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redneck22
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You are correct, it is V. 6.2 and theistic evolution, if I’m not mistaken, is V 4.7. of the same.
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itinerant1
Guest
That sounds just like something a fundamentalist would say, one who has no grasp of the issues.
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itinerant1
Guest
Since ID is creationists, why does Ed go around denying the obvious?
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redneck22
Guest
Then let’s replace a few words to illustrate a fundamental problem with another theory. "How can I know or judge the merits of evolutionary theory If I don’t know how living systems arise? Is this the secret part of the theory? Is it known only to insiders? Is it privileged information? Is it gnostic? Is it scientifically verifiable, at least in principle? What is it?
“I guess it’s too much to ask how living systems originate?”
Peace,
Ed
Brilliant, I like it.
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itinerant1
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I fail to see the brilliance in a post designed to evade answering the question as to how IC systems originate.
The evasion might be clever like a fox on the run or just plain sophistic, but it certainly would not be considered brilliant or wise where I come from.
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Touchstone
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That’s an odd conclusion to draw, especially given that you went out of your way to emphasize the qualifier given in the article, that contradictory findings exist in the literature.
Maybe it wasn’t clear what that means?
See, just for a few examples, these articles on the subject:
**Peahens prefer peacocks with elaborate trains. **
Petrie, Marion; Halliday, Tim; Sanders, Carolyn*
Animal Behaviour.* Vol 41(2), Feb 1991, 323-331.
Peahens Lay More Eggs for Peacocks with Larger Trains
Marion Petrie and Amanda Williams
Proceedings: Biological Sciences, Vol. 251, No. 1331 (Feb. 22, 1993), pp. 127-131
**Experimental and natural changes in the peacock’s (Pavo cristatus) train can affect mating success
**Marion Petrie and Tim Halliday,
*Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, *Vol 35, No 3 / September, 1994, pp 213-217
** Mating success in lekking males: a meta-analysis**
Peder Fiske, Pekka T. Rintamäki and Eevi Karvonen
Behavioral Ecology Vol. 9 No. 4: 328-338
The last reference there is a meta-study, and the full PDF can be downloaded for free (it’s interesting). So while the Takahashi, et al study complicates the picture, the way science works is that such results prompt new efforts to harmonize the results and design new and better experiments based on the difficulties. One interesting feature of one of the above studies is that the the spots on the train were found to be important – when spots were concealed in some mails, they fared worse in mating. If Takahashi et al, were using a different method of evaluating trains (purely descriptive, for example), than we have a possible resolution: lekking peahens key on spots rather than the “width of train”, or “length of feathers”.
That would explain, provisionally, both results.
In any case, it’s important to note that Takahashi, et al’s competing idea is as thoroughly “Darwinian” as the conventional understanding of peacock train displays.
-TS
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buffalo
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Well that is what they are working on. They have been reworking Darwinism for 150 years and you begrudge the ID people because they didn’t hit a home run on the first pitch?How can I know or judge the merits of ID theory if I don’t know how IC systems arise? Is this the secret part of the theory? Is it known only to insiders? Is it privileged information? Is it gnostic? Is it scientifically verifiable, at least in principle? What is it?
I guess it’s too much to ask how IC systems originate?
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buffalo
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ID simply looks for evidence of design. Too bad if you don’t like the implications.
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reggieM
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Contradictory evidence fits quite nicely into Darwinian theory, especially if it’s discovered by scientists who believe in the theory themselves. In no way can the refutation of evolutionary claims or predictions be considered a falsification of Darwinian theory at all. That’s just not how science works. When two evolutionists arrive at opposite conclusions in studying the same subject, it’s an indication of the certainty and stablity of the theory itself.
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reggieM
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Can you judge the merits of evolutionary theory if you don’t know how life originated?
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buffalo
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You know Reggie that if they weren’t do dogmatic about other ideas perhaps science could advance. It is my belief that evo is holding science hostage, It has to.
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reggieM
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Yes, exactly. It’s an agenda-driven program that cannot admit the slightest flaw. Evolutionists lately are very concerned about saying things that “might give support to creationists”. They’re trying to cover-up the problems that are evident in the theory – not for reasons of science, but for reasons of ideology.
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Touchstone
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Sure. Evolutionary theory is at risk of falsification along many lines. It doesn’t rise or fall on peacock feathers, in any case. Takahashi’s idea, if it bears out, will be another Darwinian explanation performing better than a previous one.
As I said, and as you can see for yourself in doing a few minutes’ reading, it’s not clear that the conflict is anything more than apparent. This happens often in science, and it’s one of the great engines of scientific progress – an ostensible conflict arising from experimental evidence that provides the constraints for a harmonizing theory.
The researchers are not at opposite conclusions. They came to different results, but by different routes. For example, if the ‘spots’ on a peacock’s tail are a major influence on sexual selection, and ‘tail feather length’ is not, then you would expect a study that looked at ‘spots’ (as has been done) to find a mating advantage in more and more prominent spots, which would produce a casual headline like:
Peacock tails make difference in mating, study finds
Another experiment that examined the effects of ‘tail feather length’ would not find a correlation between that feature and mating success, and that would lend itself to a casual headline like:
Peacock tails make NO difference in mating, study finds
But the conflict here is only as deep as the headlines, which is to say, not deep at all, because the two studies, while both looking in a general sense at ‘peacock tails’, were actually testing different things, different features of the peacock tail. In this case, the ‘opposite conclusions’ would only be ‘different results for different tests’.
-TS
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reggieM
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From the article quoted:
Barrett, however, mentioned that this theory, along with the rest of the new findings, is bound to be controversial, since other researchers have presented data suggesting that a peacock’s train does influence whether or not a female will choose to mate with him
So, the scientist says that the new findings are controversial because they conflict with what other researchers have claimed.
You, however, claim that there is no controversy at all.
The determination throws a wrench in the long-held belief that male peacock feathers evolved in response to female mate choice.
I think you’re saying that the determination does not throw a wrench into the long-held belief by scientists and that the article and the evolutionary scientist, Ms. Barrett are both wrong in that claim.
There is no controversy at all because what that evolutionist claimed is false and what you claim is true. So, it’s obviously not a contradiction as long as we listen to what you say and not what the scientist quoted in the journal says.
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Touchstone
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No, I think it does throw a wrench in the gears of the common understanding, and it will be a source of controversy (for researchers interested in that topic, anyway). This happens all the time in research. It may be that peacock feathers are unrelated to mating preferences by the female, for all I know, but a study like this has to be resolved against the other research that’s been done, and other evidence that’s been made available from that. Those other experiments don’t just go “poof” when Takahashi, et al, gets published, right?
You’re being clumsy in the way you assess this. It’s neither a “dead in the water” for the conventional understanding, nor a bogus controversy. It’s a legitimate conflict that demands resolution. But these kinds of conflicts come up all the time. Sometimes they really do overturn the existing conclusions – that’s a virtue of science. Other times, the conflicts get resolved through harmonization, where the conventional understanding remains, but is revised with clarifying or exceptional knowledge integrated into it by the newer results, which were putatively problematic, but which contributed to a more detailed and nuanced revision to the existing view.
One of the first tasks of “controversy resolution” is to compare and critique the methodologies used, and here we find substantial methodological differences. I won’t digress into the details here, but you can read a good writeup discussing many of the details of this by Scott Wisker at This Week in Evolution. The short summary:
- Tail differences between peacocks were very small across all the studies, and smallest in Takahashi, et al. This amplifies any problems or differences in methodology and analytical targets.
- Takahashi used estimated mating instances for their baseline, and the other studies counted actual observed instances of mating.
Here is their concluding paragraph:
The link supplied is a PDF of the entire response from Petrie, Loyau, et al.
From both of these, you can get a feel for how researchers approach controversies like this, both in a critical-rhetorical way (Wisker) and in a purely academic format (Petrie, Loyau, et al).
I note that the Petrie/Loyau/et al response does focus on what I had suspected, that eye spots may be the harmonizing factor here, explaining Petries positive results, and Takahashi’s negative results, as Takahashi et al weren’t tracking eye spots as Petrie and Loyau had. If that hypothesis bears out, then their never was an actual conflict here, and the controversy was over merely apparent discrepancies.
-TS
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tjm190
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I can judge the merits of classical mechanics’ ability to predict the path a ball I throw will take without knowing where the ball came from- evolution describes a process living systems undergo.Then let’s replace a few words to illustrate a fundamental problem with another theory. "How can I know or judge the merits of evolutionary theory If I don’t know how living systems arise? Is this the secret part of the theory? Is it known only to insiders? Is it privileged information? Is it gnostic? Is it scientifically verifiable, at least in principle? What is it?
“I guess it’s too much to ask how living systems originate?”
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itinerant1
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Certainly. Why do you ask?
This must be another one of your evasions from the issue at hand.
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itinerant1
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Work all they want. They already know the answer. I know the answer. And you know the answer. It’s time for a little honesty on your part. ID is creationist. End of story.
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grannymh
Guest
Maybe a specific example might help.
Could you be referring to the Piltdown Man?
And what do peacocks have to do with humans?
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grannymh
Guest
I agree. Yet, it is because of your first explanations of evolution theory, close to a year ago, that I have become so interested in the subject. Obviously, my interest has narrowed to questions about the human species which, again obviously, now includes all kinds of explanations from a variety of positions ranging from direct creation to “the aliens did it.”
As a devoted fan of TV murder mysteries, both American and British, I’ve learned that it is usually the missing information which provides the solution. Recently, I read a prime time type news story about some “brain?” research. Beyond the first paragraphs was the information that there were 15 or so students used as subjects for the research and towards the end were comments that hedged (almost contradicted) the popular conclusion. Obviously, the parameters for serious research were missing. The wastebasket was the solution.
However, as I start to read original published research papers, I find some similar things. For example, the seemingly inadequate number of subjects or DNA samples tested or a broad statement in the abstract which is not quite supported by the paper’s conclusion. And I wonder who has done the replicative studies.
While I definitely need a general understanding of critical concepts and am working on that – thank you for your patience – I am looking for the missing pieces of the puzzle without exactly knowing their description. Maybe it is the Tajima D statistic. Just because I am looking for a needle in a hay stack doesn’t change the importance of the needle.
I do not believe that evolution in general is a myth which is why I am interested in the research. In fact, to me, it is one of the most fascinating theories in science. Nevertheless, I keep remembering one of the first ideas presented in logic class – All grass is green; therefore, all green things are grass. This was our professor’s way of demonstrating fallacies. When looking at particular points of the evolutionary theory, there is a similar fallacy. “Evolution takes place in living organisms; therefore, all parts of living organisms have evolved.”
I am totally convinced that both logically and scientifically, the human species does not belong in the brute animal kingdom.
Blessings,
granny
All human life is worthy of profound respect.
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