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. petrushka: Is he really saying that feathers are not an accumulation of novelties, each of which occurred independently?

    Just the opposite. You’ve got that link, he talks about feathers on the second page.

  2. Flint: So what do YOU think he’s trying to say?

    …there are now six well-characterized taxa-defining novelties in birds which would appear to have been primarily the result of internal causal factors and not gradual cumulative selection to serve a succession of environmental constraints: (1) the feather follicle; (2) the plumaceous feather with un-branched parallel barbs; (3) the branched pinnate feather; (4) the open pennaceous feather with barbs and barbules; (5) the closed pennaceous feather with interlocking barbules; and now also (6) the beak. In none of these cases is there an adaptive continuum leading to the novelties as would be required by an externalist Darwinian account. Again, “internalism rules.”

    – Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis.

    He does not claim that these novelties, once they appeared, did not contribute to the cumulative selection of the feather. His argument concerns the novelties themselves and how they arose, not how the feather arose given a sequence of novelties.

  3. Mung: Just the opposite. You’ve got that link, he talks about feathers on the second page.

    And he expresses baffled disbelief at (I can’t be sure) either the power of selection, or the existence of selection. It’s strange that some people simply cannot grasp the concept of selection absent any initial goal to select for.

  4. Flint: And he expresses baffled disbelief at (I can’t be sure) either the power of selection, or the existence of selection. It’s strange that some people simply cannot grasp the concept of selection absent any initial goal to select for.

    Denton accepts the existence of cumulative selection. I have even given a case where he accepts that it likely played a role (the evolution of the feather). So why on earth would you think he denies selection?

  5. Mung: …there are now six well-characterized taxa-defining novelties in birds which would appear to have been primarily the result of internal causal factors and not gradual cumulative selection to serve a succession of environmental constraints: (1) the feather follicle; (2) the plumaceous feather with un-branched parallel barbs; (3) the branched pinnate feather; (4) the open pennaceous feather with barbs and barbules; (5) the closed pennaceous feather with interlocking barbules; and now also (6) the beak. In none of these cases is there an adaptive continuum leading to the novelties as would be required by an externalist Darwinian account. Again, “internalism rules.”

    – Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis.

    He does not claim that these novelties, once they appeared, did not contribute to the cumulative selection of the feather. His argument concerns the novelties themselves and how they arose, not how the feather arose given a sequence of novelties.

    ???

    His quote seems to be saying that he simply for the life of him can’t imagine a continuum of small steps leading up to any of the entailments of a feather much less an actual feather. He also seems to be trying to say that each mutation has an internal cause (which it does), RATHER THAN being the result of selection. In other words, he’s saying you can have selection, OR you can have mutation, but you can’t have both!

    The notion that evolution is opportunistic, making do with whatever works even if it works by altering lifestyles, seems beyond him. He’s saying that the ultimate feather was a highly unlikely result, and THEREFORE evolution couldn’t have done it. Ignoring the fact that ALL evolutionary results are highly unlikely.

  6. Mung: Denton accepts the existence of cumulative selection. I have even given a case where he accepts that it likely played a role (the evolution of the feather). So why on earth would you think he denies selection?

    Because a feather is an entirely normal, routine result of selection given a long sequence of mutations. Alone, mutation would get nowhere. Alone, selection would be useless, there being nothing to select. He needs to put the two together. He apparently can’t quite get there from here.

  7. Here is Stephen Talbott quoting Darwin and Adolf Portmann:

    The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” (Darwin 1860).

    We can assume that Darwin got over that stage of the complaint as well. But, thankfully, the biologist is still now and then allowed, if not a complaint, at least an honest expression of wonder. Portmann, writing not of the peacock, but of another bird with a remarkable pattern of coloration on its wings, asked us to appreciate the difficulty of explanation:

    If … we look at the speculum on a duck’s wing, we might imagine that an artist had drawn his brush across some ten blank feathers, which overlap sideways – making white, bluey-green, and black lines – so that the stroke of the brush touched only the exposed part of each feather. The pattern is a single whole, superimposed on the individual feathers, so that the design on each, seen by itself, no longer appears symmetrical. We realize the astonishing nature of such a combined pattern only when we consider that it develops inside several or many feather sheaths completely separated from one another; and that in each individual feather it appears at an early stage while it is still tightly rolled up, the join pattern not being produced until these feathers are unfolded. What sort of unknown forces direct the construction work in the ‘painting’ of these feather germs? (Portmann 1967, p. 22).

    Natural selection, it appears, works to perfection in the creation of form. But how are we to understand this perfection? What sort of explanation are we looking for when we want to make sense of form? In the case of that patch of color on the duck’s wings: will it be enough when we have traced the processes and connections by which the molecules of pigment come to be present in the various feathers? Do we need to discover also some use for the design? And what about the form itself – its expressive character and beauty? Do these have no place in science?

    Look at the individual feathers that contribute to the speculum of a mallard. The whole feather is brown except for the small area which makes up the speculum. The iridescent colour only occupies the area of the feather which is not hidden by the overlapping feather next to it.

    This cannot be explained by natural selection operating on random changes to organism unless you wish to believe in miracles.

  8. Well I suppose if a designer started out attempting to create something like a peacock feather from the laws of physics and chemistry, he would likely fail.

    But no one thinks the patterns of feathers were goals or targets.

  9. CharlieM:
    This cannot be explained by natural selection operating on random changes to organism unless you wish to believe in miracles.

    That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, right? You just can’t for the life of you imagine any possible reason why such a feature might have arisen. And we should all accept that nature is constrained by your failure of imagination, right?

  10. petrushka:
    Well I suppose if a designer started out attempting to create something like a peacock feather from the laws of physics and chemistry, he would likely fail.

    But no one thinks the patterns of feathers were goals or targets.

    Indeed, this seems to be best explained by sexual selection — female peacocks are impressed by big unwieldy heavy gaudy tails, and female mallards are impressed by a distinct speculum. But let’s face it, magic is so much easier to spell.

  11. Flint: Indeed, this seems to be best explained by sexual selection — female peacocks are impressed by big unwieldy heavy gaudy tails, and female mallards are impressed by a distinct speculum. But let’s face it, magic is so much easier to spell.

    Female mallards also have speculums.

  12. petrushka:
    Well I suppose if a designer started out attempting to create something like a peacock feather from the laws of physics and chemistry, he would likely fail.

    But no one thinks the patterns of feathers were goals or targets.

    Well you are supposing the designer is some external male being working on the form of duck from the outside.

    What makes you reach this conclusion?

  13. CharlieM: Well you are supposing the designer is some external male being working on the form of duck from the outside.

    What makes you reach this conclusion?

    So you are ruling out evolution, you are ruling out external design, you are ruling out selection, you are ruling out random changes. What’s left, and why should we accept it?

  14. CharlieM: Well you are supposing the designer is some external male being working on the form of duck from the outside.
    What makes you reach this conclusion?

    I’ve been accused of many things, but that’s the oddest. It doesn’t even look like a sentence in the English language.

  15. Flint: You just can’t for the life of you imagine any possible reason why such a feature might have arisen. And we should all accept that nature is constrained by your failure of imagination, right?

    Ah yes. It’s the old failure of imagination defense. Pathetic, but still popular.

    So tell us, what is it that we cannot imagine? Please be specific. Details. Extra points if they are testable.

  16. Flint: Because a feather is an entirely normal, routine result of selection given a long sequence of mutations.

    So? You’re arguing about something that’s already been granted.

    Is there some reason you fail to make the same claim for each of the six novelties Denton mentioned?

  17. petrushka: That decorative features could arise by chance.

    Are we supposed to be able to tell the difference between that and magic?

    Are you proposing that they arose by some saltational event?

  18. Flint: And?

    You seem to think that the purpose of the speculum on drake mallards is to attract a mate. So what do you think its purpose is on the female?

    And, by the way, have you ever watched mallards mating? The female doesn’t have much choice in which drake is successful. She is usually being chased by several suitors who aren’t interested in giving her a good time.

  19. Flint: So you are ruling out evolution, you are ruling out external design, you are ruling out selection, you are ruling out random changes. What’s left, and why should we accept it?

    I am not ruling out evolution, just unguidede evolution. And instead of external design, how about design from within? I am not ruling out selection and random changes. These actually occur but they are limited in their effect.

  20. CharlieM: You seem to think that the purpose of the speculum on drake mallards is to attract a mate. So what do you think its purpose is on the female?

    And, by the way, have you ever watched mallards mating? The female doesn’t have much choice in which drake is successful. She is usually being chased by several suitors who aren’t interested in giving her a good time.

    Why do you suppose it has a purpose at all? I can only speculate as to why it came to be selected for. Maybe it’s not even the result of selection.

  21. CharlieM: I am not ruling out evolution, just unguidede evolution. And instead of external design, how about design from within? I am not ruling out selection and random changes. These actually occur but they are limited in their effect.

    What limits them? How do you know these limitations exist?

  22. petrushka: I’ve been accused of many things, but that’s the oddest. It doesn’t even look like a sentence in the English language.

    So why did you refer to the designer as “he”?

  23. Mung: Ah yes. It’s the old failure of imagination defense. Pathetic, but still popular.

    So tell us, what is it that we cannot imagine? Please be specific. Details. Extra points if they are testable.

    Sorry, my imagination isn’t that good. Are you trying to present the old “we don’t know how it happened, therefore goddidit” defense? Pathetic.

  24. CharlieM: So why did you refer to the designer as “he”?

    Because you only need to scratch the surface of the ID folks to discover that, yes indeedy, the Designer is none other than the creationist god, who is generally regarded as male.

  25. Flint: Why do you suppose it has a purpose at all? I can only speculate as to why it came to be selected for. Maybe it’s not even the result of selection.

    The point is the speculum and also such features as the patterns on the wing’s of butterflies can only make sense in relation to the whole organism and not from the individual feathers or scales.

  26. CharlieM: The point is the speculum and also such features as the patterns on the wing’s of butterflies can only make sense in relation to the whole organism and not from the individual feathers or scales.

    Uh, OK. And? Generally, the whole organism is regarded as the item being selected.

  27. Flint: Generally, the whole organism is regarded as the item being selected.

    Which explains your fixation on the feather.

  28. Neil Rickert: The paragraph beginning at around kindle location 2388.

    There’s nothing there that even remotely resembles what you claimed.

    Neil Rickert: Denton has a long section on angiosperms. He sees the need for saltation to explain how they quickly took over.

    He says no such thing.

  29. Flint: What limits them? How do you know these limitations exist?

    I believe that selection can change the size of finch beaks or moth wing colour but I have never seen any examples of selection producing novel forms. Show me the evidence that selection acting on random changes is unlimited.

  30. Mung: Right. Can’t be bothered to provide an actual quote. No surprise there.

    I’ve only read the summary and have no idea what Denton thinks happened or how. All I know is he doesn’t like Darwinism.

  31. CharlieM: I believe that selection can change the size of finch beaks or moth wing colour but I have never seen any examples of selection producing novel forms.

    Show me a person who’s never heard of a kinkajou, and I’ll show you a person who wouldn’t recognize a kinkajou if a rabid one was chewing on their face.

    You say you “have never seen any examples of selection producing novel forms”? Okay; what do you mean when you say “novel form”? Depending on what you think a “novel form” is, it may well be impossible for selection to produce something you regard as a “novel form”. But until you explain what you think a “novel form” is, and how to distinguish a form which is a CharlieM-type “novel form” from a form which is not a CharlieM-type “novel form”, nobody can tell whether or not selection should, in fact, be able to produce a CharlieM-type “novel form”.

    Show me the evidence that selection acting on random changes is unlimited.

    This request is apparently directed towards someone who holds the position that selection acting on random changes is unlimited. I am unaware of any person here who holds that position. The question is not whether selection-acting-on-random-changes has any limits whatsoever; rather, the question is whether any existing lifeform is beyond whatever limits are applicable to selection-acting-on-random-changes. Do you have any candidates for such a lifeform?

  32. Flint: Because you only need to scratch the surface of the ID folks to discover that, yes indeedy, the Designer is none other than the creationist god, who is generally regarded as male.

    Then you need to be reminded that you are arguing with real individuals and not some insidious ID collective.

  33. Flint:

    CharlieM: The point is the speculum and also such features as the patterns on the wing’s of butterflies can only make sense in relation to the whole organism and not from the individual feathers or scales.

    Uh, OK. And? Generally, the whole organism is regarded as the item being selected.

    But we are not talking about the selection of the feature once it is present. We are talking about how it came to be there in the first place so that it was available for selection.

  34. CharlieM,

    This cannot be explained by natural selection operating on random changes to organism unless you wish to believe in miracles.

    So what alternative are you offering to ‘believing in miracles’?

  35. cubist: Show me a person who’s never heard of a kinkajou, and I’ll show you a person who wouldn’t recognize a kinkajou if a rabid one was chewing on their face.

    You say you “have never seen any examples of selection producing novel forms”? Okay; what do you mean when you say “novel form”? Depending on what you think a “novel form” is, it may well be impossible for selection to produce something you regard as a “novel form”. But until you explain what you think a “novel form” is, and how to distinguish a form which is a CharlieM-type “novel form” from a form which is not a CharlieM-type “novel form”, nobody can tell whether or not selection should, in fact, be able to produce a CharlieM-type “novel form”.

    Examples of novel forms would be the patterns on butterfly wings, a feather, the quill of a porcupine, a cassowary’s casque, rhino’s horns, the pentadactyl limb, etc, etc, etc.

    This request is apparently directed towards someone who holds the position that selection acting on random changes is unlimited. I am unaware of any person here who holds that position. The question is not whether selection-acting-on-random-changes has any limits whatsoever; rather, the question is whether any existing lifeform is beyond whatever limits are applicable to selection-acting-on-random-changes. Do you have any candidates for such a lifeform?

    Plenty. For example lepidoptera with their patterned wings including various cases of mimicry.

    As Simon Conway Morris wrote in the 16 November 2002 issue of New Scientist:

    When you examine the tapestry of evolution you see the same patterns emerging over and over again. Gould’s idea of rerunning the tape of life is not hypothetical; it’s happening all around us. And the result is well known to biologists — evolutionary convergence. When convergence is the rule, you can rerun the tape of life as often as you like and the outcome will be much the same. Convergence means that life is not only predictable at a basic level; it also has a direction.

  36. I wouldn’t strictly call flight feathers the result of cumulative selection in toto – to me, that implies a single selective cause allowing tuning. It is probable that a range of selective factors was in operation prior to faltering flight, rather than such a cumulative tuning for one function. You haven’t a hope of flying with early-stage feathers (to say nothing of the amendments needed to skeleton and musculature), so other factors must be invoked.

    Those same factors operate today, which is why flightless birds do not lose their feathers. Insulation and sexual distinction/display appear to be the prime function of these feathers, so it seems reasonable to infer that these could have operated before any bird ever took off.

    But those who sniff ‘Darwinist fairy story’ need to offer a better reason why a feature should become common in the population than ‘internal causal factors’. How did these factors operate? Did it happen in one individual and become inherited, or did proto-feathers pop up all over the place simultabeously? In the absence of selection, how did they not just drift out again? Alternatively, if you invoke selection to retain a stage, aren’t you just being ‘neo-Darwinian’?

    One would expect a theory not in crisis to be able to come up with some answers to these questions.

  37. In Ghostbusters II, Bill Murray chides a psychic for making a prediction too near in the future to profit from the uncertainty.

    If I were consulting the ID movement, I would recommend against hanging my hat on feather evolution. I suspect we will unravel this one.

  38. CharlieM: But we are not talking about the selection of the feature once it is present. We are talking about how it came to be there in the first place so that it was available for selection.

    I have brought this up. Try reading.

  39. Allan Miller:
    CharlieM,

    So what alternative are you offering to ‘believing in miracles’?

    Each form is an individual expression of the archetype. Look at the progression of animal forms. Beginning with the primal spherical form there is an elongation and a progression through the horizontal to the verticle position. Individual features of an animal must be looked at in relation to the animal as a whole. A cow is governed by earthly forces. Its bulk and thick set bones tie it to the earth, its spine lies horizontally and for much of the time its head is bent down touching the earth. Now look at a bird. Its whole being is designed to escape from the earthly forces. The thin-walled, pneumatic bones, the lightness of a feather, a respiritory system that channels the air deep into the bones, the head so free from the force of gravity that it can wave about at the end of many, thin walled vertebrae. Its forelimbs are designed not to push against the earth but to use aerodynamic forces to lift it free from the earth.

    We could not imagine a bird with horns nor a cow with respitory air sacs. Individual organisms and their features only make sense when seen in relation to the organism as a whole.

  40. I said:
    CharlieM: But we are not talking about the selection of the feature once it is present. We are talking about how it came to be there in the first place so that it was available for selection.

    .
    You replied:
    petrushka: I have brought this up. Try reading.

    You are commenting on a conversation I was having with Flint where I said:

    The point is the speculum and also such features as the patterns on the wing’s of butterflies can only make sense in relation to the whole organism and not from the individual feathers or scales.

    and Flint replied:

    Uh, OK. And? Generally, the whole organism is regarded as the item being selected.

    It is not the selection but the random change component which produces the pattern. So Flint’s answer was irrelevant to my comment.

    So how do you account for random changes to the genome producing individual separate feathers or scales that can only be appreciated when viewed as a whole.

    If you have already answered this please proviode a link.

  41. What do you mean by account for? Are you suggesting that changes in proteins and regulation do not cause the features?

    Or is it that you think the pariicular features in modern feathers were destined?

  42. CharlieM,

    Each form is an individual expression of the archetype.

    That’s not really saying anything, though. Where does the archetype reside, how is it instantiated into a working genome, how does it avoid evolving into something else, why are there ‘archetypes’ at all rather than a continuum, why do genomes look as if they arose by descent with modification rather than separate creation of these supposedly islanded archetypal forms?

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