Oldest vertebrate fossil found in Australia, scientists say

Ha, short trip, all the wires are down in Northern Pa and we didnt work on the mine.

DOG-you are correct sir, the point that ican misses is beautifully stated by your and rosbornes . the chance of the genes (coding or uncoding) having to redesign a trait actually decreases with time, such as the discovery of HOx gene which controls the appendages and wings of all animules. It isnt a matter of restarting the concept of legs as icans "massive math" assumes. Its actually a trimming of the genomes expression because the genome already contains the basic tools for arms legs, wings, or tentacles.

If ican wants some big numbers
EO Wilson has supplied them

The number of animal individuals of the 190 million Tons of animal flesh on the planet at any time is
1X 10^21
The number of monocellular and protozoans at any time
1X10^ hundreds
bacteria
1X10^thousands

Lets say that motile life only goes back 1 Billion years (Im giving up 2.3 billion from the Isua formation which showed biotic carbon)

The human genomeAll coding and junk 3.5X10^9 base pairs, of which there are only a few hundred which define body style(of course some of these actual genes .ike the famous no. 22 of Wqtson aND cRick is 22 million base pairs long, and that divided by 3 gives the maximum number of amino acids possible in tripartite nucleotides called codons0

the e. coli genome has a smaller overall genome but its coding size is 4 to 10 times more than human. A fruitfly has more codons than a human.

Big numbers only make us stop to think that evolution is inevitable God or not. i

Ican, I will try to find some links with the Big Numbers arguments. A fellow named STeve Austin and the fellow from Lehigh (name scapes me now)
did the big numbers games but failed to argue conclusively that an animals gene sequence is just a record of the past not a cause of its evolution.Whenever a genic expression occurs( once the gene is present) that expression doesnt neccessarily die. The part that luck plays is that all the animals that made it through the extinctions, passed their genic compliment onto their individual progeny. Remember, evolution occurs to an individual who, if the expression confers a benefit, passes it on to its progeny .

rosborne makes a very valid point that we always seem to disagree on. You only recognize mutation.
How abou sex linkage? Good ole sex stirs up the pot just by its act. How about "The red queen issue" , antelopes get faster because lions get faster and everybody has to run harder just to stay in p-lace. This is reflected by subtle expressions in the interons and or nuons

Gould (p691)
"In fact, we may be impeding the proper recognition of the frequncy of selection within genomes by naming the phenomenon after only one mode among many "gene selection" In the early days of Watson And Crick we used to conceptualize genomes as linear arrays of functional units. (like a string of beads with no spaces)
BUT we now know that functional genes of eukaryotes with their structure of exons separated by interons, do not maintain spatial continuity. moreover, the functional genes of more complex metazoans represent, in any case, a few percent of the full genome. All other kinds of genomic ele ments which form the majority os sites can also evolve by drift (yes drift) and selection. for that reason brosius
has suggested we use a more general term "nuon" for Nucleic acid sequence, to recognize that any stretch of nucleic acids can evolve by differential origin or replication .
This replication can occur by capture of entire genomes outside the host animal. 9This occurs in simpler forms and may be why , say certain plants and animals are made of chitin
0
plasmid capture is a way to confer immunity to retroviruses and bacteria.
Theres a whole bunch more , and the spaces for evolution to occur without mutation is mentioned in my quote from gould.

Sorry for my bad typing .

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To those of ye who think thisis a debate that is self evident and therefore unimportant to our education process, may i say that a DUMBING DOWN of our entire ed system includes some of my favorite pastimes besides geology. i love art and i was drawn to the arts by one Sister Attila the Nun. show me a school that teaches art criticism today. how about history/ i heard on some talk show this aM the host asked a bunch of really lame questrions to people at random. in a store , a question was asked 'Who were the combatants in the US civil War" ? no one knew AND THESE WERE NOT PRE EDITED. Just for grins read this about what the folks think about evolution http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/polling/

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ican, there are so many theories that provide working models without substantive proofs. We dont sit down in the middle of the road and stop work until this is all made clear to us. If it works it may be true.if it no longer works then abandon it and find out what does

Acquiunk and rosborne
An apparent trend toward complexity is the old saw called Copes law. its a fractal solution that stated that there is an apparent trend toward large size through time. this was a law because no one looked at the already small animals as anything but a starting point ( a foundation species) for future evolution and the large animals, of course evolved from the small, right?
Wrong. Weve discovered that insects and spiders have almost universally shrunk, as did mollusks and the super sized cartilagenous fish. Weve found that many mammals have , as terminal spoecies "gone small", like mammoths, most whales, rodents,dactylates etc etc. the rule for complexity is also possibly skewed because of our view back is with a brain, an organ that is not necessarily a feture that confers best management practices in survivability. we just dont know .

ican and rosborne, G. Eble wrote a neat paper " the dual nature of chance in evolutionary biology" its in Paleobiology
His comment was that an evolutionary connotation of the word chance is that events are independent of an organisms individual needs and of the direction provided by natural selection as a process to achieve adaptation

Gould himself , in his intro course syllabus defined randomness in terms of evolutions use of the word

By random, we mean that
species variation iS NOT inherently pointed toward adaptation
and we dont mean that
ALL mutational changes to achieve variation are equally possible at any given time

I still find this statistically comforting because if adaptation were really a goal being expressed as 'that something else", as complexity, or size, then im afraid that the force that achieves the most adaptive body plan would not let the perfectly adapted animals die off at every geo cataclysmic boundary. there would be absolutely no benefit to achieve that body plan to only have it wiped out.SO if the argument were extended to say that the body plan maker knew well in advance that the planet would go through 3 major 'zoic" eras and was designing for the ultimate tenant, then were back to good ol fundamentalist Christian Doctrine all gussied up in robes and mortar board.

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patiodog wrote:

It's just tha to me you seem awfully quick to jump from "perhaps it's not random" to "there's a guiding influence." It's definitely not random, particularly on a local scale, and particularly in higher species. Sexual selection (quite apart from environmental pressures) sees to that.

Sorry about the tone of the post, but the numbers you're making up really are coming out of thin air and don't describe anything except the model your making based on your own conjecture. In other words, I think you are begging the question.

Patiodog,
I have thus far not explained what I am about to explain because I wanted to minimize posting things in this forum that are already known to its participants. Farmerman is a working scientist in the field and I wrongly inferred the other participants here know what he knows.

By the way, none of my many sources for my numbers includes a dark place. Smile

The easiest reads for obtaining the numbers I use can be found in "Genome", by Matt Ridley, Perennial, 1999, and "Life Script", Nicholas Wade, Simon and Schuster. I think they are valid because they correlate with all my other sources. But of course, they could all be wrong.

Animals like us and mice are made of proteins.
Proteins are made of strings of amino acids.
Only 20 different amino acids are found in human genomes.

There are 4 different bases.
A codon is composed of 3 bases.

A codon specifies an amino acid, or something else.
The sequences of amino acids in the genome specify the configuration of proteins.

Computing from the numbers given in the references, there are an average of more than 9000 codons per gene.

Wade alleges that the difference between the mouse and human genome is only the sequence of and content of 300 genes.

Ok!
How many different codons are possible? 4^3 = 64.
How many different sequences of these codons are possible in a gene? 64^9000.
How many different codon sequences, S, are possible in 300 genes? S = (((4^3)^9000)^300) = 4^(8,100,000).

But, 4 = 10^0.60205991.

THUS
S = (10^0.602059991)^8,100,000 = 4,876,685.927

However, for purposes of exposition, I previously deliberately understated S and posted, S = 1,000,200 (i.e., a moogol x a googol x a googol)

I exaggerated M (i.e., number of mutations possible in a billion years) to be as high as a googol = 10^100, and I exaggerated I (i.e., the number of different sequences that could specify an animal with human-like intelligence to be as high as a googol, 10^100.

For P (i.e., probability) = M x I / S, then P = a moogolth (1.e., 1/ 1followed by a million zeros.)

A mutation of any of any one of the genomes in an animal's cells that do not take direct part in procreation is an irrelevant mutation. But, no matter how many relevant mutations are caused, they must necessarily be enough to increase P substantially more than I computed. Whether these mutations are caused by physical phenomena or choice of mate or other factors, the total number required is too little by and of itself to evolve BA to CA to Humans within a billion years. So I hypothesized the existence of 2ndI as a possible explanation, even though I do not have any scientific observations/inferences at the moment to determine what 2ndI is and how it works.

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farmerman's, patiodog's, and rosbourne's previous posts have been very valuable to me. There several things about them that I do not yet understand, but I'm working on them. Most of my questions will be posted in subsequent posts.

My first question is about complexity. I viewed complexity to be a characteristic of the life procreated by a genome, and not the complexity of the genome itself. The genome is just a long sequenceof of four different kinds of bases -- a base four number of great length. The complexity I've been focusing on is the complexity of the brains of those organisms that possess brains. While the length or intricacy of procreating genomes sometimes doen't correlate with the complexity of the procreated brain, I think it accurate to say that the brains procreated by the human genome, I'll call H, and the brains procreated by the mouse genome, I'll call M, have considerably diffent complexities.

I would measure physical brain complexity by a number, the total number of functioning neuron connections in that brain.

Or, I would measure functional brain complexity by the number of different kinds of problems that that brain can solve.

Am I wrong?

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Farmerman,
By what political unit, mechanism, organization, or process did the creationists get their curriculum adopted by a public school system?

Did a legislature do it?
Did the state courts do it?
Did the governor do it?
Did the state school board do it?

What is the creationist curriculum?
What is actually going to be taught?

Am I wrong to think this probably violates the 1st Amendment?

If I'm right, what can be done about it?

I'm fedup with the current storm of violations in this country of the rule of law, in particular the rule of law established by the supreme law of our land, the constitution of our republic.

I want to conserve our republic for my seven grandchildren. I don't want my grandchildren's children to inherit a tyranny.

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I have up to now perceived all changes to procreating genomes to be forms of mutation. I recognized that some of these mutations were caused by mutation physics (e.g., cosmic rays, whatever). I recognized that some were caused by the decisions of the organisms themselves combined with the special characteristics of their total procreating genomes. I recognized that some distructive combinations of procreating genomes were avoided by the failure of some of the procreation processes, or by the death of an organism's ability to procreate due to among other things their inability to survive competition, or due to significant environmental changes.

Are these the only possibilities thus far detected?

Aren't all of these changes subject to the chance encounters or non-encounters of would be procreating organisms with all of these kinds of events?

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ican, I read your and Patiodogs posts. I think you should confer a bit of respect to the dog, as I understand hes a phd candidate in the biological sciences. i think he understands the amino acid cycles and base pairs and codons better than you.
Ill get back tomorrow cuz its late here, but you keep forgetting that there are over 3.3 BILLION base pairs in the gene sequence , and transcription doesnt occur at the protein level, it occurs at the nucleotide level, and the amino acid s are just the result.
Youre big numbers are still the same and I must refer you to EO Wilson and MAyrs again.
Theres a quintillion animals on the planet at any given time, each with a different generational component
There are almost an infinite number of protozoans
There are , similarly an infinite number of bacteria , fungi, protiists, archeozoa, and other life forms
EACH OF THESE has a DNA complement9some with genomes longer than a human0
Viruses are multi multi infinite in number, each with an RNA genome that can be glommed by others genomes. Life was a virus infection

speculated one scientist in the eighties

Plasmids are single rings of DNA with an RNA pretxel end, so it chemicaaly cleaves by hydrolisis after it attaches to and complements anothers genome
All this has happened for at least a billion years (I dont even have to go back to the 3.3 BP for the iSua Formation-as i said before0

Mentioning that to let you know that there are millions and bILLIONS of base pairs per genome.
if these numbers dont give one pause to consider the sites in which normal transcription errors can occur in a single generation, maybe even more frequently.
aLSO, once a gene site on a chromosome confers a trait < LIke legs or a penis, if that animal class doesnt all go extint, the genome preserves that t See, what actually happens is that trait, it isnt re-invented as your numbers presume.that site is "xeroxed" and given to the next trial species. so the actual number of active sites invoking laws of change, actually decrease with time.
Now , what Ive done is just summarized what a number of us said. The drive to complexity is another area of argument as is the meaning of complexity.
Ill get back tomorrow about my persaonal fight with Creationism in the schools, but if the education boards in the states dont show somwe backbone, we are going to be teaching flat earth next. The joke that is Ohio shouldnt have to happen throughout the nation. I hope that the appeals in Ohio are successful. Nother tale, nuther day.

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(just for the record, i'm merely a bachelor's candidate -- this summer, if all goes well -- and don't know my arse from my arlbow; but it's getting better...

gotta go memorize the glycolysis pathway. cheers.)

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farmerman wrote:

ican, I read your and Patiodogs posts. I think you should confer a bit of respect to the dog, as I understand hes a phd candidate in the biological sciences. i think he understands the amino acid cycles and base pairs and codons better than you.

I respect patiodog, and I respect much of what he has written. However, I don't respect his former claim that I pulled my numbers out of my "ass". That is what I addressed when I went into the details of my computation.

farmerman wrote:

you keep forgetting that there are over 3.3 BILLION base pairs in the gene sequence , and transcription doesnt occur at the protein level, it occurs at the nucleotide level, and the amino acid s are just the result.

I truly understand this, and have not forgotten it.

farmerman wrote:

Theres a quintillion animals on the planet at any given time, each with a different generational component

In my calculation I assumed 10^84 such animals. A quintillion is a mere 10^18. However, I simplistically assumed for purposes of simplifying my calculation that all those animals could procreate with each other. As I understand it, only animals who are members of the same species can do that. How many species exist on this planet at a given time? Even if you were to claim there were a moogol such species, it would not change the implications of my calculations. Remember, I arbitrarily reduced the size of S from 10^4,876,685 to 10^1,000,200. I could justifiably change S in my calculation to 10^3,000,000. So letting M = a moogol instead of a googol, and letting I = a moogol instead of a googol, P = M x I / S would still equal one moogolth.

farmerman wrote:

There are almost an infinite number of ... similarly an infinite number of ... Viruses are multi multi infinite in number ... Mentioning that to let you know that there are millions and bILLIONS of base pairs per genome.
if these numbers dont give one pause to consider the sites in which normal transcription errors can occur in a single generation, maybe even more frequently.

I have a huge problem with this section of your summary. I don't think that an infinite anything exists on earth. Count atoms if you like. There are a very large number, but definitely not almost an infinite number. Take any number as large as you wish and I shall show that it is finite by providing you with a larger number (probaly your number multiplied by a moogol Smile

).

Also, in my calculation I assumed that from BA to CA to H, the rate of change (of any kind) was always less than 3.2 per second per procreating genome. How much bigger should I have assumed it? That's already a lot of procreating going on.

farmerman wrote:

aLSO, once a gene site on a chromosome confers a trait < LIke legs or a penis, if that animal class doesnt all go extint, the genome preserves that t See, what actually happens is that trait, it isnt re-invented as your numbers presume.that site is "xeroxed" and given to the next trial species. so the actual number of active sites invoking laws of change, actually decrease with time.

Now , what Ive done is just summarized what a number of us said. The drive to complexity is another area of argument as is the meaning of complexity.[/quote]

In my calculation, I did not assume any trait was reinvented. I assumed each and every trait change survived and procreated and enhanced the surviveability of the genome to which it happened. While I realize this isn't true and argued just that (e.g., at least 5 major anihilations from BA to CA to H), I exaggerated in my calculation because I was trying to compute a valid upperbound on the probability of the sufficiency of undirected chance plus natural selection for evolving H.

In the mathematical trade, all that is required for a computed value to be a valid upperbound is that the true number cannot be larger. I have computed an upper bound, not the least upper bound, just an upper bound. It constitutes the upperbound of the probability that life evolved CA to CA to H without 2ndI. Yes, I agree the actual true probability is much less than I computed.

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I guess then, as we boil down your essence of evolution, youre only point is that there is a drive to accomplish something that is preordained. Because , why/ you dont feel that there is enough time to accomplish all that your calcs say need be accomplished. That part has already been pretty much understood . That is, every 20 generations can achieve a major evolutionary adaptation. No need for manipulations of the math. A thing in science is CALIBRATION against reality. I do math modelling of earth structure and layers and I never have seen anyone try to force a sense of "their own" reality to what we know already exists.
I believe you should revisit your assumptions as well as your calculations because they fly in the face of experiential reality.

Every populated island has a similar population of unique animals that have evolved to adapt to that environment, when the island environment changes, within the 20 gneration "rule" either the animal has to readapt or perish.
WE know that the fossil record is loaded with maladapted individuals. You have to start from there.

Im not sure if we can stay on the same path because, rather than working from a reality base, you seem to extract some numbers and variables that have no credibility. You recognize the size of a genome but somehow you only use sexual congress to reflect this. Its not impossible for half the population to be affected by a gene mutation of a shift in gene diversity and skew the genetic expression by merely trying to populate new home ranges. The red queen hypothesis isnt necessarily genic centered. It may become so in the successful breeders at sometimes within a 20 generation minimum.

Im going to refer you to a book by Steve Palumbi, called The Evolution Explosion. Hes a biologist who teaches evolutionary biology. He compares artificial selection and natural selection and has a much better explanation of the rates of evolution in such things as
Overfished fish. He states that, as a result of overfishing, sexually mature market fish like tuna and salmon are almost half the weight of their forebears(actually forefish) He claims this as an evolutionary scheme conferring adaptation to a predators (man) in about what? 16 genereations.

HIV is where he makes his biggest contribution, becaue its genome is mostly unstable RNA, its a retrovirus that has gone through at least 5 major evolutionary spurts in the last few years, mostly as response to drugs. Drug immunity is an evolutionary strategy because the resistant strains , already exopressed through the viruses genetic diversity go from a tiny percentage of the strains until now the resistant strains make up the majority of the strains.

Im having a hard time xpressing a direction of genetic flow other than opportunistic manifestation of adaptation vis increasing survival percentages of the "fit"
Fitness need not be automatically mutated, it can already be built into the loci of the base pairs and transcription modifications"shuffling if you will'' can result in new species that are genetically isolated from their founding species.

Palumbi , a colleague of the late Jay Gould, is much more strident in thaty he states that the theroy of evolution by natural selection should be a lAW.

You once(actually quite often" say that understanding the phenomena
does not confer understanding of the mechanism"

I say that we understand the mechanisms well enough to be predictable and , my7 response is that
"No understanding of the mechanism precludes any credibility to discuss process"

Your response to patiodog is understandable but, I have to admit that, every so often I want to holler out "WHy dont you get it?" but in a more friendly vein Im trying to hone my own skills at working with Creationist Committees to engage them in school board debate so, I tend to come across more patient than I really am.

You asked me about the powers that are trying to allow teaching of creationism or its more uptown cousin, Intelligent Design in schools. Every state is a little kingdom, the powers of the constitution reserve the rights of asubject matter so long as they meet Fed Guidelines for support. The Conservative movement has , since the Reagan Years , aspoused a Capital D for doubt about the "UnChristian, materialist, Marxist" doctrine of Evolution.
A conservative platform was narrowly defeated by GOP liberals and moderates in the 1984 presidential campaign. This entire movement has gone subterranean and expresses itself on a state by state level, where, the target state of the month is heavily lobbied through symathetic legislators who, generally not scientists , think that THEORY has a significant level of doubt inherent in its definition. So the CReationists have hearings scheduled in the normal curriculum cycles in which Creation "scientists" testify sponsored by sympathetic lawmakewrs.
I Pa, where I was involved, The hearings were a point of order in that Creationists toned down their demands based upon a "reasonable doubt concerning existing theories of the rise of life on the planet. They wanted a simple expression of allowing science teachers to expand discussion into other"similarly scientifically based theories of lifes development".
That was their error, we went freom a discussion of your extreme math, to one of SCIENTIFIC METHOD, wherein the theory of evolution could be tested by as eries of convergent discoveries, data, and experiments.
The ed board stated in their ruling that "since the "alternative theory proponents" have no concrete evidence to present which is consistent with the scientific method , and was actually a modification of a theistic explanation, it had no place in the curriculum. There was , naturally an appeal which was defeated on church and state dribble (I always think that separation of church and state as a basis of rule is bullshit because the constitution is silent on that phrase or its interpretation).

Just the opposite happened in Ohio. Kansas, Louisiana all defeated the curriculum proposals. Still to come are Maine, Virginia, an appeal in Ohio, and a couple of other states. Look up Eugenie SCVotts website , ahe is perhaps the most indefatigable soldier of science out there, and I believe shes a devout Catholic.

If you really wish to use math. Iwould taje a cladistic tree of speciation like is shown on p 908 of Goulds 'Structure..." taking a third dimension for the environmental type , you will see that sometime evolution skips along, sometimes its slower, but always , those animals that speciate---fit their environment, and when they dont, they die off.

Also, youve skipped my point about what randomness is NOT in evolution. I see this , where all the possible evolutionary expressions dont preent themselves equally at any time. This is what sheer opportunistic mechanisms mean.
For example, as whales nares migrated to the tops of their heads, along with that came a pressure regulating system and a middle ear feture that allowed them to dive deeper and longer and the middle ear feature was a relic of the foundation species of land dwelling cetaceans(They were more like otters and actually looked a bit like otters). Each evolutionary modification occured in packets and , if any retrograde features occured , they were soon extinguished after a few generations. The result was adaptation but not all their body trial balloons wre manifest . So I say this is random, you could claim its "something else'

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Thanks Farmerman. I wish you luck ( it never hurts) appreciate your willingness to share actual information, and I love your tagline.

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farmerman wrote:

I guess then, as we boil down your essence of evolution, youre only point is that there is a drive to accomplish something that is preordained. Because , why/ you dont feel that there is enough time to accomplish all that your calcs say need be accomplished.

What you wrote is not my hypothesis. None of what you wrote is my hypothesis.

I'll restate my hypothesis in hopefully clearer terms. My hypothesis is that evolution from time to time had to have benefited from some additional influence to accomplish what was accomplished in the time available. I further hypothesize that this additional influence is what promoted -- not determined, not preordained, not specified -- the propensity of evolution in some respects to develop more intelligent life.

farmerman wrote:

That part has already been pretty much understood . That is, every 20 generations can achieve a major evolutionary adaptation. No need for manipulations of the math. A thing in science is CALIBRATION against reality. I do math modelling of earth structure and layers and I never have seen anyone try to force a sense of "their own" reality to what we know already exists. I believe you should revisit your assumptions as well as your calculations because they fly in the face of experiential reality.

Perhaps that explains the current obvious weaknesses in evolution science. I am not hypothesizing major evolutionary adaptations in general. I am hypothesizing an influence in major increases in the capabilities of the brains of organisms, in particular major increase in the brains of animals.

Quote:

I never have seen anyone try to force a sense of "their own" reality to what we know already exists.

How does hypothesizing an alternative force a sense of one's own reality to what is already Question

known

to exist?

There are too many real science people to list them all, who have hypothesized that which contradicted the prevailing wisdom in their time. Some (e.g., Galilei, Gauss, Newton, Riemann, Maxwell, Einstein ... ) ended up changing the then prevailing wisdom to a new prevailing wisdom. That's real science. These contributors to real science encountered many people who held on to the then prevailing wisdom as if it were religious doctrine. Sigh, I guess that will always be the case.

While I know I don't measure up to the stature of the giants listed and unlisted above, I know what I am doing is science. What I am doing is challenging the conventional wisdom. Too many alleged scientists simply cannot handle that. So be it!

farmerman wrote:

Every populated island has a similar population of unique animals that have evolved to adapt to that environment, when the island environment changes, within the 20 gneration "rule" either the animal has to readapt or perish.

I know. Darwin got a lot of attention with his Galapagos island bird evolution discoveries. Rightfully so. Did such readjustments in those birds include readjustment in their brain physics and/or brain function. I think not. At least Darwin failed to allege that they did.

farmerman wrote:

Im not sure if we can stay on the same path because, rather than working from a reality base, you seem to extract some numbers and variables that have no credibility. You recognize the size of a genome but somehow you only use sexual congress to reflect this.

I hang in there with you as long as you hang in there with me.

You have yet to show me why you in particular believe my numbers and variables have no credibility in establishing a lower bound to the probability that life evolved without 2ndI. In fairness you have provided evidence why you think 2ndI is unnecessary.

Yes, I realize that many species of organisms merely subdivide to reproduce themselves. Sexual congress isn't the only kind of procreation. Face it, without procreation (e.g., subdivision, sexual congress, spontaneous new cell formation), reproduction would not occur. Without reproduction, influencing the genomes of reproduced life would be impossible. Without reproducing life with edited genomes, evolution would not be possible.

farmerman wrote:

Im going to refer you to a book by Steve Palumbi, called The Evolution Explosion. Hes a biologist who teaches evolutionary biology. He compares artificial selection and natural selection and has a much better explanation of the rates of evolution in such things as
Overfished fish. He states that, as a result of overfishing, sexually mature market fish like tuna and salmon are almost half the weight of their forebears(actually forefish) He claims this as an evolutionary scheme conferring adaptation to a predators (man) in about what? 16 genereations.

There is another possibility. Humans have been eating up all the more mature fish, and have failed to allow the less mature fish to lie fallow so-to-speak.

I'll read and study the book. Thank you.

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Let me ask you, what do you consider the major weakness in evolutionary sciences?

Also, to me, a brain is a piece of meat that is consequential to evolutionary pressure. The human brain is, and this is current thinking from a naturalistic bias, merely the result of
Our proto human forebears originating in an environment that was changing freom jungle to open savannah. This opening range due to desertification, required them to come down from the trees. The walking apes gradually learned to walk upright as their vertebral insertion point migrated downward. Then they , as opportunistic feeders , learned that scavenging at predator kill sites allowed them to eat meat,starting with marrow , which was enjoyed by smashing the left over bones , something of a niche adaptation that the predators couldnt do. The increase in the B vitamins and proteins allowed for the growth and development of the brain. The left over tool frags at kill sites and habitats seem to say that we, as a genus, just languished around for a few million years until our "out of Africa" sojourn by h Ergaster and later species, showed a sudden advance in flake toolmaking, thus our brains were reaching present size. Actually, some Neanderthals had bigger brains on average than sapiens. Arguments about when we got abstract thought or recognized time management is beyond me so maybe acquiunk can add more substance to this

I have trouble with your math because of its non contextual nature. Youve plopped in some variables that dont even seem to correspond with anythging but your "best case" worst case" scenarios. However, Im not sure youve explained your scenarios well enough. WHy not use the real loci of evolution? why 3.2 seconds per mutation? why not considre diversity inherent in genomes? MAyr has always said that mutation isnt the source of macroevolution, its really the end members of the genetic diversity thats expressing itself. why not use known date reference fossils?
ISeethat you have no standard value references to any data that Ive seen freom accepted research. Youve picked out numbers from 'the air" and this bothers me . Its a good way to show something bogus when you use bogus values to start. then, overriding this, If your hypothesis is only interested in the brain, why use Galactic numbers and other dubious valued factors at all?. Just go for the length of time it took to achieve a human brain from a pongid brain.
I surmise that, if you use the pongid-human connection of 5+ million years, your "lack of time" argument isnt full of Impressively large numbers any more. Im not accusing you of being disengenuous, merely being focused elsewhere.

I cant help you in your overall quest because we seem to be going in circles. Im beginning to repeat myself and I hate sounding strident because it sounds like Im shouting.

Palumbis argument about overfishing is that, weve become the natural selection force for tuna , swordfish and salmon and cod. Overfishing has caused these fish to evolve smaller period Nobodys hiding, its just that.we dont see any big fish anymore. Fish of the same caught age as the fish in the 60s are now roughly half the 60s weight, thus they fit through the holes in the nets. Going smaller has , as i said before, been a factor that everyone had missed under Copes LAw. Cichlids do it all the time, PAlumbi is a biological researcher and a marine specialist, unlike gould, who was a geologist/ paleontologist. He works with living samples and is much more experimentally driven than familiar with fossil evidence. His position is, much more assertive tha was Goulds. Palumbi thinks that evolution by natural selection is a law for the books. Badabing

My last point is that , I suspect that you suspect that evolution via natural selection is not an adequate mechanism for some reason that has to do with the time available to accomplish all this work. MY problem with your hypothesis is that youve not used the discipline of the very sciences you are doubting to try to disprove them. You havent shown any errors , you just seem to dislike the pronouncement of a working theory without what you consider adequate proof. It appears we have a major difference on what we interpret as proof.
Weve both come a long way. You have gradually taken up some of the stuff a number of us have been saying, and we have learned that arguments can be mutually beneficial and can be
free of epithets and name calling. I remember, a few years ago , I said some things to a true Creationist on abuzz that I now regret having said . this has helped me immensely in my school board prsentations wherein loss of temper can easily preceed loss of credibility.especially in a hall full of legislators.

Mayr states that there were actually 9 Big mass extinctions.they were , and the number of respective species gone extinct were;
End of the Ordovician 85% extinct
Late Devonian 83%
End Permian 95%
End Triassic 80%
Early Jurassic 53%
End Jurassic 45%
Early-Mid Cretaceous 53%
Late Cretaceous 75%
Late Eocene 35%
These die offs left big voids in genomes. Much diversity was lost at the time and, youve gotta wonder, where would we be today had these species and genera lived. Ill tell you, wed still probably be in rat holes eating seeds., if we'd evolved at all

FYI,Keep your eyes on the Texas legislature, theyre about to enter into debate about teaching "alternative theories" in biology and earth sciences. I have eugenie Scotts web page bookmarked on one of these computers, Ill try to find it and link you up. I think youd find it interesting .Any debate on just about anything in Texas ought to be damn good entertainment, in my HO

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ican711nm wrote:

My hypothesis is that evolution from time to time had to have benefited from some additional influence to accomplish what was accomplished in the time available. I further hypothesize that this additional influence is what promoted -- not determined, not preordained, not specified -- the propensity of evolution in some respects to develop more intelligent life.

This summation is very close to the argument for complexity. You might want to do a little bit more reading along these lines before trying to argue intelligence as a result of, and expression of, complexity.

Also, I would suggest that you consider not using the word "accomplishment" in your argument. Accomplishment implies a goal, and the concept of a "goal" is at the heart of the debate. I would suggest that you might benefit from thinking in terms of "results" rather than "accomplishments".

Best Regards,

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Again, I apologize for the tone (though not the content) of my post some pages back. Farmerman's arguments are far beyond the scope of anything I can offer up here, but I am reading avidly, and do enjoy the exchange.

My beef with these numbers, even when they are loosely-based on observation: we can't really do the calculation until we understand how mutations arise, or what the very origins of life may have been.

Just a little side-trip about stuff i find interesting in this arena (humbly offered, because I don't iknow much about or understand the full implications of any of it Wink

)... Recent evidence -- including the full realization a year or two ago that the ribosome, that bridge between DNA and protein, is not itself a proteinaceous enzyme with RNA adjuncts, as initially thought, but a ribozyme -- and RNA molecule that catalyzes reaction -- supports the notion the life evolved from an RNA world, in which RNA was both the source of the information and the tool of metabolism. Now RNA is considerably more mutable than DNA, which is why our genome is encoded in DNA and why retroviruses are duch nasty little buggers to beat. (One estimate I've heard, though I'm not sure of its veracity, is that RNA undergoes a functional mutation -- not just a base-pair switch, but one that actually results in a different codon -- every seven seconds. That is very, very, very fast.) Now, if an RNA world is the basis for life, there must have been a point in evolution when the transition was made from RNA-catalyzed reactions to amino acid-catalyzed reactions, and from RNA-encoding to DNA-encoding. (Perhaps reverse transcriptase is a very, very ancient enzyme?)

Dunno. I'm getting confoozled here -- hopefully genetics and animal development will give me a much better grasp of things next semester. But my point is this: we've barely scratched the surface on what mechanisms might drive micro-evolution, so to start calculating probabilities at this point is silly: the science is still nascent. We don't fully understand how DNA is transcribed, how it is packed in the cells (there are all kinds of variations on the double helix we're accustomed to seeing that might have major implications in how genes are regulated and trasncribed), how genes manage to duplicate and reverse themselves within the genome, exactly what does happen on a molecular level during meiosis, etc., etc. Did you know that the proteins responsible for repairing damage to the DNA don't always make the right substitution, and can exacerbate a mutation? That we are improving methods for gene therapy using viruses to transport genes that will actually be expressed into cells?

I dunno -- as far as I'm concerned, we don't know enough to make any sort of probabilistic computations yet, at least not on the biological chemistry level. Even assuming a constant mutation rate throughout time may be fallacious (though I admit that it probably is not, as mutation rates have held up pretty good against the fossil record in reconstructing phylogeny). From where I sit -- and from where my Biochem profs sit (though they are, of course, among the scientific community that is bent on promoting evolutionnary theory even though its so full of holes Wink

) -- we have such a staggeringly vast number of new small questions to answer that speculation about the big ones is just that: speculation.

(Quick anecdotal bit, since I've been rambling due to lack of sleep and hypercaffeination and an entire night spent poring over metabolic pathways -- ugh!: we've all heard, I'm sure, how some mathematical model or other tells us that bumble bees can't fly. Is the problem with the flying insect, or with the model?)

Again -- sorry about the unpleasantness; I don't mean much by it and am perfectly willing to receive abuse, as well. Cheers...

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ican --

Okay, this should be a bit clearer. Sorry to blab so much; it's been interesting to me to figure out why exactly I objected so strongly to your numbers premise.

Turns out it's a philosophical objection. To me, your argument seems to be an attempt to close the book on further discovery by assuming that all that can be empirically understood or discovered already is and has been.

I'll try to illustrate using an example that should be less controversial (and perhaps a little dear to your heart).

A century or so ago, the planetary model of the atom seemed to be a pretty good one; it conformed to the central assumption of classical physics -- that matter and energy were discrete, and both could change forms but that interconversion was not possible. In fact, it was that very interconversion that modern science (at the time) had worked very hard to dispel, so that the observable world could be quantified and more effectively manipulated.

But there was this little problem: the planetary model of the atom didn't really work. According to the physics of the time, an electron should come crashing down into the nucleus in a minute fraction of the blink of an eye. Certainly this didn't fit with the observable universe, where atoms existed for -- well, forever, for all intents and purposes.

Now, there were a couple of ways to deal with this problem.

Solution 1: the methods we're using to measure the physical universe and to describe the structure of the atom are perfectly sound and complete. There must be some supernatural force holding the electrons in their orbit.

Solution 2: the methods we're using are clearly inadequate to measure the physical universe and to describe the structure of the atom. The old model, as well as it's served us to this point, will need to be revised.

Now, I think it should be pretty obvious that Solution 2 is the more practical approach to the problem. If everybody had decided that Solution 1 was the way to go (and most people do, so that they can live out their lives in a predictable -- if misunderstood -- universe), the 20th century would have gone very differently. I certainly wouldn't be sitting here tapping out notes on a computer.

Now, my problem with your statistical argument isn't the scale of the numbers; it is that you are employing Solution 1 (we've reached the very limit of our understanding of this subject and there can be no explanation for this phenomenon consistent with the observable universe) under the guise of employing Solution 2 (the working model has served us pretty well and seems to describe things on a certain scale with a reasonable degree of accuracy, but if we are going to continue to progress in our understanding of this phenomenon we must devise a new model without discarding what was useful in the old one).

The problem with Solution 1 is that it is an intellectual dead-end, which is why I (and, I suspect, farmerman) see at least the seeds in it of the Creationist/Intelligent Design trap. You invoke a proud history of scientific iconoclasts in your defense (though none of them, by any means, worked in an intellectual vacuum), but in fact what these folks -- at least those with whom I am reasonably familiar -- did was assume that the universe could be understood, that there was a route to a deeper understanding of universe solely through what could be observed and measured. Ascribing natural phenomena to a supernatural source is antithetical to science. That is not to say that the two are mutually exclusive, but that all scientific inquiry proceeds from the basic assumption that every event can ultimately described simply and consistently. The notion of supernatural causation is fundamentally complicated and inconsistent.

I do understand were you're coming from, ican. You're looking at a problem that you can't quite wrap your mind around and you want an answer to it. I can't wrap my mind around it, either, any more than I can wrap my mind around the scale of the galaxy or of the myriad of electrostatic interactions going on between water molecules and various solutes and suspended particles in this glass next to me. But to just write the whole question the evolution of life on this planet off to some sort of '2001: A Space Odyssey" monolith-like effect seems inherently self-limiting to me. I love the awe, the wonder, the vertigo of science's unanswered questions, and I'm pretty confident that, when I die, there will be a whole lot more answers and even more questions, just as there were for my grandparents when they died.

So that's where I'm coming from. Sorry if I lost my cool a bit; I'm apparently a bit passionate on the subject. Hadn't really realized that until now. Cheers.

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farmerman wrote:

Let me ask you, what do you consider the major weakness in evolutionary sciences?

I'm not competent to identify the major weakness in evolutionary sciences.

I have identified but one weakness. The alleged chance editing events that cause changes in procreating genomes, plus the alleged natural selection of those changes which shall survive and form the basis of additional evolution, are not wrong explanations; they are merely insufficient explanations.

This is not to say that current creationist dogma has anything valid to offer. I don't really understand what creationist dogma is, anyhow. I look at the first part of the Book of Genesis, and interpret it to be poetry in harmony with evolutionist sciences (why, is a separate discussion).

Regardless, whether they are or are not in harmony, 2ndI should be looked for. The probability of 2ndI's existence is too high to be ignored.

farmerman wrote:

Also, to me, a brain is a piece of meat that is consequential to evolutionary pressure.

Consequential to or a consequence of evolutionary pressure?

A piece of meat? Yes, a remarkable piece of meat. A piece of meat that is remarkably capable of solving problems better than other pieces of meat found in animals and in other organisms.

You have used the phrase "evolutionary pressure" several times. Up to now, I have treated your use of that phrase as a mere metaphor for the history of evolutionary events. I think I was wrong. If I am wrong, please try to enlighten me about its particular causes and manifestations.

farmerman wrote:

The human brain is, and this is current thinking from a naturalistic bias, merely the result of
Our proto human forebears originating in an environment that was changing freom jungle to open savannah. .... thus our brains were reaching present size.

That of course is another hypothesis which may or may not be valid, may or may not be complete, may or may not be sufficient.

farmerman wrote:

Actually, some Neanderthals had bigger brains on average than sapiens.

Why then didn't those dummies survive? Laughing

Inadequate connections? Laughing

farmerman wrote:

Arguments about when we got abstract thought or recognized time management is beyond me so maybe acquiunk can add more substance to this

Maybe

farmerman wrote:

I have trouble with your math because of its non contextual nature. Youve plopped in some variables that dont even seem to correspond with anythging but your "best case" worst case" scenarios. However, Im not sure youve explained your scenarios well enough. WHy not use the real loci of evolution? why 3.2 seconds per mutation? why not considre diversity inherent in genomes? ...

My objective was to establish an upper bound on the probability that current theory is sufficient. To accomplish that, I didn't need to get into the details of the theory and its evidence. Such is irrelevant to my hypothesis. If I were to get into that detail, the only thing I would accomplish with respect to my hypothesis is to show that the actual probabilty of 2ndIf not being necessary (or chance editing plus natural selection being sufficient) is not any where near a moogolth, but is closer to a troogolth (1 divided by 1 followed by a trillion zeros.)

We know that there occurred an evolutionary process. We know a great deal about the specifics of the history of that evolutionary process. It's a fascinating history, and I'm continually working on learning more about it.

farmerman wrote:

... Youve picked out numbers from 'the air" and this bothers me . Its a good way to show something bogus when you use bogus values to start. then, overriding this, If your hypothesis is only interested in the brain, why use Galactic numbers and other dubious valued factors at all?. Just go for the length of time it took to achieve a human brain from a pongid brain.
I surmise that, if you use the pongid-human connection of 5+ million years, your "lack of time" argument isnt full of Impressively large numbers any more. Im not accusing you of being disengenuous, merely being focused elsewhere.

Same denominator, smaller numerator yields a smaller, not larger, probability. Now if we can develop evidence from the suggested case that my denominator is significantly smaller than I calculated, you will definitely get my attention.

No, not out of "the air"; out of books I've read. Here's another such book: "The 5th Miracle", Paul Davies, Touchstone, 1999.

ALLEGED FACTS
1. There exists a 300 gene difference between H and M.
2. There was a CA.
3. A billion years ago there was a BA.
4. 3.3 billion years ago there was a 3.3BA.
5. The subject of my hypothesis is the evolution process from BA to CA to H.

ASSUMPTION
1. The alleged 300 gene difference between H and M is equal to or smaller than the actual gene difference between CA and H, and between BA and CA (not to mention the difference between 3.3BA and BA).
2. The total number of different codon sequences in the 300 gene H-M difference that could produce equivalent intelligence to H is less than a 10^100.

CALCULATION
1. The number of possible sequences of codons in a sequence of only 300 genes exceeds 10^4,000,000.
2. The total number of possible gene edits in 1 billion years is less than 10^100.
3. 10^100) x 10^100) divided by 10^(4,000,000) = less than 10^(-1,000,000).
4. 10^1,000,000 x 10^1,000,000 = 10^2,000,000 divided by 10^4,000,000 = less than 10^(-1,000,000).

CONCLUSION
2ndI exists.

Patiodog challenged the validity of ASSUMPTION 1. I explained why I disagreed with the validity of his challenge. But since neither of us actually knows what the actual difference is between CA and H, we have to judge the situation on our own as best we can.

You challenged the validity of CALCULATION 2. So, I asked, do you think that each procreating genome over the BA to CA to H history averaged more than an edit every 3.2 seconds. I pointed out that unless you could provide some reason to think that number times the total population of organisms existing at any one time over that period was more than 10^1,000,000 per second, the validity of your challenge does not change the validity of CALCULATION 4.

You also challenged my knowledge of all the ways procreating genomes can get edited. You were right to do that. But that knowledge is not relevant to my hypothesis. Only how many, not what kind of edits. occurred is relevant to my hypothesis.

farmerman wrote:

My last point is that , I suspect that you suspect that evolution via natural selection is not an adequate mechanism for some reason that has to do with the time available to accomplish all this work. MY problem with your hypothesis is that youve not used the discipline of the very sciences you are doubting to try to disprove them. You havent shown any errors , you just seem to dislike the pronouncement of a working theory without what you consider adequate proof. It appears we have a major difference on what we interpret as proof.

I have no problem with the working theory otherwise. The working theory does not seem to me to have inadequately addressed the subject of my hypothesis.

farmerman wrote:

The human brain is, and this is current thinking from a naturalistic bias, merely the result of
Our proto human forebears originating in an environment that was changing freom jungle to open savannah. .... thus our brains were reaching present size.

That of course is another hypothesis which may or may not be valid, may or may not be complete, may or may not be sufficient.

farmerman wrote:

Actually, some Neanderthals had bigger brains on average than sapiens.

Why then didn't those dummies survive? Laughing

Inadequate connections? Laughing

farmerman wrote:

Arguments about when we got abstract thought or recognized time management is beyond me so maybe acquiunk can add more substance to this

Maybe

farmerman wrote:

I have trouble with your math because of its non contextual nature. Youve plopped in some variables that dont even seem to correspond with anythging but your "best case" worst case" scenarios. However, Im not sure youve explained your scenarios well enough. WHy not use the real loci of evolution? why 3.2 seconds per mutation? why not considre diversity inherent in genomes? ...

My objective was to establish an upper bound on the probability that current theory is sufficient. To accomplish that, I didn't need to get into the details of the theory and its evidence. Such is irrelevant to my hypothesis. If I were to get into that detail, the only thing I would accomplish with respect to my hypothesis is to show that the actual probabilty of 2ndIf not being necessary (or chance editing plus natural selection being sufficient) is not any where near a moogolth, but is closer to a troogolth (1 divided by 1 followed by a trillion zeros.)

We know that there occurred an evolutionary process. We know a great deal about the specifics of the history of that evolutionary process. It's a fascinating history, and I'm continually working on learning more about it.

farmerman wrote:

My last point is that , I suspect that you suspect that evolution via natural selection is not an adequate mechanism for some reason that has to do with the time available to accomplish all this work. MY problem with your hypothesis is that youve not used the discipline of the very sciences you are doubting to try to disprove them. You havent shown any errors , you just seem to dislike the pronouncement of a working theory without what you consider adequate proof. It appears we have a major difference on what we interpret as proof.

My hypothesis doesn't require that I use the discipline of the very sciences I am questioning on one point. It requires only that I use science. I haven't shown any errors, elsewere, because my hypothesis does not challenge them elsewhere. Yes, I dislike the pronouncement of a working theory without what I consider adequate proof. Inadequate evidence has been provided to show chance genome ewditing plus natural selection are sufficient.

farmerman wrote:

Mayr states that there were actually 9 Big mass extinctions.they were , and the number of respective species gone extinct were;
End of the Ordovician 85% extinct
Late Devonian 83%
End Permian 95%
End Triassic 80%
Early Jurassic 53%
End Jurassic 45%
Early-Mid Cretaceous 53%
Late Cretaceous 75%
Late Eocene 35%
These die offs left big voids in genomes. Much diversity was lost at the time and, youve gotta wonder, where would we be today had these species and genera lived. Ill tell you, wed still probably be in rat holes eating seeds., if we'd evolved at all

In other words, you hypothesize that without these extinctions we'd still be rodents of some kind. Without 2ndI, you would probably be correct. I guess that without those extinctions 2ndI would have helped evolve H sooner.

9 Mass extinctions! I thought there were only 7! Thank you for that information. Does Mayr have evidence to support that claim? If so, I'd like to learn what his evidence is.

farmerman wrote:

FYI,Keep your eyes on the Texas legislature, theyre about to enter into debate about teaching "alternative theories" in biology and earth sciences. I have eugenie Scotts web page bookmarked on one of these computers, Ill try to find it and link you up. I think youd find it interesting .Any debate on just about anything in Texas ought to be damn good entertainment, in my HO

Damnit! Why can't they leave us alone. Let us wear our cowboy hats, drive our pickups, and leave science to scientists?

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Quote:

You also challenged my knowledge of all the ways procreating genomes can get edited. You were right to do that. But that knowledge is not relevant to my hypothesis. Only how many, not what kind of edits. occurred is relevant to my hypothesis.

My point is that "how" may have a bearing on "how many." It may not just be a question of chance mutations; shuffling of the genome and "enzymatic" alteration of the genome may play a role as well. Since we don't have a complete understanding of how the inegrity of the genome is (or is not, as is frequently the case) maintained, we can't really make a guess about how malleable it is. The same gene transduced between organisms may be expressed differently depending on the accessory enzymes involved in translation. Prions -- misfolded proteins that refold other proteins into their own configuration -- are a very recent discovery, and were totally unaffected. Isn't it possible that there may have occurred instances of RNA transcripts which do the same? Might not these trascripts, in the presence of something akin to a reverse transcriptase, make their way into the genome? I'm not saying this is a likely scenario, I'm just saying that there is not adequate information to peform the calculation you are trying to perform -- and there wouldn't be if Gould was doing it, either.

I will be very curious in the coming decades to see what effect nanotechnology might have on our ability to study cellular processes in vivo. How interesting it would be to be able to monitor translation on the ribosome, to follow the modifications of a protein as it makes it's way through the endoplasmic reticulum, through the Golgi, into the cytosol, across the cell membrane... We don't have any idea what over half of the human genome does. I think there are a lot of surprises awaiting us. And I don't think that treating our current level of understanding as a finished product is going to get us there...

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patiodog wrote:

My point is that "how" may have a bearing on "how many." It may not just be a question of chance mutations; shuffling of the genome and "enzymatic" alteration of the genome may play a role as well.

Allow me to assume that shuffling and enzymatic alterations actually occurred in large numbers. What's your hypothesis? If these didn't occur by chance then what caused them to occur?

patiodog wrote:

Since we don't have a complete understanding of how the inegrity of the genome is (or is not, as is frequently the case) maintained, we can't really make a guess about how malleable it is.

Ok! But what has the malleability of the genome got to do with my hypothesis. High or low malleability relates to the likihood of procreation of edited genomes. If it's not procreated at all, or is only rarely procreated, or is frequently procreated how doe that affect my hypothesis. All it does is suggest a more accurate calculation for the purpose of determining a least upper bound on my calculated probability. When an upper bound is good enough to make my case, computing a least upper bound will only strengthen my case.

patiodog wrote:

Might not these trascripts, in the presence of something akin to a reverse transcriptase, make their way into the genome? I'm not saying this is a likely scenario, I'm just saying that there is not adequate information to peform the calculation you are trying to perform -- and there wouldn't be if Gould was doing it, either.

But there is adequate information to perform the calculation I performed. In my calculation I did not differentiate causes of genome editing. I simply assumed that none of those edits were caused by a 2ndI. Further, implicit in my calculation is the assumption that all edits of procreating genomes succeeded in being procreated, and none were exterminated along the way. If I were to introduce the factors you suggest, I'd calculate an even smaller upper bound.

patiodog wrote:

I will be very curious in the coming decades to see what effect nanotechnology might have on our ability to study cellular processes in vivo. How interesting it would be to be able to monitor translation on the ribosome, to follow the modifications of a protein as it makes it's way through the endoplasmic reticulum, through the Golgi, into the cytosol, across the cell membrane... We don't have any idea what over half of the human genome does. I think there are a lot of surprises awaiting us. And I don't think that treating our current level of understanding as a finished product is going to get us there...

I too am likewise curious, even though I guess my age to be approximately 4 times yours which is supposed to make me some one who is stuck in his ways. Yes, lots of surprises. You possess a genuine opportunity to be the source of some of those valid surprises.

patiodog wrote:

I don't think that treating our current level of understanding as a finished product is going to get us there...

Please, please, ... please, patiodog, never forget that you and you alone posted this truth. So please believe it for the rest of your life.

Too frequently in the less than 200 year history of the practice of the modern scientific method, scientists have themselves become doctrinaire and closed to the implications of new observations and inferences that conflict with the implications of their cherished past discoveries. This is also true for engineers like me. It is also unfortunately true for aviators like me. That can literally prove fatal.

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Oldest vertebrate fossil found in Australia, scientists say

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