Evolution Reflected in Development

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.

896 thoughts on “Evolution Reflected in Development

  1. petrushka:
    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.

    As Goethe said about Nature

    “The one thing she seems to aim at is Individuality; yet she cares nothing for individuals. She is always building up and destroying; but her workshop is inaccessible.”

    Individual microbes can come and go. What matters is that there is a thriving population.

    For continued survival, in the case of microbes individuals are subservient to the population, in the case of mammals individual cells are subservient to the population which makes up the complete organism, and individual organisms are subservient to the breeding population.

    There is no need for ever expanding variety. All that is needed is for there to be enough variety to allow adaptation to changing conditions.

    Death at the lower level is necessary for life at the higher level.

  2. Charlie, You continue to make my point for me.
    In response to petrushka’s critical question:

    If Shapiro’s natural engineering doesn’t change the germ line, why is it touted as a challenge to mainstream evolution?

    You wrote:

    I presume Shapiro would answer that germ cells use natural engineering to manipulate their own genomes.

    Shapiro would (as I noted previously) avoid any statement that was as obviously wrong as this, he is careful to finesse the germ/soma distinction. This point appears to have sailed over your head. So I replied

    He would say nothing about germ cells.

    Thus your response

    He doesn’t need to.

    is a further demonstration that you are missing petrushka’s point. In a big way.

    If you want examples of Shapiro mumbling the word [unicellular], check out the exchange that phoodoo kindly posted. It is damning in the extreme, and assuming you read it, it offers further confirmation of my point that you and phoodoo have failed to spot the equivocation that Shapiro is guilty of.
    If phoodoo is willing to discuss that exchange, rather than C&P blocks o’ text, I will walk him through it. It reminds me of Behe’s mutilated table S2 from Liu et al.
    phoodoo’s citing Tyke Morris did bring me joy, though: he’s quite the authority.

  3. OMagain,

    Great, buy the papers, post them here and then try to explain how they make some point you are attempting.

    Looking forward to it.

  4. phoodoo: Great, buy the papers, post them here and then try to explain how they make some point you are attempting.

    You said:

    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.

    I gave you examples where the evolution of various novel functions are explored. None of which related to nylon.

    I don’t expect you to change your opinion or attempt to make an effort however. It’s just to illustrate how weak your position is, given it appears to be a deliberate ignoring of counter data.

    Not all of those papers needed to be paid for:

    https://downloads.hindawi.com/archive/2012/821645.pdf

    Ultimately, differences observed between species are due to differences at the genome level. Genomic studies are revealing the extent of these differences—in gene number,in encoded functions, in expression—and are also revealing the mechanisms involved in the evolution of genomes. The analysis of particular newly evolved genes provides information in finer detail, which hopefully can be generalized and help to understand the evolution of new genes and new functions. Equally as important as the formation of new coding sequences is the formation of regulatory regions responsible for new patterns of expression as well as the processes leading to spread and maintenance of the novel gene in the population

    The point I am attempting to make is not for or aimed at you. That point is clearly that you are happy to say things like:

    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.

    Despite the disproof of that being available to you as easily as to me.

    You know what you know and nothing anyone else ever says will change that.

  5. DNA_Jock,

    Wow, look at this, Jock doesn’t even MENTION nylonase synthesizing. Man, damning! He is embarrassed to the extreme, he is trying to hide from these claims.

    Holy cow !

  6. OMagain,

    You are not going to buy the papers now? You were lying?

    What a cheapskate! Who would have guessed?

  7. phoodoo: Wait, what??I just gave you at least 10 paragraphs of HIS IDEAS?

    Bit early to be drinking , yea?

    Of his ideas. Him. Your new pet prophet. The person, the fêted and garlanded individual (he’s worked with Nobel Prize-winners you know), whose many thoughts (except for the ones in which he accepts evolution) we are supposed to think worthy, because … well, because why? Because it’s James Shapiro, the person?

    Go on, have another go. There’s a put-down in there somewhere.

  8. CharlieM,

    DNA_Jock: He would say nothing about germ cells.

    Charlie: 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.

    That’s poor, and betrays a weak grasp of biology. Single cells are directly invested in outcomes, because they themselves are directly ‘selected’ (yeah, let’s have another lengthy debate about what ‘selection’ means, shall we? 🙄). Whereas germ cells are selected only by virtue of the actions of somatic cells sharing their genes, as tissues or as entire organisms that ultimately disappear to leave only those germ lines. This is another example of trying too hard to see unity.

  9. phoodoo: You are not going to buy the papers now? You were lying?

    What a cheapskate! Who would have guessed?

    If I thought you’d read them I’d buy them for you. Would you?

  10. I would summarize the discussion as follows.

    There is nothing in physics or chemistry that prevents somatic processes from altering genes, but there are no examples of this happening.

    Those organisms that can alter their own DNA are unicellular.

    The alterations so far observed appear to be stochastic. The process could be called adaptive, but it is useful because the environment rewards rapid production of variation. The individual variations are not biased toward useful. There are just more variants.

    I’m wondering how this comports with the concept of dysgenics. I forget the buzzword for genetic decay, but it seems opposed to the idea that deliberately increasing variation could be adaptive.

  11. petrushka,

    That’s a good summary.
    The term you seek is “genetic entropy”.
    Yeah. Aren’t you sorry I reminded you? You’ll need another round of brain-bleach.

    phoodoo, in the civilized world, there is this thing called “copyright”. It would be illegal for any poster here to post the entirety of an article that is copyright-protected. This is AIUI also why Moran cannot post the NCSE conversation in full.
    RE nylonase, you appear to be complaining that anytime a scientist touts the results of evolution, he/she always includes nylonase, and simultaneously complaining that I failed to mention nylonase. Ridicule, you continue to do it wrong.
    I conclude (tentatively, that’s how I roll) that phoodoo has no interest in discussing the substance of the debate between Moran and Shapiro, or whether other criticisms of Shapiro have merit. Would phoodoo like to start with point 1, or 2 & 6, or 3 & 5, or 4?

    Some guy speculated

    I suppose one could spend 30 minutes crafting a carefully worded critique of modern evolutionary theory here

    I suppose one could, but it just never seems to happen…

  12. phoodoo: 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.

    I’m puzzled by this. You make it sound as if Lenski’s objective in setting up the LTEE was not to study evolution in E. coli.

    Glad we can retire that nonsense.

    There was no nonsense other than in your head and the comment you posted.

  13. Alan Fox,

     

    I also agree that neutral theory is sometimes oversold,

    [By whom?] Most people outside of evolutionary biology seem completely unaware of it.

  14. DNA_Jock: I suppose one could, but it just never seems to happen…

    You and Alan could quit as fake moderators….

    But just never seems to happen.

  15. Alan Fox: Larry Moran, mostly.

    And those papers left you unpersuaded? 🤔 It’s the basis of the molecular clock, the null hypothesis for selection detection, an important engine of speciation and change in lineage, a generator of standing variation … I wouldn’t want to oversell it, but it’s a very useful refinement to the selection-led view that most people go around with!

  16. Allan Miller,

    All good points. But the key to adaptive change is bias on reproductive success of phenotypes. What else is non-random? Not drift.

  17. Alan Fox: All good points. But the key to adaptive change is bias on reproductive success of phenotypes. What else is non-random? Not drift.

    Neutral theory was not proposed to serve as an explanation of adaptive evolution; it was introduced to explain the large amounts of molecular genetic variation; to maintain so much polymorphism required implausible levels of balancing selection.

  18. Look, phoodoo, that’s how adults discuss things. You should try it some time. Without that chip on your shoulder.

  19. Corneel: Neutral theory was not proposed to serve as an explanation of adaptive evolution…

    Sure. I just sometimes get the impression, when it is mentioned in passing by some, that drift contributes to variation.

    …it was introduced to explain the large amounts of molecular genetic variation; to maintain so much polymorphism required implausible levels of balancing selection.

    DNA sequences not under purifying selection will accumulate variation. I thought the effect of drift was to randomly fix alleles at the expense of others, a net loss of variation. I seem to be fixed on this. Perhaps I need a reboot.

  20. I’m having trouble seeing how fixation reduces variation.

    In toy simulations, like weasel, variation is reduced by selection.

    It seems to me that in actual populations, fixation is balanced by continuous production of new variants. I admit I haven’t done the math, but I’m pretty sure the math has been done.

    Also, neutral doesn’t mean unselected. It means equally selected. Either because variants are equally viable, or because they are equally non-functional.

  21. Alan Fox:
    petrushka: There might be some interesting new science here, but I fail to see that this is anything other than a way of increasing variation.

    Alan Fox: Well, you nailed it!

    Not so much a way of increasing variation, but of controlling variation.

    Cells actively attempt to repair damaged DNA and faulty copying. The standard story is that they are not 100% successful in this process and so their DNA contains copying “errors” which get passed on. Why are these changes regarded as errors? Is it not possible that cells are organised in such a way as to allow particular changes to persist while correcting other changes. Or at least to allow a percentage of changes to persist. Cells successfully restrict the changes to a low value but do not eliminate them altogether and this allows for plasticity. Of course there are limits, and sometimes the damage is to severe for the cell to cope with.

    One thing is certain. If the ultimate cause of inheritable changes to genomes are not known, nor can it be determined why these persisted while other changes were corrected, our ignorance does not justify us in designating these changes as errors.

    I have been told that cancer is caused by DNA mutations within cells. But is it true that mutations are the cause. Surely they are just a factor in the development of the disease. The mutations which occur in somebody who has skin cancer may be the result of excessive exposure to the sun. This is what caused the mutations which lead to cancer.

    Why some conditions develop can sometimes be traced to the behaviour in the history of the organism and so mutations or changes in DNA structure are effects not causes.

  22. Allan Miller:
    CharlieM: All prejudices are wrong.

    Allan Miller: 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.

    I am not whinging about prejudice, I’m simply observing that we all have them. Shouldn’t everyone be questioning the present paradigms? Isn’t that how science advances?

    Obviously the way that Shapiro or Noble or Talbott describe how cells control their genomes aligns with my thinking on this subject. And I believe this is a correct and fruitful way of tackling the questions about living processes. The whole controls the parts within it.

    Evolution is a process which, over time, conscious control takes over from instinctive, unconscious control. As it stands, humans are the organisms with the greatest amount of conscious control. But the amount of conscious control we actually have is very restricted so far. For instance we can have some measure over the control of our breathing (ask your dog to hold its breath 🙂 ), but for the vast majority of our lives our breathing is automatic. And I believe that there have been experiments carried out where highly trained Tibetan monks were shown to be able to exert some control over their body temperature and heart rate. I think that further human evolution has the potential to bring about increasing measures of conscious control but, of course, this path is not pre-determined, and so it all depends on the choices we make as individuals and as a community.

    I believe that biological research lays too much emphasis on the chemistry and physics of life and this will not produce a satisfactory understanding of life in itself. It’s like trying to understand a story by examining the paper and ink it is written on and the form and arrangement of letters on the page. There is a tendency to ignore anything that goes beyond physics and chemistry. There is room for a science of biology which has its own rules at a level above that of physics and chemistry. That was what Goethe was advocating for.

  23. Allan Miller: Charlie does the same; it’s always about people rather than ideas.

    I know very little about these people except for the ideas they present in books and on the ‘net. I have never met Noble or Shapiro so I can’t claim to know anything about them as people through personal experience. I can however discuss the ideas that they have presented.

  24. Alan Fox: Sure. I just sometimes get the impression, when it is mentioned in passing by some, that drift contributes to variation.

    […]

    DNA sequences not under purifying selection will accumulate variation. I thought the effect of drift was to randomly fix alleles at the expense of others, a net loss of variation. I seem to be fixed on this. Perhaps I need a reboot.

    As you correctly note, genetic drift does not contribute to variation; that’s mutation’s job. It’s just that directional selection (where selection favors one allele) tends to more rapidly decrease genetic variation than genetic drift does. Hence a population that is in equilibrium with mutation and drift canceling out is expected to harbour higher levels of genetic variation than one where selection is operating on most variants.

    petrushka: It seems to me that in actual populations, fixation is balanced by continuous production of new variants. I admit I haven’t done the math, but I’m pretty sure the math has been done.

    All correct.

    petrushka: Also, neutral doesn’t mean unselected. It means equally selected. Either because variants are equally viable, or because they are equally non-functional.

    That’s just semantics. There is no real difference between “equally selected” and “not selected”.

  25. Semantic or no, neutral is different than dysgenic. I seem to recall a lot of time wasted on genetic entropy, or some such garbage.

    Now, the same people are claiming, or appearing to claim, that organisms lift their genomes up by their bootstraps.

    Charlie, answer my question. Are the variations produced by NGE disproportionately adaptive, or do we just see the adaptive ones, because they survive? Show your work.

    Side note: I never saw a genetic entropist explain why single celled lineages didn’t die out of entropy, despite undergoing zillions of generations.

  26. CharlieM: Why are these changes regarded as errors? Is it not possible that cells are organised in such a way as to allow particular changes to persist while correcting other changes.

    You may want to get a bit more specific on the “particular and other changes” bit. What exactly is the difference between a “particular” and an “other” change? How does the cell tell the difference?

    BTW: I know where you want to be going with this, but you should make this explicit.

    CharlieM: The mutations which occur in somebody who has skin cancer may be the result of excessive exposure to the sun. This is what caused the mutations which lead to cancer.

    People do not die from “excessive exposure to the sun”. They die of cancer.

    CharlieM: Why some conditions develop can sometimes be traced to the behaviour in the history of the organism and so mutations or changes in DNA structure are effects not causes.

    Very well. Then you better tell all cancer patients you meet that it is their own fault that they are dying.

  27. petrushka: Semantic or no, neutral is different than dysgenic. I seem to recall a lot of time wasted on genetic entropy, or some such garbage.

    Now, the same people are claiming, or appearing to claim, that organisms lift their genomes up by their bootstraps.

    Agreed. If organisms are capable of removing all but the situation-appropriate mutations, the population will not degenerate through genetic entropy. Alternatively, if organisms generate situation-appropriate mutations but the population is still being swamped by deleterious mutations, it cannot adapt. One should choose one or the other.

    ETA: or preferentially neither 😀

  28. OMagain:
    CharlieM: 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.

    A total mismatch of incomparable items. That you don’t see that is very telling.

    I’m not comparing items. I’m comparing generals which include particulars. We don’t have to use the name “dogs” to know that they are not excluded in a general discussion of mammals. Likewise we don’t have to include the name “germ cells” in a general discussion on cells to know that they are included.in a general discussion of cells.

    What precisely do you see wrong with this comparison?

  29. Corneel: It’s just that directional selection (where selection favors one allele) tends to more rapidly decrease genetic variation than genetic drift does.

    OK, I don’t think I disagree with that. But let me see if I’m following. In small populations the effect of drift is stronger reducing the chance of extinction due to loss of variation and inbreeding?

    Hence a population that is in equilibrium with mutation and drift canceling out is expected to harbour higher levels of genetic variation than one where selection is operating on most variants.

    That’s where I’ve been going wrong – under the impression that drift in small populations is, in other words, inbreeding.

  30. CharlieM: I believe that biological research lays too much emphasis on the chemistry and physics of life and this will not produce a satisfactory understanding of life in itself. It’s like trying to understand a story by examining the paper and ink it is written on and the form and arrangement of letters on the page. There is a tendency to ignore anything that goes beyond physics and chemistry.

    What nonsense!

    There is a rich and enticing narrative at all biological levels above the molecular / cellular level. You just don’t like that narrative and now you are pretending that it is incomplete. It’s not.

  31. CharlieM: Cells actively attempt to repair damaged DNA and faulty copying. The standard story is that they are not 100% successful in this process and so their DNA contains copying “errors” which get passed on. Why are these changes regarded as errors? Is it not possible that cells are organised in such a way as to allow particular changes to persist while correcting other changes. Or at least to allow a percentage of changes to persist.

    The adaptation-“ist” finds this easy to answer. Copying errors are a rich source of variation. If copying were perfect, there could be no evolution, nothing for selection to work on. Also if errors (and it is not unreasonable to call a copying anomaly an “error”, far worse anthropomorphisms fly around these threads with gay abandon) exceed the rate that selection can sort sheep from goats (see what I did there) then extinction awaits, a very unforgiving form of selection.

  32. CharlieM: I know very little about these people except for the ideas they present in books and on the ‘net. I have never met Noble or Shapiro so I can’t claim to know anything about them as people through personal experience. I can however discuss the ideas that they have presented.

    Yea, but Charlie, its PEOPLE’S ideas you are presenting, that’s what seems to be bothering Allan.

    He is competing with Jock for creating a post least worthy of response.

    Stiff competition.

  33. CharlieM: I know very little about these people except for the ideas they present in books and on the ‘net. I have never met Noble or Shapiro so I can’t claim to know anything about them as people through personal experience. I can however discuss the ideas that they have presented.

    I don’t know if you’re being deliberately obtuse … probably not, but I still don’t see why some people (almost always on the ‘anti-paradigm’ side) constantly have to chuck names about like holy writ. “Look, x, y and z agree with me”. So bleedin’ what? I hardly reference a soul in discussing concepts. I realise it is SOP in philosophy, but I don’t really get it in terms of discussing whether or not a particular approach is more or less fruitful. Joe Felsenstein agrees with me***.

    *** probably not.

  34. Alan Fox: OK, I don’t think I disagree with that. But let me see if I’m following. In small populations the effect of drift is stronger reducing the chance of extinction due to loss of variation and inbreeding?

    If you meant increasing the chance of extinction that is correct. The loss of genetic variation increases the level of homozygosity, which is bad news because it results in the increased expression of previously hidden recessive deleterious alleles.

    Alan Fox: That’s where I’ve been going wrong – under the impression that drift in small populations is, in other words, inbreeding.

    I do not blame you for being confused about this; this is really hard stuff.

    In population genetics, a distinction is made between inbreeding by drift and inbreeding by nonrandom mating. The idea is that even in very large well-mixed populations, you can still have inbreeding if relatives tend to have offspring together (inbreeding by nonrandom mating). In small populations however this distinction is blurred because even with completely random mating, you still will be mating with close relatives because everybody in a small population will be a close relative at some point: inbreeding by drift. Both inbreeding by drift and inbreeding by non-random mating result in an increase in homozygosity.

    In a large well-mixed population without relatives seeking each other out (the official term is positive assortative mating) there will still be genetic drift, but there is no inbreeding of either kind. Hence we expect no surplus of homozygous individuals.

    ETA: added some clarification about homozygosity levels

  35. Alan Fox: The adaptation-“ist” finds this easy to answer. Copying errors are a rich source of variation. If copying were perfect, there could be no evolution, nothing for selection to work on.

    There is a ‘circumstantialist’ version of that argument (I just made that -ism up): the process of improving fidelity must itself involve mutations, so further improvement gets harder and harder. Even if a ‘perfect replicator’ existed in sequence space, it could not be reached from an imperfect one, because improvement squeezes the life out of the process of improvement.

    It likely becomes maladaptive anyway, eg by taking too long, and the additional gains in offspring likely would become fewer anyway as perfection is approached. Diminishing possibilities allied with diminishing returns.

    It isn’t necessarily the case that imperfection is adaptive.

  36. Corneel: If you meant increasing the chance of extinction that is correct.

    Ah crap. That is what I did understand and I thought you were saying the opposite. So if drift in small populations does indeed increase the chance of extinction… I’m going outside now and I may be some time.

  37. phoodoo: Yea, but Charlie, its PEOPLE’S ideas you are presenting, that’s what seems to be bothering Allan.

    He is competing with Jock for creating a post least worthy of response.

    Stiff competition.

    Go on then phoodoo, tell us which of James Shapiro’s IDEAS you find particularly congenial, and why?

  38. Alan Fox,

    Hope that made sense. Don’t worry if it doesn’t: As I said, this is hard stuff and it is difficult to explain without going into the gory mathematical details of Wright’s F-statistics.

    ETA: Haha, too late “I’m going outside now and I may be some time”

  39. CharlieM: Likewise we don’t have to include the name “germ cells” in a general discussion on cells to know that they are included.in a general discussion of cells.

    except when the things you are discussing do not apply to germ cells.

    What precisely do you see wrong with this comparison?

    In your endothermy analogy, ThirdWayAdvocate has been talking at great length about a variety of endothermic animals. petrushka asks “How is this relevant to fish?”.
    Charlie replies “TWA would say that fish are endothermic too.” DNA_Jock notes “TWA would not say anything that obviously wrong, he’s not going to mention fish at all.”
    Charlie continues to miss the point, replying “He doesn’t need to. His argument is that cells animals in general are capable of NGE endothermy.
    BTW, Shapiro is very much aware of the re-arrangements that DO OCCUR in the germline of multicellular organisms, but he avoids those examples like the plague. Those re-arrangements may well be important drivers of speciation, but they don’t fit your Design narrative, I’m afraid.

  40. There are levels of discussion here that are above my pay grade, but somethings I can follow.

    If someone waxes poetic about the wonders of volcanic soil, but neglects to mention the inconveniences associated with it being produced in your neighborhood, there’s a reason for the omission. Just think how lush your garden will be in 20 years.

    High rates of mutation are easily tolerated by unicellular, fast dividing populations.

    Inconvenient for mammals.

  41. Corneel: it is difficult to explain without going into the gory mathematical details of Wright’s F-statistics.

    Ah, your reference to Sewall Wright reminds me of Will Provine. Does this paper (PDF) make any sense?

  42. From Gillespie’s paper:
    Very rare alleles, such as new mutations,will be bounced around by genetic drift. However, the dynamics of rare drifting alleles is essentially independent of population size, as originally discovered by Fisher (1958) when he used branching process theory to describe the fixation probability of new mutations. When rare alleles become common, genetic draft may take over as the dominant stochastic force. Thus, my message is not that drift is unimportant, but that population size is unimportant.

  43. petrushka,

    High rates of mutation are easily tolerated by unicellular, fast dividing populations.

    The drawbacks of a higher mutation rate may be traded off against speed of replication. It is also more readily tolerated (when expressed per-base, rather than per-replication) by those with smaller genomes.

  44. phoodoo:
    Alan Fox,

    Is that a person’s ideas?

    What’s with you evolutionists obsession with people?

    So which of Shapiro’s IDEAS are you particularly taken with? What’s with you Creationists’ inability to discuss people’s ideas?

  45. Allan Miller: So which of Shapiro’s IDEAS are you particularly taken with? What’s with you Creationists’ inability to discuss people’s ideas?

    phoodoo is the most knowledgeable person in the world with regards to his (secret) job. He knows the inner secrets of how the FBI uses PSI and that millions of people are in camps for good reasons, reasons he unfortunately can’t share. All claims made by him.

    So, what’s to discuss? He knows it all already, and nothing you could say could possibly change his mind.

  46. Alan Fox: *cough Sci-hub cough*

    Oh, I know, I was just trying to extract a promise from phoodoo to read them first 😉

    Ironically he now complains that we are focused on people not ideas, and yet he would never read the ideas in those papers that actually attempt to answer the question he asked!

    You want to know about novelty, they reading papers from people researching that might well be a good start phoodoo!

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