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By Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
The premise of the book is a simple one: Natural selection does not work. As it come to be a functional system it found its practical incarnation in the efforts of B. F. Skinner. But the failings of Skinner’s system – that is has exogenic requirements – evidences the failure of the natural selection model.
In theology, and in philosophy, the term teleology makes for a good equivalent to exogenic. That is, there is something outside the system guiding the system. Though we might use teleology in terms of ends, the teleological process arrives at ends known or unknown through a guided process. (We will refer to the authors, as did Jerry Coyne in his response[1]) F&P emphasize this requirement as their most important criticism of natural selection.
The companion term, and probably much clearer to the reader, is their “selection-for” argument, one that they pursue like a feline after a mouse. But much more could have been written on this issue. It goes beyond simple directionality and exposes one of the naturalist’s greatest challenges: Why? Still, I continue to wonder if the mechanisms of genetics might suffer the same fate given that we have somehow arrived at our current level of complexity and the presence of free riders that seem to set a course for development[2].
The work reminds one of the old neo-Darwinists who saw genetics driving everything. Though they are not quite so mechanistic as the old neo-Darwinists, they do attempt to cash out with this approach. They are clear when they reject the principle that “nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution”[3] and accept the alternative, that “[4]nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of developmental biology”.
The beginning of the book contains some admissions which are worth noting: The multiple mechanisms account for multiple evolutionary models. Each of the different disciplines seem to think that the others are wrong in their understanding of evolution. Nobody really knows how it works, but they accept it anyway.
The epistemological structure of the work is its consistency. F&P argue evidence almost entirely. They do not spend time arguing naturalism. They are not acting as evangelists for naturalism, though they hold to it. By not confusing analogical and evidential approaches the material stands above the work of many other evolutionists.
[1] Coyne, Jerry, The Nation, “The Improbability Pump” , May 10, 2010, also available at http://www.thenation.com/article/improbability-pump What Coyne fails to do is to account for Piattelli-Palmarini’s background in molecular biology when his only ascription to their shared credentials is to say that “Fodor, a respected philosopher of mind, and Piattelli-Palmarini, a cognitive scientist, both accept the fact of evolution”
[2] pp. 98-99
[3] Quoting Dobzhansky, 1973, p. 30
[4] p. 30
May 18th, 2010 | 8:54 am | #1
Am I just confused in thinking that ‘why’ questions are not scientific questions and are irrelevant to modern scientific study of efficient causality? And if that is so, then where is the probably with non-teleological accounts of evolution by natural selection?
And I have a difficult time understanding how natural selection could possibly not work. Isn’t it the whole basis upon which capitalist economies are founded? Sure, it’s operative at multiple levels: Genetic, social, culture, species – but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t simply a part of existence in this universe.
May 18th, 2010 | 8:54 am | #2
*where is the problem
May 18th, 2010 | 9:36 am | #3
In some theoretical vision that doesn’t exist, maybe. Historically, most certainly not. Capitalist economies were designed and created over time by the powerful elite descendants of feudal lords all the way to the modern State.
Unless by “natural selection,” you mean “war” in which case, the answer is yes. But the answer is no if by “natural selection” you mean a bottom-up process of uncoerced choices by informed individuals.
May 18th, 2010 | 10:17 am | #4
Oh, I definitely don’t mean that in a history of ideas sense, Albert. Obviously Smith was before Darwin. But the point of free enterprise capitalism is that competition induces productivity. How? With the threat of financial extinction in the absence of productivity, a threat which leads to creative destruction.
May 18th, 2010 | 10:45 am | #5
If natural selection does not work, how do bacteria become immune to anti-biotics? The arguments against natural selection are nonsense on their face.
May 18th, 2010 | 2:53 pm | #6
The cichlids of Lake Victoria are proof that natural selection works. Their morphological diversification is so rapid that scientists can literally witness speciation.
May 18th, 2010 | 5:46 pm | #7
Steve,
The problem with why is that teleology becomes implicit. That means something external is guiding the process. This is not allowed in a naturalistic system. Not, at least, if the theorist is consistent. (Which is the real issue here.)
Chuck & R Hampton,
Don’t confuse short-cycle adaptation with systematic adaptation.
May 18th, 2010 | 7:35 pm | #8
Collin Brendemuehl,
There is no genetic barrier or physical law that limits the amount of adaption. So systematic adaptation is merely the accumulation of short-cycle adaptations over a given length of time.
If you believe different, what then is the difference between a Wolf and a Fox? (that’s not a rhetorical question — I really would like you to answer)
May 18th, 2010 | 8:24 pm | #9
R,
Science is not a set of such vagueries. Adaptation theory is filled with them. (That, by the way, makes your question a false dilemma.)
May 18th, 2010 | 11:32 pm | #10
This is what I call Darwinian Fizzbin, borrowing the name of a game from Star Trek.
No serious person would deny the fact that living organisms can change and adapt over time. Design theorists are refuting the ability for origination of species through purely natural selection and Mendelian synthesis. In other word, neither Darwin’s natural selection or neo-Darwinism can explain macroevolution. FIZZBIN! Darwinists have been telling us that macroevolution is a fact. Random genetic mutations combined with the fittest will survive concept it is suppose to produce humans from protocell. Here you have an eminent evolutionary scientist who admits that random mutations and natural selection do not explain how macroevolution happens.
What is natural selection and why would anyone be persuaded by this argument? Natural selection is the mechanism or process that acts on genetic changes in organisms to vary the genetic frequency in the population. A frequent example of natural selection used by Darwinists is the peppered moth. The moth story goes something like this. During the industrial revolution in the 18th century in England, the dark color moths saw an increase in their population size compared to light color moths. This is due to their ability to camouflage themselves better with the soot covered trees, thereby giving them a survival advantage over the light color moths. (This has been totally debunked by Jonathan Wells in the Icons of Evolution) This is an example of microevolution. The problem with this is that some Darwinists use these type of examples as evidence for macroevolution. They do not make any distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. Some goes as far as to deny the term macroevolution as a distinction concocted by Creationists. To Darwinists macroevolution is nothing more than cumulative microevolution. This is how the vertebrate eye has evolved, through successive and cumulative improvements on a light patch. The 800 pounds gorilla in this type of Darwinian extrapolation is that there is absolutely no observable empirical evidence to support these fanciful speculations, in the wild or in the labs. Again, I would point you back to my posting in “Nietzsche’s Madman : Finding Darwin’s God” for the list of admissions by Darwinists who honestly admits this.
However, the lack of empirical evidence is not enough to deter the devout Darwinist from pressing forth with this argument. They will make claims like this is how science work because evolution happens over millions of years so extrapolation is as good as observable facts. Other arguments involve using computer simulations like the Nilsson and Pelger simulation for the eye spot and Avida. Although these simulators have no basis on empirical reality( see my debate of it here) , it does give the Darwinists cover to speculate as if they are based on reality. For those of us who work with simulators everyday in our engineering design to produce realistic functional devices, these simulators are nothing more than Darwinian fantasy games. Even the eminent British evolutionary biologist the field’s godfather, Tom Ray said, “It’s just not biology. Period. End of discussion”.
Darwinian natural selection as a macroevolutionary mechanism is totally vacuous in explaining how the new forms arise. Natural selection itself is not a force and has no ontological existence. It cannot account for the genetic differences between species, the differential survival of an organism, nor any alleged cumulative changes in such a differential survival scenario.
May 18th, 2010 | 11:40 pm | #11
You need to read Walter ReMine’s book The Biotic Message.
May 19th, 2010 | 3:21 pm | #12
teleologist,
“Natural selection itself is not a force and has no ontological existence –”
Of course not, Natural selection is the means by which mutations are selected by environmental pressures (sexual selection is also a factor). Mutations that are beneficial are preserved to a greater degree then those that are neutral, which in turn are preserved to a greater degree then those that are harmful. Over generations entire species can acquire new abilities. For example, having first appeared in Europe some 4500 to 7500 years ago, lactose tolerance is rapidly spreading throughout humanity.
Mutations occur by many means (all of the examples that follow are proven fact). Chemicals, radiation, even ultraviolet light can sever the bond between a given base pair. This alteration can make the pair appear to be composed of a different pair of bases, thus triggering a replication error. The protein DNA polymerase also errs in its function (it turns split strands of helix into identical copies) on the order of once per 100,000,000 base pairs. Both kinds of errors are examples of point mutations — changes that affects a single base pair.
Mutations affecting multiple pairs – as many as several thousands per event – are caused by insertions, deletions, and duplication errors. Because such changes alter the number of base pairs, frameshift mutations can follow (for illustration, see http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/illustrations/mutationtypes?show=frameshift)
Then their are mutations that affect entire chromosomes. Not surprisingly insertion, deletion, and duplication errors are also at play. Another factor is translocation wherein segments of two different chromosomes are swapped. It’s important to note that speciation can result when balanced Robertsonian Translocations are spread through a small population by generational inbreeding – the affect of which is a net gain or loss in the total number of chromosomes. For example, a mole rat native to Israel – Spalax ehrenbergi – is in the process of splitting into four species from chromosomal types 52, 54, 58 and 60.
Collin Brendemuehl,
Which brings us back to the Wolf-Fox problem. Despite having nearly identical morphologies, these species can not interbreed due to differences in the number of chromosomes. So is this a case of macro- or micro- evolution. What is the difference? More importantly, is this divergence an example of Intelligent Design or Natural Evolution (in your opinion)
May 19th, 2010 | 4:58 pm | #13
Natural selection is the means by which mutations are selected by environmental pressures
And that is where the “wet” biologists differ from the adaptationist theorists. This disagreement reveals that one does not have to believe in special creation (of any type) to see that there is some serious disagreement. PE v Synthetic v Neo-Dar v PG v UG. As F&P make quite clear, this conflict exists because *nobody* really knows what is going on. Nobody.
So what about foxes and wolves? One problem with these differences (same with llamas and alpacas) is that they share a common environment, and have for a long time now. So what nobody can say *for certain* is how they got to that point. Was it geographic isolation? Not likely. Was it a genetic shift in a population group? Less likely. Was it a genetic shift in an individual? Even tougher.
I’m going to do the challenge justice and plead ignorance. Which is what the evolutionists need to do instead of contriving *new models* that only create new problems. (And that false dilemma of only two choices is not a trap that I accept.)
May 19th, 2010 | 5:13 pm | #14
“By not confusing analogical and evidential approaches the material stands above the work of many other evolutionists.”
But in the end… they’re still evolutionists.
Honest evolutions who are honestly wrong.
May 19th, 2010 | 7:22 pm | #15
If you’re going to argue that there is some important distinction between micro- and macro- evolution, then you should be able to account for this simple example.
#chromosomes for six species of “true foxes”:
34 Red Fox
36 Corsac Fox
50 Kit Fox
60 Bengal Fox
64 Fennec Fox
66 Gray Fox
#chromosomes for three species of “true drogs”:
78 Grey Wolf Coyote, Domestic Dog
ID folks, such as yourself, are stumped by this information because you have no way to explain it. One the one hand, Foxes have very minor physical differences between species, so this should be a case of micro-evolution. But each Fox species evolved in part by altering its total chromosomes – meaning some fox species GAINED information by nature alone — a fatal blow to a key Intelligent Design argument. On the other hand, the chromosomal differences between species prevents interbreeding so this should be a case of macro-evolution. But if so, then each species would have required a separate and unique Intelligent Design event just to exist. At which it’s fair to say that ID advocates don’t even accept micro-evolution in practical terms — and that’s certainly not what Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer believe.
Catch 22
May 19th, 2010 | 10:53 pm | #16
The problem with using the word selection is highly misleading. It gives the false impression that natural selection can exploit any putative advantageous mutations when in fact survival is a matter of random chance. There is absolutely no evidence that natural selection will always confer a statistic advantage to an organism due to a specific mutation.
But again the more significant point is how does natural selection (NS) + random mutation (RM) create macroevolutionary species. The problem with Darwinism is that by playing with words to give the impression of real science. For instance, you refer to the mole rat as an example of speciation, why? Is this an example of macroevolution? Is the one with 52 chromosomes a rat and the one with 60 chromosomes a donkey? The fact is that they are both still different types of rats. What Darwinists fail to accept is the fact that there are limits to what RM+NS can do. Just consider the empirical fact that there are no bacteria on the path of evolving into a human. Why? Bacteria have been in existence for billions of years. If Darwinian evolution is correct why is there no evidence that these prokaryotic organisms are on an evolutionary path to becoming humans. After all we did evolve from one a prokaryotic organism once did we not? Why is it that for billions of years now a prokaryote is still a prokaryote and have not even evolved into a eukaryotic organism? Why the fixity of species?
May 20th, 2010 | 3:12 pm | #17
teleologist,
The mole rat is an example of speciation happening before our eyes (it takes many generatons). The wolf-fox problem is an example of recent speciation, and pertains specifically to the notion of “kinds” that you dismissed with the mole rats. So are wolves and foxes of the same kind or not? How could you tell?
May 20th, 2010 | 3:28 pm | #18
“Why is it that for billions of years now a prokaryote is still a prokaryote and have not even evolved into a eukaryotic organism? Why the fixity of species?”
Do realize that you are presenting a classic Creationist argument? Intelligent Design theory, as defined by Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer, accepts natural evolution, common descent, and speciation. They would argue – as do I – that prokaryotes exist to this day because they are still the best adapted to survive in the ecological niche in which they reside. While eukaryotes do many things well, in some ways they are just not as efficient as prokaryotes. Thus explains the prokaryote resiliance.
But if your logic were true, then the only living things on this planet would be human because we are the most advanced. Yet despite our self-evident evolutionary superiority, we are very poorly adapted to exploit life underground, undersea, in the microscopic realm, etc. Hence the great diversity of life.
May 20th, 2010 | 4:54 pm | #19
I would say that your response is also typical of a Darwinist. I hope you also realize that your answer is not a scientific argument but only a fiat excuse for Darwinism. Darwinists have absolutely zero scientific evidence to support this type of macroevolution. What is so unique about the ecology of the current or past 3 billion years that prokaryotic organisms find so ideal that there is no need to mutate to a eukaryotic organism? And the flip side of that question is what was so unique about the ecological environment 3 billion years ago that drove our common ancestor to mutate into a eukaryote?
How many nucleotide changes were needed to create organelles, mitochondrion, nucleus, and membranes? Did all these mutations occur at the same time? If these changes occurred independently over time; how much time? How were these individual parts protected and functioned in this intermediate state?
If you know how it works then we can test it in the lab. After all this is what science is all about isn’t it, empirical and testable? If Darwinists don’t know then stop calling it science and just admit that this is your preferred creation mythology.
On a minor point I know Behe is an evolutionist but I don’t think Meyer is. In any case they would not accept the Darwinian mechanisms for common descent.
May 20th, 2010 | 8:24 pm | #20
Meyer’s only specific claim against evolution by natural selection is in regards to novel body plans that appear during the Cambrian. Humans, dogs, and fish, however, all share the same Cambrian-born body plan; we are all members of phylum Chordata. This is common knowledge amongst scientists, but often shocking news for YEC such are yourself.
More importantly, you have demonstrated that there is no amount of natural evolution that you can accept; for you it’s not even a case of macro- versus micro-evolution.
As for the longevity of prokaryotes, some of their kind have evolved metabolisms that are not found in eukaryotes — some can digest inorganic compounds such as hydrogen sulfide. Some prokaryotes can also tolerate extreme environments; “Thermophiles, for instance, live at high temperatures – the present record is 113°C (235°F). In contrast, no known eukaryote can survive over 60°C (140°F).” Prokaryotes are also physically smaller and structurally simpler then eukaryotes. Consequently they require less energy and material to sustain themselves. There are many reasons why prokaryotes haven’t been replaced by eukaryotes.
May 20th, 2010 | 10:59 pm | #21
Darwinists swear up and down they are the sole protector of science. Why is it then when you pin them down to present the actual science behind their Darwinian narrative they just create more stories and accuse those who question them as anti-science creationists.
Once again comment #20 is devoid of science to support macroevolution and specifically the transition from prokaryote to eukaryote. It even fails to provide an unscientific story to the question “What is so unique about the ecology of the current or past 3 billion years that prokaryotic organisms find so ideal that there is no need to mutate to a eukaryotic organism?” Was there any mention of the types of environment in the past 3 billion years? Was there any mention of how prokaryotes were so adapt in their local environment globally that no mutation could have led to a eukaryote? But dial time back just a bit then boom eukaryote city here we come.
But then maybe the point was in the last 3 billion years prokaryotes have been demonstrated some remarkable mutational changes that rival the transition to eukaryote. After all prokaryotes have adapted to extreme heat and ingest inorganic compounds. That is much more difficult to do than to create all the different organelles and nucleus to become a eukaryote. I mean all those genetic mutations required to ingest inorganic compound. It must have taken what, like thousands, hundreds or maybe a single nucleotide change?
I am curious why paint me as a YEC, I am not? Why accuse me of not accepting any natural evolution when I clearly do?
May 21st, 2010 | 2:51 pm | #22
teleologist,
By the arguments you have presented, you do not accept “micro-evolution”, which distinguishes you as a Creationist. Because OEC do accept that evolutionary processes (like natural selection and random mutation) are true and real, I can further surmise that you are a YEC. Consequently the empirical evidence that does exist (even ID scientists Michael Behe and agree to this fact) is meaningless to you.
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