Darwinism refuted by adverse selection experiments
Darwin took it for granted that domestication traits such as big udders have
appeared because of selective breeding, but there is no proof for conscious
breeding in the beginning of domestication. Big udders could also be the
result of frequent milking over many generations.
> Checked it. Not impressive. How come you only rely on research done
> before I was born?
> Your argument assumes that Darwinian evolution is a result only
> of selection. It isn't.
Do you really think that Tryon was so stupid that he offered a more and
more stimulating environment to the rats and changed even diet during his
experiment? If this were the only experiment with a result of progressively
better learning despite adverse selection, your hypothesis could be taken
seriously. But there are other experiments with the same result.
And that "intellectual ability has little to do with genetics", is certainly
not the normal interpretation of Darwinism. I agree with this statement,
but it is certainly not correct within the neo-Darwinian framework.
Where do instinctive behaviour patterns and intellectual abilities of
animals and humans come from, according to you?
> Oh, I don't know about that. Dogs are pretty diverse, orginated from
> wolves, and now we see dogs ranging from the chihuahua to the
> St. Bernard.
The "extreme phenotypic diversity of dogs, even during the early
stages of domestication" could also suggest, that it is simply an
error to assume that chihuahuas did originate from wolves by
selective breeding in some thousand years. As far as I know,
wild little dogs still exist. And we have no direct evidence that
there actually was selective breeding in the early stages of
domestication. So my hypothesis that the phenotypic diversity
of wolves and dogs appeared long before dogs were domesticated
and was only reinforced by selective breeding, is not more
speculative than your alternative.
One has never succeeded in creating such a diversity in other
animal species, and it is only in the case of dogs that such a
power could be ascribed to selective breeding.
You write that I "completely ignore the source of variation", despite
the fact that my argument
"If reductionist Darwinism were right, it would be IN PRINCIPLE
as simple to breed (or clone) animals with rare qualities as to
breed (or clone) normal ones, but this is disproved by animal
breeding and by special experiments."
does not depend on variation and selection. Good racehorses and
police dogs cannot be reproduced as easily as ordinary farmhorses
and stray dogs. Ask a breeder!
And you make the same error dogmatists have made at all times:
you assume that the current official explanations of nature and
life are for the first time in human history the true explanations.
That general survival is possible does not depend on how we
explain this fact!
The essential point of adverse selection experiments is the
following: the animals with the most successful strategies
are not allowed to reproduce, but the animals with the least
successful are allowed. And such experiments have shown
that despite adverse selection the successful strategies
propagate!
23-Feb-99 (deja=447643810)
I think it is very unlikely that you understand Darwinism better
than me, because in that case, also you should have recognized that
random mutations and selection cannot be the essential part of
evolution.
You write that there is plenty of evidence that acquired characters
are not inherited. I'd like to know this evidence. I know that some
experiments have been performed such as the following one:
The tails of mice were cut off over generations, but even after
many generations only mice with normal tails were born. This
was interpreted as a success of Darwinism. But nobody would
try to breed mice without tails during the same number of
generations by selection.
"In designing his experiments, McDougall kept in mind two
principles which previous investigators have overlooked. These
are, first, that 'the adaptation investigated should be achieved
by the intelligent purposive efforts of the organism concerned',
and, second, that it should be of such a nature that slight
degrees of adaptation should be measurable, for it has
already been shown by Lamarck's opponents that acquired
characteristics are not transmitted as 'perfected wholes of
structure or function". (Nature, Feb. 4, 1939, Vol. 143, p.188)
I really would like to know the facts and arguments you think
are in favour of the selection theory and refute other explanations
such as mine. If the behaviour of our hair, fingernails and toenails
or also the behaviour of babies has changed during the last
thousands of years, then this could be rather strong evidence
against Darwinism.
My knowledge of English is certainly not the best, but according to my
feeling for language, my statement
"The experiment of Agar's group is more convincing than the one
of Crew, because they took less precautions to prevent undesired
results."
makes sense. Agar's experiment is more convincing than Crew's,
because Crew tried more to bias the results. Everybody knows
that imbreeding has negative effects, also on learning capacity.
How can an honest and serious researcher who should test
whether there is an increasing facility in learning, practise such
close inbreeding that finally all his rats became extinct?
Nevertheless, Crew actually succeeded. Darwinists claim that the
very convincing evidence found by McDougall has been refuted by
Crew (and Agar)!
If in the second generation the best rat (out of 22 rats) makes 21
errors and in the twenty second generation 9 rats (out of 98) make
no error at all, then only somebody lacking common sense needs
complicated statistical tools.
"His (McDougall's) principal evidence of Lamarckian inheritance
is comprised in the following facts:
(Agar, Drummond & Tiegs, 1935, Report on a McDougall's Lamarckian
Experiment on Training of Rats , J. Exp. Biol. 12, p.209)
In any case, I make no accusations of conspiracy. I only have noticed
that scientists often behave in a similar way as pupils and students
already knowing the solution of a problem do. In the same way as
students try to get the DESIRED result of a problem or of an
experiment, many scientists try unconsciously to prove experimentally
their prejudices.
26-Feb-99 (deja=448500332)
Your answer to my statement that "random mutations and selection
cannot be the essential part of evolution" is:
"Random mutations and selection _are_ the essential parts of
Darwinism. Which other stuff do _you_ consider to be the essential
parts of Darwinism instead?"
There is a serious epistemological error showing how biased your
reasonings (unconsciously) may be: you probably take all the evidence
in favour of evolution as evidence in favour of Darwinism.
You write:
"The success of Darwinism is that selection _does_ affect tail
length. Enough experiments in that vein have been done."
The results, however, are not impressive at all. If mice with substantial
phenotypic changes really had been created by selective breeding,
one certainly could find photos of them in every orthodox textbook on
Darwinism.
You write
"If reductionist Darwinism were right, it would be IN PRINCIPLE
as simple to breed (or clone) animals with rare qualities as to
breed (or clone) normal ones, but this is disproved by animal
breeding and by special experiments."
is wrong. This time you give to understand why it should be wrong:
the less variation, the more difficult to reproduce. But even if we
accept this explanation, my statement remains true in the case of
cloning, because there is no fusion of two haploid chromosome
sets created by 'random' recombination which could result in
genetic defects.
There is, however, a lot of evidence against the principle 'the less
variation, the more difficult to reproduce'. There are strains of rats,
mice and of many other species which have much less variation
than e.g. Chihuahuas, but remain very fertile.
A logical consequence of this principle is that animals which are
difficult to reproduce must have a much higher risk of genetic
defects than normal. As far as I know, this is not the case!
Fecundity nowadays is much lower than a few decades ago in
many countries (especially in south east Asia). Do you explain it
also by a decrease in variation? (There is always an infinity of ad
hoc hypotheses to explain s.th. not agreeing which a general law).
You ask me for the reason given by Crew why he practised such
close inbreeding that finally all his rats became extinct. The only
relevant statement I have found in his paper is:
"Reading the earlier reports, I found it impossible to overthrow
McDougall's conclusions by argument. Yet, though I could not
deny that McDougall was possibly justified in so regarding them,
I could not bring myself to accept the results he had obtained
as satisfying evidence of the reality of Lamarckian transmission.
I formed the opinion that his conclusions would be shown, by
further experimentation, to be unwarranted, for I had become
more and more critical of ... ".
It is an error to assume that our debate "is a debate that was firmly
settled" only because the debate was declared to be settled after
Crew had 'refuted' McDougall's experiments. The fact that Agar's
results cannot be explained by Lamarckism was interpreted as
confirmation of Darwinism, notwithstanding the fact that the results
are not more compatible with this prevailing theory.
Your write that I should define 'evolution' and 'Darwinism' as I
myself use the terms. You are right. There is plenty of confusion
(and unjustified criticism) because we are not always aware
that others do not mean the same concepts as we do by the
same terms.
The idea of a continuous evolution [emergence] of the world and
of life has existed long before Darwin. Darwin took evolution
as a fact and explained it by variation and selection. Because
in his books he defended evolution and his explanation of it
at the same time, and his theory became the prevailing one,
'evolution' and 'Darwinism' are often used at synonyms.
In a discussion with a creationist who rejects both continuous
evolution of all species and Darwin's explanation of it, it may
be not very important to distinguish between 'evolution' and
'Darwinism', but in a discussion about alternative theories of
evolution the distinction is a prerequisite.
That rare qualities of single individuals cannot be easlily spread
in a population can be explained by recessive genes.
"There are dominant allels (gene variants) for properties which
only rarely appear in animal populations. If selective breeding or
another selection results in a large spread of such an allel, it
often becomes recessive. Such a dominance inversion contradicts
modern genetics, but can easily be explained by the fact that the
number of psychons needed for the rare properties to appear
are limited."
I fully agree with what you think are the essential parts of
Darwinism: reproduction (a concept based on finality!!!),
variation and selection. My opinion, however, is that if somebody
really understands these essential parts of Darwinism with
all their bases, consequences and implications, then this person
must conclude, that Darwinism cannot explain a continuous
evolution of species in the context of the known empirical facts.
That Chihuahuas emerged from wolves by a few thousand
years of selective breeding is an unproven (maybe even absurd)
hypothesis.
A selection scenario is always possible if one considers only one
single characteristic such as nails. But there are hundreds of
characteristics of humans which are more important than nails.
For macroevolution to work many enzyme types, many cell types
and other structures must evolve at the same time together with
behaviour patterns. Because it is generally accepted that negative
mutations are more likely than positive ones, the probability of your
selection scenario is so low that we must exclude it.
You are interested in the continuation of
Crew's statement I quoted:All my theories are built on existing knowledge. They are a
continuation of the physics of Kepler. Kepler was the first who
substantially surpassed the astromony of Aristarchus of Samos
(ca. 310 - ca. 230 BC) by smashing the whole epicycle theory
and by replacing it by modern physical laws. Such laws seemed
to the contemporary scientists (even to Galiliei) as absurd as
psychons seem to you. Kepler explained nature in a panpsychist
way! Kepler's work was partially used and partially ridiculed and
fought by Galilei, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz and maybe even
by Bacon and Hobbes.
03-Mar-99 (deja=450927089)
You ask me whether I have read Darwin. I bought a German
translation of the 'Origin of Species' some twenty years ago,
and sometimes I have read in it. The book is quite interesting
and informative and shows that orginal Darwinism is much
sounder in several respects than reductionist neo-Darwinism.
Original Darwinism is an elegant theory. There are even elements
of Lamarckism (also advocated by Erasmus Darwin, whose
reincarnation Charles probably was) in it. The theory makes clear
predictions, also in the case of adverse selection of instinctive
behaviour. But there is a lot of empirical evidence making
necessary many ad hoc hypotheses to save the theory.
The psychon theory makes not only clearer predictions than
Darwinism but also much more quantitative predictions.
Therefore more empirical facts or situations are conceivable
which, if existent, would falsify the theory. For example, the
theory is refuted if the demographic predictions of UN become
reality.
My summary of your explanation: genes for rare properties are
somehow connected with genes for low fertility.
Normally, animals are bred for more than one single property. So
it should be possible to breed animals for high fertility and one
rare property.
Dominance inversion is generally accepted (Lexikon der Biochemie
und Molekularbiologie, Herder, 1991, --> Dominanz). It is explained
by the effect of other genes, by dominance modifiers and by
environmental factors. I also have read (I don't remember where)
that one reason why cloning is desired is the fact, that in many
cases animal properties which have been created by biotechnological
means are not transmitted to the offspring, contrary to expectations.
You are right in assuming that predictions of the psychon theory
depend on the population size. The psychons for common properties
are also limited, that's why no species can grow in number beyond an
upper limit (in the short term). I have explained this in the
demographic saturation theory.
http://members.lol.li/twostone/E/demography.html
That species are difficult to reproduce in captivity, I explain by
'environment continuity'. The probability that the soul of an animal
who has never lived in captivity is born in captivity is very low. But
after having wiped out the wild populations of a species, it should
be much easier to reproduce animals in captivity. According to the
psychon theory, it is more probable that animals which have spent
a whole life in captivity are reborn in captivity. So it should now be
easier to breed some animals in zoos than in the beginning of zoos.
Maybe it could even be possible in such a way to test directly or
statistically the thesis that the death of an animal leads to a new
birth.
'Domestic dogs descended from wolves' sounds similar to 'men
descended from chimpanzees'. But if the common ancestor of
both lived 135,000 years (or more, as I assume) ago and considering
the "extreme phenotypic diversity of dogs, even during the early
stages of domestication" (wayne1.htm), then conscious selective
breeding probably was not involved in creating this diversity. Anyway,
I think that an even greater diversity would have been possible by
conscious selective breeding.
> Now you're beginning to sound like the standard creationist
> argument from personal incredulity: "I can't figure out how this
> could have evolved through natural selection, so it must have
> been God/psychons!"
My physics is based on Kepler's physics at least insofar as Kepler
assumed instantanous effects. Kepler invoked physical laws in
order to explain the planetary system and panpsychism in order
to explain life. That "the panpsychic stuff was dropped" depended
rather on scientific power politics than on science itself.