What is GLF?
I didnât say it was nothing particularly new or exciting. I commented on how it would be deliberately misrepresented by IDers.
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A significant grant Sy - can you elaborate somewhat on the mission statement of this project. Is it reasonable to suggest that the project may consider theoretical notions that are not part of the current paradigm. By this, I mean are there any radical ideas that this project may consider, test, accept or reject?
I find EES to be something NEW to argue about ⌠rather than something that profoundly alters oneâs understanding of speciation and/or Natural Selection.
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Jon, Sorry for my misinterpretation. And I agree that ID folks, like Michael Denton and others have been quoting a good deal of this material, but I dont think Denton misrepresents it, at least not in his last book. (For more detail, see the review I posted here back in February). I have seen some misrepresentations by some YECs, and a few ID fans, but that has been going on for decades, starting (at least for my memory) with punctuated equilibrium, and the then neutral drift.[quote=âGJDS, post:23, topic:5494â]
can you elaborate somewhat on the mission statement of this project.
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I am not part of this project, (although I do have a small separate Templeton grant on a similar subject.) but I believe the project is mostly devoted to exploring niche construction as an evolutionary mechanism. I do know that there are over 40 investigators (in the US and UK) so there must be quite a bit of depth.
I am pretty sure the answer to that question is yes. I know that is true for my own project. I think that is the motivation for Templeton to fund such work.
Although Al directed his question to @Swamidass, I might be pardoned for giving my own answer. The GLF (Great Leap Forward) also called the Upper Paleolithic Revolution (UPR) was convincingly presented in the book The Third Chimpanzee, by Jared Diamond. The idea comes from archeological findings of sudden cultural and technological changes in H. Sapiens about 50,000 ya. That;s when people began moving out of Africa, started fishing, painting caves making elaborate tools etc.
To answer Leo, more recent findings have cast some doubt on the suddenness of these changes. More sites have been found with older examples of many of these technologies. I dont know the details, and havent followed the original literature, but I believe the current consensus is that the leap was more of a walk, and the revolution was more of an evolution. I do not think the final verdict is in, since the data are still being gathered.
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We nee to re-visit Ring Species âŚ
Ring Species represent NATURAL LABORATIES of evolution right in front all of us ⌠proving two challenging things simultaneously:
- a wide range of variety within a provably RELATED population of sub-groups⌠condensing thousands of years of âchangesâ into a string of populations that can all be evaluated simultaneously in the hear and now!
2) and proof that at least two sub-groups, demonstably related, can find themselves being incompatible with each other (the terminal ends of the same Ring Species)!
@Sy_Garte
@Jonathan_Burke
@GJDS
@gbrooks9
@aleo
In 1962 Thomas S. Kuhn published his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions about how fundamental change takes place in science. It was well received by many, but not by all. Richard Dawkins for one rejected the concept of scientific revolutions.
One new concept that Kuhn pioneered was the concept of models in science. He said that scientific revolutions took place when science shifted from one model of the universe to another. The Copernican revolution changed our view from an earth centered universe to a sun-centered solar system and then to an universe without a center.
In my opinion we are approaching a scientific revolution in evolution. EES is not the revolution, although it might be its beginning. Those who are set on upholding SET are only delaying the revolution.
No one really foresaw the Einsteinian revolution, so it should not be surprising that most scientists so not foresee a scientific revolution in evolution, but I assure you it is coming. Newtonâs Law of gravity did not last forever and Darwinâs TOE is coming to an end, which has little to do with ID. .
I guess I just think that set = ees. This seems like a substanceless vocabulary debate.
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Sorry Joshua. I thought I had expanded it early in every post where I used it. It stands for: the Great Leap Forward taken by the early Homo sapiens some 40K yrs ago as evidenced by the relatively sudden appearance of sophisticated cave paintings and sculpture, burials with valuable grave goods, simple musical instruments etc.âin other words a culture we would recognize as modern and an order of magnitude more elaborate than the stone cultures that preceded it. I first encountered the term in Richard Dawkins book, The Ancestors Tale (p.35) where he gives prior credit to Jared Diamond. I give Dawkins credit for mentioning it at all, because it was obviously embarrassing to him, since previously he had loudly and emphatically proclaimed that Darwinian evolution proceeded through small steps with no direction. For the anthropological evidence for GLF see Tattersallâs Becoming Human & Masters of the Planet.
Al Leo
Sometime in the fall of 1992, I heard a talk in the First E.coli Genomic Conference from a computer programmer working on the sequence alignments and annotations. He said that once we had the full genome sequence we would be able to unlock the entire functioning of E. coli.
I looked around the audience when he said that and I donât recall any biologist nodding their head in agreement. Speaking with others, we saw the statement as coming from someone grossly unfamiliar with the subject outside of a narrow experience. Most of us with any background in bacteriology or basic biology were well aware, long before then, that sequences alone were nowhere near sufficient for describing the operations of the cell. We thought the sequences provided a useful tool but they never were the be-all or end-all for describing life. That said, we did recognize that DNA provided the long-term âmemoryâ and had a critical role as a basis of inheritance.
Having worked in various areas of biochemical regulation over the years, I believe that a gene-centric view of life has been understood as mostly a first approximation approach for quite some time. This is hardly a ground-shaking or courageous position, I think, but has been a pretty mainstream one for at least the past few decades. Perhaps this has since been rebranded as a âthird-wayâ theme, but really, this is nothing new.
What is new(er) is having the tools to investigate the systems in finer details and model with higher levels of complexity. It was long suspected that regulatory plasticity effects evolutionary capabilities (particularly among multicellular eukayrotes) and much of that was confirmed from comparative biochemistry and genomics.
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Personally I doubt if the evidence will ever clearly define the amount for time it took for the transition. Of greater importance, is the acceptance of my premise that in any discussion of the relevance of Christian Faith in a science-dominated world, we define humankind more by our behavior than by our genetic makeup. As noted by Simon Conway Morris, for over 100K yrs. our species lived the same kind of life as our biological cousins, the Neanderthals. Some 40K yrs ago Homo sapiens lifestyle suddenly changed. They became US without any change in genes.
There are other questions to pose regarding my scenario, besides the timing. The clearest evidence for GLF comes from caves and burials in Europe and the mideast. But did GLF take place in other locations as well? What about the Australian aborigines? Current evidence supports their arrival in Australia about 60K yrs. B.P. Was it a separate epigenetic change that converted brain to mind in their case?
The historical record is clear: When European explorers encountered the native peoples of Australia, Tasmania, and Tierra del Fuego, they considered them sub-humanâsimilar enough so that missionaries set about try to save their souls; but still fair game for exploiting their labor for European empires. What if the GLF was separate from that in European peoples, did they still have an equal value? An American baby needs decades of education to perform at the âtopâ levels of our society; e.g. college professor, orchestral musician, businessman, etc. One Papuan native who saw his first white man arrive by airplane was flying one himself only a few years later.
I would like my Christian Faith to smoothly encompass all these accepted observations. Does God want all of humankind to know him and love him? The Spanish missionaries certainly thought they were doing the will of God bringing the knowledge of Christ to save them from the bloody Aztec worship of human sacrifice. But not all the efforts of bringing Christâs saving grace to the heathens had such beneficial results. By whatever mechanism the GLF occurred, its greatest effect was to promote cooperative societies where individual efforts could be greatly multiplied. For two millennia we have tried to build a such a society based on Christâs admonition to love oneâs neighbor, including those considered âenemiesâ. So far, science has not been of much help. What we see on TV and Facebook only reinforces the belief that we are headed in the wrong direction. Does anyone see it as a help in the future?
Al Leo
I have written and spoken about this previously. Curious your response to thisâŚ
There is a duality here, a paradox. We are genetically modified apes, but we are more than just apes.
On one hand, humans are entirely continuous with the animal kingdom. There are 10x more differences between mice and rats than humans and chimpanzees. There absolutely zero evidence that fundamentally new biochemical process enabled our origins. The notion that we need a new epigenetic mechanisms is, in my opinion, âso much tommyrot.â Evolution by natural mechanisms explains how we got here; in at least our material origins, as far as can currently tell. There are only a very small number of critical changes us and chimpanzees. We are largely the same genetic âpartsâ just âmixedâ by splicing and timing in a different way. Amazing right?
On the other hand, humans are discontinuous with the animal kingdom. Nothing like the human mind has ever arisen on earth before us. And with the human mind comes explosive cultural evolution, the likes of which there is no known parallel. In this, humans are truly exceptional and unique. Something very special and beautiful has happened in our origins.
Both these seemingly contradictory narratives appear to be true. We are simultaneously âfrom the dustâ and âimage-bearersâ. We are simultaneously âcreaturesâ and in âcommunion.â We are simultaneously exceptional and non-exceptional. We are both a âtiny stepâ from our ancestors, and âa great leap.â This is the paradox. Both are true.
The problem for Dawkins is not that he is wrong here. Rather his telling is incomplete. He argues one side of the paradox (at least at times), while forgetting the other.
Simply speaking. No. Apes have minds. Their brains very very similar to ours. Only very small changes were required to form the human mind and brain. There is no evidence that epigenetic changes were more important in this shift than others. In fact, the way epigenetics work in mammals (almost entirely wiped each generation), it is very unlikely this is the driving force of human evolution.
While we are continually learning about the mechanisms of evolution, there is no indication that the steps in human origins will require unique biochemistry. For example, there is good evidence that transposons carrying regulatory elements was particularly important in recent human evolution; this is a good way to âremixâ parts. Similarly, splicing variation seems to be a good portion of the difference between us and chimpanzees. These mechanisms, however, is not unique to our origins.
@aleo, rather than looking for some new mechanism, for which we have 0 evidence except incredulity, consider embracing the paradox. This is a place of true wonder and awe. A place of beauty and mystery. We are genetically modified apes, but we are more than just apes. We are the dust of the earth, but we are more than just dust.
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Argon
I had to smile at your comment, because I was in complete agreement at the time. I was skeptical of the human genome project when it began. But somewhere along the way, I became seduced by the pleasure of genomics (So much data, so easily) and began working only on gene polymorphisms and DNA. And of course, eventually, realized that I had been right (along with a lot of other folks) in the first place. BUTâŚin evolutionary biology and population genetics, these non gene centric ideas are still much more ground shaking than in other areas of biology such as biochemical regulation. Its no accident of course, than many of the Third Way folks are actually not evolutionary biologists originally (for which people like Coyne have attacked them) but physiologists (like Noble) or microbiologists (like Susan Rosenberg) etc. So I think we can agree that it is a good thing that many biologists are pushing the evolutionary biology folks to join the club. Finally.
Sy, I really donât see it that way. What I see are self-promoting statements about how a ânewâ approach, âpreviously ignoredâ will revolutionize a âmoribundâ science of evolutionary biology. Itâs a old, rhetorical technique of trying to play up the contrast between old and new. An extension seldom generates excitement like âthe newâ or âthe revolutionaryâ, but much of the hype is provided with an incorrect context of actual history. People like Larry Moran frequently skewer such pronouncements.
Aside:
The human genome project was also sold with a goodly amount of self-promotion and hyperbolic claims. Scientifically, the project was definitely useful but not nearly to the extent many participants said. And to be realistic, the early genome projects were done more because they were easy and could be readily accomplished, not because they were the best way for achieving groundbreaking science. Most biologists knew that the work would only start with the sequences, just providing one step along the long haul.
Still, as moon-shots go, it was probably more generally useful than many of the âomicsâ initiatives since.
Epigenetics:
Epigenetics is the the spotlight now because initial measurements are also becoming easy. We have the technology. I suspect the field is also being oversold but we will still characterize epigenetic modification sites and mechanisms because itâs another step along the way that will produce some useful insights.
I donât see these advancements as revolutionary but incremental. Perhaps because I favor the phagocytosis model for describing most of science.
Neo-Lamarkian:
Now, what really gets me seeing red is the term âLamarckianâ. I think thatâs sad because the mechanisms currently proposed as âLamarkianâ-like are but a pale shadow of the theory Lamarck proposed. For instance, Iâd like to see a biologically feasible, feedback mechanism of Lamarckian use/disuse that would account for the evolution of a giraffeâs neck. I think what counts as âLamarckianâ under ânewâ biology is piddling in comparison and I suspect these examples will cover a small set of special cases rather than be main drivers, especially in life with split germ and somatic cell lines. So, for those who want to claim that neo-Larmarckian mechanisms are wide-spread and generally applicable in evolution, Iâd really like them to list the sort of feedback mechanisms, underlying functions and specificity required to support such mechanisms on a broad scale. Early estimates from genetics suggested an upper limit to the number of genes an organism could maintain against drift and decay. Those estimates seem to have been reasonably close to what we see. I suspect there are also very real limits to the additional number of components required to support a general-purpose, neo-Lamarkian system.
Regarding popularizations missing many details:
Here is my favorite quote â âEvolution is so simple, almost anyone can misunderstand itâ by the late philosopher of science, David Hull
I doubt that many scientists in the field thought evolution was ever a simple, linear process. We hope itâs simple and there certainly are the rare, simple cases, but overall, biology rarely is easy.
I look at the advances from a technological view:
- Early on, âgenesâ were something one could study and thus genes were modeled. This was necessarily incomplete and most scientists in that field knew it.
- Later, recombination and crossing-over were studied and the linear model of genomes added model refinements. This was necessarily incomplete and most scientists in that field knew it.
- DNA and its replication machinery were characterized and we refined models with traits as products of that machinery. This was necessarily incomplete and most scientists in that field knew it.
- DNA & protein sequences yielded snapshots for comparative studies at the molecular level. This technology was used to refine evolutionary models. This was necessarily incomplete and most scientists in that field knew it.
- And so on.
Despite the shortcomings at each step, we did learn something about the nature and mode of evolution. Variation and selection are real phenomena. Taxonomy was combined with sequence data, cementing the overall pattern of common descent. Human and chimp variation fell well within the range of known molecular mechanisms, further proving relatedness. We learned that genomes constantly shift while many gross physical characteristics may persist. Changes in regulation generally occur faster than changes in structural proteins.
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Argon
If we remove the word self promoting (I trust you will agree that self promotion is a common occupational hazard of many scientists) and the quotes, I totally agree with this sentence.
Evolutionary biology itself has never been exactly moribund, but neither had it been terribly interesting in the mainstream. I think of the EES as what it says it is - an extension. There has been some degree of overblown rhetoric, (Shapiro is an example) but Wagner an Rosenberg and Laland are not claiming to be revolutionaries, they are just doing good research. I am aware of Moranâs skewering, and that is exactly the point. The fact that he, and his colleague Coyne bother to skewer efforts to expand evolutionary theory is exactly the reason that there is in fact a sense that this is a new, and controversial approach.
. To me there is no question that current evolutionary theory is incomplete. Dawkins disagrees. So do many others who feel that we dont need to find any further mechanisms for dramatic and rapid alterations in body plans other than the adaptationist paradigm (as Gould brilliantly wrote about).
We cannot say simultaneously that the EES is nothing new or different from SET, and that it is also wrong. So which is it? My own view is that neither are correct. I do expect a great deal of what is now found on the Third Way website will turn out to simply be wrong, as is the norm in science. But some of it has gone a long way to being well established. What counts now is not simply a recognition that the data imply a great deal more complexity than has been accepted previously, but that all of this must be incorporated into some useful theoretical framework within Darwinian theory. I think that is a very worthwhile endeavor, although I will not attempt to convince you further.
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Paradox is an odd term when discussing any scientific theory - what makes ToE so different that it can be discussed seamlessly as paradoxical. I should think a scientist would use semantics that either admitted the inadequacy of ToE in light of such an a paradox, or try to remove the paradox (some may argue that humanity contradicts ToE, but I am not looking for an endless exchange, so paradox will do).
Science is full of paradox. Its not just evolution that works this way, but the whole endeavor. Paradox lies at the foundation. This shouldnât be a surprise. Many early scientists were Lutheran after all =).
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I am not sure I understand you - the foundation of science is based on first principles, and from these we endeavour to understand the various disciplines. Your paradox is hardly in this area of science - we all admit that the human species is vastly different from any other species, as ~7 billion souls would show, with cities, vast tracks of land for food, the sky and ocean at the âmercyâ of humanity, wars that can exterminate vast tracks of the earth and its inhabitants, magnificent animal close to extinction, environments and eco-systems all but exhausted or destroyed - the list goes on. How can evolutionary biologists claim that this is merely the work of a clever ape?