Well CTD, you seem to be running out ... on reality.
It is Redefinin' RAZD, talkdeceptions, the evoflunky who edited the wiki, and probably a few others who are commiting the error. How common it is, I can't say.
This is a falsehood, as I have never edited that article on wikipedia, nor am I affilitated with talkorigins in any way. This doesn't bother me, as (1) CTD's opinion of me is the least of my concerns (comes after what to do with toe clippings), and (2) it demonstrates, amply, that CTD is ready and willing to rely on falsehood for his debate instead of truth. This of course necessarily makes anything he claims untrustworty.
The last resort of cognitive dissonance is character assasination, the
ad hominem attack, the shoot the messenger and ignore the message approach. This too demonstrates the complete, absolute and total failure of CTD to demonstrate that there was "somehing" (as he claimed above) that is a part of Darwin's theory that is somehow missing in his statement (descent with modification) and even more to the point, absent from my definition of evolution as the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, or in the definition of the theory of evolution as the theory that evolution (descent with modification or the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation) is sufficient to explain the diversity of life as we know it, from the world today, from history, from the fossil and geological record and from the genetic record.
There are other parts of CTD's posts that can, at best, be called misunderstandings.
Gould himself:
As a Darwinian, I wish to defend Goldschmidt's postulate that macroevolution is not simply microevolution extrapolated, and that major structural transitions can occur rapidly without a smooth series of intermediate stages.
Now unless 'major' is evodefined as exclusive of 'large'; or 'rapidly' is evodefined as exclusive of 'sudden', HY is RIGHT ON THE MONEY.
Why don't we see what Gould himself called "large" changes. From one of your other links we have this:
Gould and Eldredge later said (13), p. 226; see also(10), p. 66) that "Opponents now accept that punctuated equilibrium was never meant as a saltational theory... ." Yet even this statement was later qualified. Commenting on the experiments of Elena et al. in E. coli (14), which showed punctuated change in cell size resulting from sporadic mutations of large effect, Gould noted that these results are "deeply similar to [punctuated equilibrium].
for empHASis.
Note that when you say "person A says large and rapid" then you need to see what that person means by "large and rapid" rather than what YOU think they mean.
Somehow I don't think size differences in
Escherichia coli (a common intestinal bacterium) are what Harum Yahya is talking about, or what you think of as "large" or "rapid" macroevolution. In addition, from your link of Gould on Goldschmidt:
He spent most of his early career studying geographic variation in the gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar. He found that large differences in the color patterns of caterpillars resulted from small changes in the timing of development: the effects of a slight delay or enhancement of pigmentation early in growth increased through ontogeny and led to profound differences among fully grown caterpillars.
.
In my own, strongly biased opinion, the problem of reconciling evident discontinuity in macroevolution with Darwinism is largely solved by the observation that small changes early in embryology accumulate through growth to yield profound differences among adults. Prolong the high prenatal rate of brain growth into early childhood and a monkey's brain moves toward human size. Delay the onset of metamorphosis and the axolotl of Lake Xochimilco reproduces as a tadpole with gills and never transforms into a salamander.
Somehow I don't think that qualifies as what you or Harun Yahya were thinking either.
Nor is this really controversial in evolution: this is the environmental effects on growth and development, rather than genetic traits being changed, and is why evolutionary biologist tell you that natural selection operates on the phenotype rather than the genotype -- the phenotype is due to the combined effect of genotype and environment.
But as long as I'm started, I might as well make this more than a short supplement.
RAZD:(plus bold)
So the above quote is from one of the early papers on punkeek. It is also clear from the rest of the wiki article that large scale change is not involved. Speciation is not large scale change, and that is the most that punkeek claims. We in fact see speciation events like this. We also (see foraminifera) see speciation events without this mechanism of small population isolates.
Wesley R. Elsberry at talkdeceptions, in part #6, Common errors in discussion of PE
PE is essentially and exclusively directed to questions at the level of speciation and processes affecting species. The basis of PE is the neontological theory of peripatric speciation. The criteria by which "punctuations" are recognized by Gould and Eldredge involve temporal issues and geographic issues. PE is not expected to be as useful at lower or higher levels of change.
So who's right, RAZD or Elsberry?
Since we are both saying that punk eek is about speciation and not larger scale change, I have to wonder what the
difference is. Let's also look at what Gould himself says, from another of your links (his dispute with Dawkins, which was ongoing and there was no love lost between them):
In particular, and most offensive to me, the urban legend rests on the false belief that radical, "middle-period" punctuated equilibrium became a saltational theory wedded to Goldschmidt's hopeful monsters as a mechanism. I have labored to refute this nonsensical charge from the day I first heard it. But my efforts are doomed within the self-affirming structure of the urban legend. We all know, for so the legend proclaims, that I once took the Goldschmidtian plunge. So if I ever deny the link, I can only be retreating from an embarrassing error. And if I, continue to deny the link with force and gusto, well, then I am only backtracking even harder (into stage 3) and apologizing (or obfuscating) all the more. How about the obvious (and accurate) alternative: that we never made the Goldschmidtian link; that this common error embodies a false construction; and that our efforts at correction have always represented an honorable attempt to relieve the confusion of others.
added for emPHAsis.
And from another of your links:
They are correct that punctuated equilibria apply to sexually reproducing organisms and that morphological evolutionary change is regarded as largely (if not exclusively) correlated with speciation events.
Looks like Gould says that punk eek is a mechanism of speciation. Of course punkeek is just one of many mechanisms by which ancestral populations are replaced by new better adapted daughter species, just as Darwin said eh?
But I am confused by your post - are you now claiming that speciation events are now generally considered "sudden, large" changes by creationists? If so, then hooray! "macro"evoluiton has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of all these creationists, as speciation has been observed.
But then Elsberry disagrees with me:
PE is by no means either synonymous with "saltationism", nor did Gould's essay on Richard Goldschmidt "link" PE with Goldschmidt's "hopeful monster" conjecture. Gould wrote an article that has caused much confusion. "Return of the hopeful monsters" sought to point out that a hatchet job had been done on some of the concepts that Richard Goldschmidt had formulated. The discussion of systemic mutations as mutations which affect rate or timing of development has caused many people to assume that Gould was somehow linking PE to this concept. A close reading of the article shows this to not be the case.
He should have said "a closed-eye reading". There's no evocode I could find embedded in the text which matches Elsberry's assertion, and I note that he does not quote anything at all to back up his misinterpretation.
It comes as no suprise to me that Elsberry disagrees with you, as you clearly are no authority on anything biological or evolutionary (to say nothing of truth).
It also comes as no surprise to me when what you have quoted here agrees with the rest of the other articles you took quotes from, as shown above. Gould emphatically states that punkeek does not involve saltationism OR a "hopeful monster" event. What it demonstrates is that you have misrepresented Gould and punkeek, as does Harum Yahya, and many other creationists, or misunderstood Goulds comments as others have. Such misunderstandings come from cursory reading rather than understanding of articles.
*** Bonus! Niles Eldridge says in this pdf:
We find this example and other such case studies compelling evidence that morphological stasis is a common pattern in the fossil record, which thus requires an examination of how evolutionary and ecological processes can account for it.
So a professional evolutionist does not think stasis is something which can be blown off...
Which is not the argument. Stassis is a part of the natural history of life on earth, however this "stassis" is not a complete lack of evolution, just a comparatively slow rate of change in geological time. Here's the abstract of the paper linked:
Abstract.—The fossil record displays remarkable stasis in many species over long time periods, yet studies of extant populations often reveal rapid phenotypic evolution and genetic differentiation among populations. Recent advances in our understanding of the fossil record and in population genetics and evolutionary ecology point to the complex geographic structure of species being fundamental to resolution of how taxa can commonly exhibit both short-term evolutionary dynamics and long-term stasis.
But also please note that Eldridge also does NOT say that punkeek is more than speciation. And he is also talking about the evidence in geological time.
Enjoy.
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Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s),
and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]
