Science Breakthrough of the Year: Evolution

The prestigious US journal Science publishes its top 10 list of major endeavours at the end of each year. The number one spot was awarded jointly to several studies that illuminated the intricate workings of evolution. Be sure to check out the video or podcast.

http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/btoy2005/ (main page)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5756/1878 (article above)

Also read the BBC article below for coverage of the selection along with a little ID slap-down action.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4552466.stm

~Ulrika~

They must be reading the forums. Your posts are paying off.

snipped from article...

"some segments of American society fought to dilute the teaching of even the basic facts of evolution. With all this in mind, Science has decided to put Darwin in the spotlight by saluting several dramatic discoveries, each of which reveals the laws of evolution in action."

This is a political action committee type statement from that article. They are clearly motivated to maintain power. In the article they admit everything for them depends on this theory being accepted, here's a quote..

"Today evolution is the foundation of all biology, so basic and all-pervasive that scientists sometimes take its importance for granted. At some level every discovery in biology and medicine rests on it....".

This shows they have a bias, and not just reporting news. Everything they are depends on this one theory.

That pretty much is the party line, Kevn. I hear that statement pretty much every time someone talks about Evolution on the radio.

I'm glad I'm in computers. I'd never make it in the biological science world. From what I hear, everything in "pure" science is politically motivated

Y'know, if you two are so concerned about this issue, why not try the experiments yourselves and observe the results?


Some good starts include:

* Plant Hybridization Models

* Fruitfly Speciation (Additional Link)


I find this topic frustrating because it gets discounted for all the wrong reasons - politics over provability. Did you know mathematics is largely politically driven as well? Yet we still teach derivative calculus in High School. Maybe we should teach that two plus two equals six because it's politically motivated that it equals four, yes?

Case in point, if you're so concerned about it, try it yourselves. These are very easy experiments suitable for children, let alone adults discussing evolution. Take a shot and see what the results are, then feel free to post.


Because, if I recall, these are the same experiments that've been reproduced in Biology classes around the world. Further, these concepts have been applied to cat, dog, horse, and other domestic breeding concepts for some time. Throw in selective breeding and it makes perfect sense, ya?

(Further references with common germs and animals: http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/~gorm/modelorganisms.html )

Troll.

We already agree life changes. That's not in dispute. If you want to settle the issue, find an experiment that shows a fly change into a frog, or some other animal, not another kind of fly. Show an experiment to demonstrate adding of DNA without intelligent intervention.

I want to see how the DNA is slowly added to till it changes a worm into a cat.

The fact plant breeding by intelligent design creates hybred plants means nothing to the debate. So drop breeding, no new dna information is created. And it's done by intelligent design.


Merry Christmas

On a different tack.

Rather than butting heads on the science portion of the issue (because hey, you're just wrong if you're supporting ID and you'll get over it eventually), lets look at economic factors.

If we DO stop teaching evolution and we have a science environment in our country that is generally 'bad science', what does that do to our research market hmm? They all get shopped to OTHER countries. So you can say bye bye to new innovative things coming from us in the biomedical fields that rely on fundamental concepts of evolution. Medicines that work within the concepts of evolving viruses and dna and speciation. All those people are going to get offers from more accepting countries. And if I was one of those scientists, I would go. There'd be no reason to stick around in an environment of persecution.

So honestly, if you want to hurt the economy, science, and general education, by all means, flush evolution down the crapper. But I don't know what you expect to discover, research, or prove by getting an incorrect hypothesis elevated above a correct one.

Now as has been discussed before, talking about the metaphysical implications of ID is fine. There are some things that live entirely IN metaphysics and they do just fine. Like the "what happened before the current big bang theory" thing. No party lines or agendas there. You can discuss it all day long. You can even go ahead and throw ID at that if you want. It'd probably be a more appropriate application of it.

Why is it ok for science to go into metaphysics if, and only if, it's to say there is no purpose to the universe? Read this quote from an Astrophysicist from the Oxford University....

"It is no more heretical to say the Universe displays purpose, as Hoyle has done, than to say that it is pointless, as Steven Weinberg has done. Both statements are metaphysical and outside science. Yet it seems that scientists are permitted by their own colleagues to say metaphysical things about lack of purpose and not the reverse. This suggests to me that science, in allowing this metaphysical notion, sees itself as religion and presumably as an atheistic religion (if you can have such a thing)."

Shallis, Michael [Astrophysicist, Oxford University], "In the eye of a storm", New Scientist, January 19, 1984, pp.42-43.

If science said nothing about whether the universe has purpose or not we wouldn't need to have this debate. But science isn't neutral, and science has already become a religion by entering metaphysics.

You're perfectly allowed to talk about science in metaphyics. There's no reason a scientist can't participate in a metaphysical discussion, however that discussion should not be construed as either a scientific hypothesis or scientific theory or adhering to the scientific method just because a scientist was talking about something metaphysical. Therefore, Science does not say the universe lacks purpose. It is correct to say, "we observe no purpose as of yet" in science. Any further discussion is metaphysics and not in the realm of science. A scientist, if they were to address the purpose, would have to form a hypothesis, work toward discovering ways to develop tests of that hypothesis that could prove or fail said hypothesis and eventually produce some positives for it to become an accepted theory.

So, really, why is it okay for you to say science is saying something it's not?

Sure. How's an ear mouse sound to you?

(Originally an AP article from 1995, archived here)


As for the more insane questions, scientists playing with the genetic code are working on more extreme examples.

A better (current) study would be the issue of cloning and hybrids like Ligers and Wolphins. We also have bioengineered crops, glow-in-the-dark goldfish, and even hypoallergenic cats. And of course, mules.

Merry Christmas to you too.

Excellent examples of intelligent design, thanks.

As for a mule, it's sterile and can't reproduce. So that's a dud.

Merry Christmas to you.

as always, an interesting, yet weak-based debate. for example...

if it's 'intelligent design', then why do i have an appendix that could go kablooey anytime?

jes'wun'drin...

(pssst... answer: the result of messy, yet beautiful in its own right, evolution.)

i feel a presence, and respect the presence of, a certain 'god' - goddess, it, whatever, so that's not up for debate. all that is at hand is whether evolution, in and of itself, is a plausible explanation for the spread of the incredible variety of species upon our planet.

and according to the scientific evidence... yah, it is. if ya don't believe, ya haven't read enough of it, understood enough of it. plain and simple.

no, it's probably not a perfect roadmap of how it all happened, and we won't ever know, until we invent a time machine to verify. same applies to any other competing argument... but one picture is a whole lot clearer than the other.

ipso facto domini etc etc...

I, ahh... don't follow. Mind explaining that?

He's saying that since we, humans did it and are intelligent, it is an example of intelligent design. Even though said examples would be impossible without tools based on the science of evolution.

Which tools are based on the theory men evolved from amoebas?

But even if we had tools made from our experience with that theory, it takes ID to design the tools, and it takes ID to use the tools correctly. Assuming such tools exist.

You're saying I'm saying something I'm not. Don't imply I said we evolved directly from amoebas because that's a misnomer. I'm certainly not going to redescribe volumes of theory and intermediary steps to you that explains how life gets from one given point to another.

And the way you use ID, I could say it takes ID for a baby to crap it's pants or you to take a piss. It takes ID for you to pick your nose. If you're going to demand it be a serious scientific theory or terminology, at least specify what PART of ID it is that does what you seem to think it can do.

For example, what you demanded of ME requires at least 5 different theories. You also started from a possibly impossible starting point, so it also requires an unverifiable theory which has nothing to do with evolution. Can I demand you describe which parts of ID are used to develop those theories? Can I demand that you then further explain how those ID parts function to develop the biology tools to work based on those theories? I'll write up what you asked me if you can produce the same from the ID standpoint

It was you who said "Even though said examples would be impossible without tools based on the science of evolution." I only asked which tools that would be.

Don't bother, Kevn doesn't answer questions along those lines (or at least he didn't the last 3 times I asked them over on the other thread. Or maybe he has me on ignore?)

Thing is, I posited examples that were both direct intervention and due to natural causes. Wolphins and Ligers were through natural breeding (captivity is arguable since their mating ranges to not commonly cross). Earmice through artificial "molding" and cartilage injection. And in the more extreme sense, cloning would be direct intervention.

Further, wolphins and ligers sometimes retain their ability to breed, negating the "mule" rule.


Stating all of the above as "intelligent design" is a glaring Catch-22, which is why I inquired further.

What the hell, I'll ask the question. All those who are anti-intelligent design at all costs - where did the process of evolution come from? I believe fully in evolution - it is verifyable, observable, and should be taught in schools as scientific fact. However, I also believe that all of it - the universe, life, etc.. comes from some higher power, not just randomness. So I am curious, in the midst of talking about evolution itself, you have to take a step above evolution and say how did evolution come about? The processes involved - how were they formed, what is driving them?

The wolphins are dolphins, not whale as the article says here...

"Although the word 'wolphin' is a portmanteau of whale and dolphin, since false killer whales are members of the family Delphinidae, that is, dolphins and not true whales, the wolphin is a kind of dolphin."

The ligers are cats, and not found naturally, the Male is sterile as the article says here...

"Known ligers are human influenced, either by deliberate human intervention, or by humans putting lions and tigers in enclosed spaces together."

"Known male ligers have all been sterile."

Biology, Microbiology, Cellularbiology, DNA, etc.

I mean, go ahead and rewrite all those subjects from square one if you want. They all use evolution as a theoretical basis and you can't just substitute ID and have it work.

DNA for instance. If you don't understand or at least accept dna duplication, mutation, copying, errors, and all of that you need to make up new rules which produces different science. But hey, go ahead and rewrite all that.

While you're at it, call up some chemists and tell them they're wrong about how chemicals work so you can redefine how proteins get their jobs done. THEN go ahead and have the chemists tell the physicists they're wrong because they now have to rewrite how chemicals work. So now they physicsts have to reshape the fundamental forces of the universe because you think that somehow ID can support all these tools.

You need 2 basic things to see evolution happen. You need things reproducing with small random errors and you need something that determines whether or not each instance of an organism gets to reproduce or not.

This happens in all sorts of contexts, not necessarily biological life. I think this is how you go about training neural nets for instance. Suppose you have some computer program set up that simulates a bunch of neurons firing, and that program is hooked up to a small robot with some legs of some kind. At first you try a whole bunch of random neural nets, and predictably, the robot flails around and doesn't do anything. Some of those random nets however, will move the robot some small distance. You throw out the 90% worst at moving neural nets (measured by the distance they travelled), apply some small random changes to the remaining 10% and try them all again. Again some do better than others - choose the top ones, apply some random changes, rinse and repeat.

In some pretty large number of generations you get your little robot moving pretty damn fast (and generally ending up copying some kind of gait also found in nature).

No intelligence required whatsoever, all of this can be automated.

So I guess to answer your question, if you've got those two things, reproduction with errors, and some kind of selection pressure (e.g. kill off the ones that didn't travel far) then you get evolution - it's just something that naturally happens.

I've been attempting to drive this point home, this is certainly legitmate discussion. Evolution is definately there, but we don't yet have anything concrete to say about overall impetus factors. We have a few ideas, and some specifics, but no overall picture. We would be remiss in just assigning a given force to it and calling it a day.