Evolution by Epigenesis: Farewell to Darwinism, Neo and Otherwise

@Aedes,

Aedes;110528 wrote:

Being a doctor is not just "living a definition". We have communication styles and social styles and rhetorical styles. There are also expectations that patients have of us as being empathetic and listening, we are directly trained in these skills in medical school, we are tested on them using national standardized exams (look up the USMLE Step 2CS), and we are disciplined by medical boards for failing them. And by the way, this has been written about in medicine since Hippocrates.

Expectations of patients have NOTHING to do with what you are to do. Some patients may expect sexual favours, some with a mental illness expect a doctor to operate on an imaginary problem.

Patient expectations are NOT your purposes as Doctor. You ARE NOT tested on sexual favours ability. Nor on praying.

You're giving all kinds of extraneous information on doctoring now, as we have been taken off track with this business and now you offer more and more subtracks filled with unconnected information.

Yes you are expected to listen and attempt empathy. OF COURSE.

All about this

Quote:

Have you not ever advised someone to drink water, for any reason ? I mean, we do not advise drinking water solely on the basis that it relieves thirsty feelings, eh ?

all sidetracking away from this.

There is a purpose to "drinking water", or "water intake" that is NOT about tickling your palate. You just need to admit that and on we go. It's no use insisting that SOMETIMES you drink water when you think you really do not need extra water.

After argument, you DID agree

Quote:

We have multiple purposes.

and now you go back into the shell of insisting that it is only ONE articulated purpose by an individual ( which is always necessarily true) on ONE occasion, which counts :perplexed:

so if you teach Salsa to your patients, that is YOUR purpose in being a doctor at that moment.

and so teaching Salsa is the purpose of Doctors ?

1 Reply

@Dave Allen,

Dave Allen;109877 wrote:

She's being sensationalist in this, I think. The "dictat" of "thou shalt not believe in aquatic theory" doesn't really exist,

Quote:

and her list of authorities who do support Alister Hardy's hypothesis proves that it isn't exactly biological heresy.

This part has been admitted as wrong by the author ( neither the list, nor the making of the list, can show anything as to the reality).

1/

Quote:

Her claim that scientists carried on despite the change in paradigm is not entirely correct - the paradigm shift in this case was that leading to the idea that the plains of Africa have been more temperate in the relevent era than previously described.

We can find her claims perhaps and compare, and we can find what change in thinking has occurred about the savannah.

2/

Quote:

Proponents of the idea that homnids developed on savanna/plains have been able to bring a lot of paleontological evidence to support their theories.

However, whilst the ideas of 'aquatic ape proponents' sound almost more intuitive and logical than the ideas of 'savanna ape proponents' at first glance, proponents of the hypothesis are missing the most important evidence needed to prove their argument - which is fossils of a homnid that lived in such close association with large bodies of water.

We can check this claim.

3/

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Until this evidence is produced the aquatic ape hypothesis can't really develop beyond the ideas originally sketched out by hardy in the 60s.

It has changed already.

4/

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She also dodges a lot of common critiques, such as these from Wikipedia:

Lets look into this claim next.

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@Dave Allen,

Dave Allen;109884 wrote:

The problem seems to me to be an anthrocentric one - we humans tend to credit ourselves with ultimate complexity. Monkeys are more like us than snakes or cuttlefish are - ergo they must be more complex.

But we are no more 'evolved' than any other organism alive today (with the possible exception of the odd living fossil). There are organisms that have evolved to parasitise us - so they must be more recent than us, but I doubt you'd find them more complex than us.

So this view is probably just chauvanism. Rice has more DNA than dogs do - what's up with that?

You make a good point. But a counter might be this. The more we reduce the stature of man, the more we reduce the stature of his science. --and that of his religion..

1 Reply

@memester,

memester;110548 wrote:

Expectations of patients have NOTHING to do with what you are to do

As Bob Dylan said, "How I wish that for just one time, you could walk inside my shoes."

You have no idea. I've been doing this for a long time. I'm on the faculty at a major medical school, and I teach clinical medicine to students, residents, and fellows. I'm pretty comfortable with the way in which I educate them how to be a doctor, thank you.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes;110713 wrote:

As Bob Dylan said, "How I wish that for just one time, you could walk inside my shoes."

You have no idea. I've been doing this for a long time. I'm on the faculty at a major medical school, and I teach clinical medicine to students, residents, and fellows. I'm pretty comfortable with the way in which I educate them how to be a doctor, thank you.

Paul, I am not doubting that you do a good job and that it is extremely taxing. But I bug a lot of educated people from Phylogeneticists to Language experts, and press them to defend their views. So I get a fairly good impression of when something in Evolution studies is not defended well, where there are weaknesses.

---------- Post added 12-12-2009 at 10:42 PM ----------

the Wiki critique

Aquatic ape hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

reply to Langdon's sllghtly comical "analysis".

http://www.riverapes.com/AAH/Arguments/Langdon/LangdonCritique.pdf

1 Reply

@memester,

memester;110766 wrote:

I bug a lot of educated people from Phylogeneticists to Language experts, and press them to defend their views.

We've digressed a lot, and we've been talking about the role of a physician. It is a role that is different than a repairman and different than a scientist, even though we employ both kinds of mindsets at times. It's a very humanistic trade, and you can't do the job without assuming a caregiver role -- even though that is defined variably and varies from one patient encounter to the next. Today I admitted someone to the hospital who medically didn't need to be there, just so that tomorrow I can tell him that I think his blood pressure is OK and he doesn't need to keep checking it every 30 minutes at home and coming to the ER every day. This is 1% medicine and 99% communication.

memester;110766 wrote:

So I get a fairly good impression of when something in Evolution studies is not defended well, where there are weaknesses.

The aforementioned conversation is not about evolutionary science -- not at all. We got there somehow by arguing the semantics of the word "purpose". We're now sort of arguing the semantics of the the word "caregiver" or "care provider" or whatever it was.

One problem, and I think all participants in these threads lately including both of us, is that we have not kept these arguments very "taut". We jump from generalization to specific, from philosophy to science, from general epistemology to the pop culture exhortations of Dawkins et al, and it makes it very hard to put an evolutionary biology finding "on trial".

So if you want to truly, critically, with an open mind take on whatever in evolution -- be it aquatic apes or punctuated equilibrium or heritability of epigenetics, that's fine, but let's stick to it. And let's not take small findings and use them to overturn paradigms that are built on a lot more. Even though I think the aquatic ape hypothesis is a bunch of nonsense, whether it's true or not does not overturn evolution. And there are sure to be things overturned. Happens in medicine a lot, everyone talks about how the Australian guy who implicated H. pylori in ulcers was a laughingstock until he won the Nobel Prize for it.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes;110784 wrote:

This is 1% medicine and 99% communication.

Nothing wrong with that. The best Dentist I ever visited was an old man who took a long time looking at the tooth, before he drilled. the drilling was over real fast, and he did an excellent job. For him it was about seeing, more than about getting in there and drilling.

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So if you want to truly, critically, with an open mind take on whatever in evolution -- be it aquatic apes or punctuated equilibrium or heritability of epigenetics, that's fine, but let's stick to it. And let's not take small findings and use them to overturn paradigms that are built on a lot more. Even though I think the aquatic ape hypothesis is a bunch of nonsense, whether it's true or not does not overturn evolution.

OK, but let's also not strawman our way into claiming that EVOLUTION is being dismissed when it is the mostly the "Genetical basis, with Natural Selection on Individual Level Only" Dogma, that is being questioned ( or with the AAH, one particular species' evolutionary history being questioned).

Dawkins can hardly be left out, though, when we discuss Evolution. Not that his contributions to Science are really all that positive, but he has that sphere of followers, citers, quoters, and so on.

His version is being spread.That's undeniable.

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@memester,

I'm not sure where you've gotten the impression that I argue that. But you're also combining several things simultaneously in this statement.

1) Biological evolution, we can probably all agree, is a matter of populations changing over generations and over time

2) Populations change because of heritable things. [Yes, some of this is cultural and learned (at least in a few species), but for the vast majority of species on earth this is not the case]

3) Genetics is a physiologic system, not simply a sequence of nucleotides. This includes all sorts of epigenetic and regulatory phenomena.

4) The individual is important in that a population is made up of individuals. Population genetics, in the end, is a vector addition of changing allele frequencies among all the constituent individuals.

5) Natural selection is one of many evolutionary "forces", and even in the presence of selection on certain loci, NON-selection based evolution can happen in every other genetic locus

This all seems to be pretty conventional, what I'm writing here. Nothing dogmatic, and if any of it is incompatible with your views then maybe we can explore that.

---------- Post added 12-12-2009 at 11:36 PM ----------

memester;110788 wrote:

Dawkins can hardly be left out, though, when we discuss Evolution. Not that he is anything worht mentioning, but he has that sphere of followers, citers, quoters, and so on. His version is being spread.

Well, I haven't read a word of his, just seen some interviews and I found him self-aggrandizing, cocky, and intentionally offensive and sensationalist.

Dawkins can be discussed as part of the cultural dialogue about evolution. His popular writing cannot be regarded as representative of science, representative of evolutionary biologists, representative of atheists, representative of anything except himself.

His science may be worthy of discussion, but I know enough about genetic linkages and about the multiple effects of certain genes in different tissues and during development to entirely buy his 'selfish gene' thing. And natural selection produces a lot of side effects, too many to make it nice and neat and simple as Dawkins did.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes;110792 wrote:

I'm not sure where you've gotten the impression that I argue that. But you're also combining several things simultaneously in this statement.

Well, I was answering your post, which had more than several things in it.

Now see that your statements each may contain several assertions, and some need explanation.

Quote:

1) Biological evolution, we can probably all agree, is a matter of populations changing over generations and over time.

a) Some claim this and some claim that. Recently you claimed that Evolution is Population Genetics. That's a different statement.

b) You say "populations changing". "Population" can mean anything from cells to species, at least.

C) You say "over generations". That, it seems, is that an allele becomes more or less common in the population, though reproductive success of the allele holders. Of course, this takes time, as reproduction takes time.

d ) You also say "and over time" which suggests there is another way of populations changing. But I'm not sure what other means you admit - other than gene change first, followed by allele frequency changes, under Natural Selection.

Quote:

2) Populations change because of heritable things. [Yes, some of this is cultural and learned (at least in a few species), but for the vast majority of species on earth this is not the case]

How do you know this is so ? And is it only because of heritable things that populations change? What about cataclysm ? What about war? What about Religio-cide ? and how's smallpox doing ?

Quote:

3) Genetics is a physiologic system, not simply a sequence of nucleotides. This includes all sorts of epigenetic and regulatory phenomena.

I think so. But when it comes down to it, we hear "gene", not "Genetics".

Dawkins tries to play it both ways, calling it "gene" in one sentence, Genetics the next , and "genotype" in the middle.

As for yourself, you seem, to me, to do exactly that , also.

Dawkins will then say that "gene' is anything that does the trick ( and so he can't be wrong, he says )
so instead of calling it "Genetics", as you just did, he says by way of Montreal and back, that the gene is the same as genetics. Sometimes. Depends on which argument he is forwarding and which part of which sentence he is protecting Smile

But as for you, if "Genetics" includes all those, then "Genotype" is literal gene plus gene plus gene ? No regulatory, no epigenetic components allowed in "Genotype" ?

And what of "Genome" ? Regulatory and Epigenetic components are under "Genome" ?

I notice that you called it "Genetics", not "the genetics". "Genetics" being a study, whereas "the genetics" being of the organism.

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4) The individual is important in that a population is made up of individuals. Population genetics, in the end, is a vector addition of changing allele frequencies among all the constituent individuals.

There you go. Back to saying "The Gene is IT".

You say that Evolution is population genetics, and population genetics is change of alleles frequency.
Evolution is all gene, no regulatory components, no epigenetics, no, not, nada, nothing else.

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5) Natural selection is one of many evolutionary "forces", and even in the presence of selection on certain loci, NON-selection based evolution can happen in every other genetic locus

Let's leave this one aside for now, as the crux of your post culminates in 4)

Quote:

This all seems to be pretty conventional, what I'm writing here. Nothing dogmatic, and if any of it is incompatible with your views then maybe we can explore that.

OK, so it came down to gene is ALL. And that's the problem.
You "Dawkinsed" your way from here

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1) Biological evolution, we can probably all agree, is a matter of populations changing over generations and over time.

to here. and now Evolution has gone from "change in populations" to "change in allele frequencies".

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4) vector addition of changing allele frequencies

0 Replies

@memester,

I'm communicating similar concepts in different terms, and you're playing semantic games with it as if you're some aggressive lawyer trying to get me to crack on the witness stand.

Some of these terms have built-in imprecision. But I'm willing to accept that in order to discuss general principles. But I'm not willing to lose the argument simply to satisfy a page-long exegesis of my terminology as you've just submitted.

I've got to go to bed, but I'll answer this one:

Quote:

How do you know this is so ? And is it only because of heritable things that populations change? What about cataclysm ? What about genocide? How's smallpox doing ?

You've utterly missed the point, wow... you're refuting something that I never said.

A genocide will asymmetrically change populations. The gene frequencies among survivors will be different than among the pre-genocide population, it's a genetic bottleneck. The gene frequencies in the regional population will change as well, because one group has been decimated.

I did NOT EVER say that only heritable traits cause population change. That is an egregious misreading of my point.

What I meant, and I thought this should be fairly obvious, was that it is heritable changes that define evolutionary population difference between ancestral and progeny generations, even if a NON-heritable event has produced this change.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes;110811 wrote:

I'm communicating similar concepts in different terms, and you're playing semantic games with it as if you're some aggressive lawyer trying to get me to crack on the witness stand.

Give me a break !

You've equalled #1 and # 4, unjustifiably. I pointed out where it happened.

It's not that you have to crack, it's that you're "standing pat" on a cracked explanation of things.
semantics: The study or science of meaning in language.

nothing wrong with that. I didn't play any games. no tricks.

I'm asking you to clarify how your statements can possibly remain coherent to you, after I take them apart as to their meaning .

"Change in populations" is not "change in alleles". Population is not allele. It's that simple. Your've got error from Dawkinsish thought; it's promulgated everywhere.

---------- Post added 12-13-2009 at 01:32 AM ----------

Aedes;110792 wrote:

Dawkins can be discussed as part of the cultural dialogue about evolution. His popular writing cannot be regarded as representative of science, representative of evolutionary biologists, representative of atheists, representative of anything except himself.

I don't know how you can support that statement.
He sat on the Oxford Chair for Public Understanding of Science, and he expounded. He is also cited in many real works.

3 Replies

@memester,

Let's simultaneously take another branch of thought. philosophy time.
Identify the cause of Evolution, if you would.
"This is the cause".

You know, something like "Selection is the cause". "Mutation is the cause". "Sex" is the cause . "Behaviour is the cause".

This time we're not asking what is "Evolution", but what causes it.

Check out either AAH or Savannah Hypothesis. Both Behavioural causation hypotheses, aren't they ?

0 Replies

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;110680 wrote:

You make a good point. But a counter might be this. The more we reduce the stature of man, the more we reduce the stature of his science. --and that of his religion..

I'm not personally sure why this is a problem. I mean, if it's just true then knowing that truth provides a foundation for something more solid.

Religion's advocates either stress the fact that religion provides something science can't, on a metaphysicial level (consolation, emotional tie with stark reality) or lie about science (which works for many but backfires for a sizable minority).

So I don't see it as 'a counter' because some people are just interested in the apparent truth whether or not it disturbs or pleases them - and if human achievments are reduced in stature as a result - so be it.

0 Replies

@memester,

memester;110813 wrote:

I don't know how you can support that statement.
He sat on the Oxford Chair for Public Understanding of Science, and he expounded. He is also cited in many real works.

I said his popular writing, as you've quoted. His scientific writing does not get into god, it's like any other scientific writing. His popular writing is to be viewed in cultural terms and not scientific terms.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes;111253 wrote:

I said his popular writing, as you've quoted. His scientific writing does not get into god, it's like any other scientific writing. His popular writing is to be viewed in cultural terms and not scientific terms.

Well, yes, you did say that. And I did reply, heedless to it, because I thought it might be discouraging to explicitly point out the fruitlessness of the avenue you were leading discussion into.

You see, the discussion went like this

Quote:

One problem, and I think all participants in these threads lately including both of us, is that we have not kept these arguments very "taut". We jump from generalization to specific, from philosophy to science, from general epistemology to the pop culture exhortations of Dawkins et al, and it makes it very hard to put an evolutionary biology finding "on trial".

So if you want to truly, critically, with an open mind take on whatever in evolution ...fine, but let's stick to it.

[CENTER]

[RIGHT]

Quote:

OK, but let's also not strawman our way into claiming that EVOLUTION is being dismissed when it is the mostly the "Genetical basis, with Natural Selection on Individual Level Only" Dogma, that is being questioned ( or with the AAH, one particular species' evolutionary history being questioned).

Dawkins can hardly be left out, though, when we discuss Evolution. Not that his contributions to Science are really all that positive, but he has that sphere of followers, citers, quoters, and so on.

His version is being spread.That's undeniable.

[/RIGHT]

[/CENTER]

Quote:

Dawkins can hardly be left out, though, when we discuss Evolution. Not that he is anything worht mentioning, but he has that sphere of followers, citers, quoters, and so on. His version is being spread.

Well, I haven't read a word of his, just seen some interviews and I found him self-aggrandizing, cocky, and intentionally offensive and sensationalist.

Dawkins can be discussed as part of the cultural dialogue about evolution. His popular writing cannot be regarded as representative of science, representative of evolutionary biologists, representative of atheists, representative of anything except himself.

His science may be worthy of discussion, but I know enough about genetic linkages and about the multiple effects of certain genes in different tissues and during development to entirely buy his 'selfish gene' thing. And natural selection produces a lot of side effects, too many to make it nice and neat and simple as Dawkins did.

Quote:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aedes
Dawkins can be discussed as part of the cultural dialogue about evolution. His popular writing cannot be regarded as representative of science, representative of evolutionary biologists, representative of atheists, representative of anything except himself.

I don't know how you can support that statement.
He sat on the Oxford Chair for Public Understanding of Science, and he expounded. He is also cited in many real works.

So you see, you insist on talking about his pop writings or God arguments.

Obviously they are not scientific writings.

I have not argued that his pop works themselves are scientific writings.

So I'm bsically ignoring just one more sidetracking item, and pointing out that he MAY well necessaruily have to be included in anydiscussion ABOUT the state of Evolutionary Biology, and even about Science in general ( because of Oxford Chair ).

And I find it not all that striking any more that this is what you would choose now to comment about

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@memester,

That's fair enough. Perhaps I didn't find it clear which you were referring to when you mention things like "he has that sphere of followers, citers, quoters, and so on", which I took to reference his non-scientific writings.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Well, the trouble with drawing a very hard line on what is pop and what is for discussion on this topic, is that his popular musings are cited in real works, and also his pronouncements from the Chair of Oxford might also be considered to be Reports to the Public on the state of Science.

IOW, something official, like an peer reviewed paper is officially vetted; this is an approved voice for Science speaking to our understanding. Almost something like that. a grey area.

I mean, it's not as if we get a Sciptural Dogma Update every year or month from Science.

We re really talking about de facto dogma, not "legally installed" dogma

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@memester,

memester;110813 wrote:

"Change in populations" is not "change in alleles". Population is not allele. It's that simple.

But change in allele is A change in population, and changes in allele frequency are the entire underpinning of population genetics. Allele, like gene, is not an isolated concept, and I make allowance for that. I mean there can by synonymous point mutations in a given allele, so that the ultimate polypeptide transcript is identical, or than can be nonsynonymous mutations that change function. So I'm using the term "allele" here completely cognizant that an allele change may or may not be functional, it may or may not be selectively advantageous or disadvantageous, it may or may not correspond to changes in gene regulation, and it may or may not be subject to mechanisms of gene selection. So what's the problem?

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes;111270 wrote:

But change in allele is A change in population...

...So what's the problem?

As I pointed out at the start of the reply to that 1,2,3,4,5 set; #1 has aspects that need explaining.

e.g.
If you mean that a mutation in one somatic cell gene of an individual which never reproduces itself, is the same as a change in the population's number of individuals, it is a....... s t r e t c h Smile

I mean, "change in allele" = "change in population"; we've gone through why you can't claim that.

0 Replies

@memester,

No, that's not what I mean. I mean a somatic cell, except in the case of mosaicism, reflects what individual X has inherited from his parents. So you can do cross-sectional population genetics with cheek swabs or blood samples rather than collecting sperm from people.

Obvious (or it should be) is that population genetic changes are transmitted by germ-line allele frequencies, but the best way to check what population 0 can transmit in their germ lines is to look at the somatic cell gene frequency in population 0+1.

1 Reply

Evolution by Epigenesis: Farewell to Darwinism, Neo and Otherwise

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