I say no but why do evolutionists?
This is a sly way to demonstrate how unlikely evolutionism is on a probability curve.when on thinks of the millions (billions?) of segregated populations in biology(species) then it should be a high, or respectable percentage, are evolving as we speak to create new populations with new bodyplans to survive in some niche. By high I mean millions, with a allowance for mere hundreds of thousands. YET I am confident there is none evolving today. further i suspect evolutionists would say there is none evolving today. WHY? If not today what about yesterday or 300 years ago? Why couldn’t creationists say its not happening today because it never happened? Its accurate sampling of todays non evolution for predicting none in the past!
i think the only hope (hope?) is if evolutionism said , under pE influence, that all biology today is in the stasis stage and just waiting for a sudden need to change, qickly done, then stasis again. Yet why would it be that stasis has been reached so perfectly today relative to the enormous claim of the need in the past for evolutionism?
Anyways i think creationists have a good point here but willing to be corrected.
I don’t think it’s possible to predict which species or populations are in the midst of evolving to a new body plan, especially in the absence of any clear statement as to what would count as a new body plan. But perhaps beavers, hippopotamuses, and mudskippers are in the midst of evolving from land animals to aquatic animals or vice versa. Perhaps flying squirrels are in the midst of evolving a new form of flight.
What do you think about those, Robert?
No, it does not require a body plan change in order to count as evolution. And “body plan” is just something that people make up, anyway. If the distribution of genes for the population is changing, that counts as evolution.
So are mutations only confined to germ cells? Ever heard of somatic mosaicism?
What? You mean I won’t be mutating into an flying shark that shoots lasers through the eyes as promised by my Darwinian pastor?
That’s it, I’m leaving the faith for good. Heh
What? You mean evolution is essentially you “mutating into an flying shark that shoots lasers through the eyes as promised by my Darwinian pastor”?
You have an extremely narrow view of evolution 🙂
So, what’s the point of your comment?
Since only some men, and few women develop baldness, how does that apply to senescence?
You are obviously confused and don’t understand the point I’m trying to drive home: i.e. the idea that Allan Fox supports that our genome doesn’t change, and yet, we develop many diseases later, much later in life..
J-Mac,
Au contraire, mon ami, you are obviously confused.
Corneel pointed out to you that “age dependent processes, such as development and senescence, don’t require genomic changes.”
It is you that is failing to understand his point.
The development of secondary sexual characteristics does not require genomic changes. Neither does male-pattern baldness, or sarcopenia, or diabetes. There are lots of age-dependent processes like this, rendering your question pointless.
In case you have forgotten, you asked
I have a pretty good idea of the gotcha that you think you are heading for, and it bores me. It will be yet another pointless semantic debate in which you demonstrate the depth of your ignorance of biology.
Evolutionistas play dumb (w. the benefit of doubt). You see, “evolution” is a quantum event, so it doesn’t work when you look at it. You have to believe it and never attempt to measure.
Really? 🙂
You show, again, that your “knowledge” is limited to the 19-century science, or what you can google…
Spare yourself another embarrassment…
Enjoy the retirement! lol
Wow! Now you’re talkin… 😉
True, evolution and development are really quite distinct — though also closely related themes.
Somewhat ironically, the word “evolution” originally meant “unfolding” (compare “involution”, to fold up) — the idea being that there was some pre-given essence that got expressed or articulated in time, “rolled out” as it were. The idea that “evolution” could mean the process whereby genuine biological novelty comes into existence is a thoroughly Darwinized meaning to the word!
Yes, they are linked in that they involve lineages of cells. Indeed, that’s the only link I can really call to mind. The generation of a soma of reproductive dead-end cells sharing the same genome as germline cells gives a coordinated impetus to a life which would be lacking if those same cells retained individual reproductive competence and had unconnected futures.
No. Is it heritable?
Sure mutations arise in somatic cells. Cancer is not in itself heritable, though
I see others have answered this.
Do you really think we can count accidental events as opposed to non-accidental events in fitness and think we can make a distinction?
Okay lets think about this.
Bodyplan, is not my coined word, but a excellent word to describe the whole reason for evolutionary biology to explain why bodies changed/evolved from this to that.
I would see bodyplans changed within a new population as the only justification for saying evolution has occurred. ANYWAYS tits still about explaining this. So I ask if its going on anywhere etc.
You say the distribution for genes in a population is changing and thus thats evolution. Hmmm. First I’m not aware of this. That would mean a population is evolving though no change in its bodyplan generation after generation.
So you could say all species are constantly evolving though not changing in anyway whatsoever in looks and lifestyle.
I fail to see why genes changing but with no effect has anything to do with explanation for biological change!! i don’t think evolutionists would say this but…
Anyways i still can say no ACTUAL bodyplan evolution is going on as we speak despite billions of species. Or name one and preferably two! I don’t evolution is occuring at all in populations just because of gene flow.
if your saying these are evolving then show how? How can a whole population just be changing as if under the same influence and not actually change enough for anyone to say BEHOLD a new species from the parent one?
One can’t say one does not know. This is not how they teach how evolution works.
To say evolution is taking place ONE must say a population, actually members in a population, are being selected on due to some trait that gives a advantage for reproduction and this must be a different bodyplan, otherwise why evolve/, .
your analogy fails to show any species are evolving as we speak.
Nonlin.org,
Well I think indeed this thread makes a good case that evolution is not true or the unlikely probability that billions of species are right now fine and dandy. Stasis to use PE language. maybe evolution supporters think so but they are not articulating it here. i hope this concept is not taxing. I don’t why!
This thread has worked better then i first imagined. I see evolutionists here saying I’m wrong but not saying why? What am I , those i represent, missing?
I think its a good intellectual discussion hiting main concepts of evolutionisms hypothesis.
if I don’t understand evolutionism then show why? of the billions of species are any as we speak EVOLVING? i say none. how could this be? How could we miss so many/any new species/populations with new bodyplans needing new scientific names for description.?
They must say, for all biology, that its in a state of stasis and waiting for some event(s) to allow selection on indivuals in a population to take advantage of a useful new niche by way of a new bodyplan and thus have EVOLVED.
Or i will conclude another creationist victory to be put in our arsenal.
Do evolutionists here REALLY conclude biology is evolving as we speak? When does it finish with a new realtime species/population??Some folks have said odd things here!!
Yes, but you are probably not using it the same way as other people.
For example, I would be inclined to say that humans and monkeys have the same body plan, even though they differ in many traits.
Robert Byers,
You’re just not listening, is all. Evolution being true does not demand that you see new ‘body plans’ popping up all over the place.
Also, your standard … suppose, deep in the rainforest, I came across a ‘body plan’ never before seen. “Robert! Robert! Over here! Found one!”.
“Huh”, says you. “It was already there …”.
The only way you would accept evolution is if it happened in a place you happened to be staring at. Which, coincidentally, is my standard for Creation.
Allan Miller,
“my standard for Creation.”
Not for ‘creativity’ though, right? And people are or can be ‘creative’ can they/we not?
Sure. I see it all the time. Making creative organisms though – that would be pretty creative.
I had a look at that and enjoyed it. I agree he is doing philosophy of biology.
At the start, he makes gentle fun of philosophers for trying to deal with confusions in the use of the term fitness, then he spends the rest of the chapter doing exactly what they do.
ETA: Skimming Dennett’s afterword, I see Dennett argues athat the whole book could be viewed as a sustained argument in philosophy. Cue the joke about the guy speaking in prose.
The study body president at my high school was balding.
He went on to become the (completely bald) president/CEO of CGI, the company that owned the US Software firm that screwed up the original software for Obamacare.
One likely had nothing to do with the other, however.
https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/person/2396715
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/10/16/meet-cgi-federal-the-company-behind-the-botched-launch-of-healthcare-gov/
Yup, Allan is correct, you’re simply not paying attention. Asking why you don’t witness evolution, as defined by “new body plans popping up”, is like asking why you never see new mountains popping up. This is a s-l-o-w process, playing out in geological time.
Since we know that new body plans arise as a result of genetic changes, we can get around that by defining evolution as “genetic changes occurring” (typically quantified by changes in allele frequencies). This conveniently plays out within human time frames and yes all species, bar none, are evolving under that definition.
Alan Fox said/says that an individual’s genome is fixed when parental gametes fuse (referring to sexually-reproducing diploid organisms). Variation enters the gene pool at this point because that individual’s genome has been sorted, shuffled and crossed over, including some new mutations from copying errors. Populations change genetically over time, not individuals.
So, has it been established, or not?
Does our genome change over our life time, or not?
Robert: your customers…
Here is a list of similarities I can see between individual human development and evolution in relation to humanity:
Both show an Increase in complexity over time.
An Increasing body mass mirrors an Increasing biomass.
Individuals progress from living in amniotic fluid to a terrestrial existence, life moves from the oceans to the land.
Cells produce daughter cells (offspring) in development and organisms produce offspring during evolution. Generations of cells compared to generations of individuals.
Bodily development involves a differentiation of cells and tissues from the general to the specific and in evolution we see differentiation and separation into the various species.
Some cells remain generalists, some become extremely specialised. Some species remain generalists some become extremely specialised.
Cells and tissues live and die throughout the lifespan of the body comparable to life & death of species and higher classes within the the evolution of life as a whole.
Homeostasis maintains the viability of the body during life and the balance of nature ensures the continued existence of life.
Both individuals and life as a whole show a progression from basic consciousness up to higher self consciousness.
Both lead to novelty novelty within the general form. No two individuals are alike.
And now for distinctions. There is a difference in scale analogous to the minute and hour hands of a clock. Development is localised and of short duration and evolution is widespread and is taking place over vast stretches of time.
What do you see as the essential observed distinctions between development and evolution?
I could speculate that a copying error could occur early in embryo development that was non-lethal that develops into the reproductive organs but I suspect instances are vanishingly rare. Could be wrong, though.
These are differences in somatic cells, not the germ cells, so the answer would be no.
See here
And here
CharlieM,
That the genome and the genetic makeup of gametes would be unaffected is precisely my point .
CharlieM,
I see there is germline mosaicism
I doubt this has any overall significant effect on evulionary change. Could be wrong.
ETA on the other hand, if significant, it would be an additional source of allele variation.
Since both lead to the same thing – a human – how could it be otherwise? This does not make evolution ‘like development’, it simply says the evolution of a thing has led to that thing.
Urgh. That’s awful.
Urgh again. ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’. Should I continue?
OK, better – that, indeed, is the one I came up with. But note that the cells of a body all die. Evolutionary lineages are (to a point) continuous, and have independent futures.
Not at all the same. In a body, it’s differential expression of the same genome. In evolution, it’s genomic change, plus cladogenesis, a process with no analogue in bodies.
Urgh.
Urgh.
Ye gods! nothing like each other! And the ‘balance of nature’ … extinction is very much the order of the day.
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny you mean? Heh heh.
Streeeeeeetch … twang!
One of these things is quicker than the other?
The fundamental one, I’ve already alluded to. The cells of a body are genetically related, creating a co-ordinated rationale for some (most) cells to forego their direct reproduction in favour of germ cells. This makes a body a co-operative endeavour. There is no such rationale for separated organisms. They all have the opportunity to reproduce, and don’t always play nice when getting there. When the body starts to behave like the biosphere – autoimmune disease, or cancer – it’s time to start worrying.
But anyway … how does all this at times painful analogising help us do science?
I’m surprised nobody has brought up Darwin’s finches or peppered moths in reply to Robert’s question.
They have purportedly found the gene that gave rise to the variation in peppered moth colouration and it turns out to be a transposable element.
The moths needed to don a more suitable camouflage suit and so a gene which could do the job jumped into place. Now you see them now you don’t.
Here is another example of parallels between evolutionary and individual traits.
This species of moth changed its primary colour over time as a form of camouflage. If you have ever been to a sea life centre and observed rays, they can quickly change their appearance to match the colour and pattern of the surface they are resting on. It’s quite spectacular to watch.
And one more example of “evolution in action”
It links to a BBC news story on the subject.
Instead of giving the cause as a change of behaviour due to climate change they report it as being caused by “the gene which causes earlier birth”. I would like to know, what actual gene are they talking about?
Is this really a case of evolution in action, and can it be said to have been caused by a single gene?
And I was simply correcting your statement, “Genomes of individuals don’t change after conception.
And of course this is another parallel between individual development and evolution.
It’s not individual development though; it is evolution. Where does evolutionary change take place, if not in individuals?
It would be more accurate to state that they found the mutation that gave rise to the variation in peppered moth colouration, which indeed was caused by the insertion of a TE in the first intron of the cortex gene. Both the wildtype typica and the dark carbonaria morph have this gene, but the latter carries at least one carbonaria mutant allele.
It wasn’t brought up because Robert asked for changes in body plan, and the carbonaria morphs are “still butterflies”.
Yes I’m a bit confused. What would be the difference between the mutational changes in germ cell genomes that are supposed to cause the variation that natural selection can work on and germline mosaicism which is also a change in germ cell genomes?
CharlieM,
None that I can see other than that germline mosaicism contribution to variation is insignificant enough to be ignored.
I am being specific and you have turned it into something vague.
You believe that the beginning of life on earth involved single celled organisms right? You also believe in common descent, right? So we could take any creature living today and theoretically trace its ancestry back to these primal cells, right?
So the evolution of you or me involves and ancestry back to this beginning. Compare that with us as individuals. We begin from a primal ancestral cell, the zygote. Our cells can be traced back to this primal beginning. A process which parallels our evolution as a whole. This would be the same for any organism but I specifically said I was taking human evolution as a case study if you like.
Its got some truth to it. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It needs a lot of ducks in a row for the first cell to emerge. Andreas Wagner tackles this with his “metabolism first” idea (might not be his idea originally ut he presents it well in his book).
The death of body cells parallel individual organisms dying during evolution. What about developmental lineages? What is your favourite molecule that gets passed on as the cells of a body multiply and develop? Match the pairs, a cell, an evolutionary lineage, a developmental lineage, a body.
Is it really the same genome? If you are imagining the genome as a bare one-dimensional string of DNA then you might be entitled to say it is basically the same in every cell. But that would be an abstraction. The reality is that what is active in each nucleus is a complex of multiple types of molecules assuming a multitude of configurations and shapes. There are vast differences depending on which cell it is in and which stage the cell is at. We should define the genome by its activity and processes not by its molecular composition.
Regarding the parallelism between development and evolution see this article:
Lineages, splits and divergence challenge whether the terms anagenesis and cladogenesis are necessary
and this:
Ultimate destiny: How undifferentiated cells commit to their biological fate
If we ignore the way they tell this story and concentrate on what is actually observed we see that these stem cells become specialised by being influenced by the environment they find themselves in, but they already possessed the means by which they could become functional in their new location. The same can be said for species divergence during evolution. The organisms already possess the means by which they can become functional in their new environment.
Essentially we have the same process whether it is cells multiplying and differentiating or organisms multiplying and differentiating. The parts go about their business while the whole grows and becomes more complex.
Yes, it is a case of evolution in action, and no, it cannot be said to have been caused by a single gene.
This is a great example of the dangers of relying on secondary sources, and journalists in general, even ones as good as the BBC.
The PLOS article by Bonnett et al shows how much of the change in parturition date is directly due to the warmer weather (phenotypic plasticity), and how much of the change is heritable (the result of evolution acting on the deer population).
It’s based on statistics; I did not find any publication describing which genes are involved.
Except that (caveat the odd copying error creeping in at mitosis) it is the same set of genes in each daughter cell from the zygote. Development is very much down to which genes are switched on in each cell. I’m sure you will have heard of HOX genes.
ETA apologies for numerous spelling edits, have stinking cold!
The regulator in this case is the gene NEUROG2
I disagree (on several counts!). But in the correspondence I was responding to you effectively analogised the complexity of a human with the complexity of a human.
Well, I agree we can trace back to a cell – LUCA. A line of genome copying leads from that cell (not the first cell on earth; I don’t really know about origins, but it’s the most recent common ancestor). Likewise, a line of genome copying leads from a fertilised zygote to a human. But that was already conceded. That’s the similarity I see; life on the grand scale is ‘made of cells’ and multicellular individuals are ‘made of cells’. But that’s where resemblances stop.
Your general thesis is like saying that, because individuals in a corporation work towards a common goal, then a multiplicity of corporations behave the same way, because they are ‘made of people’. Whereas separate corporations do not (always) cooperate the way people within one such instance do. So it is with life. Multicellularity is cemented by a common ‘goal’ (I use the word with caution). Life in the round does not share a similar meta-goal – just lots of little ones.
CharlieM,
As near as makes no difference, yes. Any gene in a somatic cell has the same chance of ending up in an offspring as if it reproduced directly, and hence (cancer aside, one of the perils of multicellularity) somatic tissues can specialise, leaving reproduction (another specialism) to other tissues. You wouldn’t get this cooperation without relationship.