The trap of dogmatic skepticism

[axocanth]

Again, I brought up Mayr, not to defend his position, or any alternative position, but to highlight ambiguity.

Certain people -- including yourself (right?) -- go around telling people that "changes in frequencies of alleles" just is the definition of evolution, as if to say "Ask any competent biologist and he'll tell you the same thing".

What I was trying to bring attention to -- as I often do -- is that things are not quite so straightforward. There are perfectly competent scientists who do not accept that this is the definition of evolution, and few more competent than Ernst Mayr.

Does this sound reasonable?

 

[axocanth]

You have to admit the Mayr quote did not tell the whole picture (traits being genes)
It would have also been better to cite Mary w.r.t. The Blind Watchmaker, he thought it was great.
He obviously was not as impressed with "The Selfish Gene."

What Mayr argues, I think you'll find, is that to identify evolution at the level of genes is to "mislocate" it. Mother Nature, if you will, does not "see" genes -- what she sees and acts on is individual organisms and their phenotypic traits -- and this action has the consequence of changes in gene frequencies. That consequence is not evolution itself, as he sees matters.

 

[axocanth]

You'll also find, I daresay, that your definition (i.e. changes in gene frequencies) is favoured by the population genetics crowd. It's less popular -- indeed unhelpful -- in other disciplines such as paleontology.

Note: I stuck in a "u" in "favoured" for you. How nice can a fella be?

 

[Pinball1970]

Does this sound reasonable?

Yes. Dawkins doubled down with the anniversary edition of the Selfish Gene, his forward mentioned that from 1976 first Edition to the 40th anniversary Edition that he felt no need to change anything. Possibly a swipe at his detractors. Possibly Mayr himself.
Dawkins is a bit of a nut job, I love his books because they made me think.
He has an ego but is a great science communicator.
His Christmas lectures for kids were fantastic.

 

[axocanth]

We also need to be wary of precisely what Dawkins is claiming. Is gene selection an empirical hypothesis (thus, that can be true or false)? Or is it conceptually more helpful to think of selection this way?

My understanding is that he started off (around the Selfish Gene period) claiming the former, later modifying it to the latter. But don't quote me lol.

By contrast, there is no doubt at all what the PE folks are asserting, they are quite explicit: species selection is an empirical hypothesis (as opposed to a helpful way of conceptualizing the situation).

 

[axocanth]

Yes. Dawkins doubled down with the anniversary edition of the Selfish Gene, his forward mentioned that from 1976 first Edition to the 40th anniversary Edition that he felt no need to change anything. Possibly a swipe at his detractors. Possibly Mayr himself.
Dawkins is a bit of a nut job, I love his books because they made me think.
He has an ego but is a great science communicator.
His Christmas lectures for kids were fantastic.

Each to their own. I am not a fan myself, presumably obvious to all by now lol.

I think it's his complete ignorance of the philosophy of science that bugs me most, leading him to say an awful lot of things about science (as opposed to his own narrowly circumscribed forte) that are . . . well, let me be blunt . . . ridiculous!

I see him therefore as a propagator of misinformation.

 

[TheVat]

What Mayr argues, I think you'll find, is that to identify evolution at the level of genes is to "mislocate" it. Mother Nature, if you will, does not "see" genes -- what she sees and acts on is individual organisms and their phenotypic traits -- and this action has the consequence of changes in gene frequencies.

Another aspect of phenotypic selection is that it does not always require any changes in gene frequencies, because epigenetic mechanisms can change gene expressions in response to the environment and pass them on to progeny. The mechanisms can include DNA methylation, chemical moieties attached to histone proteins, and RNA-dependent processes that influence chromatin structure. Mayr pointed evo biology in a good direction, allowing it to expand the ways evolution can happen.

 

[TheVat]

And it underscores - and this can't be overstated in a thread like this - that there is no The Theory, but rather that evolution is an umbrella concept that incorporates a large bodies of theories, plural. Putting a The in there would indeed invite dogmatism.

 

[Pinball1970]

And it underscores - and this can't be overstated in a thread like this - that there is no The Theory, but rather that evolution is an umbrella concept that incorporates a large bodies of theories, plural. Putting a The in there would indeed invite dogmatism.

If you are teaching 14 year olds, you will teach the theory, the things we know with examples.
The basic structure.

Would methylation and PE be appropriate here?

 

[TheVat]

Fair point. With 14 yo, basic selection might be the first baby step. Peppered moths on tree trunks in Birmingham, before and after coal.

Wait a minute...OK, well maybe just a little PE, then.

 

[Pinball1970]

Fair point. With 14 yo, basic selection might be the first baby step. Peppered moths on tree trunks in Birmingham, before and after coal.

Wait a minute...OK, well maybe just a little PE, then.

I to get into the weeds of what PE is saying because both Gould and Dawkins said it was misrepresented and is not in conflict with Darwin.

 

[axocanth]

I to get into the weeds of what PE is saying because both Gould and Dawkins said it was misrepresented and is not in conflict with Darwin.

PE advocates say it is in conflict with certain parts of (neo) Darwinian theory. The processes driving microevolution (peppered moths et al), for example, are not challenged by PE, and a fortiori neither is the central claim of common ancestry.

 

[axocanth]

No dogma in science? Try telling that to Alan Feduccia. Some snippets from the introduction to his 2014 "Riddle of the Feathered Dragons: Hidden Birds of China" (Anything not in quotes is my own handiwork):



Birds-are-dinosaurs has become an "unchallengeable orthodoxy" . . . "those who oppose the consensus view find themselves unable even to offer contrary evidence or opinions, which are no longer considered respectable science".

"Amid the haze of this hyperbolic rhetoric is an all-too-common but dangerous scientific development: the ascendancy of a consensus view that has quickly evolved into a dogma."

"The popular press has distorted the arguments on bird origins out of proportion."

"For such a theory [direct descent - axo] to be true stretches biological credulity and must therefore involve an extreme in special pleading."

"Largely because of its simplicity and its ability to "solve," albeit in naive fashion, long-term, intractable problems of the field, cladistics soon became a dominating force, blending ideology with science."



Many scientists not sharing this passion for cladistics have been "severely criticized", becoming "the target of emotionally charged, derisive comments from audience members."

" . . . Peter Dobson, detected a tone implying "the ultimate threat in science, the withholding of funding, for dissenters," "



The author and Ernst Mayr "carried on a lively correspondence". Mayr quipped, "Of course, cladistics is a religion and once you are a 'born again' cladist you can ignore anything in conflict with dogma."

"The overarching problem in cladistic approaches has been practitioners' tendency to ignore or dismiss contradictory evidence."

"A follow-up entry [in a scientific journal] even called for "a scientific crucifixion." It indeed seems that the weaker the science, the more contentious and vitriolic its adherents."



How reliable is cladistic analysis anyway?

"For example, loons and grebes, which can be shown not to be closely related by innumerable studies from DNA to embryology, almost invariably slot cladistically as a clade (a monophyletic group, derived from common ancestry)."

"In times past, paleontologists tended toward greater caution in interpreting fossils, but today, fantastic claims are made with abandon by amateur and professional alike, and each new fossil find, regardless of age or completeness, is often promoted as a missing link or a solution to some major paleontological mystery."



I know it sounds ludicrous but . . . um . . . might this possibly have anything to do with money, power, and politics?

"In exchange for the monetary "goodies," universities expect great discoveries, and that's exactly what they get."


"Strong-willed people who unrelentingly cling to their favored theories, regardless of contrary evidence, seem to dominate the field, and constant appeal is made to a consensus of opinion. Perhaps this is true of many fields."


"Every fantastic idea seems to add momentum to the Fantasia that paleontology has increasingly become."



And finally . . .


"The goal of this book is not to resolve complicated problems of avian origins that we are just beginning to understand but to encourage the new generation of students not to be bound by a faith-based reliance on computer-based slanted lines [i.e., cladograms - axo] that confer an aura of precision and truth to what is in reality speculation."


Did anyone else notice that f-word in the final paragraph?

 

[axocanth]

I to get into the weeds of what PE is saying because both Gould and Dawkins said it was misrepresented and is not in conflict with Darwin.

What do you mean by "conflict"? Directly contradict? As we've discussed in other places, an apple suspended in mid-air, or a planet with a square orbit, is not in conflict with (= does not contradict) Newtonian mechanics. No observation is in conflict with Newtonian mechanics, if the term is understood this way.

It's certainly not what we'd expect to see though. And if we had a theory asserting "Most of the balls in this urn are red" or "The balls in this urn are typically red", and then we proceed to draw out ball after ball that is not red, we might feel decidedly uneasy. Given a large enough urn, the repeated drawing out of non-red balls does not falsify or contradict our theory (nothing does!), but surely only a person, dare I say, dogmatically committed to the "Mostly red balls" theory would smile and assure the skeptics "The theory could not be healthier. Just keep pulling out balls. The red balls will appear eventually."

I'd suggest this is exactly analogous to the situation with the fossil record, both in Darwin's day and in the present day. "Red balls" are almost never pulled out.

". . . in paleontology one almost never found [Darwinian gradual change]" - S. J. Gould, "Punctuated Equilibrium", 2007, p2

(a gazillion other quotes from paleontologists saying the same thing available upon request)


Charles Darwin was far too honest a man not to remark on the obvious incongruity between the fossil record and the expectations of his theory, even if the fossil record did not directly contradict his theory (after all, nothing would!).

Why do you think Darwin spoke of the incompleteness of the fossil record (cf. incompleteness of the urn ball record) and the lack of transitional forms (cf. red balls) if the fossil record was revealing precisely what his theory would lead us to expect? If the fossil record reflected his expectations there would be no reason for him to complain!


Anyway, paleontologists finally got tired of (dogmatic!) gradualists blaming everything on the "incompleteness" of the record, and announced that Darwin's theory of phyletic gradualism -- understood as a claim about relative frequencies -- was just wrong. They argued instead that stasis rather than gradual change is the norm, and proceeded to seek ways to explain a fossil record that they took to be perfectly representative of the whole, not incomplete or misrepresentative.

One can of course argue that Darwin never made any claims about relative frequencies; his theory (or one part thereof) amounted simply to "Phyletic gradualism happens" (cf. "There is at least one red ball in this urn").

One would be, then, distorting Darwin's theory in order to dogmatically defend its integrity.

 

[axocanth]

And it underscores - and this can't be overstated in a thread like this - that there is no The Theory, but rather that evolution is an umbrella concept that incorporates a large bodies of theories, plural. Putting a The in there would indeed invite dogmatism.

And it's about time people stopped talking of The Theory, doncha think?


"Darwin, throughout his life, referred to his theorizing on evolution as "my theory," in the singular. However, it is now quite clear that Darwin's evolutionary paradigm consists of five theories, which are independent of each other. Failing to appreciate this independence unfortunately led Darwin, and others who followed him, to several misinterpretations. One will never fully understand the autonomy of biology if one does not understand the nature of Darwin's five theories."

- Ernst Mayr, "What Makes Biology Unique?", p6


After we get people to stop talking about The Theory (of evolution), perhaps we can get them to stop talking about The Scientific Method too.

And after that, perhaps we can get people to stop saying that the word "theory" in science -- unlike a layman's theory -- refers exclusively to something that is well established, highly confirmed, and widely accepted. After all, Charles Darwin spoke of his theory twenty years before publication of Origin, as Mayr attests above, when the number of people who accepted it amounted to himself, and perhaps the ship's cook and the ship's dog on the Beagle.

But before we do any of that, I suggest we try to get Americans to pronounce the "h" in the word "herbs". Their failure to do so is far more annoying than any of the others above.

Poke!