele frequencies of a population – as I’ve told you before.

@NonlinOrg

Is every live birth evolution?

If it changes the allele frequencies in the population, then yes, as I’ve also told you before. You didn’t answer my question then: why is this a problem? To be sure, evolution caused by a single birth is unlikely to be at all interesting – we’re interested in the evolution of the whole population. But we have to draw the line somewhere, and some of what’s included as evolution is going to be insignificant.[quote=“NonlinOrg, post:54, topic:34603”]
You’re going in circles.
[/quote]
You seem to be ignoring everything I’m writing.

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

@NonlinOrg

If the definitions associated with said hypothesis are lacking

What definitions associated with what hypotheses are lacking?

@NonlinOrg

hence the 150 yrs. debate after Darwin.

There is no scientific debate about evolution – about whether it happens or about whether it generated the diversity of life on Earth.

@NonlinOrg

Unlike Evolution, no one debates the electron because it is well defined by mass, charge, spin, etc. which can be verified by many.

Electrons exist and have certain properties; we don’t define them, we observe them. Evolution – genetically driven change to populations – occurs and has generated the range of life we see today. In both cases, scientists study the phenomena and define (or sometimes fail to define) various terms for describing them. But there is no question that the phenomena are real. You seem to have gotten the phenomena themselves and the descriptions tangled.

@NonlinOrg

Don’t mix the two. Genetics is science because you can test. Evolution is not because you cannot test.

Population genetics is the mathematical study of evolution.

[beaglelady]

Whassa matter? Haven’t you heard of #alternativefacts?

[Chris_Falter]

@NonlinOrg

Just like in Lenski’s experiment.

Actually, not at all like Lenski’s experiment. Lenski identified several different mutations (most of them drift) that contributed to the breakthrough ability for one of the E. Coli strains to metabolize citrate aerobically. Whereas the Japanese diet since WW2 does not seem to be correlated with any change in allele frequencies.

The definition of evolution as change in allele frequencies has already been pointed out to you. That you keep repeating the same mistakes, and refusing to engage seriously with others in the conversation, is why one of our friends in this thread has already dropped out of the conversation. Ponder that for a minute. If your goal in this forum is to shout loudly at people who disagree with you…congratulations, you have accomplished your mission. Is that your goal?

Hoping that you are more interested in engaging in a constructive conversation, I want to respond in detail to another point you raised about the Lenski experiment–to wit, that we don’t see transitions across species boundaries. Let’s consider experiments in other disciplines first to see if they can help us set appropriate expectations for a biology experiment.

Geology
Not long after Darwin proposed the theory of evolution, Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift. His theory was based on several observations:

1. The west coast of Africa and the east coast of South America appear to have been joined over 100 million years ago. (A) Fossils of the fresh water mesosaurus are found on both continents. They would have been incapable of swimming thousands of miles through the salty Atlantic Ocean. (B) The shapes of the coastlines match very closely. (C) The stratigraphy of both coasts match like adjacent pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

2. Fossilized tropical plants were discovered in Norway.

Wegener misunderstood the mechanisms behind the drift of continents, but his basic insight is an important part of the current theory of plate tectonics.

So let’s say you’re a geologist, and you want to test the validity of plate tectonics. Could you design an experiment that directly observes two joined landmasses tear apart and drift thousands of miles apart? Obviously not, given that you do not have tens of millions of years available and they are thought to be moving at the rate of about 2 cm per year. However, you can design an experiment to test the hypothesis, based on plate tectonics, that we should observe 2 cm of motion per year. This is what NASA scientists have done with the LAGEOS satellites. It has been a (pardon the pun) smashing success.

Astrophysics
Based on the big bang theory (BBT) and the theory of relativity, should astrophysicists be able to design an experiment that observes, like a movie on a movie screen, the actual unfurling of universe from singularity to today’s vast expanse? Since we do not have 13.8 billion years, the answer is obviously not. But astrophysicists can use the foundational theories to predict phenomena such as the amount of apparent (not actual) visual correlation between relatively near galaxies and relatively distant quasars. They expect this to differ from the correlations predicted by Arp, who opposes the big bang theory. Examining the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data, astrophysicists have shown that the frequency of observed correlations agrees with the frequencies predicted by the BBT and relativity, not with the frequency predicted by Arp.

Astrophysicists can also use the BBT to predict the redshift of all but the closest galaxies. And yes, the data are consistent with the BBT.

Biology
Based on the theory of evolution, should biologists be able to design an experiment that observes a progression across a large phylogenetic distance, such as the distance from E. Coli to amoebae? Clearly not, as they don’t have the tens to hundreds of million years that would be required. However, they are able to predict the observation of evolutionary mechanisms such as drift, parallel changes, and genetic divergence in E. Coli bacteria.

Conclusion
Like geologists with plate tectonics and astrophysicists with the Big Bang, biologists are not able to directly observe 500 million years worth of change in a single population in just a few decades. But like the geologists and astrophysicists, they can use their discipline’s major theory to predict experimental observations of mechanisms and change across a more feasible time period. LAGEOS, the SDSS, and the Lenski experiment have succeeded in demonstrating how a major theory (plate tectonics, Big Bang, evolution) can yield testable predictions (landmass drift, frequency of visual correlation of galaxies with quasars, mutations and genetic drift).

Hope this helps,

[NonlinOrg]

@Chris_Falter

the Japanese diet since WW2 does not seem to be correlated with any change in allele frequencies

You’re making this up. Who has ever studied those alleles? Do we even know how many alleles there are?

@Chris_Falter

…distance from E. Coli to amoebae? Clearly not, as they don’t have the tens to hundreds of million years that would be required

Again, you’re making up the “required” time. You simply have no idea what it takes to get from E. Coli to amoebae.

@Chris_Falter

Like geologists with plate tectonics and astrophysicists with the Big Bang, biologists are not able to directly observe 500 million years worth of change

These unrelated topics don’t help your argument …aside from the fact that Big Bang is itself a questionable model which I will not discuss here.

@Chris_Falter

Hoping that you are more interested in engaging in a constructive conversation

I am not sure you even understand my position. If you care, you might want to start here: http://nonlin.org/evolution/

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@NonlinOrg

Christ_Falter writes: “the Japanese diet since WW2 does not seem to be correlated with any change in allele frequencies”

NonlinOrg writes: “You’re making this up. Who has ever studied those alleles? Do we even know how many alleles there are?”

@NonlinOrg

You can’t be serious.

Are you proposing that the reason the Japanese eat more French fries is because millions of Japanese, in the span of 20 years, have experienced genetic selection that compels them to eat a more Western diet?

Because there is not even any credible agent that could change the genetics for millions of Japanese in 20 years … we don’t have to ask about changes in the alleles. It’s a preposterous hypothesis.

But it can be tested, I’m quite sure - - it would be tested as False!

[NonlinOrg]

@gbrooks9

there is not even any credible agent that could change the genetics for millions of Japanese in 20 years

Are you saying your genetics match 100% those of one of your parents? Agent or not, genetics change continuously from generation to generation. You’re the one not serious.

[NonlinOrg]

@glipsnort

the amount of morphological change

Another nonscientific term. How on earth do you measure “morphological change”? You just don’t understand that vague descriptions ARE NOT part of the scientific method.

@glipsnort

There is no scientific debate about evolution – about whether it happens or about whether it generated the diversity of life on Earth.

Indeed, because evolution is not science. But there’s an intense philosophical debate that just included you and me.

@glipsnort

people getting larger because they’ve adopted a new diet is not evolution, because it does not involve a genetic change

How on earth do you know there’s no genetic change? Aren’t your genetics different from those of everyone else?

@glipsnort

other fields of science do just fine without single, clear definitions of their subject matter

No, they do not. You will never see a serious argument about “particle” in physics unless that particle is identified by other MEASURABLE properties.

@glipsnort

Baseline of what?

In order to measure change (evolution), you need to know the initial condition and the final condition. But everyone has different DNA in the initial condition, hence NO Baseline. True, we can estimate one allele before and after, but do you define evolution based on one or a few alleles? Another question is How much change is “Evolution”?
You say:

@glipsnort

Any change in the allele frequencies of a population

If so, then every new birth is evolution.

@glipsnort

But we have to draw the line somewhere,

And where EXACTLY do you draw the line? I have never seen this “line”, and this is exactly what I have been asking for all along.
Here is my original position which might help you understand: http://nonlin.org/evolution/

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@NonlinOrg

I am not sure you even understand my position. If you care, you might want to start here: http://nonlin.org/evolution/

@NonlinOrg

I went to your link. How can you write so much about something you don’t understand?

Here is a doozy of a paragraph right at the very beginning:

"Evolution is defined as “changes in gene frequencies in populations”.

For an aspiring scientific theory, this is vague and meaningless since every single newborn changes the gene frequency in a population."

There is nothing vague and meaningless about something you can Count.

Now that we have adequate genome technology, we can literally take a population of 1000 (let’s say…) Mice. And for the sake of simplicity, let’s say we are Only interested in Gene “A”, that comes in 5 forms.

And in 1000 mice, the allele proportions are:

673 mice have Allele #1,
135 mice have Allele #2,
88 Allele #3,
59 Allele #4, and
45 Allele #5.

1000 total pop.

So why is this vague? Or meaningless? This is incredible precision… now that we can tell precisely what makes one Allele different from another.

673 = 67.3%
135 = 13.5%
88 = 8.8%
59 = 5.9%
45 = 4.5%

1000 = 100.000%

So let’s imagine that there is ONE new birth. And for the gene we are tracking, we determine
that the new baby mouse has Allele #2, increasing the count from 135 to 136, and the total is now 1001.0 , instead of 1000.0.

This changes the percentage for the 2nd allele by 0.000864, or roughly 9 hundreds of an additional percentage, which looks like this: 13.5% becomes 13.59%.

As you can see, if we are rounding, there is no change in Allele frequency at all with just 1 birth.

So… as you can see… these statistics are:

1. countable,
2. provide adjustable precision,
3. are as meaningful as your precision allows.

Thus, your sentence: “For an aspiring scientific theory, this is vague and meaningless since every single newborn changes the gene frequency in a population.”

is wrong in just about every way it is possible for a sentence to be wrong.

It isn’t vague.
It isn’t meaningless.
It is only meaningless if you expect that one birth is supposed to have monumental affects.
But experts can tell you that the larger the population, the more stable allele proportions become.

It’s only when a population is on the verge of extinction that allele proportions have the power to dramatically shift … because there it is easier to influence a population of 50 than it is to influence a population of 50,000.

[NonlinOrg]

@gbrooks9

As you can see, if we are rounding, there is no change in Allele frequency at all with just 1 birth.

No, you cannot round and then give a bunch of disclaimers. And this is only 5 alleles. But how many alleles does an organism have? That’s why Evolution is not science. And we haven’t even gotten to “Common Descent”. How do you go from “allele frequency” to “common descent”?

Do you agree that every single newborn changes the gene frequency in a population? It’s fine, but utterly unremarkable if you want to define every newborn as Evolution.

[Chris_Falter]

@NonlinOrg

You’re making this up. Who has ever studied those alleles? Do we even know how many alleles there are?

If you understood population genetics, you would know that I am not making this up. There have only been two or three generations in Japan since WW2. That’s too few generations to manifest a significant shift in allele frequency.

Your accusation about my character is quite remarkable.

@NonlinOrg

You simply have no idea what it takes to get from E. Coli to amoebae.

I already gave you my idea and the mathematical basis behind it. You might try pointing out where my calculations supposedly went wrong, and to what extent.

@NonlinOrg

These unrelated topics don’t help your argument .

I am astonished that you don’t see the connection. They are very much related because they show how the natural science community performs the job of modeling, data-gathering, verification, etc. I have shown that the way the biological science community uses its major theory to inform research and gain a better understanding of mechanisms is consistent with the way the geology and astrophysics communities do their work.

Your thread-bare assertion that they are not related does not make your assertion true. On the other hand, if you would like to offer substance rather than bare assertion, I am all ears.

@NonlinOrg

If you care,

You haven’t given me a reason to care, NonlinOrg. If I saw you constructively engaging in the conversation here, I would be motivated to read what you have written elsewhere.

I hope my feedback helps you, NonlinOrg. Have a blessed day.

[glipsnort (Steve Schaffner)]

@NonlinOrg

Another nonscientific term. How on earth do you measure “morphological change”?

Seriously? If I showed you a Great Dane and a chihuahua, handed you a ruler and a scale, you wouldn’t be able to figure out how to do a quantitative measurement of the difference in their morphologies? Morphology means the physical structure of the organism. Physical structures can be measured – it’s something scientists are quite good at.

@NonlinOrg

Indeed, because evolution is not science. But there’s an intense philosophical debate that just included you and me.

You can hold whatever beliefs you want, but in the real world of people who actually do, fund, publish, teach and study science, evolution is part of science. That means that your belief in this case is simply wrong. (And no, this is not a philosophical debate.)

@NonlinOrg

How on earth do you know there’s no genetic change? Aren’t your genetics different from those of everyone else?

Because I know something about the subject.

@NonlinOrg

No, they do not. You will never see a serious argument about “particle” in physics unless that particle is identified by other MEASURABLE properties.

I’ve never seen a serious debate in biology about whether something is evolution either. And there’s plenty of fuzziness in physics about what a particle is. Is a nucleus a particle? Is a broad resonance a particle? How broad does it have to be not to count as a bound state? What about an excited state of another particle? I note that you still haven’t provided me with a definition of a particle.

Since you’re making sweeping statements about a broad range of scientific subjects, I have to ask: what are your qualifications for declaring what’s scientific and what isn’t? Exactly which fields have you published in?

@NonlinOrg

In order to measure change (evolution), you need to know the initial condition and the final condition. But everyone has different DNA in the initial condition, hence NO Baseline.

Your conclusion seems to have nothing to do with your premise. Everyone has different DNA, so we can count how many people have allele A at a site and how many have allele B there, and do the same for lots of other sites. Again, counting things is something scientists are good at. Then we can see whether the numbers change over time. Or we can compare two groups that have been separated for some time, and see how their allele frequencies differ.

@NonlinOrg

True, we can estimate one allele before and after, but do you define evolution based on one or a few alleles?

“Define evolution”? I’m not defining evolution – I’m studying it. We can observe evolution of one allele, or of lots of alleles, or of an entire genome. You keep saying these things as if they were some kind of problem, but they’re not. [quote=“NonlinOrg, post:75, topic:34603”]
Another question is How much change is “Evolution”?
[/quote]
That’s a question I’ve answered repeatedly. Why do you keep ignoring my answer?[quote=“NonlinOrg, post:75, topic:34603”]
If so, then every new birth is evolution.
[/quote]
Yeah, I know. Every time you say that, I agree and ask why it’s a problem. In response, you just say it again. [quote=“NonlinOrg, post:75, topic:34603”]
And where EXACTLY do you draw the line?
[/quote]
At any change in allele frequency.

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@NonlinOrg

No, you cannot round and then give a bunch of disclaimers. And this is only 5 alleles. But how many alleles does an organism have? That’s why Evolution is not science. And we haven’t even gotten to “Common Descent”. How do you go from “allele frequency” to “common descent”?

Do you agree that every single newborn changes the gene frequency in a population? It’s fine, but utterly unremarkable if you want to define every newborn as Evolution.

@NonlinOrg

I have to wonder if English is your language of birth. You don’t seem to follow the sense of the written word very well, which is common if your native tongue is some other language.

My point about rounding is pretty basic!: some experimental studies don’t need to have data extended to the “One Hundredth” of One Percent. And so, for those, the birth of one person may not change the numbers. I also said that you can be as precise as you want to be.

You complain that I chose a hypothetical example of a gene with 5 alleles. Did you really want me to choose a gene with 20 alleles… and then type up percentages, to the one hundredth for 20 alleles - - pre-birth and post-birth? You seem incapable of understanding “an example” or a “demonstration of the math”. You ask how many alleles does an organism have? I would ask you … do you know any experiment any where, that tried to make meaningful observations on hundreds of genes at a time, incorporation thousands of alleles?

Have you ever done a science fair project? Virtually all science experiments seek to focus on just a few variables… But, as I said already, because we can now quickly identify all the molecules of DNA and RNA, if you want to study hundreds of genes and thousands of alleles… the technology exists for you to do it. It’s just going to take a long time and cost quite a bit of lab costs. So shall we dismiss all science because “it just takes so long”?

As for your sentence: “It’s fine, but utterly unremarkable if you want to define every newborn as Evolution.” We have already covered the issue of materiality. In a 500,000 member population, the birth of one is not going to materially change the metrics. In a near-extinct population of 10 precious “Tiger Pigs” (< totally fictional name), then the birth of ONE is going to have a 10% affect on lots of things, right? While in a 500,000 population, a birth of one is going to be 2 ten-thousandths of one percent (0.0002%) - - or a factor of 0.000002.

Generally speaking, evolution doesn’t get interesting until you have spanned multiple generations. So while a single birth might technically qualify as a “teeny tiny bit of evolution”, it isn’t really what a researcher is looking for. He is looking for material changes in a whole population; one birth does not represent a material change. When botanists measure the growth of a plant … they usually just measure from the ground to the top of the plant. They might count the number of branches. But would you fault them for not counting roots … and not counting individual leaves … and then dismiss their results because counting roots doesn’t produce dramatic conclusions?

You need to make up your mind … either you are interested in the tiniest shift in the metrics, or you aren’t. Usually when metrics dwindle into incredibly small measures … the researcher says: “there was virtually no change” or “there was essentially no change” … and the like.

Conclusion: I strongly suggest you start paying attention to what people tell you about methodology and experimental design. You seem woefully unprepared to grasp when something matters, and when something doesn’t matter. Your main ambition appears to be to dismiss everything as having no value because it isn’t precise enough … or because it measures precision down to a level that is uninteresting to you. My dear sir, you cannot play both sides of the game.