Below is an image of the developmental path from human conception to adult in comparison with evolutionary path from prokaryote to human.
Unlike Haeckel’s biogenetic law with its focus on physical forms, the comparison above also concerns activity, lifestyle and behaviour. Comparative stages may be vastly different in detail, but the similarity of general lifestyles and consecutive stages are there to be observed.
Human life begins in an aquatic environment. Toddlers gradually learn to walk upright from a previous state of crawling and moving around on all fours. The brains of children develop through daily interactions and experiences. This brain development accompanies the child’s increasing ability to achieve complex manipulation skills using hands that have been released from the task of providing support and locomotion, and also the practice of producing sounds using the various muscles of the mouth. Well developed brains allow for rational thinking and the creative use of language.
Human minds have brought about technological advances which have allowed human activities to engulf the planet. Signs of intelligent human activity are evident a good distance beyond the earth spreading ever further out into space.
The various forms of extant animals and all other life forms have evolved as an integral component of the living earth and the whole forms a dynamic system.
The various animal forms should be studied in the context of the complete system in both time and space. Conditions would have been very different prior to the terrestrial colonization of earthly life In all probability none of the present aquatic animals would bear any resemblance to the aquatic ancestors of humans and other higher vertebrates save that at some stage they all require an aquatic environment for their continued existence.
From a point of view which regards physical organisms as the individual expressions of overarching general forms, the evolution of cetaceans need not have involved moving to the land only to return to the water at a later time. They may have reached the mammalian stage of evolution but in a way that was suitable for an aquatic lifestyle. They adopted the archetypal mammalian form in a way that suited an animal living in an aquatic environment and there would be no need to posit a terrestrial stage in their evolution.
It’s my belief that higher consciousness is ever present. Evolution is the process whereby higher forms of consciousness descend from the group level to the individual level. The most fully developed individual consciousness which I am aware of on earth can be found in humans but it is still rudimentary compared to the higher level group consciousness.
Plasticity is a fundamental feature of living systems at all levels from human brain development to the radiation of multicellular life. Paths are formed by branching out and becoming fixed along certain lines. It would be impossible to forecast specific paths but, nonetheless, there is a general overall direction.
Now that biological life has reached the stage where social organisms have become individually creative and rational, the all encompassing Word is reflected in single beings. This could not have come about without preparation and the evolution of earthly life is the evidence of this preparation. We, as individuals, are only able to use language and engage in rational thinking because our individual development has prepared us to do so. Likewise humanity could not arrive at the present state of culture without the evolutionary preparation in its entirety.
Focussing in at the lower level gives a picture of ruthless competition, of nature “red in tooth and claw”. But from a higher vantage point life benefits from this apparent brutality. For instance if a sparrowhawk makes regular hunting visits to a suitable habitat in your neighbourhood it signifies that this environment supports a healthy songbird population. In the case of the continued evolution of physical forms, survival of the breeding population is more important than any individual’s survival. In the evolution of consciousness the individual is the important unit.
I think it is a mistake to see biological evolution as a blind random groping towards an unknown and unknowable future.
I don’t think Larry Moran would consider himself a gene centrist.
On the other hand, opposition to gene centrism seems enough for you to swallow someone’s position whole. Did you ever meet a maverick you didn’t like?
Shapiro finesses this issue.
The vast majority of the work he cites concerns unicellular organisms (my favorites, and his, are salmonella and trypanosomes — such a benevolent designer). He often uses language that obscures any germline/soma distinction.
His examples of heritable NGE in multicellular organisms are not going to bring any joy to creationists or IDists: P-element dysgenesis is the sort of Selfish DNA warfare that would make Dawkins proud…
BY way of illustration, Shapiro blogged (yeah, he does that…)
linking to an impressive 58 article bibliography to support this. Well, one of these articles is about variations in somatic cells, three quarters of them are about prokaryotes and the remainder are about unicellular organisms. How many are about germline “Engineering”? Zero. Which is weird, because P-elements definitively count; perhaps they don’t represent the sort of positive, ‘erector set’-style toolkit he’s pushing.
Oh I see what you are saying. You think tadpoles evolved from something else, and thus it is not that something else. So it must have new features, because its not that thing.
There wasn’t a single bit of actual fact to that statement then, just an assumption that this must be how things happened. But you are also saying, tadpoles have been tadpoles for as long as we know. No changes to tadpoles for eons. You can’t name a single thing about tadpoles that has evolved.
That seems to be pretty much the evolution story. Look at any animal. Go back and see what it looked like 1000 years ago. Its the same animal. Diversity of form, sure. Like terriers and poodles, and people from Turkey and people from Finland-but no, not evolved from history. Only the assumption that at some time they did.
DNA_Jock,
Not sure what Neil thinks is “dubious” about this. I am sure he believes he has a better understanding of the cells functions than Shapiro. I am sure you believe you do too. I doubt anyone else believes that about you.
Oh, but you don’t like his bibliography references. Noted. Not sure what you mean. Not at all sure that you know what you mean. But noted.
From context, I surmise what he means is that the bibliographic references do not support what DNA-Jock thinks Shapiro is saying. From which it’s logical to conclude that either the references or the material being referenced is not understood by somebody.
Flint,
Not really.
I think the bibliography supports what Shapiro is saying. I agree with what Shapiro is saying (in the blog post I cited). However, I am confident that many readers will come away with the mistaken belief that what Shapiro is saying has relevance for multicellular organisms. I am concerned that this misunderstanding might be intended — that he is being intentionally vague.
So you mean you don’t think we should draw inferences about evolution for multi-cellular life, from say experiments involving single cellular life. Again noted.
Sorry Lenski.
Flint,
Yea, I was pretty confident no one understood what Jock was trying to say and why.
Still not sure he does.
Shapiro extrapolates (or hints at extrapolation) to multicellular eukaryotes from evidence relating to prokaryotes.
That’s my take.
phoodoo,
Who does that? Do you have an example?
Yep, that’s exactly how I phrased it: “Tadpoles of frogs and toads acquired many morphological, physi[ologi]cal and behavioural novelties not found in their ancestors.”
I am neither a paleontologist nor a herpetologist, so you will have to forgive me for not presenting you with a detailed fossil series of tadpole evolution.
I *believe* we also have quite some fossil series, biogeographic patterns and genetic evidence as well, but never mind that.
Please tell me exactly when and how you believe tadpoles to have appeared. Do you believe modern amphibian species to be immutable? What happened to the species we know from fossils? I am genuinely interested.
Very good; Then your views have changed. You used to argue that inner activity was limited to living substance.
But if all matter has inner activity, then why are you so surprised that, as you so eloquently put it, “the words combine to make a meaningful story”?
Corneel, correct me if i’m wrong, but you seem to believe tadpole evolution and frog evolution as somehow separate.
Evolution is not a series of snapshots of the momentary form at a particular stage in an animal’s life. It’s about the general repetition in the descendants of the life processes in the ancestor. A complete dynamic life is repeated. It should not be forgotten that the bones and fossils that paleontologists line up were once just one part of a being that existed, not only in space but up to that point it had developed over a period of time.
Looking back we should understand that evolution is the evolution of life histories. Frogs metamorphose from tadpoles in the same way that you or I have metamorphosed from an early embryo. A tadpole is equivalent to an embryo whose womb is the body of water in which it exists. Some frogs have no free tadpole stage in their lifecycles. In these cases the equivalent stage will be passed through within the body of the parent frog or within the egg.
Comparing vertebrates in general the development to adulthood will always happen by metamorphosis from eggs by means of similar processes taking place in diverse environments. Because I am a mammal the development of my limb buds just happened to occur within the body of my mother, in the case of the common frog it happens within the body of water where it is living. In the case of birds this stage is passed through within the egg. The environments might vary considerably but the processes of limb development are remarkably similar in all vertebrates.
Novelties such as?
I agree they are not parallel processes. But they both consist of change over time on different scales. The development of an individual basically repeats the development of its ancestors.
Yes, just as I can speculate that next Tuesday the sun will appear to move across the sky from east to west. I’m hoping it will happen that way but I can’t be totally certain that it will.
From the initial zygote there is division and subsequent differentiation. This is happening within the organism as a whole which can be considered as a unity. Holistic thinking does not ignore the parts. It considers the parts in relation to the whole.
And why would I think otherwise?
We all have them 🙂 “Know thyself”, good advice, easy to say but hard to put into practice.
Scientists often say that all theories are tentative and outside of mathematics nothing is proven.
Have you ever watched a child developing into an adult and witnessed how their consciousness changes? A two week old baby has no real awareness of itself as an individual. That awareness takes time to develop.
You do this a lot, Charlie. I admit I’m easy to irritate but I’m not the only one to complain (see Petrushka). Nobody is disputing any of the above statements. I dare say, if we took a straw poll, no-one would take exception. Why do you persist in stating the bleedin’ obvious as if someone did disagree?
ETA: shoot, I missed out on using the word “banal”!
Feel free to withdraw from the conversation at any time. While I have been active here my “vacuous” comments have invoked a host of responses from which I have learned a great deal. so you may not see any merit in them, but I am very much benefitting from being here, so I’ll selfishly carry on.
On saying all that, it’s good to see you back, and in good health, I hope. 🙂
See, you have added to my knowledge. I didn’t even know I was in Paly’s corner until you enlightened me.
Is it like being put on the naughty step? 🙂
Why would I want to disprove your claim? Maybe you think I’ve moved into Shapiro’s corner.
Who are the opponents of evolution and why should I care about them?
As I see it, many of the people in the “third way website” don’t want belief in evolution to be abandoned, they just want dogmas to be left behind and views to be broadened.
Well, I am glad you now admit the Lenski experiments that you have hyped so much here in the past, don’t really tell us anything at all about animal evolution. Glad we can retire that nonsense.
Maybe you are finally waking up.
It’s not just an implication. That is what heredity means. That which is inherited down the generations.
An example that comes to mind is a bird such as a peahen altering her own heredity by choosing which cock to mate with. There are numerous examples in which the actions of the parents alters their heredity.
Obviously not; they are stages of the same individual with the same genome.
But (hopefully) also obvious; they have very different morphology and physiology produced by stage-specific expression of that genome. That is what allows larval frogs to exploit a completely different niche than adult frogs.
No it does not, for the reason mentioned above: the larval stage cannot be a recapitulation of the evolution of the adult phase because it is itself subject to evolutionary change.
See my answer to phoodoo. I trust that you are as fascinated by tadpoles as phoodoo is.
Because you claimed that the zygote has already reproduced when it reaches the blastula stage. That is very confused thinking.
Did you ever observe a human species evolve a consciousness higher than we currently have? You keep claiming that you are just making observations, but that’s not true.
Thankyou.
It all begins when a stork lands on your roof. So if someone wishes to have children, they should get a roof. The stork will be carrying a coloured basket, and…( story continues behind paywall.) 🙂
Surely you would agree that evolution is much more than the fixation of alleles?
Unless, of course, you think that fixation is synonymous with change over time.
All prejudices are wrong.
I eagerly await enlightenment.
Respond to my question.
If Shapiro’s natural engineering doesn’t change the germ line, why is it touted as a challenge to mainstream evolution?
Yes, I’m sure he’d agree with you. But I do think he believes that genes, or more specifically, changes in allele frequencies, are the prime movers of evolution.
I must admit I preferred James Garner’s character to Roger Moore’s. Does that count? 🙂
I presume Shapiro would answer that germ cells use natural engineering to manipulate their own genomes. No need to posit any interference from outside. Control is at the cellular level not the genome level.
You also are left with the never ending problem of explaining how it came to be.
Those organisms with natural genetic engineering had more babies than those without it, so they had a Darwinian advantage?
Can it get any more silly?
And to prove my point, along come CharlieM and phoodoo to demonstrate that they were misled by what Shapiro was claiming.
He would say nothing about germ cells.
Shapiro would note that [unicellular] organisms with NGE have more progeny than [unicellular] organisms without NGE. It’s completely Darwinian.
He would mumble the “unicellular” bit somewhat, mind you.
It’s not so much that allele frequency is the mover of evolution as it is the definition of evolution.
The interesting question is why.
What is about genomes that make them interesting?
I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll ask a question for which I don’t know the answer.
Are changes made by NGE “intelligent”?
That is, do they always, or frequently, improve the success of progeny? Has this question been put to a test? What would a test look like?
Perhaps another way of putting my question. Suppose you had a way of stochastically increasing variation.
How would the results look different from NGE?
Are they known to be different?
Sure you’re not a lawyer?
<ggg>
Well, the answer’s gonna depend on how you define “intelligent”.
The most widespread uses of NGE are different forms of antigenic variation which allow bacteria or protist parasites to evade a host’s adaptive immune response. So having a library of different surface antigens available and switching between them, either completely at random or in some form of “if stressed, switch”-type rule, is pretty bloody crafty (and the cause of much human suffering…), but easily evolvable.
In the germline of multicellular organisms, you have some pretty baroque behavior by transposable elements, but they look more “selfish Loki” than “intelligent”.
This is interesting. There is no scientific basis for rejecting the possibility that a process akin to the adaptive immune system also modifies the germ line.
Adaptively.
Well, nothing except the lack of evidence.
Nothing known about biochemistry prohibits mutagenesis, but a couple of nagging questions remain. Mostly about whether engineered mutations would be differentially adaptive.
So we have a red queen thing going on.
Organisms evolved adaptive immune systems, and pathogens evolved ways to selectively increase variation.
My first thought is that microbes come in millions and billions, and that some of them can die from self inflicted mutations, without anyone noticing. So there is no cost if the mutations are stochastic, and possibly fatal to individuals.
There might be some interesting new science here, but I fail to see that this is anything other than a way of increasing variation. Perhaps the variation is targeted toward areas less likely to be fatal. That would be interesting.
Well, you nailed it!
All aphorisms are tedious.
You display clear prejudices, in favour of anyone who questions the present evolutionary paradigm and against anyone who defends it. You want people in evolutionary theory to see it like you do. Else why whinge about ‘prejudice’? It is a common refrain: people only think as they do because they are locked in a mindset. They can’t possibly have come to their conclusion rationally, otherwise they’d think like you.
“Where’s the feedback” is one question that needs to be kept in consideration.
I am glad to see that Shapiro on occasion responds to some of the evolution preacher barkers such as Coyne. I have read enough of Coyne to know that his positions are just ideological wishful thinking at best, and pure dogmatic bullshit at worst. I think Shapiro sets him pretty straight here:
Jock may want to take some notes.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jerry-coyne-fails-to-unde_b_1411144
I also like this review of Shapiros ideas on Quora, by a student named Tyke Morris:
There seem to be a lot of evolution preachers who get their feathers ruffled by Shapiro, which tells you a lot about those preachers I reckon (one of their lame arguments is that Shapiro is a microbiologist and geneticist, not an evolutionary biologist-as if first off Shapiro doesn’t understand evolutionary biology, and second as if evolutionary biologists understand microbiology and genetics better than Shapiro. If they are not scared why do they sound so panicked about Shapiro? I could only stomach to read a few of their responses on the same page. They clearly sound worried):
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-status-of-James-Shapiros-theory-on-the-mechanism-of-evolution-Is-it-accepted-in-scientific-circles
phoodoo,
That you respond favourably to such credential mongering is no surprise. Add in some fantasy that opposition to ideas betrays some deep terror and your joy is complete.
Charlie does the same; it’s always about people rather than ideas. It is an unending theme of ID/Creationist discourse.
Yet when it comes to the actuality of evolution (which these people accept) they are deemed to be as full of crap as the rest of those darned evolutionists. There ought to be some hint of cognitive dissonance there, though there never is.
Wait, what?? I just gave you at least 10 paragraphs of HIS IDEAS?
Bit early to be drinking , yea?
Said the guy who has defended Uri Geller’s ‘ability’ to bend spoons with his mind and argued that dogs can see into the future to see when their owners are coming home….
And of course, the camps, where everyone who is there deserves to be there….
I’m unsure what you are getting excited about here. No matter what, no matter who ‘wins’ or ‘loses’ this ‘battle’ it’s not going to suddenly turn into Intelligent Design was right all along is it?
I’m not sure what relevance it has to you when two people are arguing details about something that you reject in its totality anyway. The immune system is not Intelligent Design in action, is it now?
He doesn’t need to. His argument is that cells in general are capable of NGE. If I said that mammals are endothermic you cannot criticize me because I said nothing about dogs.
DNA_Jock: Shapiro would note that [unicellular] organisms with NGE have more progeny than [unicellular] organisms without NGE. It’s completely Darwinian.
He would mumble the “unicellular” bit somewhat, mind you.
Can you provide quotes or specific references to him saying this, so that I can get an idea of the context.
A total mismatch of incomparable items. That you don’t see that is very telling.
Of course genomes are very interesting and what makes them interesting is the processes in which they are involved.
Is “allele frequency” the definition of evolution? Is it one definition of evolution among many? Is it part of a definition of evolution? Can the reality of evolution be totally encompassed by mathematics?
What would you say was the prime mover of evolution? And what do you think Moran sees as the prime mover in evolution?
CharlieM,
I find it truly extraordinary that Jock is suddenly so concerned about separating the concept of evolution from what happens with single celled organisms.
Its almost as if every time one asks for examples of evolving new novel functions the ONLY thing you are ever given is NOT examples of nylon eating bacteria.
You could have a read of this. There are hundreds of references. I’m sure they will provide some answers for you. (Although you will need to download it.)
Here is the introduction:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg2808
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10709-008-9289-z
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110411-160513
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijeb/2012/821645/
I’d be happy to chip in to help you afford access to some of these papers, if you need.