Could Homo Erectus speak?

I just picked up Daniel Everett's book, "How Language Began", which argues that language goes back hundreds of thousands of years.  

On the other hand, there is another school of thought that says language and a fully functioning, self-aware mind was something that developed in the last 40,000 years, maybe the last 10,000.

Interesting.

Immunity to high altitude sickness may have come from extinct Denisovans.

It's amazing what they can do with a finger bone.

The variant of the EPAS-1 gene, which affects blood oxygen, is common in Tibetans - many of whom live at altitudes of 4,000m all year round.

But the DNA sequence matches one found in the extinct Denisovan people.

Many of us carry DNA from extinct humans who interbred with our ancestors as the latter expanded out of Africa.

Both the Neanderthals - who emerged around 400,000 years ago and lived in Europe and western Asia until 35,000 years ago - and the enigmatic Denisovans contributed DNA to present-day people.

The Denisovans are known only from DNA extracted from the finger bone of a girl unearthed at a cave in central Siberia. This 40,000-50,000-year-old bone fragment, as well as a rather large tooth from another individual, are all that is known of this species.

The tiny "pinky" bone yielded an entire genome sequence, allowing scientists to compare it to the DNA of modern people in order to better understand the legacy of ancient interbreeding.

Now, researchers have linked an unusual variant of the EPAS1 gene, which is involved in regulating the body's production of haemoglobin - the molecule that carries oxygen in the blood - to the Denisovans. When the body is exposed to the low oxygen levels encountered at high elevations, EPAS1 tells other genes in the body to become active, stimulating a response that includes the production of extra red blood cells.

The unusual variant common among Tibetans probably spread through natural selection after their ancestors moved onto the high-altitude plateau in Asia several thousand years ago.

"We have very clear evidence that this version of the gene came from Denisovans," said principal author co-author Rasmus Nielsen, from the University of California, Berkeley.

Evolution by Natural Selection - more than a scientific theory...

...it's a faith system that where those who are not enthusiastic enough about it must be sent to a re-education camp!

Here's the latest comment on my review of Michael Denton's "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.":

"How do mutations create new structures?" Etc.

Sorry. A rejection of science based on your personal incredulity is simply ridiculous.

"Likewise, how do we know that Pakicetus and Ambulocetas were in fact precursors to the modern whale?"

Who cares? The answer will not help to provide a cure for cancer.

"I will have to take TENS on faith"

Improper use of the word "faith". Perhaps you could say "I will have to accept the authority of the consensus of biological scientists who really know what the Theory of Evolution is."//

Wow! I must be a knuckle-dragging Creationist.

Except I'm not. Here is a part of what I actually wrote in my review:

Ultimately, though, for me at least, Denton explains why I remain a dissatisfied Darwinist; it's the only game in town. In his final chapter on Kuhn's approach to the philosophy of science, Denton points out that you can't beat something with nothing. Pointing out the problems in a science is only the first step to replacing the science. The next step is coming up with a theory that explains the problems that were paradoxical under the previous paradigm. Denton does not provide that theory as far as I could tell. Undoubtedly, his purpose was to highlight the problems in TENS so as to start a discussion "outside the box" of TENS.

But we don't have that theory yet. What we have is TENS. So, until a better one comes along, I will have to take TENS on faith with respect to the conundrums and paradoxes that Denton points out. It may ultimately be the only game that is ever in town. As Denton suggests in his final chapter, "There is still a possibility that living systems could possess some novel, unknown property or charactristics which might conceivably have played a role in evolution." In light of the evidence of types emerging fully developed, like Athena from the head of Zeus, that may well be the case. Perhaps the unknown property we don't understand is the property that answers to the "final cause," or teleology, as discussed by Etienne Gilson in From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution, but as Gilson points out that discussion is not "scientific" because science has restricted itself from all considerations of final causes in order that it can do its "scientific thing."

So, I accept Darwin, but, apparently, I committed the cardinal sin of giving "the other side" a fair hearing and for that I must be driven from the tribe.

"Argh, Shut Up! Shut Up, Gus Blackwell, Republican state representative from Oklahoma," he mentioned.

Well, at least, we've got Oklahoma sewn up for 2016.

In biology class, public school students can't generally argue that dinosaurs and people ran around Earth at the same time, at least not without risking a big fat F. But that could soon change for kids in Oklahoma: On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Common Education committee is expected to consider a House bill that would forbid teachers from penalizing students who turn in papers attempting to debunk almost universally accepted scientific theories such as biological evolution and anthropogenic (human-driven) climate change.

Gus Blackwell, the Republican state representative who introduced the bill, insists that his legislation has nothing to do with religion; it simply encourages scientific exploration. "I proposed this bill because there are teachers and students who may be afraid of going against what they see in their textbooks," says Blackwell, who previously spent 20 years working for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. "A student has the freedom to write a paper that points out that highly complex life may not be explained by chance mutations."

More Weird Evolution. From Science Now:

Talk about having a potty mouth. When Chinese soft-shelled turtles (Pelodiscus sinensis) need to relieve themselves, they just open wide, according to a study published online today in The Journal of Experimental Biology. The reptiles don't have gills, but they have structures in their mouths that work a little like gills. That means they have the option of breathing underwater. But normally they just reach up and breathe air. So researchers thought it was a little odd that, when the turtles were on dry land, they would stick their heads in puddles and swish water around in their mouths. The scientists thought maybe something else was going on besides respiration, so they bought Chinese soft-shelled turtles at a market in Singapore and found ways to collect their urine, like attaching a flexible latex tube to each one's underside. They found that the animals were getting rid of the vast majority of their urea, a major component of urine, through their mouths instead of their hind ends. The team speculates that this might be because animals have to drink a lot of water to make urine, which can be unhealthy in the saltier waters where these turtles spend some of their time. If they're just rinsing the water around in their mouths, they avoid having to get rid of all that salt.

Is there something in the water?

First, Newsweek permits an anti-Obama cover article.

Then, CNN rakes a Democratic operative over the coals.

Now, an atheist - actually, atheist philosophical maven Thomas Nagel - declares that Intelligent Design should be taken seriously:

In a soon-to-be released book, an atheist professor has argued that the critiques of the Theory of Evolution by intelligent design defenders should "be taken seriously."

Thomas Nagel, professor at the Department of Philosophy at New York University, argued this in a book titled Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False.

"Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously," wrote Nagel in chapter one.

"I believe the defenders of intelligent design deserve our gratitude for challenging a scientific world view that owes some of the passion displayed by its adherents precisely to the fact that it is thought to liberate us from religion."

Mark Looy, co-founder and chief communications officer for Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum, told The Christian Post that a book like Nagel's is welcomed to the debate.

"We find it encouraging that philosophers like Nagel, and even some secular scientists today, are using their critical thinking ability and are recognizing the massive scientific problems with Darwinian evolution," said Looy.

Truth is not determined by a majority vote...

...but it may be decided by "search engine optimization."

Io9 has an interesting article on how one amateur enthusiast has managed to put his unorthodox view of "reptile evolution" into a position to dominate how the average person thinks about reptile evolution by virtue of his proficiency with "SEO" aka "search engine optimization."

One of the many unintended consequences of the cyber-revolution.

Why does the Creation/Evolution Debate Matter.

A panel discussion.

Philosopher Michael Ruse comes across as a windbag simply assuming that his opponents are cross-dressers and that denying global warming is identical to denying evolution.

Law Professor Mike McConnell [at 20 minutes] comes across as uncommonly sane and a throwback to an earlier time when the idea that exposing all sides of discussion to a public airing was a way to get at the truth, and that if fundamentalists were Navajos, then Liberals would treat them better.



At 50 minutes, McConnell actually makes the argument for welcoming creation arguments in with the confidence that the right side will win.

My 10th Grade Biology allowed a debate on Evolution v. Creation. I took the Evolution side and mopped the floor with the other side and ended for myself and many others the Creation argument by actually dealing with those arguments!!!

What a crazy idea!

That approach, incidentally, was considered to be the essence of the First Amendment when I was in law school, and was part of the Supreme Court's remedy that "more speech" not less speech was the answer.

The atheist evolution lady doesn't want that debate at all because there is only one right answer in her mind.

In that regard, she represents the new thinking on "public discourse."

She then tells us that the topic is not science; ok, make that the debate, then.

*Sheesh*

In a way, the sheer cussedness of this is admirable.

46% of Americans believe in special creation of human beings within the last 10,000 years.

Here is the Gallup Poll on the subject.

Naturally, the oikophobes and atheists are looking at this as evidence of the unredeemable ignorance of Republican/uneducated "godbotherers" but notice that 41% of Democrats and 25% of those who made their way through a post-graduate education believe in the most extreme form of creationism.

Perhaps 41% of the Democrat party are church-going Evangelicals, but how does anyone make through post-graduate education and remain committed to "special creationism."

Grace.

Obviously, since I'd be more likely to pray that this guy got "crotch-rot" than pay for his groceries, I don't belong in the company of the Christians who helped to convert this atheist by communicating God's grace to him through corporeal works of mercy.

This is one of those stories that seems too good to be true. Last month, we told you about Patrick Greene, an atheist activist who threatened to sue over the presence of a nativity scene in Athens, Texas.

Despite his actions against the religious symbol, Christians came together to raise funds for him and his wife to purchase groceries after he fell ill. Now, as a result of the kind gesture, Greene has reportedly announced that he has become a Christian — and that he wants to enter ministry.
(Related: Christians Raise Funds to Help Atheist Who Threatened to Sue Over TX Nativity Scene)

It’s only been two months since the atheist was threatening to wage a legal war against the nativity scene in Henderson County. But something changed over the past 60 days. After residents found out that Greene was suffering from a serious eye condition that could lead to blindness and he was forced to retire, Christians‘ kindness transformed Greene’s worldview.

In the end, they offered him $400 for groceries and other needs (atheists raised additional funds). This simple gift, which was given despite ideological and theological differences, apparently caused Greene to re-think his atheistic inclinations. The Christian Post recaps his transformation from non-belief to an adherence to Jesus Christ:

“There’s been one lingering thought in the back of my head my entire life, and it‘s one thought that I’ve never been able to reconcile, and that is the vast difference between all the animals and us,” Greene told The Christian Post on Tuesday, as he began to explain his recent transformation from atheist to Christian. The theory of evolution didn’t answer his questions, he says, so he just set those questions aside and didn’t think about them anymore.

That last part made me think of the X-Files episode, Die Hand die Verletzt, where Satan decides to "terminate with extreme prejudice" a Parent-Teachers Association in a town founded by Satan-worshippers.  It seems that like true believers everywhere, the Satanist have "secularized" and started treating the dark arts like boring rituals that have to be gotten through out of tradition.  For me, though, one of the more arresting scenes of the show was the confession of one Satan worshipper who described the crisis of faith he suffered because after a lifetime of being taught that he was a mere animal, he realized in the form of his young daughter that he had to be more than an animal.

Fascinating.

Score one for evolutionary theory as scientists discover "fossil genes."

In a sense they really are ghosts, because they contain the remnants of function they once had, and more interestingly, they retain the relative location they still occupy in our contemporary living relatives on the Tree of Life.


Trinity Western University biologist Dennis Venema highlighted this in a paper published last year which, for other reasons, I have been re-reading. As he reviews some key pieces of evidence for common ancestry, he writes:

“Common ancestry also predicts that, beyond human-chimpanzee common ancestry, the common primate ancestor also shares ancestry with other vertebrates in the more distant past. For example, evolutionary theory predicts that humans, like all vertebrates, are descended from egg-laying ancestors. As with all placental mammals, humans do not use egg yolk as a source of nutrition for their embryos. Other vertebrates such as fish and birds do employ egg yolk, as do a small number of extant mammals such as the platypus.

But it turns out, humans still retain the remnants of these yolk-producing genes. A particular protein used as a component in egg-development in egg-laying vertebrates, Venema points out, is produced by a gene called vitellogenin. And recently some researchers decided to find out if humans carry the pseudogene for vitellogenin.

They did this by first locating the functional vitellogenin gene in the chicken genome. They examined all the genes flanking the vitellogenin sequence–and then tracked these same genes in the human genome. According to Venema:

“They found that these genes were present side-by-side and functional in the human genome; then they performed an examination of human sequence between them. As expected, the heavily mutated, pseudogenized sequence of the vitellogenin gene was present in the human genome at this precise location. The human genome thus contains the mutated remains of a gene devoted to egg yolk formation in egg-laying vertebrates at the precise location predicted by shared synteny derived from common ancestry.

This is certainly one of the more extraordinary pieces of evidence for common ancestry as Darwin first proposed it.

It’s one thing to tell your kids or students that we share some obvious gene sequences with animals (like primates) that look a lot like us. They think that’s cool.

It’s another to watch their expressions when you tell them we still carry the remains of genes … for making egg yolk.

Why evolution and much of science require faith...

...because humans suffer from a "poverty of imagination."

Although it may be a faith in reason, but then so is much of Christian faith a "faith in reason."

Michael Denton observes in "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis":

One of the strategems adopted by Darwin in the Origin and used by many evolutionary biologists since, when faced with the difficulty of envisaging transitional forms, is to allude to the poverty of human imagination and to the very surprising and curious adaptations and behaviour pattersn many organisms exhibit - the implications and being that had we not known of such bizarre adaptations we would never have believed them possible.

Id. at p. 227 - 228.

Interestingly, St. Augustine noted that this limitation - and its attendant consequences - are a feature of the human mind which understands by taking what it has experience of and adding or subtracting those things about which it also has experience. In "On the Trinity," Augustine wrote:

10, 17. But then if we only remember what we have sensed, and only think what we have remembered, how is it that we often think false things though we do not of course remember falsely what we have sensed?23 It must be that the will, which I have been at pains to present to the best of my ability as coupler and separator of this kind of thing, it must be that the will leads the thinking attention where it pleases through the stores of memory in order to be formed, and prompts it to take something from here out of the things we remember, something else from there, in order to think things we do not remember. All these assembled in one sight make something that is called false because it is not to be found outside in the nature of bodily things, or because it does not seem to have been derived from memory, since we do not remember ever having sensed such a thing. Has anyone ever seen a black swan? So no one remembers one. But is there anyone who cannot think of one? It is easy enough to suffuse that shape which we know from seeing it with the color black which we have seen no less in other bodies, and because we have sensed them both we remember them both. Nor do I remember a four-footed bird, because I have never seen one;24 but it is very easy for me to look at such a fancy when to some winged shape I have seen I add two more feet of a sort that I have also seen. So when we think of two things in combination which we remember having sensed one by one, we appear to think of something which we do not remember, though we do it under the limitations set by memory, from which we take all the things that we put together in many and various ways as we will.

Again, we cannot think of bodies of a size we have never seen without the aid of memory. We can extend the masses of any bodies when we think of them to the maximum extent of space that our gaze is accustomed to range over through the magnitude of the universe. Reason can go further, but fancy does not follow, inasmuch as reason declares an infinity of number, and this no thinking about bodily things can grasp with inner sight. The same reason teaches that even the smallest corpuscles can be divided to infinity; but when we reach the limits of minuteness or fineness that we remember having seen, we cannot now gaze on any slighter or minuter fancies, though reason does not stop proceeding to divide. So we do not think of any bodily things except what we remember or unless they are composed out of what we remember.

Saint Augustine of Hippo; John E. Rotelle; Edmund Hill (2011-01-23). The Trinity (The Works of Saint Augustine) (pp. 319-320). New City Press. Kindle Edition.

Reason can tell us that something exist in some sense - the concept of infinity, for example - but try as we might we are not going to be able to "imagine" - picture, understand, grasp - infinity because we don't have an experience of infinity, we only have an experience of finite things, and add as many finite things as you want, you still only have finity.

On the other hand, even Augustine could imagine a "black swan" because he had an experience of "swans" and "black" and by compounding the two ideas, he came up with an image  of a "black swan."

Evolution, black holes and the experience of travelling at the speed of light, but also God's infinity, omniscience and simplicity, are places where are reason can travel further than our imagination.

Amazon Review - The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection may be in trouble, but it will have to do until we get a better one.

Michael Denton, "Evolution: A Theory In Crisis."

I came to this book as a person who has absolutely no problem in accepting Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection (“TENS”). After all, TENS is the account taught throughout my academic career, it seems to be universally accepted by most – essentially all – reputable scientists, and, then, there are all those fossils of animals and plants that no longer exist and a fossil record that tells when the animals that we are familiar with began to exist. Obviously there was a world of “then” – deep in the past- and the world of “now” and the two worlds are related in some fashion. Something obviously happened over time, and the best explanation is that the animals and plants that existed “then” became the animals and plants that exist “now.”


I have no problem with that idea whatsoever. But when I start to think about the details of evolution – the mechanics of how evolution occurred - I start having problems. How do mutations create new structures? How does chance give rise to the coordinated new structures required for birds to fly – i.e., the unique structure of the feather and the unique structure of the avian lung – or for whales to live in the water – i.e., morphological changes plus changes in the teats of whale mothers and the throats of whale babies required before whales can be born in the ocean? How do these mutations become a species? Is it a long and gradual process of an entire population – in which case, how does it happen in spite of the preservation of dominant traits and regression to the mean? Or is it “saltational” – big jumps by “lucky” individuals, in which case how do they manage to share their genes if the jump is too big? I would like answers to these questions, but I have noticed that the answers seem to short on details and long on tautology. The standard answer seems to go, “well, obviously, coordinated new structures can arise because that is what obviously happened.” My response is usually, “I am not saying that doesn’t happen, but how does it happen.”

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The Thesis of Denton’s book is that these questions – and many other - are a real problem for TENS and that TENS and the scientists who are deeply invested in TENS do not have any good answer for these questions. The eminence grise behind Denton’s book, who makes an explicit appearance in the final chapter, is Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Kuhn’s thesis was that science advances only after the structure of an existing science has been undermined by questions and contradictions that are unanswerable under the assumptions of the prevailing scientific theory – the “paradigm” under which the scientists operate. At that point, the old science is ripe for a revolution, when someone has an insight that shifts the way of looking at the problem, and the older science is swept away by the new (although, as Kuhn says, the new science doesn’t coopt the older scientists so much as it makes the older scientists holding the older paradigm irrelevant - science advances death by death, according to Kuhn, sort of like evolution.)

Denton’s book starts with a long historical look at the history of Darwin’s ideas and TENS' assumption that species would develop throug a long, long, gradualistic change within a population. This is a necessary discussion, but unless one is interested in 19th Century scientists like Darwin, Huxley, Agassiz and Cuvier, it seemed long and dry. Denton then moves on to discuss “typology” and its implications. Typology posits that there are actual “types” of species as opposed to a gradual, continuum of form. Nature in fact, according to Denton, is characterized by discontinuities, and not by continuity. Again, this account seemed to be a necessary if not intrinsically interesting introduction before he got down to his real thesis.

When Denton moved on to his actual task – outlining and explaining the contradictions in the evidence for TENS – the book became something of a page turner. Denton makes the point that the fossil record lacks the transitional species that Darwin predicted would exist. Of course, I’ve heard this argument a thousand times as a kind of straw man argument made by my teachers and by scientists shortly before they shot it down. How can, I have wondered, his argument be made in the light of the fossil evidence of the horse and the archaeopteryx? This is probably the first time that I’ve heard a critic of the fossil record make the argument for himself, and, now that I've heard it, the argument seems like a fair one.

Denton points out that we lack the fossils of the transitions between the new type and the old type. So, with respect to Archeopterix what we have evidence of is a bird. Archeopterix has the feathers and wing structure of a bird. Admittedly, it has teeth and it has claws on the end of its wings, but those forelimb structures are wings, and the feathers are feathers with the complex interlocking barbules that stiffen the feather for fight. Where are the feathers with “half barbules” or “three quarter barbules”? Undiscovered, as yet. And, similarly, the archaeopteryx wing is a wing, not a half or three quarter wing. Where is the fossil evidence of the animal that was just slightly in to the process of sacrificing the use of its forelimbs in favor of a new form of propulsion? Who knows?

Denton points out that this is typical of the fossil record. We don’t find the transitional creatures that are supposed to be there for the transition between types. What we do find is fossils that show the type fully developed. This is true of even the living fossils held up as transitional creatures between Linnaean classes, such as the duck-billed platypus and the lungfish. Both are held up as being transitional animals – between reptiles and mammals in the case of the platypus and between fish and amphibians in the case of the lungfish. And yet, according to Denton, on closer examination, we don’t find transitional creatures, we find a “mosaic” of fully developed traits of the respective classes. (See p. 107 – 108.) Hence, according to Denton the platypus has a reproductive system that is “almost fully reptilian” but, of course, it also has mammalian hair, and the lungfish is likewise a mosaic of fully developed fish and amphibian systems.

According to Denton, this is typical of the fossil record. Denton writes, “all the major classes of organisms known to biology are already highly characteristic of their class when they make their initial appearance in the fossil record” (p. 162), which in the face of the idea of continuous and gradual development seems to be a trick like not unlike Athena springing fully grown from the head of Zeus. At their first appearance, angiosperms – the flowering plants that would remake the world – were already divided into different classes. (p. 163.) Ditto with vertebrates and fish (p. 164), and the amazing proliferation of life preserved in the Burgess shale. (p. 161.) In fact, it may be the case that life itself in the form of the cell had this characteristic of a sudden appearance with the essential elements that it would contain for all time. According to Denton, while the traditional view posited billions of years to happen, the current evidence is that we find the modern cell in existence within a few hundred million years of the Earth “cooling off.” This is even more remarkable in light of the fact that for the cell to exist at least two things had to happen simultaneously: there had to be a cell wall that could contain and protect a “transcription machine” that would regulate the activities of the cell, one activity of which would be the manufacture of the cell wall. Chicken meet egg.

Denton’s book seems to be dated. One reason I was reluctant to read it, and a fact that constantly recurred to my mind while I was reading it, was that the book was written in 1986, the Paleolithic period of our genetic/biological/archeological knowledge of evolutionary history. This seems to be a serious drawback for the book but on further inspection, I’m not sure it is. For example, Denton makes a great deal about the absence of fossils of the intermediate species leading from a land animal to the whale, including an otter precursor, a dugong precursor, etc.

During the 90’s, however, these precursors were discovered, but what do these discoveries do to Denton’s thesis? I’m not sure. One reason I’m not sure is that they seem to confirm Denton’s point about the absence of intermediate fossils with respect to key changes in animals from one type to another. The internet has some clever and superficially convincing videos showing these transitional types. Here is one. The problem for me, though, in light of Denton’s point about types appearing fully developed is that the video shows that happening in the transition from Kutchicetus to Dorudon. Dorudon appears to be a whale, i.e., a form that lives entirely in the water, unlike the Kutchicetus, which is depicted as a fully developed otter. These two types either give birth on land (in the case of the otter-like Kutchicetus) or in the water (in the case of the dugong-like Dorudon.) But where is the species that is developed for either kind of birth? Who knows? So, while the presentation in the video seems superficially convincing, I still have questions.

Likewise, how do we know that Pakicetus and Ambulocetas were in fact precursors to the modern whale? The answer is that both were found to have a particular bone that is found today only in whales. Mmm…okay …fine…so there is no typology of form, except when it comes to identifying precursor species? How do we know that there weren’t random mutations in completely different orders that gave rise to this kind of bone and then died out?

I’ll agree that such a supposition doesn’t seem likely and perhaps it is ruled out by the “law of parsimony” but it does seem ad hoc to appeal to typology while denying typology.

In addition, it may be the case that the last thirty years have provided confirmatory evidence for Denton’s thesis. For example, it is not hard to find stories such as this one concerning the discovery of a fossilized “Jurassic beaver” that lived 160 million years ago and which has forced scientists to revise and reconsider the diversity of mammals at a time when they were traditionally viewed as primitive shrew-like creatures running scared from the dinosaurs.  In fact, every few years, scientists seem to find new fossils that significantly push back the time at which typological traits developed and, thus, seems to rule out the gradual development thesis. In light of the newly –discovered evidence, Denton’s claim that ““all the major classes of organisms known to biology are already highly characteristic of their class when they make their initial appearance in the fossil record” seems to get stronger as time passes.

Ultimately, though, for me at least, Denton explains why I remain a dissatisfied Darwinist; it’s the only game in town. In his final chapter on Kuhn’s approach to the philosophy of science, Denton points out that you can’t beat something with nothing. Pointing out the problems in a science is only the first step to replacing the science. The next step is coming up with a theory that explains the problems that were paradoxical under the previous paradigm. Denton does not provide that theory as far as I could tell. Undoubtedly, his purpose was to highlight the problems in TENS so as to start a discussion “outside the box” of TENS.

But we don't have that theory yet. What we have is TENS. So, until a better one comes along, I will have to take TENS on faith with respect to the conundrums and paradoxes that Denton points out. It may ultimately be the only game that is ever in town. As Denton suggests in his final chapter, "There is still a possibility that living systems could possess some novel, unknown property or charactristics which might conceivably have played a role in evolution." In light of the evidence of types emerging fully developed, like Athena from the head of Zeus, that may well be the case. Perhaps the unknown property we don't understand is the property that answers to the "final cause, or teleology, as discussed by Etienne Gilson in "From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution" but as Gilson points out that discussion is not "scientific" because science has restricted itself from all considerations of final causes in order that it can do its "scientific thing."

The reader of this revew should understand that the last paragraph was my speculation. Denton does not make any foray into theology or mysticism. He stays firmly planted in the world of science with its limitation to two causes - the material and the efficient - and its mechanistic, naturalistic assumptions.

Denton's book is well-written. As far as I could tell from a layman’s perspective, it was fair and accurately recounted the evidence available at the time. It should be read by anyone with an interest in evolutionary theory.

Amazon Book Review - Etienne Gilson,  "From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution."

Go here and give me a "helpful" vote.

"Not for everyone, but useful for those with a deep interest in the project of  science," September 25, 2011


By Peter S. Bradley "Peter Sean Bradley"

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution (Paperback)

This book is a lot like physical exercise; difficult, occasionally enjoyable, often a slog, but worthwhile after the fact.

Gilson's book is not facially anti-Darwinian. Gilson's real concern is in defending the idea of final cause or teleology in biology from those who would say that such an idea has been disproven by science. Final cause, or teleology, is the idea that things are directed towards some end, either by something external to themselves or by their own internal existence. Gilson's argument is that Darwinism either doesn't disprove teleology because Darwin's method of science isn't interested in science or that Darwinism actually incorporates teleology by its incorporation of the idea of "evolution" itself.

Gilson is primarily writing as a historian of science and philosopher. Consequently, is method of analysis is historical. He reviews the history of ideas, rather than criticizing evolution or Darwin on a scientific basis. On the whole, Gilson appears to be quite sympathetic to Darwin as a person and a scientist.

Gilson's first chapter is on the "Aristotelian prologue." Gilson examines Aristotle's idea of final cause, and how Aristotle responded to those who would deny final cause. Gilson points out that Aristotle's interest in biology led him to conclude that there was clear and convincing evidence of final cause in the biological world. This evidence grew out of Aristotle's observations that natural things developed regularly and orderly in the direction of an end, e.g., calves grew up to be cows and seed grew up to be plants. Moreover, things in nature develop to a "limit." Calves grow up to be cows, and then develop no more, which implies a limit or an end toward their development. Aristotle's observations - based as they were on truth - carried the day, and from Aristotle onward, any person who sought to examine nature was compelled to include in their description some idea of final cause.

Gilson's next chapter is on the "Mechanist Objection." In a nutshell, that objection, formulated by Rene Descarte and Francis Bacon, was that science ought to be useful, and that final cause was not useful. Gilson observes that the Aristotelian approach found its end in the "contemplation" of nature, and that "contemplation" was tied up with appreciating "final cause." Gilson notes that for scientists, the appreciation for the truth of a theory is often related to an appreciation of the beauty of a theory, which is itself tied up in the wonder of "final cause." However, a scientific approach that incorporates final cause may find that science is being "retarded" in its ability to produce practical results as scientists become "critics" of nature, rather than "mechanics."

So, for Bacon and Descarte, "final cause" had to go, not because it was wrong, but because it was either not useful, or it was retarding scientists from focusing on the useful.

After clearing the ground, Gilson then addresses the history of the idea of evolution. Gilson's argument here seems to be that neither "fixism" - the idea that species were fixed from the beginning - and "transformism" - the idea that species change over time - is conceptually opposed to the idea of final cause. In fact, it seems that Darwin was not opposed to the idea of final cause, but on one occasion accepted the congratulations of a friend that he had restored final cause to science.

The truth appears to be that Darwin simply wasn't concerned with final cause. Being nurtured in an understanding of science that had developed after Bacon, final cause simply wasn't a thing that Darwin was concerned about.

Darwin's big target was the idea of "special creation." Gilson argues that when Darwin felt that his observations disproved special creation, it meant that the Bible could not be trusted by itself as an accurate description of truth. From that point on, it seems, Darwin made common cause with those "partisans" who opposed "special creation," whether or not they accepted Darwin's notion of natural selection, or its chief competitor, Lamarckianism.

One of the partisans who came into Darwin's camp, even though Darwin did not like him personally, was Herbert Spencer. It was Spencer who popularized the notion of "evolution," not Darwin. According to Gilson, in his first editions of the Origin of the Species, Darwin did not use evolution, rather he spoke of "transformation." It was Spencer who spoke of "evolution," but in Spencer's usage evolution had a clear teleology in that their was an internal dynamic by which things progressed from the simple to the complex. Eventually, Darwin began to speak of his theory as "evolution," but by doing so he incorporated, sotto voce, Spencer's teleology.

Gilson discusses other contributors to Darwinism. His take-down of Parson Thomas Malthus is a must-read example of ironically damning someone with faint praise.

So, Darwinism, or "evolution", did not eliminate the notion of final cause, and how could it if final cause is true? Rather, Darwinism is either irrelevant to the notion of final cause, or it incorporates that notion without explicitly acknowledging that it does.

Gilson ends his book by explaining why we ought to continue to think that final cause is necessary for our understanding of truth. That reason primarily is that we see it all around us, even if we don't have a mechanistic explanation for it. Gilson notes, for example, that one of the things that we see in evolutionary development is a progress toward individuation: slime mold is less individual than plants which are less individual than bees which are less individual than cows which are less individual than lions which are less individual than human beings, who have a mind and self-awareness. Is this observation wrong? No. Can it be explained mechanistically? No. Does this teleology, showing a development toward limits, exist? Yes.

Is this science? Probaby not, but it seems to be "common sense" as that term was classically understood as meaning a first order inference from undisputed facts and ideas. To paraphrase a source quoted by Gilson, scientists need to be careful in ruling out "common sense" because where the results of a scientific inquiry conflict too strongly with common sense, it may not be common sense that it wrong.

Gilson concludes by pointing out that final cause may not be scientifically useful, but it is a necessary concept for understanding reality, and it is attested to by numerous real world examples. Its truth may not be scientifically verifiable, but many things we take for granted are not scientifically verifiable. The meaning of ideas, for example, is not scientifically verifiable. We hear words, but the meanings behind the sounds and symbols that are words cannot be measured. Meanings are sense independent, and, in fact, immaterial. Does that mean that meanings don't exist?

Likewise, science relies a variety of theoretical principles to reach its conclusions, including Occam's razor, the principle of least action, etc. Why are those things any more true and real than final cause? Gilson concludes with the following:

"Compared to generalizations such as the principle of least action, economy of thought, and other similar ones, the notion of natural teleology cuts a modest figure. It can be reproached for being anthropomorphic, but in a science which is the work of man, what is not? Furthermore, the important thing is to know whether or not it expresses a fact given in nature for if we object to final causality as an explanation, it remains as a fact to be explained."

Gilson's book is difficult, but I think that on reflection - and reflection is required to put together Gilson's arguments - it pays dividends.

Wow! Science - Evolution Division.

According to this article at Io9, brains developed separately in the different branches of the mollusk phylum.

University. Kevin Kocot and his team examined the genetic sequences of the eight main branches of the mollusk phylum. They hoped to determine which branches are most closely related to which others, and in doing so provide a clearer history of the specifics of mollusk evolution. Until now, it was assumed that the two mollusk groups with the most highly organized central nervous systems, the cephalopods (octopus, cuttlefish, squid) and the gastropods (snails and slugs), are the most closely related.

Now it appears that that's actually almost the exact opposite of the truth. According to Kocot's analysis, the gastropods are most closely related to bivalves (clams, mussels, oysters, and scallops), which have far more rudimentary nervous systems and not much of a brain. Even more shockingly, cephalopods - the most intelligent of all the mollusk groups - comes from one of the earliest branches, meaning their evolutionary development predates that of snails, clams, and the rest.

There's no way that cephalopods and gastropods could have evolved together apart from all the other mollusks, which means that their similarly advanced nervous systems must have developed independently. That goes against a lot of longstanding assumptions about the evolution of sophisticated structures, as Kocot's colleague, University of Florida researcher Leonid Moroz, explains:

"Traditionally, most neuroscientists and biologists think complex structures usually evolve only once. We found that the evolution of the complex brain does not happen in a linear progression. Parallel evolution can achieve similar levels of complexity in different groups. I calculated it happened at least four times."

A lot of evolutionary theory has been guided by something akin to Occam's Razor - it's simpler to assume that something as complex as the brain only evolved once in a given group, and that all brainy members of that group come from a single common ancestor. Mollusks appear to be pointing us towards a very different story of evolution, one governed by parallel developments and the repeated emergence of brains in wildly divergent groups. Evolution doesn't have any set goals, but it does appear that it has certain ideas and structures it just keeps coming back to.

That last (emboldened) sentence is strange bit of rejecting final causation while affirming final causation. 

Wow! Science - Evolution.

Where did the megafauna of the Ice Age come from?

And yet, although it isn't quite the same as its descendants, all the key adaptations that would allow woolly rhinoceroses to thrive during the ice age were already in place. For instance, the skull shows signs of special adaptations that allowed it to clear snow away using its horn. That allowed the ancient rhino to find vegetation hidden underneath the snow and eke out a decent existence in the Tibetan plateaus.


Full sizeAfter a few hundred thousand years, the woolly rhinoceros was perfectly adapted for life in Tibet. That proved to be a very useful thing, because it was around that time that the entire world basically became Tibet, as the glaciers descended on Eurasia and the world became choked in ice and snow. While the woolly rhinoceros had evolved during a period where most of the world enjoyed a mild climate, it was poised to thrive in this chilly new order.

The woolly rhinoceros skull was the most dramatic find made in the Tibetan highlands, but it was far from the only one. Evidence of nearly thirty different extinct species were found in the Himalayas, including the three-toed horse, snow leopard, and Tibetan antelope. It appears these creatures all evolved in the generally harsh Tibetan climate and then expanded throughout all Eurasia when the ice age began.

This new find could go a long way to clarifying how megafauna like the woolly rhinoceros - which aren't generally known for their ability to quickly adapt to changing environmental conditions - were able to not just survive but thrive during the chilly Pleistocene era. It's possible that almost all of the giant mammals that dominated Europe and Asia during the ice age had their start in the brutal winters of a relatively small area of the Himalayas. So be sure to respect the local fauna the next time you go hiking - assuming we make it to the next ice age, their giant descendants might well rule the world.

OK, this is just weird.

African rat weaponizes plant toxins:

The African crested rat has been revealed as the first known mammal to use plant poison to defend itself, using the toxins as a weapon against would-be predators.


The peculiar East African rodent, Lophiomys imhausi, uses saliva to transport the toxin, Ouabain, from gnawed branches of the Poison-arrow trees onto its unique wick-like fur.

The unique ability of the rats to part their flank hair, exposing a striking black-and-white fur pattern, has long been known, this elaborate display alone could not explain the animal’s unpalatability to predators.

It turns out that it is the design of this specialised flank hair, and its ability to hold and dispense poison, that makes the difference, according to a group of East African and British scientists.

Wow! Science.

Darwin's God points to some technical engineering analysis of the "armor" on the polypterus senegalus.  It turns out that the scales of that fish incorporate composite "technology" into a design that is optimum for serving the armor function while minimizing weight:

P. senegalus has a protective armor coat of scales, but this armor is not simply a single material. The scales are interlocking, and constructed with four layers of nanocomposite materials. In all the armor coat is about 400 micrometers (a bit less than half a millimeter) thick. On the outside is a thin layer (about 8 micrometers) of the very strong and hard ganoine. This is followed by layers of the softer dentine and isopedine. These layers are each about 50 micrometers, and they are followed by a 300 micrometer layer of bone.


The objective of structural designs is often to meet the requirement while minimizing weight. In this case, the armor should provide protection against attacks, such as sharp teeth bites, without adding more weight than necessary to the fish. This unique multilayered composite design does just that.

The researchers modeled P. senegalus’ armor using the finite element method and calibrated the mechanical properties of the four layers to experimental observations (such as from atomic force microscopy). They could then use their model to make design conclusions.

And:

Perhaps the main conclusion is that the unique four-layer approach works well. For instance, it provides a 20% weight reduction compared to two-layer models the researchers tested. One reason for this is that the different layers work together to absorb attacks:

In conclusion, here we report on the fascinating, complex and multiscale materials design principles of ancient fish armour in the context of its specific primary environmental threat (penetrating biting attacks) and mechanically protective function. One overarching mechanical design strategy is the juxtaposition of multiple distinct reinforcing layers, each of which has its own unique deformation and energy dissipation mechanisms. As the stiff ganoine transfers load through the ganoine–dentine junction, the underlying softer, more compliant dentine layer dissipates energy via plasticity (at high enough loads). The ganoine thickness was selected (1) to simultaneously access the advantageous mechanical properties of the ganoine (hardness, stiffness) and underlying dentine (energy dissipation), (2) to reduce weight while maintaining the required mechanical properties and (3) to promote the advantageous circumferential cracking mechanism (S22 > S11), rather than disadvantageous radial cracking.

But there is more to the design than the mere use of these four different materials together. For instance, the order is important:

The material layer sequence is also critical; for example, reversing the ganoine and dentine layers in a virtual microindentation leads to magnified interfacial tensile normal and shear stresses, promoting delamination

Also, the ganoine and dentine layers are not uniform, but have mechanical properties that very across the cross section. Furthermore, there are geometrically corrugated junctions between the layers, that provide transitions between the mechanical properties of the different layers. These junctions are a crucial part of the design:

The junctions between material layers are clearly ‘functionally graded’, that is, they possess a gradual spatial change in properties motivated by the performance requirements and are able to promote load transfer and stress redistribution, thereby suppressing plasticity, arresting cracks, improving adhesion and preventing delamination between dissimilar material layers. Last, the corrugated junction between the layers is expected to lead to spatially heterogeneous stresses and a higher net interfacial compression, also resisting delamination. Such multiscale materials principles may be incorporated into the design of improved engineered biomimetic structural materials.

There is, of course, no explanation from evolutionists for such designs. That is not surprising because random events don’t create exquisitely designed multi-layered nanocomposite structures. Nor do they create the manufacturing facilities required to construct such designs. Nor do they create the instructions required to create such facilities. Evolutionists are left only with empty rebuttals. Religion drives science, and it matters.

 
I don't know which is more of a Wow! factor: that these fish developed this level of complexity from intelligent design, or by slowly wiping out fish that didn't have the precise design that led for optimal efficiency.

Cool Science.

Vegetarian primate collateral ancestor of human beings ate grass "like a cow."

 It turns out that the strong-jawed, big-toothed human relative colloquially known as “Nutcracker man” may never have tasted a nut. In a finding that questions traditional ideas of early hominid diet, researchers discovered that Paranthropus boisei, a hominid living in east Africa between 2.3 and 1.2 million years ago, mostly fed on grasses and sedges. “Frankly, we didn’t expect to find the primate equivalent of a cow dangling from a remote twig of our family tree,” researcher Matt Sponheimer told MSNBC.

Speaking of the existential horror of talking bears...

...apparently we should be more worried about squirrels.

According to Cracked's list of "5 Adorable Animals that are turning to the Dark Side":

Between May 2006 and March 2007, multiple squirrels attacked 13 people, mostly children. One four-year-old boy thought he was being hugged by his furry little woodland friend until it started digging its fingers into his scalp. At this point the boy started screaming and rolling in the grass, which we've found is usually enough to scare away anything within 20 feet of us. But in this case, the squirrel just dug in that much harder, playing scalp rodeo until a grown-up came over and broke things up.


Fish and Game declared the squirrels in the park a "threat to continued public safety" and began trapping and killing them. Not by using a cage with a bunch of nuts in it, but by using a decoy baby stroller. See, a number of the attacks had occurred when the squirrels jumped into baby carriages -- presumably to suck the infants' souls from their lips for some dark squirrel harvest. They'd been doing it so frequently that it was apparently the only way the park rangers knew to trap them. The day after the first squirrel was captured in a baby carriage, another squirrel jumped onto a four-year-old girl's face, leaving scratches to both cheeks and her forehead that likely would have spelled out "snitch" if squirrels knew how to spell.


This is not an isolated incident. A squirrel attacked six people in the U.K. before being captured, and the town of Bennington, VT, is currently being terrorized by a rogue gray squirrel. You might start thinking that our dogs and cats have the right idea, with their much more hostile stance toward inter-species relations, but that's just because you haven't heard what happened in a Russian park in 2005. A stray dog was barking at a gang of local squirrels, as dogs are wont to do. Likely former Spetsnaz agents, the squirrels became irritated and decided to shut the dog up in much the same way the Russian Mafia shuts people up: by killing it.

Two important lessons from this:

First, evolution is not necessarily our friend.

Second, we need to regularly remind furry woodland creatures that we are at the top of the food chain.

Next up - Vegans: fuzzy minded idiots or nefarious Quislings in the service of bovine efforts to unseat us as the top of the food chain?