detailed summary of Wistar
Luther Sunderland, _Darwin’s Enigma_
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amazon .com/Darwins-Enigma-Luther-Sunderland/dp/0890512361/
amazon .com/Mathematical-challenges-neo-Darwinian-interpretation-evolution/dp/0845142038/
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In 1966, after the advent of the tremendously powerful analytical tool, the digital computer, biologist Dr. Martin Kaplan organized a symposium at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia to thoroughly air a dispute between leading mathematicians and evolutionary biologists.
The dispute had come to light at several meetings the previous year in Switzerland between mathematicians and biologists who were discussing mathematical doubts concerning the Darwinian theory of evolution.
At the end of several hours of heated debate, the biologists proposed that a symposium be arranged to consider the points of dispute more systematically and with a more powerful array of biologists who could function adequately in the realm of mathematics.
The Wistar Symposium was the result.[P.S. Moorehead and M.M. Kaplan, “Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution,” _The Wistar Symposium Monograph No. 5_ (Philadelphia, PA: Wistar Institute Press, 1967), p. vii]
In his preface to the proceedings of the symposium, Dr. Kaplan commented about the importance of mathematics in such matters as theorizing about origins.
He said that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive efforts is comparable to omitting the part of Ophelia from Shakespeare’s play, _Hamlet_.
The 52 attendees included a dazzling array of evolutionary biologists such as Sidney Fox, Ernst Mayr, George Wald, Richard Lewontin, Loren Eiseley, and H.B.D. Kettlewell of peppered moth fame from England.
The mathematicians included Murray Eden and V.F. Weisskopf of MIT, Marcel Schutzenberger of Paris, and Stanislaw Ulam of Los Alamos.
This was a conference to end all such conferences– and it apparently did, as nothing like it has been held since.
Nobel Prize laureate and biologist Peter Medawar chaired the symposium.
He stated its purpose in his opening remarks:
“As Dr. Kaplan has explained, the immediate cause of this conference is a pretty widespread sense of dissatisfaction about what has come to be thought of as the accepted evolutionary theory in the English-speaking world, the so-called Neo-Darwinian Theory.
This dissatisfaction has been expressed from three quarters and is not only scientific.”
He listed the three main objections to neo-Darwinian theory as first, religious; second, philosophical and methodological; and finally,
“Objections by fellow scientists who feel that, in the current theory, something is missing.”
He said,
“These objections to current neo-Darwinian theory are very widely held among biologists generally; and we must on no account, I think, make light of them.”
Loren Eiseley also indicated a need for the symposium in view of the fact that there were still some unanswered questions about a mechanism for evolution.
He noted that Darwin had placed emphasis on “fortuitous variation and selection” in the evolutionary process.
He thought that Darwin’s use of “fortuitous” in terms of pure chance and “mysterious laws” could be made allowance for because of what he did not know about genetics.
But he said,
“I still think Darwin expressed a certain tolerance, a marked degree of wary unease, as to whether, indeed, the phrase ‘fortuitous variation’ was a sufficient answer to all our problems.”
This was the primary problem addressed by the symposium:
Is there some natural process, which can be defined mathematically, that could generate the raw material which the theory of evolution requires as the first step in the creation of every different type of living organism?
For two days the biologists and mathematicians examined the question from every possible angle.
Murray Eden, in a paper entitled, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” showed that it would be unlikely for even a single ordered pair of genes to be produced by mutations in the DNA of the bacteria, E. coli, in five billion years.
He calculated that to have any reasonable chance of getting such a result you would need a population of that organism weighing a hundred trillion tons, enough to cover the entire earth to a thickness of nearly an inch.
He contended that the only way to overthrow this calculation was “by finding of a new determinate feature,” in other words, a new natural law.
This relates to only the probability of getting just one ordered pair of genes, but hundreds of genes are present in this bacterium.
In fact, it is estimated that the genes of E. coli contain over a trillion (10^12) bits of data.
That is the number 10 followed by 12 zeros.
Dr. Eden also calculated the maximum number of protein molecules that could have existed on earth in ten billion years, and it is only an “infinitesimal number” when compared to the maximum number of possibilities in a polypeptide chain containing 250 links.
These calculations are consistent with those made earlier by the French scientist Lecomte du Nouy, who examined the mathematical odds of life having evolved by chance from nonliving matter.
Regarding the formation of a single protein, he said that the “time needed to form, on an average, one such molecule in a material volume equal to that of our terrestrial glove is about 10^243 years.”[Lecomte du Nouy, _Human Destiny_ (New York, NY: Longmans, Green and Co., 1947), p. 34]
Thus, he concluded that the odds against the chance formation of a single protein were so great that such an event could not have occurred.
Dr. Eden attacked the central tenet of evolution, natural selection.
He said,
“Concepts such as natural selection by the survival of the fittest are tautologous; that is, they simply restate the fact that only the properties of organisms which survive to produce offspring, or to produce more offspring than their cohorts, will appear in succeeding generations.”
He further explained,
“Any principal criticism of current thoughts on evolutionary theory is directed to the strong use of the notion of ‘randomness’ in selection.
The process of speciation by a mechanism of random variation of properties in offspring is usually too imprecisely defined to be tested.
When it is precisely defined, it is highly implausible.”
Getting away from the philosophical discussion, Dr. Eden reported on his extensive genetic data on hemoglobin.
Hemoglobin contains two chains, called alpha and beta.
Evolutionists assume that one evolved from the other through certain random mutations.
He said that it would take a minimum of 120 point mutations to convert alpha to beta.
At least 34 of these mutations required changing two or three nucleotides of the 140 residues in the chain.
Yet, if a single nucleotide change occurs through mutation the result is highly deleterious to the organism.
George Wald commented on just this point.
He said that George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard had claimed that all changes in protein were adaptive.
Because of this remark, Dr. Wald said he
“took a little trouble to find whether a single amino acid change in a hemoglobin mutation is known that doesn’t affect seriously the function of that hemoglobin.
One is hard put to find such an instance.
Do you understand what I am saying? …
One is hard put to find a single instance in which a change in one amino acid in sequence does not change markedly the properties.”
For example, the change of one amino acid out of 287 in hemoglobin causes sickle-cell anemia.
Molecules of normal hemoglobin have a glutamic acid unit where the sickle-cell hemoglobin has a valine unit.
The resulting disease kills about 25 percent of the population of black humans who are affected.
(Evolutionists often like to cite this highly deleterious mutation as a good example of a beneficial mutation because those afflicted with sickle-cell anemia are less likely to die with malaria.
To the overall population, however, it is highly destructive.)
Dr. Wald also noted the enormous time span required to establish a mutation in a population:
“If you make a rough estimate…, it looks as if something of the order of ten million years is needed to establish a mutation.
That is, each of these single amino acid changes appears relatively frequently in individuals as pathology; but to establish one such change as a regular characteristic in a species seems to take something of the order of ten million years.”
Participants in the symposium said that obviously there must be a way for nature to reduce the odds against evolution, but no one could offer a mathematical characterization of such a mechanism.
Dr. Eden said,
“What I would like to find is the characterization of these constraints….
What I am claiming is simply that without some constraint on the notion of random variation in either the properties of the organism or the sequence of the DNA, there is no particular reason to expect that we could have gotten any kind of viable form other than nonsense.”
He was talking explicitly about the very heart of the question of plausibility in macroevolution.
If the raw material of evolutionary change is supposed to be generated by random processes, and random processes cannot be shown to produce even a fraction of the intelligence contained in the simplest DNA, then some non-random mechanism must be found.
When no such mechanism can be found, the theory should be deposited in the rubbish heap.
Natural selection is sometimes offered by neophytes as the answer, but knowledgeable specialists in the field know that selection cannot operate until there is raw material for it to preserve.
The problem becomes even more insurmountable when considering the matter of prebiology, or the origin of the first living cell from non-living chemicals.
Some participants preferred not to address that subject, claiming that it was not a part of evolution, but Sidney Fox disagreed.
Dr. Fox made the inexplicable statement that the evolutionary process from non-life to life was one of decreasing order and was completely in accord with the second law of thermodynamics that edicts this running down in all closed systems.
He said,
“On the premise of a logical evolutionary span from prelife to life and from preprotein to protein, the total picture is one of an evolution from a highly ordered primordial state to a considerably less ordered state, when looked at purely from the standpoint of the protein.
This progression is in keeping with the second law of thermodynamics.”
This statement is particularly astounding since the simplest living cell contains over a trillion bits of data in its genes– a number equivalent to the total number of letters in all the books in the world’s largest library.
If the supposed natural process from non-life to life represents a loss of intelligence, Dr. Fox is asking a lot if he expects anyone to believe that chemicals in an ancient ocean could contain more data than is in the largest library.
It is quite understandable that most attendees were happy to avoid a discussion of the origin of life.
Ernst Mayr made some startling admissions about Darwin’s original model of mutation and natural selection.
He said,
“Popper is right; this model is so good that it can explain everything, as Popper has rightly complained.”
This relates to the requirement in science that a theory or model must make exclusionary predictions.
If the concept is so generalized that it can explain any conceivable type of evidence, then it is of no value in science.
For example, if a theory can explain both dark and light coloration in moths, both the presence and absence of transitional forms in the fossil record, complex life forms either above or below in rock strata, etc., then it has no value in making predictions.
Dr. Mayr talked in generalities about neo-Darwinism being more than just mutation and natural selection– gene flow from one population to another, for example.
But he admitted that, in reality, the raw material was all generated by random mutations:
“Ultimately, all variation is, of course, due to mutation….
The input of untested new mutations in these cases would almost invariably have a deleterious effect.”
At the conclusion of his comments he could only offer this in regard to a mathematical definition of his neo-Darwinism model that could be tested on a computer:
“I think it should mean one thing in particular, which is that the approach adopted should not be too simplistic.”
From this, one can only gather that he admits that there is no presently known definitive theory on how life could have evolved from a common ancestor by a materialistic process.
The challenge to define the theory mathematically quickly strips its proponents of the endless verbiage containing generalizations and suppositions.
He added during the ensuing discussion,
“Whenever a major new evolutionary branch originates, whether the birds, or the first mammals, or any other major new taxon, it always goes in an incredibly short time (geologically speaking) through that labile stage between the well-defined ancestral phenotype and the new descendant type.
This is what was such a puzzle to Goldschmidt. …
An Eocene bat looks just like a modern bat.”
In this manner, Dr. Mayr copes with the total lack of fossilized transitional forms between the major different kinds of life.
In a discussion of how evolution theory can explain the fact that eels, which normally reproduce only in salt water, have certain landlocked species that reproduce in fresh water, Dr. Weisskopf said,
“I think it was Medawar who said that one thing about the theory of evolution is (and he quoted Popper) that it is not falsifiable, that whatever happens you can always explain it.
I think you have an example here.”
On the same subject, Dr. Fraser said,
“It would seem to me that there have been endless statements made and the only thing I have clearly agreed with through the whole day has been the statement made by Karl Popper, namely, that the real inadequacy of evolution, esthetically and scientifically, is that you can explain anything you want by changing your variables around.”
George Wald agreed:
“This cannot be done in evolution, taking it in its broad sense, and this is really all I meant when I called it tautologous in the first place.
It can, indeed, explain anything.
You may be ingenious or not in proposing a mechanism which looks plausible to human beings… but it is still an unfalsifiable theory.”
Dr. Schutzenberger of the University of Paris reported on why all attempts to program a model of evolution on a computer had completely failed.
He said that neo-Darwinism asserts that without anything further, selection brings about a statistically adapted drift when random changes are performed in a population.
He insisted,
“We believe that it is not conceivable.
In fact if we try to simulate such a situation by making changes randomly at the typographic level (by letters or blocks, the size of the unit does not really matter) on computer programs we find that we have no chance (i.e., less than one in ten to the thousandth power) even to see what the modified program would compute:
it just jams.”
In conclusion, Dr. Schutzenberger said,
“Thus… we believe that there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged within the current conception of biology.”
One problem, of course, is that regardless of all the discoveries we have made in the field of genetics, there still is no way to know how chains of nucleic acids in DNA instruct the cell to perform its multitudinous and complex functions.
Dr. Ulam said,
“Nobody in the 19th century or even now would profess to understand the details of how, from the code, an actual organism is produced.”
To this Schutzenberger replied that if there were explicit general principles relating them we should be able to simulate them and show the passage form disorder to order.
He insisted that with even the simple models that had been programmed on the computer,
“What we know is that when we make changes of a typographic nature, most of them are meaningless from any respect, and when I say ‘most of them’ I mean less than one out of ten to the hundredth power.”
In reply to Lewontin’s claim that a very large proportion of mutations do not render the molecule meaningless, Schutzenberger said,
“I ask you, what is the mechanism which makes it so, or what sort of conceptual mechanism could make it so?
I don’t know of any general principle or of any trick which in any other circumstances could produce this effect.”
When someone argued in general terms about how evolution solved the problem, he replied that they were falling into a trap:
“You only make the case worse by supposing that the mechanism which induces an agreement between the topologies has been produced also by random changes.
That is to say, this sort of fallacy has been used a lot of times in ‘artificial intelligence’ to pretend that one could write programs [for] machines which would learn how to tell themselves how to improve programs.”
Dr. Waddington commented,
“Your argument is simply that life must have come about by special creation.”
This brought a resounding “No!”
Near the end of the symposium, Murray Eden presented a second paper that summarized the results of the encounter quite well.
He said that, during the course of development of neo-Darwinian evolution, a variety of postulates have been suggested and invalidated, so:
“In consequence, the theory has been modified to the point that virtually every formulation of the principles of evolution is a tautology….
It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws– physical, physico-chemical, and biological….
In summary, it is our contention that the principal task of the evolutionist is to discover and examine mechanisms which constrain the variation of phenotypes to a very small class and to relegate the notion of randomness to a minor non-crucial role.”
Stephen C. Meyer, “Three Major Scientific Discoveries In The Past Century That Point To God” (April 2, 2021)
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Finally, discoveries in molecular biology have revealed the presence of digital code at the foundation of life, suggesting the work of a master programmer.
After James Watson and Francis Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, Crick developed his famed “sequence hypothesis.”
In it, Crick proposed that the chemical constituents in DNA function like letters in a written language or digital symbols in a computer code.
Functioning computer code depends upon a precise sequence of zeros and ones.
Similarly, the DNA molecule’s ability to direct the assembly of crucial protein molecules in cells depends upon specific arrangements of chemical constituents called “bases” along the spine of its double helix structure.
Thus, even Richard Dawkins has acknowledged, “the machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.”
Or as Bill Gates explains, “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”
No theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the information in DNA (or RNA) needed to build the first living cell from simpler non-living chemicals.
Instead, our uniform and repeated experience – the basis of all scientific reasoning – shows that systems possessing functional or digital information invariably arise from intelligent causes.
We know from experience that software comes from programmers.
We know generally that information – whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in radio signals – always arises from an intelligent source.
So the discovery of information – and a complex information transmission and processing system – in every living cell, provides strong grounds for inferring that intelligence played a role in life’s origin.
As information theorist Henry Quastler observed, “information habitually arises from conscious activity.”
Stephen C. Meyer, “Signature in the Cell: Intelligent Design and the DNA Enigma” on 270-282 of
_The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity_ (2012)
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But with the advent of Darwinism, and later neo-Darwinism, modern science claimed to explain the appearance of design in life as the product of a purely undirected process.
In the _Origin_, Darwin argued that the striking appearance of design in living organisms – in particular, the way they are so well adapted to their environments – could be explained by natural selection working on random variations, a purely undirected process that nevertheless mimicked the powers of a designing intelligence.
Thus, as evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala (2007, 8567) notes, Darwin accounted for “design without a designer.”
Indeed, since 1859 the appearance of design in living things has been understood by most biologists to be an illusion – a powerfully suggestive illusion but an illusion nonetheless.
Or as Francis Crick put, biologists must “constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved” (Crick 1988, 138).
But due in large measure to Watson and Crick’s own discovery of the information-bearing properties of DNA, scientists have become increasingly, and in some quarters, acutely aware that there is at least one appearance of design in biology that has not been explained by natural selection or any other purely naturalistic mechanism.
When Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA, they also discovered that DNA stores information in the form of a four-character alphabetic code.
Strings of precisely sequenced chemicals called _nucleotide bases_ store and transmit the assembly instructions – the information – for building the crucial protein molecules and protein machines the cell needs to survive.
Crick later developed this idea with his famous “sequence hypothesis,” according to which the chemical parts of DNA (the nucleotide bases) function like letters in a written language or symbols in a computer code.
Just as letters in an English sentence or digital characters in a computer program may convey information depending on their arrangement, so too do certain sequences of chemical bases along the spine of the DNA molecule convey precise instructions for building proteins.
Moreover, DNA sequences do not just have a mathematically measurable degree of improbability.
Thus, they do not just possess “information” in the strictly mathematical sense of the theory of information developed by the famed M.I.T. scientist Claude Shannon in the late 1940s.
Instead, DNA contains information in the richer and more ordinary dictionary sense of “alternative sequences or arrangements of characters that produce a specific effect.”
DNA base sequences convey instructions.
They perform functions and produce specific effects.
Thus, they do not possess mere “Shannon information,” but instead what has been called “specified” or “functional information.”
Indeed, like the precisely arranged zeros and ones in a computer program, the chemical bases in DNA convey instructions in virtue of their “specificity” of arrangement.
Thus, Richard Dawkins (1995, 17) notes that, “the machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like” and software developer Bill Gates (1995, 188) observes that “DNA is like a computer program.”
Similarly, biotechnology specialist Leroy Hood (2003, 444-448) describes the information stored in DNA as “digital code.”
But if this is true, how did the _functionally specified information_ in DNA arise?
Is this striking appearance of design the product of actual design or a natural process that can mimic the powers of a designing intelligence?
This question is related to a longstanding mystery in biology – the question of the origin of the first life.
Indeed, since Watson and Crick’s discovery, scientists have increasingly come to understand the centrality of information to even the simplest living systems.
DNA stores the assembly instructions for building the many crucial proteins and protein machines that service and maintain even the most primitive one-celled organisms.
It follows that building a living cell in the first place requires assembly instructions stored in DNA or some equivalent molecule.
As origin-of-life researcher Bernd-Olaf Küppers (1990, 170-172) has explained, “The problem of the origin-of-life is clearly basically equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information.”
“As always, it is tedious to do the research to properly evaluate the true scientific relevance of the claims of creationists/IDers”
“Understanding the scientifically-sophisticated arguments of Behe, Meyer and Axe is tedious and time-consuming”
_Beyond Matter: The moving experiences of a scientist with the spiritual world and his afterlife research_ (2023), 385pp., on 182-183
…I was ready to invest time and effort in new ways of seeing and thinking and I found not waffle but solid arguments.
Understanding the scientifically-sophisticated arguments of Behe, Meyer and Axe is tedious and time-consuming, but at the same time worthwhile, and if you want to criticize them, even if you are reluctant, you must have read their books.
With most materialists, however, I have the impression that they have not taken the trouble.
I have read Dawkins myself, otherwise, I would never allow myself to criticize him.
In my opinion it is only honest criticism if one presents concrete arguments for Intelligent Design (for example, the implications of the flagellular motor of bacteria) and then refutes them in argument and with solid facts.
This does not happen in most cases.
Those who do not know the arguments _for_ Intelligent Design cannot formulate any serious counter-arguments.
To protect their own worldview, they take the easiest way out of this dilemma and accuse Intelligent Design of being a theory for religious fanatics with a literal interpretation of the Bible.
With this pseudo-argument, they protect themselves from having to get into an embarrassing scientific discussion using real evidence.
_A Mousetrap for Darwin: Michael J. Behe Answers His Critics_ (2020)
Stephen C. Meyer, _Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe: Discoveries in Physics and Cosmology_ (2021)
Douglas Axe, _Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed_ (2017)
In your view, who has done the most-devastating takedown of Behe’s and of Meyer’s arguments?
What are some predictions of the theory of natural selection?
_Science_ (26 Apr 1968), Vol 160, p. 408
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Many of the papers by biologists in this volume are peripheral to the theme stated by the mathematicians, providing an accompaniment of sophisticated evolutionary theory rather than a counterpoint to the mathematical challenge.
Most biologists are satisfied with a theory that can be tested and that proves predictive.
M.W. Ho & P.T. Saunders, “Beyond neo-Darwinism—an epigenetic approach to evolution” (1979)
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We argue that the basic neo-Darwinian framework— the natural selection of random mutations— is insufficient to account for evolution.
The role of natural selection is itself limited: it cannot adequately explain the diversity of populations or of species; nor can it account for the origin of new species or for major evolutionary change.
Peter Saunders, “Random variations, gradualism and the role of natural selection” (2021)
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While the modern synthesis has at its core the claim that evolution can be entirely explained by the natural selection of random variations, neither “random” nor “variation” is adequately defined.
Neo-Darwinists explicitly deny that they use random with the meaning of haphazard, but it is what they assume in their work; if they did not, they could not justify their total concentration on selection and neglect of variations.
They conflate variations in the genotype with those in the phenotype.
This might be justifiable if the connection between the two were simple and straightforward, but it is not.
Like Darwin, neo-Darwinists are committed to the belief that evolution is always gradual.
Also like Darwin, they justify this on theoretical rather than empirical grounds and despite acknowledging that the evidence does not support them.
The paradox could be resolved by relaxing the commitment to gradualism, but only at the cost of significant consequences for the paradigm.
Peter T. Saunders, “Beyond the neo-Darwinist paradigm” (2016)
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Ever since Darwin, there have been challenges to the claim that the natural selection of small random variations is a sufficient explanation of evolution.
Even mainstream evolutionists are now beginning to accept that something more is required.
The question is whether this will be merely a few add-ons that leave the paradigm unaltered, or whether the whole framework of explanation, including its application to other disciplines, will be changed.
============================
Denis Noble, “Central tenets of neo-Darwinism broken. Response to ‘Neo-Darwinism is just fine’” (2015)
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This correspondence on my article (Noble, 2015) is very welcome since it accepts the main point I made in relation to epigenetics and evolution.
Williams and I therefore agree that ‘recent observations reveal multiple generations sharing the parent’s environmentally induced phenotype, even in the absence of the original factor’.
Where we disagree is whether this is incompatible with neo-Darwinism.
Those who formulated neo-Darwinism would not have accepted this.
The central basis of the theory was established by Weismann (1892) in postulating the existence of the Weismann barrier that would make inheritance of environmentally induced variation impossible:
‘when these deviations only affect the soma, they give rise to temporary non-hereditary variations; but when they occur in the germ-plasm, they are transmitted to the next generation and cause corresponding hereditary variations in the body’.
As Dawkins expressed it, genes are ‘sealed off from the outside world’ (Dawkins, 1976).
Mayr (1982) and many other neo-Darwinists concur:
‘All of the directions, controls and constraints of the developmental machinery are laid down in the blueprint of the DNA genotype as instructions or potentialities’.
If we accept that environmentally induced phenotypes can be inherited, as recent observations abundantly show (Tollefsbol, 2014), then we have broken the Weismann barrier, because the germline is no longer isolated from the environment and the organism’s response to it.
We have also automatically broken the other neo-Darwinian assumption of random variation because phenotype changes can then guide inheritable variation.
The honest response to this situation is to say that the central tenets of neo-Darwinism are no longer valid.
We then return to a modern version of Darwinism.
Darwin accepted the inheritance of acquired characteristics and formulated a hypothesis in his 1868 book The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, his pangenesis theory of gemmules, which turns out to be not so far removed from what we have now found.
His gemmules can be viewed as our inheritable epigenetic changes.
If, as the commentator seems to imply, we make neo-Darwinism so flexible as an idea that it can accept even those findings that the originators intended to be excluded by the theory it is then incumbent on modern neo-Darwinists to specify what would now falsify the theory.
If nothing can do this then it is not a scientific theory.
Concerning Collins and Venter, I did not quote or refer to either of them in my article. I quoted an earlier version of the Nature Editorial, with which I entirely concur:
‘They began to see DNA as the “book of life”, which could be read like an instruction manual.
It now seems that the genome might be less like a list of parts and more like the weather system, full of complicated feedbacks and interdependencies’.
This is the reason why the gene-centric approach has failed to deliver its promises on health care (Joyner and Prendergast, 2014).
The references to Collins and Venter are in a revised editorial, not in my article.
It is impossible to reply to all the points made.
Further details are in the recording of a session on evolutionary biology at EB2015 ().
“Are you aware of any potential discovery that would refute/ falsify the ‘continually evolving theory of evolution’?”
“Rabbit fossils in pre-Cambrian strata would certainly cause some problems”
What kind of “problems” for the “continually evolving theory of evolution” would be posed by finding “rabbit fossils in pre-Cambrian strata”?– details on those “problems”?
Does the “continually evolving theory of evolution” predict _where_ rabbits would first appear?
“What evidence would falsify ID?”
Nothing.
ID is a ‘metaphysical research programme.’
What are some predictions of the theory of natural selection?
“the evolution of a scientific theory is a constant refinement process.
You can try to represent any progressive refinement as a partial refutation or partial falsification of earlier forms of the theory, but such are not support for intelligent design”
Do you consider the theory of natural selection well-supported?
Do you agree with this?:
“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”
— Richard Dawkins, _The Blind Watchmaker_
“Why would one subscribe to the ID metaphysical research program?”
To make faster progress in understanding biology.
Do you agree that “The Origin of Species does not really deal with, well, the origin of species”?
Massimo Pigliucci, “Elements of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis” in
_Evolution, the Extended Synthesis_ (2010), 495pp., 3-17, on 7
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Take, for instance, Mayr’s related ideas of the so-called biological species concept and of allopatric speciation.
Despite the fact that they are both still controversial today
(Mishler and Donoghue 1982; Templeton 1989; Grant 1994; Sterelny 1994; Barraclough and Nee 2001; Hey 2001; Schluter 2001; Pigliucci 2003; Coyne and Orr 2004; Gavrilets 2004; de Queiroz 2005),
they were a direct rebuttal of Darwin’s conception of species as arbitrary demarcation lines imposed by the human mind on an otherwise continuous process of diversification (which is why The Origin of Species does not really deal with, well, the origin of species).
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“Transitional fossils, for example, provide plausible links between several different groups of organisms, such as Archaeopteryx linking birds and non-avian dinosaurs”
Exactly which bird and which dinosaur?
Gould & Eldredge, _Paleobiology_ 3:147 (1977)
At the higher level of evolutionary transition between basic morphological designs, gradualism has always been in trouble, though it remains the “official” position of most Western evolutionists.
Smooth intermediates between _Bauplane_ [body plans] are almost impossible to construct, even in thought experiments; there is certainly no evidence for them in the fossil record (curious mosaics like _Archaeopteryx_ do not count).
Even so convinced a gradualist as G. G. Simpson (1944) invoked quantum evolution and inadaptive phases to explain these transitions.
“Darwin himself found the paucity of transitional species to be one of the greatest weaknesses of his theory:
‘Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?
Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.
The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.’
Darwin appealed to the limited collections then available, the extreme lengths of time involved, and different rates of change with some living species differing very little from fossils of the Silurian period.
In later editions he added
‘that the periods during which species have been undergoing modification, though very long as measured by years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which these same species remained without undergoing any change.'[87]
The number of clear transitional fossils has increased enormously since Darwin’s day, and this problem has been largely resolved with the advent of the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which predicts a primarily stable fossil record broken up by occasional major speciations.”
What mechanism(s) is/are responsible for the “occasional major speciations”?
Re: “a primarily stable fossil record,” what’s responsible for the stasis?
Essay “Problems with the Theory of Natural Selection”
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“What is a metaphysical research program?”
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Popper’s first thorough treatment of the tautology issue and ET was in section 37 of his 1974 autobiography (entitled “Darwinism as a Metaphysical Research Program”), which appeared in the Schilpp volume on Popper.
Here Popper announces that ET “is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program— a possible framework for testable scientific theories.”
He clarifies what he means by a metaphysical research program in footnote 242:
“The term ‘metaphysical research programme’ was in my lectures from about 1949 on, if not earlier; but it did not get into print until 1958, though clearly in evidence in the last chapter of the Postscript (in galley proofs since 1957).
I made the Postscript available to my colleagues, and Professor Lakatos acknowledges that what he calls ‘scientific research programmes’ are in the tradition of what I described as ‘metaphysical research programmes’ (‘metaphysical’ because nonfalsifiable)” (Popper 1974, 175).
at Wistar in 1966
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aka
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Ernst Mayr made some startling admissions about Darwin’s original model of mutation and natural selection.
He said,
“Popper is right; this model is so good that it can explain everything, as Popper has rightly complained.”
…
In a discussion of how evolution theory can explain the fact that eels, which normally reproduce only in salt water, have certain landlocked species that reproduce in fresh water, Dr. Weisskopf said,
“I think it was Medawar who said that one thing about the theory of evolution is (and he quoted Popper) that it is not falsifiable, that whatever happens you can always explain it.
I think you have an example here.”
On the same subject, Dr. Fraser said,
“It would seem to me that there have been endless statements made and the only thing I have clearly agreed with through the whole day has been the statement made by Karl Popper, namely, that the real inadequacy of evolution, esthetically and scientifically, is that you can explain anything you want by changing your variables around.”
George Wald agreed:
“This cannot be done in evolution, taking it in its broad sense, and this is really all I meant when I called it tautologous in the first place.
It can, indeed, explain anything.
You may be ingenious or not in proposing a mechanism which looks plausible to human beings… but it is still an unfalsifiable theory.”
BDEhrman
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