The Discontinuity of Nature

Typology is perfectly consonant therefore with descent with modification. Each cladogram is witness to descent with modification and the existence of distinct Types. The modifications are novel taxa-defining homologs, acquired during the process of descent along a phylogenetic lineage, each of which defines a new Type.

– Denton, Michael. Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis

I repeat, Michael Denton accepts common descent is is not a Creationist. My original thread has been inundated with scoffing and mocking and young earth creationism, all of which are far removed from the subject matter of Denton’s latest book. Trying again.

There is a tree of life. There is no doubt that all extant life forms are related and descended from a primeval ancestral form at the base of the tree. But there is no evidence to support the Darwinian claim that the tree is a functional continuum where it is possible to move from the base of the trunk to all the most peripheral branches in tiny incremental adaptive steps. On the contrary, all of the evidence as reviewed in these first six chapters implies that nature is clearly a discontinuum. The tree is a discontinuous system of distinct Types characterized by sudden and saltational transitions and sudden origins of taxa-defining novelties and homologs, exactly as I claimed in Evolution thirty years ago. The claim has weathered well!

The grand river of life that has flowed on earth over the past four billion years has clearly not meandered slowly and steadily across some flat and featureless landscape, but tumbled constantly through a rugged landscape over endless cataracts and rapids. No matter how unfashionable, no matter how at odds with current thinking in evolutionary biology, there is no empirical evidence for believing that organic nature is any less discontinuous than the inorganic realm. There is not the slightest reason for believing that the major homologs were achieved gradually via functional continuums. It is only the a priori demands of Darwinian causation that have imposed continuity on a basically discontinuous reality.

No matter how “unacceptable,” the notion that the organic world consists of a finite set of distinct Types, which have been successively actualized during the evolutionary history of life on earth, satisfies the facts far better that its Darwinian rival.

In these first six chapters, I have presented my reasons for viewing the biological realm as a discontinuum of isolated Types and pointed out that many of the Type-defining homologs give no indication of being adaptive. I have argued that this empirical picture is incompatible with Darwinism but supportive of typology. Standing on their own, I think the evidence and arguments offered in these first six chapters are sufficient to make a very strong case for my thesis. In the rest of the book, I will provide further evidence for this view by considering in depth the origin of a number of specific novelties. Near the end in Chapter 13 I will also present additional positive evidence for typology.

– Denton, Michael. Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis.

Did Darwin accept the types or offer an alternative to them?

What would the reality of the types mean for neo-Darwinism?

186 thoughts on “The Discontinuity of Nature

  1. GlenDavidson: Are you kidding?
    Glen Davidson

    I’m just assuming that anyone who considers having answers right now to every scientific question must have one.

    Otherwise, why not put it on the stack of unanswered questions and either wait, or do some science?

  2. Golly, you’d think that in the ensuing 22 years, someone might have pondered the same question. Have they?

  3. Here is a link, but unfortunately there is a paywall:

    http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v3/n6/full/nrg818.html

    Abstract:
    Understanding how the spectacular diversity of colour patterns on butterfly wings is shaped by natural selection, and how particular pattern elements are generated, has been the focus of both evolutionary and developmental biologists. The growing field of evolutionary developmental biology has now begun to provide a link between genetic variation and the phenotypes that are produced by developmental processes and that are sorted by natural selection. Butterfly wing patterns are set to become one of the few examples of morphological diversity to be studied successfully at many levels of biological organization, and thus to yield a more complete picture of adaptive morphological evolution.

    This article is a bit more recent:

    http://today.duke.edu/2004/07/wing_0704.html

    And up to 2012 here:

    http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v108/n6/full/hdy20126a.html

  4. petrushka:
    I think you are ignoring Denton’s question.

    How does evolution know how to make the patterns? Or any other form.

    And how does it keep learning all these new patterns? Obviously, someone is teaching it when nobody is looking.

  5. You’d think that patterns could not exist unless they were somehow specified in the genome. But we know better.

  6. Mung:
    You’d think that patterns could not exist unless they were somehow specified in the genome. But we know better.

    Specified seems to imply intended. Which seems ask, by what or by whom.

    Does that seem like a fair way of characterizing at least one kind of ID position?

    I’m at something of a loss to understand why Denton thinks evolution can’t produce sequences that result in patterns. Perhaps you can explain.

  7. Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis
    Michael Denton : Still the man
    The patterns: Still unexplained by algorithmic processes like evolution
    The Critics: Still uncomprehending
    ………
    The Game still not completed
    …….

    Therefore back to work
    😉
    peace

  8. fifthmonarchyman: Michael Denton : Still the man

    Still the man who made embarrassing mistakes in his first book where he questioned common descent, now backpedals and claims there’s no doubt about common descent, and without a mention to his former failed argument, goes on to spout more nonsense.

    ID, still the same bunch of dishonest scumbags

  9. fifthmonarchyman:
    Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis
    Michael Denton : Still the man
    The patterns: Still unexplained by algorithmic processes like evolution
    The Critics: Still uncomprehending
    ………
    The Game still not completed
    …….

    Therefore back to work

    peace

    FMM: Still relying on presuppositions.

    Glen Davidson

  10. petrushka: I’m pretty sure that is his intention, because that is exactly what CharlieM is arguing.

    John Harshman: How do you know that CharlieM agrees with Denton?

    Good question. He doesn’t.

    It doesn’t really matter whether I agree with him or not. But I do think that he asks some good questions that are worth examining.

    There are some who think it is far better to question his motives than to tackle the actual questions he asks.

    The questions are either brushed aside with a “we already have a very good grasp of the answers to these questions”, or with a “we don’t know the answer yet but real scientists are working on these questions and it is only a matter of time before our beliefs on these things are confirmed.”

    The problem is that some of these questions are very hard to answer from a Darwinian framework.

  11. CharlieM: The problem is that some of these questions are very hard to answer from a Darwinian framework.

    Well, let’s see.

    Today we have an announcement that gravity waves have been observed.

    For the last 100 years, they were just a theory. For most of that 100 years there was little hope that we would ever be able to observe them.

    If you wish to go through life denying evolution, you will survive. And evolution deniers have been known to prosper politically and financially. But don’t expect or ask for respect.

  12. CharlieM: Good question. He doesn’t.

    It doesn’t really matter whether I agree with him or not. But I do think that he asks some good questions that are worth examining.

    There are some who think it is far better to question his motives than to tackle the actual questions he asks.

    The questions are either brushed aside with a “we already have a very good grasp of the answers to these questions”,

    You almost had it there. Yes, the questions that have been completely, thoroughly, answered in depth and detail, are brushed aside for that very reason. Ask a question already answered because you don’t like the answer, and eventually people will tire of repeating the answer you won’t accept.

    or with a “we don’t know the answer yet but real scientists are working on these questions and it is only a matter of time before our beliefs on these things are confirmed.”

    Why is it necessary for you to be dishonest in order to try to make your case? Some of his questions are not meaningful. Some do ask for answers that can potentially be found, but why mock those bothering to look? If you are trying to say that scientific research is only done to confirm prior beliefs, you are confusing science with apologetics.

    The problem is that some of these questions are very hard to answer from a Darwinian framework.

    No, some are hard to answer from a scientific perspective, because that perspective requires observations, hypotheses being tested, peer reviews, and such. But of course all questions are simple to answer from a creationist framework – goddidit. End of story. Aren’t we all satisfied with that, boys and girls? A genuine explanation, even children can understand.

  13. CharlieM,

    [lengthy list of quotes]

    Yeah, we can read, thanks.

    Charlie (paraphrased) “they don’t tell us every achingly minute frigging detail”

    It’s a broad overview in a newspaper, for God’s sake. You think no-one knows how developmental genes are switched on and off? Check with primary sources, you want spoon feeding?

    And where’s your detail? Preferably one that doesn’t involve some hand-wavy analogy about 8 stone weaklings or jet engines. This kind of crap does rather cream my crackers. ‘Darwinism’ fails because every last i has not yet been dotted. On Design, meanwhile … not one solitary scrap of detail provided.

  14. petrushka: Specified seems to imply intended. Which seems ask, by what or by whom.

    Does that seem like a fair way of characterizing at least one kind of ID position?

    Specified is what is demanded by Darwinism. Do you forget that Darwinism is supposed to give us design without a designer?

  15. Flint: Yes, the questions that have been completely, thoroughly, answered in depth and detail…

    This is false.

    Why is it necessary for you to be dishonest in order to try to make your case?

    You have no case. Admit it.

  16. Mung: Specified is what is demanded by Darwinism. Do you forget that Darwinism is supposed to give us design without a designer?

    That’s just nonsense. CSI, FSCI, dFSCI all have an S.

    Dembski wrote “Specification: The Pattern That Signifies Intelligence.”

    Evolution produces stuff that looks designed to those who wish to see living things as artifacts.

  17. petrushka: Evolution produces stuff that looks designed to those who wish to see living things as artifacts.

    That’s is what Darwinism proposes. And humans are artifact makers. Why should other organisms be different?

    Everyone who studies biology knows that the sequences of nucleotides specify sequeneces of RNA and sequences of amino acids. Darwinism and ID merely differ over the cause of the specificity, not whether it is present.

  18. Mung: Darwinism and ID merely differ over the cause of the specificity, not whether it is present.

    That would be true if ID actually said what the cause of the specificity was. Except it does not. Unless you, Mung, know better?

    But it’s funny. So Darwinism is true except some of cog in the whole that you can brush under the carpet of “random might not be so random but you can’t tell”.

    And what’s funny is that you never were on the anti side at all. Apart from that one little bit. Quite an important bit. And, so, like Joe G says, all research is ID research really….

  19. Mung: This is false.

    You have no case. Admit it.

    And, right on schedule, we get what I call the William Benetta defense. He writes:

    In all of their efforts, creationists make abundant use of a simple tactic: They lie. They lie continually, they lie prodigiously, and they lie because they must.

    Thanks for the free home demonstration. You are reliable in this way, at least.

  20. noun
    1. the act of specifying.
    2. Usually, specifications. a detailed description or assessment of requirements, dimensions, materials, etc., as of a proposed building, machine, bridge, etc.
    3. a particular item, aspect, calculation, etc., in such a description.
    4. something specified, as in a bill of particulars; a specified particular, item, or article.
    5. an act of making specific.
    6. the state of having a specific character.

  21. But each one of those opsin and and crystallin proteins is a chain of hundreds of amino acids, highly specific sequences of molecules written in an alphabet of twenty amino acid letters.

    – Andreas Wagner

    I wager I can find him making additional appeals to specificity.

  22. I wager if you stop quote mining Wagner, he will continue on with the thought that there are a sea of synomous or equivalent sequences lurking in adjacent “rooms”.

  23. And that coding sequences are so far from specified that they can effectively be replaced, one character at a time.

  24. Hmmm, what’s goin’ on over at TSZ tonite [tap-tap-tap]? Ah, semantics. Splendid.

  25. Allan Miller: Hmmm, what’s goin’ on over at TSZ tonite [tap-tap-tap]? Ah, semantics. Splendid.

    right you are. petrusha for some reason needs to believe that specificity as an ID construct, even though it isn’t and never has been. I even quote one of his favorite authors to contradict him, and for that I am charged with quote-mining.

    Just another typical day at TSZ indeed.

  26. More quote-mining:

    …each protein has a precisely specified amino acid sequence.

    – Andreas Wagner

    This guy is worse than any IDist.

  27. Mung: right you are. petrusha for some reason needs to believe that specificity as an ID construct, even though it isn’t and never has been. I even quote one of his favorite authors to contradict him, and for that I am charged with quote-mining.

    Just another typical day at TSZ indeed.

    Naw, just typical Mung. Nobody thinks specificity is an ID construct. The ID construct involves misusing specificity in certain ways. Now, what a non-Mung might try to do is identify exactly what specificity MEANS within a given context, and determine if that meaning is or is not being transported to a different context. For example, does specificity refer to something constructed beforehand (to which the reality, once determined, can be compared), or is it something pasted on afterward, to show that a prior specification MUST have existed?

    I would be curious as to what you think it means. What you misrepresent petrushka as thinking it means, not so much.

  28. Flint,

    The ID construct involves misusing specificity in certain ways.

    Evidence please- It seems the evolutionary construct is to mislead and misrepresent all opposition.

  29. Each of these molecular machines [enzymes] – and there are several thousand of them – is a specific string of amino acids.

    – Andreas Wagner

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