[MD] Distinguishing Levels (Individual level)

[ian glendinning]

Omigawd - Platt you have surpassed yourself on this one.

Where to start ? With contempt perhaps.
Or no, hang on a moment - maybe THIS is Platt being ironic - whaddya think ?

Some great news stories of Reverse Evolution in the press currently,
should be right up your street Platt. Humans regressing to walk on all
fours ...

Bye,
Ian

On 6/6/06, Platt Holden <pholden at davtv.com> wrote:
> Hey SA,
>
> >      Platt said:  "Inability of a second generation to
> > breed with a previous one takes evolution nowhere."
> >
> >      In this statement of yours Platt, you are going
> > against a main, general, and wide-spread definition
> > that biologists teach in Biology 100 to accurately
> > portray according to the current science what it means
> > for a species to no longer be identified as one
> > species and must be given a new species label.  A
> > species changes into another species or is a different
> > species when the new species can no longer breed with
> > its' parent population or another population no matter
> > what they look like - this is defined as evolution.
> > Morphology still helps in identification, especially
> > in the fossil record, but current studies with
> > animals, even plants, that have similar form are not
> > always the same species because of this inability to
> > breed with each other.  That's why there are
> > evolutionary lineages based on morphology, and other
> > lineages based on genetics.  These two ways of
> > defining a lineage rarely ever veer from each other,
> > they usually come to the same conclusions.
> >
> >      Platt said:  "Problem is, the fossil record
> > doesn't show millions of tiny intermediate steps
> > culminating in a new form. Rather it shows big jumps."
> >
> >      Yes, that's why Niles Eldridge and the late
> > Stephen Jay Gould came up with punctuated equilibrium
> > (PE).  It says evolution occurs with more frequency on
> > a equilibrium state (static pattern), and then when
> > change or evolution occurs it will be seen as a
> > punctuation (dynamic quality at work here) in the
> > fossil record.  Keep in mind this punctuation still
> > occurs over a span of a million (if not millions) or
> > hundreds of thousands of years.  I said PE occurs with
> > more frequency according to these two scientists,
> > because where PE occurs in the fossil record,
> > sometimes though with much less frequency, a slow,
> > little by little change (I forgot what the term is
> > called [books of mine still unpacked]) that Darwin
> > came up with can be noticed in the fossil record.
> >
> >      Platt said:  "My theory is that the life force
> > (DQ) works to change forms for the better. When it
> > runs up against a catastrophe, like the extinction of
> > the dinosaurs, it works hard to avoid such
> > catastrophes in the future.  Thus, it switched from
> > making bigger and bigger reptiles to creating bigger
> > and bigger brains, big enough not only to deflect a
> > meteor like the one that extinguished the dinosaurs,
> > but to eventually leave this planet and continue life
> > elsewhere in the universe before the sun expands and
> > burns out all life here a few billion years from now."
> >
> >      Your theory is similar to how scientists think
> > currently.  Even Pirsig's levels have a scientific
> > mirror in Gould's Hierarchical Theory, which states
> > pretty much the same thing as Pirsig, but Gould goes
> > into a lot more detail with scientific data to back up
> > his theory.  Gould in his book 'The Structure of
> > Evolutionary Theory' goes into at least a hundred
> > pages, I believe, on this Hierarchy (which he also
> > explains does not mean to increasing domination) of
> > independent levels with for example a biological level
> > and a social level, etc...  I keep wondering how he or
> > Pirsig came up with their similar ideas, but again, I
> > don't have that book with me right now to see any
> > references Gould might make to Pirsig.  They are so
> > similar I want to find out.
>
> Well, I'm glad I agree with how some if not all of how scientists think
> currently. I"ve been known to have been wrong, but then again, so have
> scientists.
>
> Anyway, thanks for the explanation of evolution as proposed in current
> scientific thinking. As you know, such thinking is currently challenged
> by proponents of intelligent design. So Darwinian evolutionary theory
> can hardly be considered the last word.
>
> Platt
>
>
>
>
> >
> > Thanks,
> > SA
> >
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