Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis - Author's Introduction

Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis - Author's Introduction Introduction All in all, the empirical pattern found in nature most prominently emphasizes the proposed model in pattern science, and the basic tenet of pattern science is that varieties are absolutely distinct from each other, and that they possess dissociative properties that are always found in all classifiable organs. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. My primary goal in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985) was to prove that nature is fundamentally non-continuous. As I have shown, the specific qualities of the taxa, such as hair in the case of mammals or feathers in the case of birds, have not been reached from postulated ancestral forms through a long series of intermediate forms (which I have called "functional form continuity"). Furthermore, these traits in the groups that define them have remained constant in all of their very diverse members,2 and I have seen that the absence of this functional continuity poses an external threat to the traditional Darwinian adaptive gradient and the claim that macroevolution is nothing more than an extension of microevolution, and I have strongly defended the idea that it is not There must have been factors other than cumulative selection that shaped the course of evolution. Overall, evolution was a "totally direct" critique of the traditional Darwinian model, and an indication that the natural system is a natural discontinuity rather than a functional continuum as Darwinian biologists claim. She asserted that taxa classes are similar to characteristic geometric forms such as triangles or quadrigons of opinion, which cannot be achieved from one class to another by small successive steps of geometrical forms.3 She therefore defended the typological view that classes or types are real and existential for organisms only and characteristic components of the cosmological system, a belief that prevailed in the 19th century before Darwin. Nature moves from pattern to pattern in addition to inorganic forms; these patterns vary depending on their parameters, determined by the conditions of physical-mathematical potential. Cuvier's "patterns" in natural history may not be fully selected and abundant enough, but they are patterns; seeking a foothold in the gaps between them is a vain quest, forever.4 I am still committed to this intermittent stereotype, although since I wrote the book Evolutionary Citation I have adopted a more structuralist concept of organicism, especially patterns, in which I was convinced when I wrote the book Evolutionism of pan-adaptionism and I thought of a rigid functionalist view of biological systems. I saw adaptation as the main or only pre-existing organizing principle of life, and I considered organisms as essentially "modifiable packages," similar to machines like clocks, in which every attribute exists a special end. But I did not realize then what was now quite clear to me (thirty years later) as a structuralist: although "Coffier's functional constraints" may play a large role in "pattern isolation",6 the qualities of living things did not all exist to serve a certain adaptive purpose, many novel qualities of the class-specific "pentadeactyl"-terminals (tetrapoda) conjugate. These seemingly non-adaptive forms, as Richard Owen explained in his landmark On the Nature of Limbs, pose a clear challenge to overall adaptiveness. These seemingly non-adaptive forms certainly pose an existential threat to the entire Darwinian and functional model, because they suggest that causal non-cumulative systems lead to functional ends and must have played a crucial role in living. First I need to know two terms that I will use frequently in the rest of the book, the first being "similar or homologous paphermies", which refers to a unique biological trait common to all members of a particular group such as the five-toed basic plan at the tip of tetrapods and common to all tetrapods. The other word I need to know is "non-adaptive", which I also use throughout the book. I use this term to refer to any trait or form of an organism that does not seem to offer a certain conceivable adaptive end – in other words, any trait that does not contribute to the organism's adaptation. These traits are hidden to the eye of natural selection because it only sees traits that lead to an adaptive end. My main goal in this new book is to review the challenge to Darwinian belief and to support the stereotypes offered by emerging traits and the extraordinary persistence of similarities. Moreover, I will explore the apparent uncertainty of the adaptive state of many similarities. 1 1 Structuralism and Functionalism For two centuries, biologists have adhered to two contradictory conceptions of the fundamental nature of organic form, one called formalism and the other called functionalism.11 In his book The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Stephen Jay Gould noted these two opposing conceptions of organic order: Most organisms have adapted well to their immediate environments[citation needed], but they are also built on basic anatomical schemes that go beyond any particular circumstance. Yet the principles of functionalism or structuralism seem to be reversed in a strange way - why do adaptive structures of particular endings take root in homologs that do not currently express any common function (as in Darwin's example of anterior limbs in mammals)? The choice of one of these two principles as a causal basis for biology practically determines the attitude of any researcher towards the organic world and the causes of the system in it ... Can we consider the plan of the taxonomic system to be high base level, while we see local adaptations as a set of small dendrites ... base built with immense grandeur? A. Structuralism Based on the structural model, a large part of the life system and the system of every living organism results from basic internal determinants or causal factors that arise from basic physical properties in biological systems and living matter. In other words, it is a biological system that did not arise from adaptations to achieve functional ends. The cell membrane is one of the simplest examples of this type of system ("structural system"), where it organizes itself into a thin layer that covers the surface of the cell, just because of its hydrophobic properties. Many pre-Darwin biologists believed that these internal determinants, or "laws of biological form" as they were referred to in the 19th century, confined the ways of building organisms to a few basic designs or types, just as the laws of chemical form or crystal form define the body of chemicals and crystals within finite groups of specific forms according to certain laws. Thus life is not a defect resulting from "time and chance" as it came to be seen after Darwin, but a predictable and necessary part of the cosmic whole. For Richard Owen, the father of Anglo-Saxon structuralism, the idea that life on Earth is the result of a natural legal process is clearly confirmed in the concluding chapter of his book Anatomy of Vertebrates, in which he states that the course of evolution was "predestined ... because of the natural amplitude or force of change by which protozoans have risen." Protozoa) created by laws into refined plant and animal forms."14 As noted by E.S. Russell E.S. Russell, in his classic work Form and Function, believed almost all pre-Darwinist biologists at the beginning of the 19th century – among them luminaries such as Karl Ernst von Baer, Etienne Geoffrey and Isidore of St. Hilaire. St. Hilaire, Henry Milne-Edwards, Etienne Serres, Johann Friedrich Meckel, Karl Gustave Carus, Heinrich Georg Brun George Bronn and Theodore Schwann argue that the whole system of life is the result of processes that follow laws that are indeterminate: the famous "puzzling laws of form." I also mentioned it in a previous article: Given the Zeitgeist's legal spirit of pre-Darwinian biology and given the abstract nature of many of the same sequences and their consistency in many different types of organisms over vast periods of time; seeing them as unchanged natural forms similar to crystals or atoms was a small inferential step. Joffrey, who may have been the most prominent formalist in Europe, hypothesized that similar "capabilities" were also used for atoms and other non-alterable elements. Borrowing too, in the last chapter of his book Microscopical Researches he drew intense comparisons between cells and crystals: The process of crystallization in inorganic nature is the closest analogy to the formation of cells ... Can we therefore assume that the formation of the initial parts in organisms is nothing but a crystallization ... and the organism is nothing but a collection of these crystals? ... If a number of crystals are formed that are capable of being assembled, they must be assembled according to certain laws in order to be systematically both, i.e., similar to an organism. Ernst Haeckel largely used this metaphor, restating Schwann's views on "cells as organic crystals, on crystalline trees, and on the analogy between representation assimilation in the cell and crystal growth in the mother fluid."16 Consistent with the idea that homologs or "primary models" are natural forms and original public faculties that are supposed to occur across the universe regardless of the existence of life, Owen thought in the final section of his book on the nature of the parties in the possibility of achieving homologs in vertebrates or their physical scheme Bauplan on other planets.17 Ginter Wagner in his recent book Similarity, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation describes Owen's structuralist vision: Owen believed that it was possible to describe the organization of the animal body as a physical "formula", such as the possibility of writing the composition of a chemical in the form of a chemical formula. For example, H2SO4 is only a picture of the "chemical elements" (H, S and O) and their molecular proportions combined in the molecule (i.e. sulfuric acid). The analogs of the chemical elements for Owen are the same in biology; that is, the analogs are the anatomical "atoms" of bodies which, together with different combinations and bodies, form different special bodies of real animals.18 As I explained in my previous article: Structuralists adhere to a strict "non-selective and non-historical" view of the biological world. Notable structuralists of the 20th century include William Bateson (inventor of the concept of genetics), D. Arce Wentworth Thompson (author of the famous structuralist work on growth and form), Robert Rupert Riedl, and Stuart Kauartuphraman. Although Gould was convinced in his early years of pan-selectionism, he became more structuralist late in life, writing in Structure Theory of Evolution: "I don't imagine that anyone can read from Goethe, Geoffrey Severtzov, Riemann and Riedl, without some reasonable admiration for the important or at least rational functions." Of course, all structuralists agreed that organisms showed adaptations to external environmental conditions, but they considered, as Owen described them, “adaptive masks,” placed with basic core plans or “primitive models.” The great variety of vertebrate limbs – swimming fins, gripping hands, and flying wings – are all modifications to the basic core plan or the prototype itself, which does not serve a particular environmental need, as Gould described in his quote. Owen saw that "primitive models" were generated during development by what he called "polarizing force," while adaptive masks were the result of another fundamental mechanism he called "adaptive force."20 As I pointed out in a previous paper: It is important to emphasize that structuralism suggests that an organic system is a combination of two completely different types of system, and is born by two different causal mechanisms: a primary system [including the specific analogies or similarities of its classes] which is generated by natural laws, and a secondary adaptive system imposed by environmental determinants (by natural selection according to Darwinism, by Lamarckian mechanisms, and by intelligent design according to current design theorists). Of course, the origin of the natural laws that generate the elementary system has its own important question, and I have discussed, as others have discussed elsewhere, that these laws may refer to the intelligent design of the universe to be uniquely suited to life22, but discussing that hypothesis is not the purpose of this book. b. Functionalism According to the corresponding model often called functionalism, adaptation is the principal or only intrinsic organizing principle of biology. In this view, the specific similarities of the pattern (five-fingered limb, etc.) are adaptations built through cumulative selection during the course of evolution to serve different adaptive outcomes. The biological system built in this manner is episodic, meaning that it is not determined by a specific natural law. 23 Of course this is the current common and prevailing view, as all followers of Darwinism, and thus the vast majority of evolutionary biologists, are functionalists by definition, because the whole evolution according to traditional Darwinism occurred as a result of cumulative selection to serve functional outcomes. It is hard to imagine two scientific frameworks that are as contradictory as structuralism and functionalism, where functionalism suggests that function is the former and it determines structure, while structuralism suggests that structure is the former and it restricts function. It is strange to think that prominent biologists saw the same empirical facts as pointing in two completely different directions, as Russell pointed out in his book Form and Function: The contrast between teleological position with its insistence on the primacy of function over structure, and morphological position, with its ruling on the primacy of structure over function, is one of the most important fundamentals in biology. Will the consequences of functional adjustment outweigh the unity and diversity of organic forms, or is Joffrey right in insisting on the inexplicable element of unity in terms of adaptation?24 Curiously, English natural theology from the 17th century to the mid-19th century also adhered very strongly to the divine adaptation, which asserts that the whole organism's system is adaptive and serves a direct purpose; even the male nipples, as John Ray!26 For this reason the machine analogy popularized by William Paley, of course, as the result of "clocklike" creationism, are as common as the components of adaptation. The English-speaking world has adhered to a certain version of functionalism for so long (creativeists since the 17th century and Darwinists since 1859) that most English-speaking biologists cannot conceive of living organisms containing a significant degree of order arising from basic internal physical determinants rather than from adaptive processes. The structuralist claim that the world of biology is based on basic plans that do not serve a particular adaptive purpose is therefore alien to English-speaking biology. 1 2 The new Darwinian formula When I was attending the final draft of my book Evolution in the mid-1980s, the model called Modern Evolutionaryism or Neo-Darwinian Evolutionism (a strictly functionalist worldview) was still dominant among evolutionary biologists. The theory of evolutionism emerged four or five decades ago, as a result of studies by a group of prominent evolutionary biologists in the mid-20th century (geneticists, Ronald Fisher, J.P.S. Haldane, and bioscientists) The synthetic theorists hoped to banish all non-Darwinian ideas of evolutionary biology once and for all, by returning to an evolutionary model based exclusively on functionalism and external influences. All other explanations of evolution have become dubious and unsuited to modern science. These explanations include the structural views of Richard Owen and many other biologists during Darwin30, the ideas of Darcy Thompson31, and the ideas of directed evolution, orthogenesis22 and early biological ideas23. Thus the emphasis on adaptation in the 1950s to 1970s and 1980s was more intense than in Charles Darwin's book The Origin of Species, especially in recent versions in which Darwin flirted with Lamarck.35 As Gold36 pointed out, the prevailing spirit was the spirit of mass adaptation, and as he showed, textbooks issued after the 1959 Darwinian Centennial praised "the adequacy of natural selection[cluster selection] in covering the entire field of evolutionary phenomenon at all levels, from ecological to geological".37 However, the modern Darwinian consensus did not pass without the appearance of some irregularities, and in 1985 some objections emerged from the transitional forms of Darwin, in addition to the widely read "paper" of Gold and Leontine, which criticizes the "comprehensive adaptive" view of the synthetic theory40, there was Gold's famous remark that Darwinian explanations in many cases lack the same "childish stories."41 "The Secret of Workmanship in Fossil Science."43 Gould proved, perhaps more than any other contemporary scientist, the structuralist perspective in his book The Structure of Evolutionary Theory through a sympathetic review of the views of leading 19th- and 20th-century structuralists and by his criticism of the attitude of mass adaptation. Another burden of the new synthesis was the controversy that erupted in the late 1970s and early 1980s over the radical cladism (often referred to as model cladism) of Colin Patterson and other researchers at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington in London. 44 Nature turned its ire on the abbreviated publications of the Cladism in a hysterical editorial entitled "Darwin's Death in South Kensington" and sharply cited a publication that, as the editor pointed out, contained "a quirky phrase" that was "if the theory of evolution is true."45 It is easy to understand Nature’s concern, given the kind of claim made by some of the most radical followers of the classics. In the 1980s bioarchaeology and bioarchaeology, William Thompson, for example, commented on the classics: “A counter-hypothesis to the Darwinian evolution hypothesis ... has been put forward by a neoclassical hypothesis that the search for ancestors is a fool’s errand, and that all we can do is identify the sibling relationships of common ancestors.”46 There was also the disturbing opinion of Japanese geneticist Motoo Kimura 48, who noted growing evidence that most evolutionary change at the molecular level was neutral and continued in many cases at a regular rate. Kimura's opinion was considered heretical at the time, as the traditional view of the vast majority was that all the foundations of the genome were functional. Although these opposing expressions exist, they are like Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, one of the very few publications of the 1980s that saw the heretical possibility that nature may have a discontinuous basis of isolated and unique patterns unconnected by functional modes of the necessary Darwinian mode. A few other publications have attempted such a systematic critique of the entire Darwinian structure, in particular the critique of its fundamental claim that cumulative selection is the single or greatest driver of organic change, but that the whole system of nature and evolutionary innovation can be explained by the present day. 1 3 Growing Cash Since the publication of Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, there have been tremendous advances and discoveries in many areas of biology; such as paleontology, genomics, and developmental biology. In 1985 the genome project had just begun, and developmental biologists had just begun to apply new genetic knowledge to provide detailed molecular genetic descriptions of development. Over the next three decades, these biological advances, especially evolutionary thought, shifted to a growing and sustained critique of universal Darwinian selectivity in many places that rested on some of my core ideas in my previous book. Indeed, it is widely recognized that one of the major challenges to evolutionary biology today is to explain the origin of the novel similarities that define and isolate the species in the same century. In his book Similarity, Genetics, and Evolutionary Innovation (2014), Ginter Wagner, a leading researcher in the field of evo-devo, expresses his apparent sympathies with pre-Darwinian style ideas. He questions the idea that similarities are "species by name only...simple arbitrary abstractions of structure and apparent difference," and asks Wagner if they are instead "natural species," a possibility he calls "very dialectical or not."52 Richard Prum and Alan Brush describe the thoughts of many Evo-Devo workers when they write: Wagner and his colleagues recently proposed that the search for the origin of evolutionary emergent traits should be separate from the search for standard microevolutionary change, and should be restructured to ask radically different questions that focus directly on the mechanisms of the origin of qualitative innovations. This view points to why traditional neo-Darwinist methods of determining the origin of feathers such as Bock (1965) and Fedoccia (1985, 1993, 1999) have failed. By insisting on reshaping a series of functionally feasible and microevolved transitional intermediate states, neo-Darwinist methods applied to the origin of feathers have failed to adequately identify emerging features of feather growth. His Morphology, and consequently failed to adequately explain his origin. This failure reveals an inherent weakness in neo-Darwinist attempts to synthesize micro and macroevolution. On the contrary, the evolutionary theory of feather origin focuses directly on the interpretation of the actual evolutionary emergent traits involved in feather origin and diversity (Prum 1999). The restructuring of research to focus directly on the interpretation of the origin of the evolutionary emergent traits of feathers produces a more productive and conceptually appropriate approach.53 In the same vein, Douglas Erwin titled one of his papers "Major Evolution More Than Just Repeated Rounds of Microevolution."54 In another paper, Erwin and his colleague Eric Davidson saw that microevolutionary changes are unable to explain the origins or radical changes in what they call the intrinsic evolutionary regulatory networks that contribute to the generation of essential morphological elements in all organisms.55 Davidson and Irwin suggest that the origin of higher biological branches, such as people, includes mechanisms other than normal microevolution processes thought to cause speciation. They argue that "traditional evolutionary theory based on the selection of increasingly small changes" cannot provide "an explanation for evolution in terms of dynamic changes in the genetic program regulating the growth of the somatic schema."56 Guttner Wagner, mentioned earlier, also questions the derivation of large evolution from microevolution and claims that the origin of large introduced traits is inexplicable by Darwinian gradualism, slowly. One of his key points in the book of similarity, genes and evolutionary innovations is that while microevolutionary changes shed light on the origin of small-scale emergent traits, they may not be able to explain large evolutionary novelty such as the specific large novelties of the higher taxon discussed in this book. The question of how complex somatic blueprints arise is beyond the reach of group genetics [known as the change in genetic frequencies in groups, i.e., microevolution] as well as questions about how complex organisms can emerge from random mutations and selection.57 One of the key points noted in Wagner's book is his claim (in a re-dispersion of Owen's homologs or "primitive models" and their adaptive persuasions) that the processes that led to the large evolutionary emergent traits are different from the processes that cause adaptive modifications. Wagner discusses: Emerging traits often require large-scale reorganizations of the structured genetic network. Reorganizations of the structured genetic network ... involve the creation of new cis-coupled regulatory elements, and, conversely, adaptive modifications often include only modifications of pre-existing cis-coupled regulatory elements.58 Scott Gilbert, another dissenting voice, recently acknowledged: "I said formally in a 1996 paper that if the model of group genetics in evolutionary biology is not reviewed by developmental genetics, it will be as biological as Newtonian physics is in current physics."59 Many recent publications touch on aspects of the current revolution, such as Pigliucci's book and Muller's book Evolution: The Extended Synthesis,60 Wallace's book Evolution: A Developmental Approach61, Susan Mazur's book Altenberg 16, and Fodor's book Piatelli's The Mariner argues that there is no such thing as Darwinism.62 The first part of the book provides a critical review of the current state of traditional Darwinism. To their skepticism of the "evo-devo constraint model" that informs much of the research in evolutionary biology these days: In contrast to conventional opinion, it needs to be emphasized that natural selection within randomly generated traits cannot be the basic principle of evolution alone. Strong, often critical, internal constraints are required... for the phenotype choices that external selection operates on.65 Fodor and Patali Balmarini conclude with a phrase that sums up the position I will defend throughout this book (and also re-distinguishe Owen's similarity [to the melody] and adaptive mask [to tune the piano]): "We believe that natural selection is like tuning the piano, not composing the tunes. This is our story, and we believe it is the story that contemporary biology tells us when interpreted appropriately."66 There are still many leading figures such as Michael Ruse67, Jerry Quinn68, Daniel Dennett69, and Richard Dawkins70, who are strongly committed to a comprehensive adaptive structure and to the idea that the whole large evolutionary phenomenon, from the origin of life to the origin of humans, can be generally explained by the same mechanism, cumulative selection, which operates at the microevolutionary level. 1 4 Overview I will argue in this new book that nature is essentially a discontinuous system in the same state as I described in my book Evolution, consisting of a limited set of stable, pattern-specific physical forms. I will prove, by a detailed study of many well-studied pattern-specific similarities (e.g., tetrapods, feathers, etc.), that trying to explain many of these similarities through cumulative Darwinian selection is always problematic. Moving beyond my original thesis in Evolution, and in line with structuralist ideas, I argue that many similarities do not seem to serve particular job ends at all. I will also show that this fact poses an additional challenge to Darwinian overall adaptation, supporting my overall critique of Darwinian functionality. I will also consider some of the specific novel traits of the pattern that were not discussed in the Evolution Book such as the removal of the mammalian red cell nucleus (a specific trait of the mammalian class), which was the focus of my doctoral thesis at King's College London in the early 1970s. Given the length of the book, I purposely omitted discussion of a wide variety of challenges to traditional Darwinian belief: challenges arising from the cost of selection (though this topic has been addressed in the discussion of language evolution)71, challenges arising from the speed of evolutionary change at the genomic level, and growing evidence that selection played only a marginal role in the compilation of genomes72, and challenges arising from the requirements of the DNA Encyclopaedia Project, which suggests that much of the genome may not be as long-73. The discussion of the problem of equidistance or equal isolation of members of a given branch of biology from certain external group types has also been omitted at the molecular and genetic level. While this fascinating phenomenon remains as challenging for Darwinian stories as it once was, Shi Wang has reviewed it in detail in a number of recent papers. He has shown that it is possible to explain equidistance only if the origin of the different patterns describes other causal factors in addition to natural selection and gradual displacement, and if the origin of belief. In addition, I have omitted any discussion of what I see as difficult problems in Darwinian structure, such as the origin of sensation and reason. Thomas Nagel recently illustrated this problem in his book Mind and the Universe.75 I have also omitted any detailed discussion of the problem posed to Darwinism by the highly adaptive complexity of organisms. I still believe just as strongly at the time of authorship of evolution that experience and error over the course of the past decade could achieve any kind of complex adaptations spread across the entire kingdom from the molecular to organ level. Although this book is primarily a critique of Darwinian increased functionality, as was the book Evolution, it is also a systematic defense of pattern science; much deeper than my original book. Clearly, if the Darwinian project fails and the specific similarities of its varieties are not accessible through adaptive continuity, the idea that patterns are real classes in the universe system, just like atoms or crystals, is intuitively supported. I think, in parallel with Owen and many 19th-century biologists, that life is an integral part of nature that follows specific laws and that the basic forms of life are somehow integrated into nature. I think this idea is very much supported by evidence from 20th-century cosmology; that the laws of nature are precisely tuned to fit life. If the patterns (or more precisely, the parallels that define them) are indeed natural forms, their origin can never be explained by cumulative selection. Thus the failure of Darwinism as a comprehensive explanation of life is inevitable. I will consider the final chapters of the book in some new sets of evidence that support pre-Darwinist concepts of "primary models" defined for their varieties as natural forms arising from the self-organization of certain classes of matter, and the patterns that define them as a system of real At the outset, I would like to mention an important point in the defense of Owen and the biology of the 19th-century "laws of form" as well as the naturalistic outlook of this book. The idea that Darwin was a scientist while Owen was a religious, and that Darwinism is scientific while the opposite stereotyped structural model is quasi-religious and unscientific, is nonsense to the contrary is true. In preparation for the final version of this book, I came across a scandalous quote depicting the deep bias in modern biological thought against Owen and pattern science in the 19th century. In a 2009 scientific paper, prominent evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci claimed that the initiation of Darwinian evolutionary biology "has moved it from natural theology to experimental science...and suddenly moved the concept of biological evolution away from a quasi-religious idea, leaving biology to theology." (18) But how can a framework like Owen's, which posits a natural law as an explanation of patterns and evolution of life, be unscientific?78 And how can the Darwinian story, which is a historical narrative describing a series of episodic events, be "just like physics"? Of course Owen's view is that which is "just like physics" while Darwin's views are the furthest imaginable from physics! Of course Owen was a Christian, a believer, a teleologist.79 But when he sought to find out the natural laws that generate the basic organic forms of life on Earth, he was placing the question of organic form in the context of experimental science. In the next chapter we will explore part of why Darwin's theory has spread as a science, the evidence for the power of natural selection. - Dr Michael Denton. — Source: Brahin Center website - Published 2017-01-23 (archived at the Internet Archive) https://braheen.com/publications/intros/التطور-ما-تزال-نظرية-في-أزمة-مقدمة-المؤلف