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During the first Round Table audience discussion, Hands introduced himself as the author of Cosmosapiens: Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe and made the following comments.
“It’s appropriate that this meeting is being held at the Royal Society, whose motto, we were reminded yesterday, is Nullius in verba”: Accept nothing on authority.
The current paradigm in evolutionary biology, NeoDarwinism, also called the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, has been the authority for some 65 years. It is, of course, a mathematical model based on several unquestioned assumptions, hose proof was given by 1940s game theory borrowed from economics.
What we have heard over the last 2 days is empirical evidence that new species arise rapidly, from such mechanisms as symbiogenesis, horizontal DNA transfer, hybridisation, whole genome duplication, interactive systems producing novel emergent properties, and other mechanisms described in Part 2 of my book.
These mechanisms contradict the fundamental tenets of neo-Darwinism, namely:
To the contrary, Darwinian competition causes not the evolution of species but the destruction of species. It is collaboration in its various forms that causes biological evolution. Hence I’m surprised by calls for extending the neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Synthesis. You can’t extend something that is broken. Surely what is needed now, after 65 years, is using the empirical evidence to develop a new paradigm for biological evolution.
During the first Round Table audience discussion, Hands introduced himself as the author of Cosmosapiens: Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe and made the following comments.
“It’s appropriate that this meeting is being held at the Royal Society, whose motto, we were reminded yesterday, is Nullius in verba”: Accept nothing on authority.
The current paradigm in evolutionary biology, NeoDarwinism, also called the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, has been the authority for some 65 years. It is, of course, a mathematical model based on several unquestioned assumptions, hose proof was given by 1940s game theory borrowed from economics.
What we have heard over the last 2 days is empirical evidence that new species arise rapidly, from such mechanisms as symbiogenesis, horizontal DNA transfer, hybridisation, whole genome duplication, interactive systems producing novel emergent properties, and other mechanisms described in Part 2 of my book.
These mechanisms contradict the fundamental tenets of neo-Darwinism, namely:
- random gene mutations provide phenotypical characteristics enabling
successful Darwinian competition; - these random gene mutations spread through a population’s gene pool by
sexual reproduction; - Darwinian gradualism leads to the genetic transformation of populations
of individual species members over tens of thousands of generations; - information flows one-way from a gene to a protein in a cell.
To the contrary, Darwinian competition causes not the evolution of species but the destruction of species. It is collaboration in its various forms that causes biological evolution. Hence I’m surprised by calls for extending the neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Synthesis. You can’t extend something that is broken. Surely what is needed now, after 65 years, is using the empirical evidence to develop a new paradigm for biological evolution.
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