tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5506870823292198189.post6794176000554092272..comments2023-09-16T09:31:23.577-04:00Comments on Please be patient, I am evolving as fast as I can!: Transitionial forms re-vistedTed Herrlichhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03194189686075222808noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5506870823292198189.post-71544673909166649522010-07-26T11:00:26.142-04:002010-07-26T11:00:26.142-04:00I think you have your history mixed up. Fossils h...I think you have your history mixed up. Fossils have been discovered for a long time, well before Darwin and the theory of evolution. The idea of the relationship between modern organisms and the evidence left from organisms in the past led to many questions, some dating back to Plato and Aristotle.<br /><br />The Theory of Evoltuion, particularly Natural Selection in this case, was the first mechanism that offered an explanation that made sense based on that evidence. It has so far withstood 150 years of study and experimentation -- not because it is an assumption of truth prior to a discovery, but because no other explanation fits the evidence. Other scientists would love to find a discovery that would knock back evolution -- it would be a career maker!!<br /><br />You want to show evolution is false, it really wouldn't take much. Find one rabbit skeleton in the stomach skeleton of a disonsaur. That would do it. Have we found the fossilized stomach contents in dinosaurs? yes we have -- but no rabbits or any organism that evolved at a later date.<br /><br />I would recommend a better understanding of the history of evolutionary theory and even a better understanding of how fossils and transitional forms support it -- including the methodology used. It's not a bunch of wild guesses.<br /><br />As for every organism being a transitional form . . . when you bother to think about it, it's true. Life on the planet has changed greatly over a very long period of time. There is NO evidence to suggest that the future will not bring more changes. Will there be homo sapiens in a million years? I don't know for sure, but the evidence says probably not.<br /><br />What you are quoting is part of the support for "Theory of Punctuated Equilibrium" which is part of evolutionary theory. It shows that there is evidnece of the gradualism discussed by Darwin, but there is also evidnece of more rapid evolutionary change. The Italian Wall Lizard is an example. A small population was transported to a Croatian Isalnd and have undergone dramatic changes in a few decades. But the source of those transported lizards have not changed in the same time period. Evironment is the key to both.Ted Herrlichhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03194189686075222808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5506870823292198189.post-35308250970279633462010-07-25T23:42:59.613-04:002010-07-25T23:42:59.613-04:00So not only do transitional forms exist, but there...<i>So not only do transitional forms exist, but there are thousands of them. There is no 'missing link', but there are many links between different species. We are engaged in finding them and the work continues.</i><br /><br />Don't you ever wonder why your various mythologies of Progress all seem to so seamlessly blur together? It is assumed that evolution, whatever it is, is true. Indeed, it is the equivalent of knowledge itself in the minds of many. This is the paradigm by which science is defined and therefore it is always being inevitably verified and never falsified. Every single organism that has been observed supports evolution, whatever it is. And even if one supposedly did not that would only show how evolution would inevitably be found to be true in the future thanks to progress, i.e. evolution. Indeed, at a wider level some use the same term to describe every single change that has or ever will happen in the entire Cosmos. Given that, it's little wonder that evolution seems so overwhelming to some. <br /><br />But as far as every single fossil which has been found supporting evolution, whatever it is, why is that surprising? After all, as you go on to point out every single organism is transitional just as all your mythologies of Progress merge seamlessly one into the other. <br /><br />On the other hand, for those interested in more than the unfalsifiable hypothetical goo typical to hypotheses of evolution there are some definitions and specifications which are not merely figments of our imaginations. They are the sort of definitions and observations which may be missed by those blinded by the Darwinian urge to merge.<br /><br />E.g.<br /><b>Stasis is data.<br /><br />So if stasis could not be explained away as missing information, how could gradualism face this most prominent signal from the fossil record? The most negative of all strategies-a quite unconscious conspiracy of silence-dictated the canonical response of paleontologists to their observations of stasis. Again, a “culprit” may be identified in the ineluctable embedding of observation within theory. Facts have no independent existence in science, or in any human endeavor; theories grant differing weights, values, and descriptions, even to the most empirical and undeniable of observations. Darwin’s expectations defined evolution as gradual change. Generations of paleontologists learned to equate the potential documentation of evolution with the discovery of insensible intermediacy in a sequence of fossils. In this context, stasis can only record sorrow and disappointment.<br />Paleontologists therefore came to view stasis as just another failure to document evolution. Stasis existed in overwhelming abundance, as every paleontologist knew. But this primary signal of the fossil record, defined as an absence of data for evolution, only highlighted our frustration-and certainly did not represent anything worth publishing. Paleontology therefore fell into a literally absurd vicious circle. No one ventured to document or quantify-indeed, hardly anyone even bothered to mention or publish at all-the most common pattern in the fossil record: the stasis of most morpho-species throughout all their geological duration.<br />(The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Harvard College) by Stephen Jay Gould :759-760)</b><br /><br />But if everything is transitional then I guess that stasis is an illusion, not data, correct? The interesting thing about the notion that everything is changing is that the more it changes the more it seems the same.mynymhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07095211421748579139noreply@blogger.com