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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Rupert S was tangentially involved in the history of that dialogue about speciation. I agree his boy does himself no favours.
Another comment on the Medium piece just got posted:
Marcin
"believed by all educated people other than daft twats in the American Bible Belt"
And a billion Muslims that you just disregarded.
"...According to Islamic belief, Adam was created from the material of the earth and brought to life by God. God placed Adam in a paradisical Garden. After Adam sinned by eating from the forbidden tree (Tree of Immortality) after God forbade him from doing so, paradise was declined to him and he was sent down to live on Earth.This story is seen as both literal as well as an allegory for human relationship towards God."
Mick Harper
Yes, but you have to be careful who you call 'daft twats'. However, I am reminded that I don't actually know what is taught in Muslim countries, so thanks for that.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I'd better give you the comments of an academic biologist on my Evolutionary paper lest you think I'm a Life Sciences superstar rather than his kid brother
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Evolution is supposed to be driven by a genetic mutation occurring in a single organism conferring a competitive advantage allowing that individual to have more offspring than other members of the species.
| Mutations are not strictly necessary. You can get very large differences just through the natural variability of genetics. |
This advantage, being heritable, allows the offspring of the offspring to gradually displace non-mutated individuals until either (a) the whole species possesses it or (b) two populations are established, one with and one without the mutation. It depends on whether the original species formed a single breeding group or were separated by geographical factors.
| See previous comment. True, mutations do help things along, but are not strictly necessary. Facetiously perhaps, it is comparable to the difference between Executive Orders and proper legislation. |
This does not, in itself, lead to speciation. By definition the two groups are still one species, they can breed with one another. Further genetic mutations, further ‘survival of the fittest’ stages, are necessary before this is achieved. Since genes were unknown in Darwin’s time, this theory is called ‘neo-Darwinism’ and is taught by and believed by all educated people other than daft twats in the American Bible Belt.
| Yes, largely because natural selection is very close to being logically necessary. It’s hard to imagine a universe where it does not have a large effect. More successful organisms, people, institutions, countries, tend to get on and prosper, less successful ones do not, and might eventually fail completely. |
And me. I like evidence before believing things. As they say, “He won’t be taught, that M J Harper.” That appears to be the case. So I have devised my customary ten-point plan to try out on any passing neo-Darwinist. This one goes like this:
1. Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: According to neo-Darwinist theory all species must experience a period of time when they co-exist with the species that gave rise to them. That period might be short, it might be indefinitely long.
“Yes, sir.”
2. Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: At any one time then, the species of the world must be divided into two types: those whose ancestral species still walks the earth (‘extant’) and those whose ancestral species has been entirely replaced (‘extinct’).
“Yes, sir.”
| This is not the orthodox view. There are indeed ‘splits’, but both parts continue to evolve. It is true that some seem to change quickly, while others change very slowly, so slowly in fact that some species are designated ‘living fossils’. In our case, nobody believes there is an extant ‘ancestral species’, but we can roughly calculate the time when (say) the chimp line (later, Pan) split from human line (later, Homo). Chimps are as different from that ancestor as we are. |
3. Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: The one time for which we have good evidence is right now. There are reckoned to be several million species in the world today and, as you say, they will be divided between those with a still extant ancestral species and those whose ancestral species has gone extinct.
“Yes, sir.”
| This does not strike me as a coherent question. Almost no species have extant ancestral species because everything is evolving all the time, except for a few weird ‘living fossil’ cases, and even then the genetics might be different but we can’t check. |
4. Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: Could you give me an estimate of how many million, hundreds of thousand, tens of thousands, whatever approximate number of species that fall into the ‘still extant ancestor’ category (ignoring any species that might have been affected by human domestication).
“Can’t, sorry.”
| Yes, I can answer it. Almost none. |
5. Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: Failing that, a short list will suffice.
“Can’t, sorry.”
| Stet. Is that short enough? |
6. Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: Failing that, a single example will do.
“Can’t, sorry.”
| No examples, because essentially there aren’t any. Except the celebrated ‘living fossils’ where morphologically at least, some living species seems more or less identical to fossil species (Ginkgoes, King crabs, the brachiopod Lingula, some others). Do these render the general theory moot? I cannot see why. |
7. Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: So some better explanation would appear to be indicated, wouldn’t you say?
“I’m listening.”
| No I’m not! I prefer the simple orthodox explanation. Nothing to see here. It’s exactly what we would expect. WYSIWYG. So simple it’s almost circular. |
8. Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: Every now and again an unusually powerful burst of solar radiation promotes genetic mutation in all organisms on earth. After that a whole myriad of possibilities are opened up.
“Is that the time? I must be off. Nice talking to you.”
| As I said before, it’s not just mutations. The absence of evidence for ‘solar storm’ events supports this. The big bursts of speciation seemed to occur after mass extinction events, which generally mark the end of a geological period. Then you have ‘adaptive radiations’, again just what we would expect. |
9. Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: Is that your final word on the subject?
“Yes.”
| No. What’s all this obsession with mutations? You shake the kaleidoscope and you get a new pattern. A small number of new patterns are somehow ‘better’ than the old, or allow colonisation of new habitats unavailable to the old population. Most things fail, but by sheer blind chance some succeed. It’s all very simple. |
10. Dear Passing Neo-Darwinist: Thank you for your valuable time.
“Don’t mention it, it’s what we’re here for.”
| Well no, it isn’t really. But sometimes you have restate the bleedn obvious. |
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Are you with me, brothers? Well that one wasn't. Like all academics he is quite unable to tell the wood from the trees. And him a botanist, fancy!
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Grant
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I thought the main tenet of Neo-Darwinism is that it is indeed mutations which drive evolution. Mere differences are not enough.
Your expert is quoting the original Darwinism. Darwin didn't know about DNA and he was open to all sorts of suggestions including Lamarckism.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Why have Dutch people got so much taller?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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One of my examples is this one:
1. Medieval suits of armour are too small for the average person of today.
2. Body size is mainly a matter of genetics.
3. Although armour-wearers tend to have more children than the average person, there are not enough generations between then and now for genetic mutation to account for the general increase in size.
4. If big people tend to have more children than small people, is this (a) true and (b) if it is, marginally, are there enough generations to affect the entire population?
5. Clearly not, it is practically observable generation by generation.
6. 'The increase in nutritional standards' is always given as the reason.
7. So body size is not mainly a matter of genetics.
8. Although orthodox neo-Darwinists agree with all these points they are never discomfited by the argument as a whole.
9. But then again my solar radiation theory doesn't account for it either.
10. It is good for Lamarkians though. And for Sheldrakians.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Granted that it's a logical fallacy to look at one instance and argue a general case from that.
But anyway, here I go, ignoring my own rule, and peering up at the extra-tall Dutch folk.
I too noticed that "nutrition" was offered as the reason. Consuming lots of dairy products may be very enjoyable. In my case, it never did me any harm, but the increase didn't materialise as extra-special vertical height, it was horizontal circumference. i.e. I just got fat.
I also noticed that something was carefully ignored. Dairy and beef cattle diets in this period also included lots of antibiotics and growth hormones. How much of that survives the conversion to human food and enters our own systems?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Given the date of the introduction of hormones, antibiotics etc, it would be useful to know when the increase in height (as you say) took place. I use suits of armour because it's absolute, them and us, but I have never seen height rates plotted over time. This might be careful ignoral and significant or just my ignorance. Or maybe it just hasn't been done.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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“In 1860, Dutch military men were about 165cm tall,” said Professor Louise Barrett of the University of Lethbridge, Canada, who was part of the study. “At that time men in the US were around 5cm taller.” This, added Barrett, made Americans the world’s tallest people.
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Yet another rabbit hole, why were US males the tallest in 1860? Was it immigration of the tallest?
| Since then, however, there has been a remarkable role reversal: in just 160 years, Dutch men have shot up by 20cm, soaring past their American counterparts, who have grown just 6cm. |
So they say.
Environmental factors have also sent the Dutch soaring, added Barrett, citing the Netherlands’ world-leading healthcare system, low levels of income inequality and excellent social welfare system as another explanation for them overtaking the Americans.
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Dutch NHS -v- US expensive?
| “[In the Netherlands] everything is geared towards producing high-quality babies that then don’t suffer any of the kinds of things that reduce height,” she said. “Every time you mount an immune response it costs you energy that otherwise you would have put into growth.” |
This part I don't understand. If the Dutch version of Call The Midwife is saving every runt in the litter, are they not also saving the weak and feeble end of the spectrum? The ones less likely to be big strong Dutch superheroes?
More here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20200823-why-are-the-dutch-so-tall
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: |
9. But then again my solar radiation theory doesn't account for it either.
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Are you sure?
How about the flipping magnetic field?
Not a derogatory term, it's a real thing.
| The last such cataclysmic event occurred about 41,000 years ago, leaving a signature in the Laschamps lava flows in France. As the field weakened to only 5 percent of its current strength the reversal process allowed a surpluss of cosmic rays to pass into Earth's atmosphere. |
I think a "surplus of cosmic rays" means we get a kind of natural microwave oven.
| It took 250 years for the Laschamps reversal to take place and it stayed in the unusual orientation for about 440 years. At most, Earth's magnetic field may have remained at 25 percent of its current strength as the north polarity drifted to the south. |
https://www.sciencealert.com/earths-flipping-magnetic-field-heard-as-sound-is-an-unnerving-horror
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I'm afraid magnetic reversals don't happen, Borry. (You can find out somewhere in these hallowed threads what the evidence actually points to.) But in any case why would a magnetic reversal affect genes?
"Ouch! Stoppit!" said the compass needle but not much else.
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