Powerful New Evidence For The Theory of Devolution

Eugene Shubert

Eugene Shubert

Valued Senior Member
The theory of devolution is now being recognized as a legitimate science:

"IF YOU want to know how all living things are related, don't bother looking in any textbook that's more than a few years old. Chances are that the tree of life you find there will be wrong. Since they began delving into DNA, biologists have been finding that organisms with features that look alike are often not as closely related as they had thought. These are turbulent times in the world of phylogeny, yet there has been one rule that evolutionary biologists felt they could cling to: the amount of complexity in the living world has always been on the increase. Now even that is in doubt."

"The idea of loss in evolution is not new. … However, the latest evidence suggests that the extent of loss might have been seriously underestimated. Some evolutionary biologists now suggest that loss - at every level, from genes and types of cells to whole anatomical features and life stages - is the key to understanding evolution and the relatedness of living things."

http://www.newscientist.com/article...-hacking-back-the-tree-of-life.html?full=true

That's exactly what I've been teaching. http://www.everythingimportant.org/devolution
 
That's exactly what I would expect a traditional Darwinist to say as an old theory is collapsing in the light of a superior explanation based on the real science of genetics.
 
Nevertheless, it doesn't stop it being true.
There is no "superior explanation", since your particular view of evolution is flawed.
Evolution is not "collapsing" at all.
 
Ever increasing complexity was never an essential aspect of the Theory of Evolution. Yes, it can build on previous complexity, but the overall trend is towards one of fitness, which can mean increasing or decreasing complexity. For example, a cave fish can lose it's eyes. There isn't really anything revolutionary about this idea.
 
Dywyddyr said:
Wrong again. Re-read it.


You aren't teaching anything except that you're misunderstanding evolution.

Pseudoscience or Cesspool, please.
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Pseudoscience. Arendt appears to be in the thick of nervous system evolution studies. The field of genetic engineering is in its infancy. What we are learning is changing the way we think and there will be more changes in how we view evolution. Regardless of correlations to devolution that Eugene makes, there are great advancements being made in our ability of decode genes and make correlations between species. There is something to the new science that is growing from our ability of do genetic engineering and to decode DNA.

Pseudoscience would be more appropriate than the cesspool in my opinion.
 
spidergoat said:
There isn't really anything revolutionary about this idea.
Click to expand...


To "suggest that loss — at every level, from genes and types of cells to whole anatomical features and life stages — is the key to understanding evolution and the relatedness of living things" is a revolutionary new hypothesis.
 
Eugene Shubert said:
To "suggest that loss — at every level, from genes and types of cells to whole anatomical features and life stages — is the key to understanding evolution and the relatedness of living things" is a revolutionary new hypothesis.
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... And unproven to be true to the extent that it is a "key" to understanding evolution.

Atrophy of useless features is part of evolution and though it seems to go backward, it is really adaptation. To me that shows a efficiency in evolution that can reduce complexity or increase complexity depending on the environment and circumstances. Cave salamanders have lost their sight, they have even lost the eyes completely, and yet they have evolved the ability to find food in the dark. They have evolved sensors in their skin that allow them to detect movement around them and can pick off a fairy shrimp swimming by with ease. They obviously can detect the shrimp from over an inch away and can react as if they had eyes. That isn't devolution as much as it is adaptation.
 
Eugene Shubert said:
The theory of devolution is now being recognized as a legitimate science:

"IF YOU want to know how all living things are related, don't bother looking in any textbook that's more than a few years old. Chances are that the tree of life you find there will be wrong. Since they began delving into DNA, biologists have been finding that organisms with features that look alike are often not as closely related as they had thought. These are turbulent times in the world of phylogeny, yet there has been one rule that evolutionary biologists felt they could cling to: the amount of complexity in the living world has always been on the increase. Now even that is in doubt."

"The idea of loss in evolution is not new. … However, the latest evidence suggests that the extent of loss might have been seriously underestimated. Some evolutionary biologists now suggest that loss - at every level, from genes and types of cells to whole anatomical features and life stages - is the key to understanding evolution and the relatedness of living things."

http://www.newscientist.com/article...-hacking-back-the-tree-of-life.html?full=true

That's exactly what I've been teaching. http://www.everythingimportant.org/devolution
Click to expand...

The article doesn't describe anything new. Your notion of "devolution" is pseudoscience (probably due to a lack of understanding of evolution).
 
Has anyone noticed the large pull-quote in the article?

"Now that the spectre of loss has been raised, proponents of the new model see it everywhere"

That means that we're discussing a scientific theory, not a mere hypothesis.
 
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