Wholly Natrualistic Alternative To Neo-Darwinism?

[randman]

What I am saying is simple English, randman:
They did not use not use Haeckel's actual diagram as published in Haeckel's book. We know this because there is no citation at all for their diagram.

They used their own diagram, based on his work. That turned out to be virtually identical to Haeckel's diagram.

Well, I said they used them, and I was right. You are trying to suggest that since they elaborated (maybe, it's hard to tell with the 1994 drawings), then they didn't use them, but that's just adding a qualifier I did not add.

Plus, the drawings are virtually identical anyway.

 

[Reality Check]

Here's a little illustration though not of Miller and Levine's textbook but of a later one.

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1224

Any citation to the IDiots at the Discovery Institute (especially without context) shows a large amount of ignorance of the crankiness ID as presented by the closet creationists at DI.

I did find the DI blog post linking to this animation and it is really stupid - whining on about Haeckel's diagram being used in Raven & Johnson without any quote for context.

 

[Reality Check]

Well, I said they used them, and I was right.

No you said that they used them, and you were wrong.
They did not use Haeckel's actual diagram as published in Haeckel's book. We know this because there is no citation at all for their diagram.

But if you want to reword this to that they used them as source material as they state, then we are both right.

 

[Reality Check]

Except none of it's true.

Except it is all true.
The earliest stages are similar as shown by modern images.
The explanation is basically as they give.

Why, then, should the embryos of related organisms retain similar features when adults of their species look quite different? The cells and tissues of the earliest embryological stages of any organism are like the bottom levels in a house of cards. The final form of the organism is built upon them, and even a small change in their character can result in disaster later. It would hardly be adaptive for a bird to grow a longer beak, for example, if it lost its tongue in the process.
The earliest stages of the embryos life, therefore, are essentially "locked in," whereas cells and tissues that are produced later can change more freely without harming the organism. As species with common ancestors evolve over time, divergent sets of successful evolutionary changes accumulate as development proceeds, but early embryos stick more closely to their original appearance.
(Joseph S. LeVine & Kenneth R. Miller, Biology: Discovering Life, pg. 162 (2nd Ed., D.C. Heath, 1994))

 

[randman]

Reality, if you USE them to base your drawings on them, you USED them. Already explained that a long while ago on other threads.

Maybe we agree. Not sure though.

Their drawings are virtually identical and likewise erroneous. Whether they straight up copied them or made some changes, who knows? Maybe they just cleaned up the edges of whatever they were copying from? They say there are some changes, but that could be just leaving something out, cleaning up the image from wherever they got it. Who knows? I think you'd be hard-pressed to show the differences but maybe you can spot them?

 

[randman]

The earliest stages are similar as shown by modern images.

No, but certainly the earlier stages are smaller than later since the organism develops but if you think "images" support your idea here, you are being misled by a superficial perspective.

It's kind of like saying, well, electrons, atoms and molecules are all basically the same. I mean they are real small and everything.

ETA: just to help clarify since you likely will not believe me. Think about the term "the hourglass model."


Why is that the term?

 

[Reality Check]

No, but certainly the earlier stages are smaller than later since the organism develops but if you think "images" support your idea here, you are being misled by a superficial perspective.

That is dumb - of course as embryos grow they get larger!
It looks like you are being misled by your ignorance of biology as other posters have pointed out.

It is the features of embryos that are similar in earlier stages.

 

[Reality Check]

Reality, if you USE them to base your drawings on them, you USED them. Already explained that a long while ago on other threads.

randman, if you USE them in your book then you USE them and cite your source.
By that definition they were not USED (no source was cited).

Maybe we agree. Not sure though.

If you persist in "use" = indirect use then we will never agree.
I have a sceince background. To me "use" is direct use with a citation.

I hope that we can agree with the obvious:

1. They did not use Haeckel's actual diagram as published in Haeckel's book.
   We know this because there is no citation at all for their diagram.
2. They did use Haeckel's work as source material.
   This obviously included Haeckel's actual diagram since the diagram that they came up with is virtually identical to Haeckel's.

 

[randman]

No, I can't agree because your comments obscure the truth which is they appear either identical or nearly identical. Maybe they didn't source them. The drawings were quite old and no longer under copywright, I suspect, but regardless, they produced drawings either identical or nearly identical, and removed them when they became aware they were fakes.

That's the truth. Spin it however you want if it makes you sleep better but that's what happened.

 

[randman]

That is dumb - of course as embryos grow they get larger!
It looks like you are being misled by your ignorance of biology as other posters have pointed out.

It is the features of embryos that are similar in earlier stages.

So why the term the "hour glass model"?

I'll answer for you in case you don't know. It's because divergence or dissimilarity is greatest in the earliest and later stages. They are not more similar in the earlier stages and gradually depart from them.

Just not the case and so what they wrote is completely wrong.

ETA: and yet the confusion of evos doesn't end there as even the hourglass model isn't consistent and valid. The reality is embryology doesn't show us much of anything as far as evolution.

 

[Dinwar]

randman, your last post amounts to an accusation of fraud. Got any actual evidence to back it up? Reality Check's use of the term "used" is appropriate--if you use some figure in your paper, you take the figure and put it in your paper. If you ADAPT the figure, you edit it and include the new figure. In both cases, you cite your sources. If you merely use a figure as inspiration, you may or may not present a citation--after all, it's an entirely new figure. And Haeckel presented his diagrams in more or less the only way they can be.

None of that is relevant, however. Many textbooks and ALL OF EMBRYOLOGY use actual embryos or their photographs. So unless you're going to accuse Haeckel of posthumously fiddling with the development of all embryos used by modern science, Haeckel's work has been completely relegated to the dustbin of history, and a handful of third-rate textbooks (which DO NOT IN ANY WAY present the current scientific understanding of evolution).

The horse is dead, and has been beaten to a red smear on the pavement. If you still don't understand why Haeckel is irrelevant, you're simply refusing to understand the issue at hand, and we can't help you with your own intellectual honesty issues.

That is dumb - of course as embryos grow they get larger!

Oh, for the love of....He's complaining about THAT?! I really hope he never gets his hands on the latest copy of any paleontological literature that includes plates of fossils. They're often presented side-by-side, on the same plate, despite widely varying actual sizes. It's not at all uncommon. In a journal publication you include scale bars, but being as the focus of these figures is the morphology, not the size, it's not unreasonable to leave it out in a textbook (simply put, any textbook is going to have enough REAL issues that a missing scale bar on a figure where scale is more or lesss irrelevant isn't going to get noticed).

 

[Dinwar]

The reality is embryology doesn't show us much of anything as far as evolution.

I like this quote. It neatly illustrates the vaccuity of randman's thoughts on this issue. He believes that embryology has nothing to teach us about evolution. This isn't because it's true--ask any embryologist to see how, frankly, stupid such a statement is. It's because "evos"--meaning, apparently, any non-Creationist who disagrees with randman's view of evolution--haven't found it yet. This nicely illustrates that the overwhelming majority of those who oppose evolution are merely arguing against a theory they know little of, without doing their own research. If randman had, he'd have run up against numerous ways in which embryonic development plays a major role in evolution.

 

[randman]

Ok Dinwar, how does the hour-glass model demonstrate evolution?

And is the hour-glass model even true?

 

[Reality Check]

No, I can't agree because your comments obscure the truth which is they appear either identical or nearly identical.

The images are clearly not identical. They are clearly nearly identical.
My comments are about how scientists use sources. If a scientist uses a source then they cite it.

1. They did not use Haeckel's actual diagram as published in Haeckel's book.
   We know this because there is no citation at all for their diagram.
2. They did use Haeckel's work as source material.
   This obviously included Haeckel's actual diagram since the diagram that they came up with is virtually identical to Haeckel's.

Yeah - I really obscured that they diagrams are virtually identical !

 

[Dinwar]

Seems this answers your question quite nicely. And it's even simple enough for you to read the whole thing!!

Now that I've dealt with your pet concept in embryology, care ot look up Gould's book on the subject? Embryology is more than just the phylotypic stage, after all--it's everything from conception to birth (and in some case, well after birth). Are you going to tell me that you think the ONLY thing that has ANY use in evolutionary analysis in that WHOLE time is the phylotypic stage? How about, oh....the amniotic egg, live birth, the evolution of the placenta, all that? Or are you going to do your typical trick of picking one thing out of a huge and diverse field and declare that that is the One True Theory of that field, ignoring all others and belittling anyone who dares to say that perhaps you should look at the rest of the field?

 

[randman]

So explain please how they are not virtually identical, and also answer the question now twice put to you on the hour-glass model.

ETA: to Reality. Dinwar, your response is in the post below this one.

 

[Dinwar]

I answered that question, randman. You didn't listen. I have a feeling you're not even reading posts--just skimming them for key words.

 

[randman]

So Dinwar, you actually posted an article highlighting Haeckel's forgeries prominently and then suggest I take you and the article seriously, and that evos have moved on past Haeckel.

 

[randman]

Seems this answers your question quite nicely. And it's even simple enough for you to read the whole thing!!

Now that I've dealt with your pet concept in embryology, care ot look up Gould's book on the subject? Embryology is more than just the phylotypic stage, after all--it's everything from conception to birth (and in some case, well after birth). Are you going to tell me that you think the ONLY thing that has ANY use in evolutionary analysis in that WHOLE time is the phylotypic stage? How about, oh....the amniotic egg, live birth, the evolution of the placenta, all that? Or are you going to do your typical trick of picking one thing out of a huge and diverse field and declare that that is the One True Theory of that field, ignoring all others and belittling anyone who dares to say that perhaps you should look at the rest of the field?

How about answering my questions first?

How is the hour-glass model evidence for evolution?

Is it real?

 

[Reality Check]

So why the term the "hour glass model"?

Why not?

Comparative embryology shows that early embryos have more features in common than later embryos. That lead Haeckel to propose the existence of a phylotypic stage of development.
FYI - this is not "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny".

This phylotypic stage stage is the waist in the controversial hour glass model. AFAIK there is little debate about the waist and above, probably because the data is easy gathered - just take photos of embryos. The debate is about the bottom of the hour glass.

P.S. Maybe you remember what I said to you back on 2nd April 2011!

The Pandas Thumb blog has a good series of articles about it.

• It’s just a stage. A phylotypic stage. Part I.
• It’s just a stage. A phylotypic stage. Part II: The flies
• A visit from the architects of the fly hourglass paper
• It’s just a stage. A phylotypic stage. Part III: Fish and more

P.S. I do hope you realize that the supposed observation of a phylotypic stage is separate from the debunked recapitulation theory?If it exists then a theory will have to explain the observation. That theory will not be recapitulation.