views on evolution

[leopold]

well here it is:
"In a generous admission Francisco Ayala, a major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis in the United States, said: "We would not have predicted stasis from population genetics, but I am now convinced from 884 what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate."
-dr. ayala in Science, vol. 210 no. 4472 pp: 883-887

it should be pointed out that "science" never issued a retraction in this matter.

 

[origin]

well here it is:
"In a generous admission Francisco Ayala, a major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis in the United States, said: "We would not have predicted stasis from population genetics, but I am now convinced from 884 what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate."
-dr. ayala in Science, vol. 210 no. 4472 pp: 883-887

I disagree with the opinion of Dr. Ayalan, as do the overwhelming majority of Biologists.

it should be pointed out that "science" never issued a retraction in this matter.

Why in the world would Science issue a retraction for an opinion put forth by Dr. Ayalan?:shrug:

Do you have any evidence against evolution?

 

[leopold]

Do you have any evidence against evolution?

other than a leading evolutionist denying one of evolutions basic tenets?

the above quote was made at a conference of no less than 50 scientists.
the consensus is clear.

edit:
i seriously doubt that you have the credentials to ascertain the opinion of ayala or "science".
furthermore ayala made his statement after reviewing the data/ evidence offered by paleontologists.
so, it just isn't ayalas opinion.

 

[spidergoat]

well here it is:
"In a generous admission Francisco Ayala, a major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis in the United States, said: "We would not have predicted stasis from population genetics, but I am now convinced from 884 what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate."
-dr. ayala in Science, vol. 210 no. 4472 pp: 883-887

it should be pointed out that "science" never issued a retraction in this matter.

But Dr. Ayala himself did:

...I don't know how Roger Lewin could have gotten in his notes the quotation he attributes to me. I presented a paper/lecture and spoke at various times from the floor, but I could not possibly have said (at least as a complete sentence) what Lewin attributes to me. In fact, I don't know what it means. How could small changes NOT accumulate! In any case, virtually all my evolutionary research papers evidence that small (genetic) changes do accumulate.

The paper that I presented at the conference reported by Lewin is virtually the same that I presented in 1982 in Cambridge, at a conference commemorating the 200 [sic] anniversary of Darwin's death. It deals with the claims of "punctuated equilibrium" and how microevolutionary change relates to macroevolution. (I provide experimental results showing how one can obtain in the laboratory, as a result of the accumulation of small genetic changes, morphological changes of the magnitude observed by paleontologists and presented as evidence of punctuated equilibrium.) The paper was published as part of the conference proceedings:

Ayala, F.J. 1983. Microevolution and macroevolution. In: D.S. Bendall, ed., Evolution from Molecules to Men (Cambridge University Press), pp. 387-402.

More accessible are two papers dealing with the same topic, written with my colleague G.L. Stebbins: Stebbins, G.L. and F.J. Ayala. 1981. Is a new evolutionary synthesis necessary? Science 213:967-971. (I quote from the abstract of the paper:

"Macroevolutionary processes are underlain by microevolutionary phenomena and are compatible with the synthetic theory of evolution." But, please, read the whole paper to get the wealth of results and ideas that we are discussing; and read also the following paper:

"Stebbins, G.L. and F.J. Ayala. 1985. The Evolution of Darwinism. Sci. American 253:72-82."

You may quote from this letter so long as you don't quote out of context or incomplete sentences.

Sincerely yours,
Francisco J. Ayala
​

 

[leopold]

most probably under peer pressure or fear of losing his career.

"science" is standing behind what it printed, in other words ayala made the statement spidergoat.

 

[leopold]

Why in the world would Science issue a retraction for an opinion put forth by Dr. Ayalan?:shrug:

i was hoping for someone like spidergoat to chime in here.

"science" would issue a retraction IF ayala was misrepresented.

yes, "science" does indeed retract when it is in error.

you will also note that the source of spidergoats claim is a personal website, hardly something i would call a "peer reveiwed souirce"

 

[Trippy]

most probably under peer pressure or fear of losing his career.

"science" is standing behind what it printed, in other words ayala made the statement spidergoat.

So, according to you, for 32 years (Lewin's quote of Ayala comes to us from 1980) Ayala has continued advocating a view he doesn't believe in, including in a book he published in 2010 titled "I am a Monkey".

What makes it even funnier, is that if you do even a modicum of research, you can come across this:

Punctuated equilibrium (also called punctuated equilibria) is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that most species will exhibit little net evolutionary change for most of their geological history, remaining in an extended state called stasis. When significant evolutionary change occurs, the theory proposes that it is generally restricted to rare and geologically rapid events of branching speciation called cladogenesis.

Punctuated Equiilibria on Wiki

This is important to understand - what evolutionary biologists mean when they talk about stasis - it's not a period of no change.

Now, consider the fuller context of what Lewin said about the conference, which provides context for Ayala's statement:

Thus went the verbal jostling, with the mood swinging perceptibly in favor of recognizing stasis as being a real phenomenon. Gabriel Dover, a geneticist from Cambridge University, England, felt atrongly enough to call species stasis “The single most important feature of macroevolution.” In a generous admission Francisco Ayala, a major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis in the United States, said: “We would not have predicted stasis from population genetics, but I am now convinced from what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate”

In otherwords, the most that can be taken from what Ayala said is that he now favours punctuated equilibria over gradualism, although a more reasonable interpretation would be the acceptance of the reality of periods of stasis. It says NOTHING about the abandonment of evolution, it is simply a quibble over the precise mechanism by which it occurs.

 

[leopold]

actually you can take his words as "small changes do not accumulate".
in other words "accumulating small changes" is not the "driving force" behind evolution.

this implies that the driving force could be mutation driven except that all mutation type lab results i've seen has failed.

there are other alternatives too, some not so pleasent.

 

[spidergoat]

most probably under peer pressure or fear of losing his career.

"science" is standing behind what it printed, in other words ayala made the statement spidergoat.

Whatever, you know you are wrong. Even a science magazine can get a quote or transcription wrong. Be honest with yourself and the forum.

 

[rpenner]

well here it is:
"In a generous admission Francisco Ayala, a major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis in the United States, said: "We would not have predicted stasis from population genetics, but I am now convinced from 884 what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate."
-dr. ayala in Science, vol. 210 no. 4472 pp: 883-887

it should be pointed out that "science" never issued a retraction in this matter.

No "retraction" was necessary because if you have the article before you and understand the jargon, you would understand that Dr. Ayala was talking not about the death of evolution but rather about punctuated equilibrium. Roger Lewin nowhere in the article implies that evolution lacks scientific support. But "gradualism" which was strongly favored from at least 1942 to 1972 was being replaced with Gould's 1972 description of punctuated equilibrium where large changes in phenotype appear mixed with long stretches of lesser changes in phenotype, "stasis." The naive view of gradualism which is based on a simple model of gene expression and naive model of genomic change is replaced 1972-1982 with the fact-based view of complex expression and population dynamics favoring slow and fast periods of phenotype change. And phenotype, not genotype, is what the fossil record manages to incompletely document.


Your entire argument is a house of cards built on one improperly sourced quote.

Thus went the verbal jostling, with the mood swinging perceptibly in favor of recognizing stasis as being a real phenomenon. Gabriel Dover, a geneticist from Cambridge University, England, felt strongly enough to call species stasis 'The single most important feature of macroevolution.' In a generous admission Francisco Ayala, a major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis in the United States, said: 'We would not have predicted stasis from population genetics, but I am now convinced from what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate.'

Roger Lewin, “Evolution Theory under Fire,” Science, Vol. 210 no. 4472, (21 November 1980), pp. 883-887
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/210/4472/883.extract

But is the view held by the author that in no cases that small changes accumulate? No. In 2001, Dr. Ayala wrote in response:

I don't know how Roger Lewin could have gotten in his notes the quotation he attributes to me. I presented a paper/lecture and spoke at various times from the floor, but I could not possibly have said (at least as a complete sentence) what Lewin attributes to me. In fact, I don't know what it means. How could small changes NOT accumulate! In any case, virtually all my evolutionary research papers evidence that small (genetic) changes do accumulate.

The paper that I presented at the conference reported by Lewin is virtually the same that I presented in 1982 in Cambridge, at a conference commemorating the 200 [sic] anniversary of Darwin's death. It deals with the claims of "punctuated equilibrium" and how microevolutionary change relates to macroevolution. (I provide experimental results showing how one can obtain in the laboratory, as a result of the accumulation of small genetic changes, morphological changes of the magnitude observed by paleontologists and presented as evidence of punctuated equilibrium.) The paper was published as part of the conference proceedings:

Ayala, F.J. 1983. Microevolution and macroevolution. In: D.S. Bendall, ed., Evolution from Molecules to Men (Cambridge University Press), pp. 387-402.

More accessible are two papers dealing with the same topic, written with my colleague G.L. Stebbins:
Stebbins, G.L. and F.J. Ayala. 1981. Is a new evolutionary synthesis necessary? Science 213:967-971. (I quote from the abstract of the paper:

"Macroevolutionary processes are underlain by microevolutionary phenomena and are compatible with the synthetic theory of evolution." But, please, read the whole paper to get the wealth of results and ideas that we are discussing; and read also the following paper:

"Stebbins, G.L. and F.J. Ayala. 1985. The Evolution of Darwinism. Sci. American 253:72-82."

You may quote from this letter so long as you don't quote out of context or incomplete sentences.

http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/another_creationist_out_of_context_quote.htm

 

[spidergoat]

i was hoping for someone like spidergoat to chime in here.

"science" would issue a retraction IF ayala was misrepresented.

yes, "science" does indeed retract when it is in error.

you will also note that the source of spidergoats claim is a personal website, hardly something i would call a "peer reveiwed souirce"

The source on the quote is the scientist who allegedly said it. It does not require peer review.

 

[Trippy]

actually you can take his words as "small changes do not accumulate".
in other words "accumulating small changes" is not the "driving force" behind evolution.

this implies that the driving force could be mutation driven except that all mutation type lab results i've seen has failed.

there are other alternatives too, some not so pleasent.

Wrong. The only thing you've proven is that you don't understand the Jargon. I even spoonfed you the definitions, and what Stasis means in terms of punctuated equilbirium, and evolutionary biology, and still you're persisting on this dishonest tack?

 

[leopold]

what dishonest tack?
i merely pointed out what was said and what can be implied from it.
make of it as you will.

rpenner,
you are in error.
the qoute WAS sourced correctly disregarding any typos in the issue.

 

[Trippy]

what dishonest tack?
i merely pointed out what was said and what can be implied from it.
make of it as you will.

Your interpretation of it is a dishonest one, for the reasons I have previously outlined, and which you have failed to address.

The quote is on a technical issue, therefore the only correct interpretation can be in the context of the field within which the quote was made.

The interpretation within the context of the field within which the quote was made (evolutionary biology), and also within the context provided when one examines the full text from which the quote has been cherry picked is clear.

The concession that Ayala is making (assuming the quote is correct in the first place) is that the theory of punctuated equilibria might actually have a leg to stand on, not that evolution does not occur.

 

[leopold]

Your interpretation of it is a dishonest one, . . .

how is it dishonest for me to take ayalas words at face value?
and . .

. . . for the reasons I have previously outlined, and which you have failed to address.

what have i not addressed?

 

[rpenner]

ID is a sterile philosophy, and makes adherents stupid and unproductive and bad Christians
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-wallace/intelligent-design-is-dea_b_1175049.html

Kepler did not reject special creation because he put limits on God. Nor did his rejection flow from a desire to push God out of his work. Instead, it sprung from his conviction that God's creation is not founded in obscurity, darkness, and confusion. He believed, in a way that far outstripped his contemporaries, in the comprehensibility of God's creation, because it was God's creation. Kepler's fundamental axiom may be stated:

The universe has been designed; therefore it must be comprehensible.
...
Behe has led us to the fundamental axiom of ID, a sharp contrast to that of Kepler:

The universe is incomprehensible; therefore it must have been designed.

Thus ID is not science -- it's just giving up.

But in the 20 years since ID appeared, it has hammered in the point that it is not an answer to any question. ID makes people stupider.

These are people who operate on the thinnest glosses of science and when reality or scientific models don't operate as they assume they do, they feel free to make up stories without checking them. Thus 20 years later, some are still claiming evolution (or life) is contradicted by thermodynamics.

http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2011/11/twenty_years_after_darwin_on_t.php

Do we really have to explain, again, that the notion that local decreases in entropy can be offset by global increases is just a straightforward consequence of what the second law says? That the second law does nothing more than put a lower bound on the magnitude of the entropy change that results from some thermodynamical process, and that a claim that evolution contradicts the second law must be backed up with a plausible calculation showing that the bound did not hold in the case of evolution? That every serious attempt to estimate the entropy change in the course of evolution shows that Darwin is safe by many, many orders of magnitude? Must we once more point out that declaring a sequence of events to be consistent with the second law in no way implies that that sequence is probable?

Is this the sort of serious ID theorizing to which Klinghoffer wants us to pay greater attention?

 

[leopold]

Thus ID is not science -- it's just giving up.

please, not the ID/creationist bit.

although its a possibility, i'm getting to where i wanna puke every time i hear the phrase.

 

[Trippy]

how is it dishonest for me to take ayalas words at face value?

For the reasons I have already explained.

 

[rpenner]

2005, Dr. Ayala explains punctuated equilibrium in reviewing Gould's book which quotes Dr. Ayala from 1982.
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/reviews/ayala_structure.pdf

The [punctuated equilibrium] theory proposes that the frequently observed scarcity or absence in the fossil record of specimens that are intermediate in morphology between successive fossil forms (each with sustained presence in the fossil record) is not always or even generally due to the incompleteness of the record. According to PE theory, the record should be taken at face value. The abrupt appearance of new fossil species reflects their development in bursts of evolution, after which species remain unchanged in their morphology for the species’ duration, which may extend for millions of years. The theory proposes that the prevailing view, that morphological evolution is predominantly gradual, must be replaced with a model of speciation with two distinct sequential components, a burst of change during the origination of a species, followed by a long period of stasis for the remaining duration of the species. Gould acknowledges that gradual and punctuational change both are represented in the fossil record, but he affirms that the punctuational mode appears at much higher frequency.

The PE theory provides, according to Gould, the foundation on which he builds the claim that macroevolution (i.e. evolution on the large scale with respect to time and morphological diversification) is an autonomous subject of evolutionary investigation, given that the punctuational pattern is not predictable based on the small and gradual genetic changes investigated by population geneticists and other students of microevolutionary processes, such as they occur in living organisms. Gould refers to me, with kind words, as supporting this claim of macroevolutionary autonomy and quotes me at length (p. 1023):

I have particularly appreciated the fairness of severe critics who generally oppose punctuated equilibrium, but who freely acknowledge its legitimacy as a potentially important proposition with interesting implications, and as a testable notion that must be adjudicated in its own macroevolutionary realm. Ayala (1982) has been especially clear and gracious on this point:

If macroevolutionary theory were deducible from microevolutionary principles, it would be possible to decide between competing macroevolutionary models simply by examining the logical implications of microevolutionary theory. But the theory of population genetics is compatible with both punctualism and gradualism; and, hence, logically it entails neither. Whether the tempo and mode of evolution occur predominantly according to the model of punctuated equilibria or according to the model of phyletic gradualism is an issue to be decided by studying macroevolutionary patterns, not by inference from microevolutionary processes. In other words, macroevolutionary theories are not reducible (at least at the present state of knowledge) to microevolution. Hence, macroevolution and microevolution are decoupled in the sense (which is epistemologically most important) that macroevolution is an autonomous field of study that must develop and test its own theories.

Page 101.

... The controversy among paleontologists is not whether the punctuated mode of evolution exists, but whether it is more common in the record than other more or less gradual modes, as well as those exhibiting irregular or oscillating change.

Creationists have argued that punctuated evolution manifests the intervention of God in the evolutionary process. The sudden appearance of new species would indicate divine acts of special creation. In The Structure, as he had done many times before, Gould negates this implication and verbally castigates its proponents. Gould reiterates in his new book, as he has repeated before, that the geological ‘‘instants,’’ during which ‘‘sudden’’ change occurs, typically encompass 50,000 to 100,000 years, and that these bursts of change result from the well-known processes studied by evolutionary geneticists, genetic mutation, and natural selection, yielding adaptive evolutionary change. The creationist claim is based on an additional and truly monumental misunderstanding. The bursts of morphological change noticed by Gould and others do not involve new body plans, the emergence of radically different kinds of organisms, or the appearance of new limbs or organs, such as wings or lungs. Rather the traits manifesting punctuated evolution are traits such as the shell flatness of oysters, irregular patterns of coiling in ammonites, or the configuration of the head bones in lung fishes.

pp 103-104
"[T]ruly monumental misunderstanding" explains much about the way creationists argue about science.

I don't think that Dr. Ayala has a gun held to his head to make him write such things.

 

[leopold]

rpenner,

The abrupt appearance of new fossil species reflects their development in bursts of evolution, after which species remain unchanged in their morphology for the species’ duration, which may extend for millions of years.

this was said in regards to the almost complete lack of transitional fossils.
check your history dude.
see what has been said, with "proof" i might add.
now, what was it you were taught in school?
THIS is what blows my fuse.
THIS is what must be fought against in regards to science.

edit:
BTW, i've been meaning to say this for the last couple of posts.
to me it's a given but some people might need to hear it.
EVEN IF evolution is disproved it DOES NOT mean there is a "god" or "supernatural" or "ID".
why this continually crops up is anyones guess.
this is by no means an either/or situation.
it simply means we do not have all the answers.