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  Topic: Daniel Smith's "Argument from Impossibility", in which assumptions are facts< Next Oldest | Next Newest >  
mitschlag



Posts: 236
Joined: Sep. 2006

(Permalink) Posted: Feb. 23 2009,11:14   

Quote (Daniel Smith @ Feb. 22 2009,12:55)
         
Quote (mitschlag @ Feb. 22 2009,05:29)
             
Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Feb. 21 2009,07:43)
mitschlag in particular simpson's account of schindewolf suggests that there are some serious issues with the domain of observations used by schindewolf to support his contentions.  i think SJG goes over this in more detail in "Structure" but I keep forgetting to bring my copy home.  I'll be paying close attention.  This narrative is a great antidote to Popper and Kuhn.

Erasmus, whatever you care to provide from Structure will be welcome.

Your reference to Gould reminded me of his essay Life's Little Joke, which goes well beyond Simpson in demolishing the simplistic sequence portrayed by Schindewolf.  (Gould wrote in 1991 and had in hand much more data than either Schindewolf or Simpson commanded.)  The entire essay - too long to copy and post here - is provided in the link.  Daniel should read it and comprehend it.

Schindewolf is not mentioned at all.  Gould seems to be "demolishing" every simplistic phylogenic tree here - including Simpson's.

Exactly!  Need I remind you that that's how SCIENCE works?  (But why the scarequotes around demolishing?  Gould brings evidence to bear on the subject.)
       
Quote
One thing you repeatedly fail to mention is that Schindewolf's area of expertise and study was not horses - it was cephalopods and stony corals - for which he documented extensive patterns of evolution.  Horses were a periphery issue for him - one for which he probably accepted the commonly delineated pathway for his day.  

Thus I can understand why you'd want to focus on horses, since - as you've just documented - all Schindewolf's contemporaries missed the mark to a degree, but no discussion of Schindewolf is worth having if it's not about the area he excelled in - cephalopods and stony corals.

It looks like you're conceding that Schindewolf was wrong about horse evolution being an example of orthogenesis*.  But isn't it significant that in his introduction of the concept, Orthogenesis (Chapter Three, pages 268-272), he cites as examples  ammonites, nautiloids, stony corals, and (drumroll) horses!

I sympathize with the burden you have in dealing with the several lines of inquiry that have been opened among your opponents here, and if you are indeed conceding the horse issue, I am willing to leave unexpressed my further researches into that issue.  But I submit to you that if Schindeowlf's orthogenetic thesis is unsupported by horse evolution, it casts grave doubt on the viability of the theory as an alternative to random mutation + natural selection.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogenesis
     
Quote
Orthogenesis, orthogenetic evolution, progressive evolution or autogenesis, is the hypothesis that life has an innate tendency to move in a unilinear fashion due to some internal or external "driving force". The hypothesis is based on essentialism and cosmic teleology and proposes an intrinsic drive which slowly transforms species. George Gaylord Simpson (1953) in an attack on orthogenesis called this mechanism "the mysterious inner force". Classic proponents of orthogenesis have rejected the theory of natural selection as the organising mechanism in evolution, and theories of speciation for a rectilinear model of guided evolution acting on discrete species with "essences"

(If you can find a better definition in Grundfragen, please provide it.)

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"You can establish any “rule” you like if you start with the rule and then interpret the evidence accordingly." - George Gaylord Simpson (1902-1984)

  
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