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Fossil and Evolution

mijopaalmc said:
Out of curiosity what textbook did you use?

The definition of epistemology that I cited seems to be pretty standard across the philosophy of science video lecture courses that I have consulted.
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For the sake of argument, I will call the professor of epistemology who lectured on three papers I took for my minor degree as my source.

I have already retracted my statement.

ETA: No comments on my response to your question, then?

ETA2: To further explain my point before I drop it completely. Epistemology deals with methods of obtaining knowledge, and defines what that knowledge is. You, on the other hand, have asked for the reasoning behind one specific claim of evolution. This has nothing to do with epistemology. If it did, you would ask for our justifcations in claiming our knowledge certain, or perhaps for our theories on the definition of knowledge, and how to obtain it. Epistemology deals with the abstraction of "knowledge", you are asking about a specific point and our reasoning behind that.
 
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Slimething said:
Yeah, I know about the bones and I guess I am technically wrong as they are described as fossilized remains but I had more the impression-in-rock kind of fossil. You know, the silhouette imbedded in some type of rock. I believe that's what those there creationists think of as fossils. Anyone who sat down and really thought about the exact type of conditions that have to be met to form any type of fossil would have to wonder how we have any of them not why we haven't found certain ones.

Thanks for the information, Unrepentant Sinner!
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And don't forget that fossils include all kinds of things besides bones and impressions. Stromatolites, burrows, footprints, nests, turds, etc. all are fossils as well and tell us about the past.
 
mijopaalmc said:
Isn't that a bit of a false dilemma? Could you have simply have misunderstood the question? Or could the question have been so poorly stated in the first that it really wasn't worth answering in any meaningful sort of way?:p :D
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I do believe I misunderstood the question but we shan't know unless you tell us. ;)

And please, do tell, did I answer it?
 
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mijopaalmc said:
OK, then how classify a question that deals how we know something is due to a causal link or how we know what constitutes causality?

To use a common trope, here is what Wikipedia says epistemology is:

(emphases mine)
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In the case of the theory of evolution, we know from the genetic trail. And in addition, we can use genetic science (aka the theory of evolution) to make predictions, test them and indeed, the predictive ability of the theory of evolution has been confirmed. That is the last step in confirming a theory in science.
 
mijopaalmc said:
I think the most frustrating aspect of this whole conversation is that people seem to approach the question with a series of pat answers which in truth really don't answer the question as it was originally posed.

I admit that the analogy that I originally presented was at best poor and at worse false and misleading, but it seem that people have chosen with unfailing regularity to quote it, ignoring the fact that I had already acknowledged, in the very first post, that it failed in several important aspects. However, the aspect that I was trying to emphasize with the analogy, the perception of the continuity of evolution (absent all of the creationist baggage that has now been attached to it), still stands and has not been answered adequately: how can we claim that the extant evidence that we have from the incomplete fossil record at this very moment (not the hypothesized evidence that we assume would be availible to us from a complete fossil record) presents eivdence for the continuity of evolution?

People have answered variously with "intermediate forms" and "not enough time", which is strange because I dont think I implied that I was ever talking about a big jump in development, just a big jump in time (e.g., 1-2 million years when considering cetacean evloution, specifically the gap in the fossil record between Pakicetus and Ambulocetus or between Ambulocetus and Dalanistes). My point has mainly been that our claims to knowledge seem to far outstrip the current state of evidence, not that this discrepancy will never be resolved or that it even severly undermines evolution (both of which I don't believe). Thus, it seems that skeptics (as most of us are) would want to make conservative claims to knowledge based on the evidence.

In sum, I am not questioning the existence of evolution but rather the representation of evolution as continuous given the cureent extant evidence. Moreover, I am looking for a way to explain how the fossil record demonstrates the continutiy of evolution given its current fragmentary state.
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Then you missed posts 12 and 69. Read them and get back to me. In addition, you are not mentioning the genetic record which completely overruns the fossil record.

The gap you speak of implies either you do not know what the last 2 decades of research has uncovered, or you are ignoring it for some other reason. You are beginning to sound like you think you have some evidence of ID and its irreducible complexity. Well that ignores the wealth of evidence we have in genetic science. Behe has been debunked.
 
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skeptigirl said:
I do believe I misunderstood the question but we shan't know unless you tell us. ;)

And please, do tell, did I answer it?
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Truth be told, I'm not sure what I was asking anymore.

Let me think about it a little more and I'll try to spell it out without the pesky analogies that seem to be getting me into to trouble here.

I will also try to incorporate the other information that had been given to me, especially the analogy that Dr. Adequate had provided me. (It's late and I'm tired so I think that it would better for all involved if I responded when I was more cogent.)
 
mijopaalmc said:
What would be the best way of demonstrating that my question is genuine?
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Well, you could start by explaining why, in your opening post, you refer to your degree in multiple scientific subjects, as a "Bachelor of 'Arts.'"

Hmmmmm? ;)
 
kjkent1 said:
Well, you could start by explaining why, in your opening post, you refer to your degree in multiple scientific subjects, as a "Bachelor of 'Arts.'"

Hmmmmm? ;)
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Well, that is really not my fault :p . To be completely transparent, I went to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington which is only chartered to grant BA's but if it so pleases you (and I mean that in the least condescending way possible), you can look at the requirements for the degree in the course catalog, which you can find at the college website, and determine whether the degree lends itself to a thorough understanding of science and the scientific method. I also understand as the degree doesn't require a course in evolutionary biology, which I didn't take due to scheduling conflicts, I may not understand evolution as thoroughly as originally I thought I did when I first posted. Evolution was only covered briefly in so far as it related to the course material. Thus, evolution was covered on the context of genetics, cell biology, physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology, and not vice versa. In other words, evolution was ancillary to the main topic of the course and therefore covered very briefly when compared to how much detail, for instance, the Krebs cycle was covered in cell biology. In fact, the "and this is a result of evolution" aspect was often covered in a very ad hoc hand-wavy way almost, as I recall, as if saying it made it so.
 
mijopaalmc said:
I think the most frustrating aspect of this whole conversation is that people seem to approach the question with a series of pat answers which in truth really don't answer the question as it was originally posed.
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What was wrong with my answer? I very much tried to answer as it was originally posed. I even used the same analogy.

ETA And there was certainly nothing "pat" about Dr. A's responses!
 
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I'm also wondering what was wrong with my explanation? At least it should merit a response of your own?
 
mijopaalmc said:
Truth be told, I'm not sure what I was asking anymore.
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Fair enough. Please keep the following easily verifiable facts in mind:

1. There aren't any questions any more about whether evolution occurs or not. There are too many documented cases of it occurring under scientific observation. The black and white moths in Britain, forced to evolve because they have to hide from birds on the trunks of beech trees, which became contaminated with soot, are a well known and trivial example; we have observed evolution in many places, at many times, in many species, to such an extent that I think previous estimates of a few decades of certainty are unnecessarily conservative. I would state without reservation that by the 1930s there was essentially no question in the mind of anyone studying the accumulated evidence as to whether evolution occurs. In the 1920s, a gentleman named Paul Kammerer was discovered to have faked evidence of Lamarckism (inheritance of acquired characteristics) and felt that the evidence of Darwinism was sufficiently embarrassing that he shot himself on September 23rd 1926. I think that about covers that subject in sufficient detail.

2. We not only know that evolution occurs, we even know the mechanism by which it occurs. We understand precisely how the DNA is altered, and how often, and how those alterations lead to novel characteristics and eventually to new species. We have gone so far as to analyze the genes of modern humans to determine how far back their most recent common ancestor is, and we've done the same for other species. When you do that with two species, and find how long ago their common ancestor must have lived, and figure what that common ancestor must have looked like, and you find it right there in the fossil record, there's basically no where left to hide. It's clear, it's unequivocal, and it's conclusive in the view of so vast a majority that the minority view isn't any longer considered scientific.

So when someone comes onto a skeptics' web site and questions evolution, you have to understand that about nine times out of ten, they're looking for a fight; if you're the tenth, then I apologize on behalf of the others. We've had some pretty egregious denials of obvious well-established fact around here, and it's gotten pretty old; I can only plead that as an excuse, I make no claim it's reasonable. If you're sincere, then I can at least plead that I have not been unreasonable, nor sarcastic, though it may have seemed that way; I honestly believe that if someone with an open mind surfs talkorigins, it's probably the best way they can find out what's going on and what the evidence really looks like. I honestly meant what I said; you can find out more there in ten minutes than we can give you here in ten hours. But ask away; don't let the cynical and jaded here dissuade you. The only dumb question is the one you didn't ask.
 
mijopaalmc said:
However, the aspect that I was trying to emphasize with the analogy, the perception of the continuity of evolution (absent all of the creationist baggage that has now been attached to it), still stands and has not been answered adequately: how can we claim that the extant evidence that we have from the incomplete fossil record at this very moment (not the hypothesized evidence that we assume would be availible to us from a complete fossil record) presents eivdence for the continuity of evolution?

...snip....

My point has mainly been that our claims to knowledge seem to far outstrip the current state of evidence, not that this discrepancy will never be resolved or that it even severly undermines evolution (both of which I don't believe). Thus, it seems that skeptics (as most of us are) would want to make conservative claims to knowledge based on the evidence.

In sum, I am not questioning the existence of evolution but rather the representation of evolution as continuous given the cureent extant evidence. Moreover, I am looking for a way to explain how the fossil record demonstrates the continutiy of evolution given its current fragmentary state.
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I agree that we should want to make conservative claims, and I think that most people actually do so.

how can we claim that the extant evidence that we have from the incomplete fossil record at this very moment (not the hypothesized evidence that we assume would be availible to us from a complete fossil record) presents eivdence for the continuity of evolution?
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Easy, we can't. We cannot claim that we have direct evidence, by visual inspection, from the fossil record of the continuity of evolution. We do not see evolution happening in a continuous fashion from one form to another, with our own eyes in real time, as the process unfurls. But we don't see molecules re-aligning as a chemical reaction occurs either. We see color change. They occur on different time scales, but the scientific thinking is the same. In both instances, we predict what will occur in a situation by use of a theory that provides our explanatory scaffolding. We watch what happens (or with evolution, what happened if we can find the evidence), and we either keep or reject our explanatory theory of the way the world works based on the evidence that we do see with our eyes. I've never seen chemical bonds break and reform though I have mixed several compounds together. My theory tells me that the regular change that I do see when I mix the stuff together is because of the chemical changes taking place at the molecular level. I can make this inference because, when I analyze the resulting compounds, I see exactly what my theory predicted would occur. The same is true of the fossil record, as Dr. A pointed out.

We have seen, however, with our own eyes the creation of new lines of plant and animal that cannot mate with the parent because of new variation/mutation. The inability to mate will create a barrier to further gene mixing which will, in time, produce different forms of organism since the two groups are now genetically isolated. The same thing occurs, as has been mentioned, with rivers getting in the way or continents drifting apart.

As Dr. A so succinctly put it, when teaching this material or simply discussing it with others, we must distinguish between the theory and what it predicts -- the way the evidence will appear to us if the theory is correct -- and the fuller model that we can have confidence in once the theory has been confirmed (or, rather, not rejected).

So, with many, many more words than Dr. A would have used I would say that we shouldn't, based solely on the fossil record and nothing else, say that we have "seen" evolution occur in a continuous fashion. But, again, I don't know anyone who does say that. I will take your word for it that there are people who do (I've found that some people will say almost anything). What we can say is that the evidence of the fossil record confirms the predictions our theory makes about what should be there, and our so-far completely confirmed theory tells us (just like with molecular bond breaking and realignment of molecules in chemical reactions) that the process does occur in a continuous fashion. So, the continuous change is a fallout of the theory, not a direct observation, just as molecular realignment is a fallout of theory while we only see compunds changing color.

We have, as has been also mentioned, several other lines of evidence that converge on precisely the same evolutionary explanation, with predicted intermediate fossils occurring in the proper stratigraphic level, a rather fuller genetic story of changing information over time, the correlation of radioisometry data, and the blindingly simple framework of natural selection itself. I think when teaching this material (you did mention that aspect didn't you or am I reading into your post?), it is very important to report all those converging lines of evidence, but to treat the fossil evidence as Dr. A spelled out.

Can I also lend my kudos to Dr. A's explanation. And Skepticgirl and Taffer's explanations too.
 
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Schneibster said:
The black and white moths in Britain, forced to evolve because they have to hide from birds on the trunks of beech trees, which became contaminated with soot, are a well known and trivial example;
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This is a point of information about the Peppered Moth observations. First off, if any C/IDer mentions Jonathan Wells or Icons of Evolution there's a Talk Origins page that blows him out of the water. Second, C/IDers will try and argue the "existing information" angle because there were indeed darker and lighter moths in existance before the Industrial Revolution and therefore "it's not evolution." Well, the whole "information" argument from C/IDers is BS, but laying that aside for a moment, English Peppered Moths represent both Natrual Selection in action and a change in allele frequencies over time, which are key components to evolution as we know it. Finally, make the point that Peppered Moths evolved from non-moth, non-insect (in laymans terms) beings and we can place them in phylogenies or cladegrams genetically which demonstrate this. Be prepared to fend off the "information" tangent on this third point.

Jonathan Wells got one single thing right about Peppered Moths, they are indeed a "Icon of Evolution," and rightfully so.
 
mijopaalmc said:
Thus, evolution was covered on the context of genetics, cell biology, physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology, and not vice versa. In other words, evolution was ancillary to the main topic of the course and therefore covered very briefly when compared to how much detail, for instance, the Krebs cycle was covered in cell biology. In fact, the "and this is a result of evolution" aspect was often covered in a very ad hoc hand-wavy way almost, as I recall, as if saying it made it so.
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That's the strength of evolution.

Consider that, in most of the kinds of courses you list (and this is based on my own experience, including have taught general biology and plant physiology) is that there is a lot of background taken for granted.

I know I've not been able to take the time to go into detail on chemical processes, and have simply said "and this is a result of chemistry" - not hand-wavy or ad-hoc; I've simply assumed that students have had the required prerequisite coursework.

Teaching a junior level physiology course, you must assume students have done something with their previous two years, and can simply skip the basics.

There's not time to cover the fundamentals of chemistry in a physiology course, nor is there time to prove the basic tenets of evolution.

For another example, consider the role of plastids and mitochondria in plant science. Cytoplasmic inheritance is sometimes important in crop science; cytoplasmic male sterility has great impact on breeding programs. Cytoplasmic inheritance follows from plastics and mitochondria having independent genomes.

That is fact, and important concept to be covered in a plant physiology course. I might mention in lecture, in an ad-hoc, hand-wavy way, that this fact is best explained by evolutionary processes, but I don't really have time prove the endosymbiotic origin in a physiology course.

Obviously, I could list many more examples - evolution so permeates biology that it becomes transparent, like chemistry. It's just something you take for granted.
 
Taffer said:
Noooooooo! :(



Erg, what was I thinking.

* Taffer;2481012 hides in the corner. :boxedin:
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Is this a reference to the departed one who used to "drink and post"?--
Last I saw, he was imbibing and blathering at skeptic.com.

I thought my explanation was worthy--as were most.
But here's a good, short video that is useful regarding human skulls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwD98VB1zvU

You (the OP) has chosen a broad topic, but there are some great videos on youtube that can give you the "non-pat" answer you are looking for, but creationists aren't very good at "non-pat" answers.

You can also point out that if evolution is a lie, all the scientists in the world are in on it, including forensic scientists, the Smithsonian, all Natural History Museums, National Geographic, PBS, the BBC, CBC (Canadian), and ABC. And Turkey is the only country in the developed words who have fewer people who understand or "believe in" one of the most compelling and well supported and accepted "theories" of all time. And their lack of belief is due to fundamental Muslim thinking. In the U.S. it's due to ignorance and Fundamental Christian thinking. There is no controversy in science. The controversy is between religious fundamentalists and scientific facts.

Here are a couple of more sources.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV4_lVTVa6k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XDn5SqE9jc&mode=related&search=

And PBS has great videos has well that you can play right on your computer if you really want the facts.

But there are tons of "fossils" in our DNA as well--genes that we no longer use that are active in our ancestors--the vitamin C gene, for example. All organisms carry remnants of fossil genes--genes from their ancestors that are broken or mutated or turned off or stuck in the junk DNA. We can see that. In the molecular record, we can see what changes took place between us and Chimps. With fossils we have to take what we can find...what lasted. But just because you can't fill in every piece of the puzzle, doesn't mean you can't figure out what the big picture is and where, approximately each piece goes. Radiometric dating and genetics fills in the gaps beautifully and in stunning detail--we are discovering life forms everywhere--in the air we breath, and on our skin and in the ocean--and in the depths of the ocean we are seeing "aliens" we could not have imagined. Boneless aliens which aren't likely to fossilize. DNA, like fossils, degrades over time, but we are getting better at finding it, copying it, and analyzing it. We've got both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from Neanderthals, and the information it has given us has been compelling. There were other hominids besides humans who walked the earth at the same time as humans. The "hobbits" of Flores are another example for whom we have some compelling fossil evidence and studies, but no DNA yet.

Please learn the answer to your question, because it is some of the most fascinating stuff humans have had the privilege of knowing. I teach biology, and I post pictures of fossils, weird creatures we are discovering, the latest updates on the family tree (put "tree of life" in a google search), hybrids like ligers and Zonkeys--and their common ancestor, skeleton comparisons of various primates (living and extinct)--and then I let them ask the questions.
I think the answers are obvious and the fossil records more complete than you think. Even my "special" students with religious indoctrination--can't help but notice that Humans are not the same as Neanderthals--and yet primates are all similar in some ways distinguishable from other mammals--just as mammals are similar in some ways distinguishable from other vertebrates. They also can't help but see that we share amazing similarities with apes. I also have some good clips of Apes exhibiting very human emotions including 2 clips of gorillas protecting a child who fell into the gorilla exhibit at a zoo.

National Geographic, the Natural History Museum in New York, and Humanorigins.org (from the Leaky foundation?) are all excellent sources of info. and contain interactives. People enjoy looking at the tree of life (there are great visuals all over the web). Molecular studies recently showed that hippopotami (sp?) are more related to whales then they are to land mammals.

And that's the thing about fossils--some things that are distantly related look very similar, and some things like dogs and wolves that are the same species--yet they have vastly different pheontypes and would confuse anyone trying to sort them out based on their fossils. DNA sorts out these conundrums.

I'm sorry for thinking you were a creationist if you are not. But they do have this "wedge" strategy where they try to get their agenda taught via sciency sounding words, and they sometimes dishonestly post here pretending to be interested in the actual science, when they really want to learn just enough to build a sciency sounding argument to refute the scientists--or at least something that sounds good to the people who fund them or believe in their teachings. And the compendium of knowledge just in the last couple of years is astounding.

You may not be able to educate someone who thinks faith is a good way to get knowledge, but don't let yourself keep from being educated. These are not "pat" answers. If you expect to explain anything to the ignorant, you are going to have to start with something simplistic. And it sounds as if you may need to build up your knowledge in this way as well. Science doesn't have easy answers--but they are useful and they are true and they lead to more knowledge. What more could you want?
 
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